“Did she help?” I ask, the only logical question.
“I believe instead she called Gerald at three a.m. in hysterics,” he says.
“I’m sure he took that well,” I say, keeping my voice low, and Oliver just sighs.
“We didn’t have another female visiting professor for quite a while after that,” he admits. “No matter how many the rest of us recommended.”
“Gerald nursed a grudge against an entire class of people for the actions of one? Doesn’t sound anything like him,” I mutter, glancing over at Oliver.
My advisor — no, my former advisor, we’re now colleagues — gives me a conspiratorial look.
“Even in a brand new building, the walls here have ears,” he says, one eyebrow raised. “And you don’t want your soul to join the ghosts of the un-tenured, do you?”
I just shudder.
“Perish the thought,” I say, and I’m not being sarcastic.
Being denied tenure is the worst thing that can happen to a professor, barring death of disfigurement, though frankly I might opt to lose a finger, given the choice.
It’s not like getting fired. If you get fired, you can still get a job in your field — get denied tenure and not only do you lose your current job, you stand a zero percent chance of getting hired anywhere else, either.
In other words, if you get denied tenure, you’d better have a backup career in mind. It’s hell.
“Thought not,” Oliver says, lightheartedly. “I, on the other hand, have had tenure for a number of years, so I’m free to call Gerald a total dinosaur who wouldn’t know what to do with a new idea if it bit him on the ass, and who hasn’t had a single original thought go through his head since the first Bush administration.”
I just laugh, and Oliver raises one eyebrow.
“His dinner parties are incredibly dull,” he declares. “The drinks are weak, the food is bad, and he only invites other ancient white men. And me, to prove that he’s open-minded and knows someone who isn’t an old white man.”
“Well, I find Dr. Comstock to be a lovely, wise, generous, dignified, and…”
I trail off, thinking.
“…informative individual,” I say, just a little too loudly, glancing down the hall toward the rest of the offices.
Oliver grins.
“You’ll be a full professor in no time,” he says. “I’ve got a class at two, are you heading to campus?”
“Honors Calc in Keyes,” I say, and we walk down the hall toward a set of glass double doors.
I’m pretty sure I owe my job to Oliver Nguyen. He was my advisor while I was getting my doctorate here, and when this position suddenly opened up last year, he’s the one who practically forced me to apply.
I later found out that there were nearly a thousand applicants, many of whom were probably more qualified than me. It’s a miracle that I got it.
“I hope they’ve fixed the AC,” he says. “No one can learn in a sauna. Last semester it got so out of control —”
“Professor Loveless?” a voice asks, right as we pass the main Mathematics office.
It takes me half a second to remember that that’s me.
“Yes?”
“Dr. Comstock has asked to see you,” says Karen, his Executive Assistant — not secretary, never secretary — calls through an open doorway, framed by heavy wooden doors.
She’s looking at me expectantly from behind a massive wooden desk, her dyed-blond hair practically a helmet.
“Of course,” I tell her, and nod at Oliver.
“Good luck. We’ll talk later,” he says, clapping me quickly on the shoulder, then walking away. Karen gives a single nod, then points to an office door.
“You can go ahead in, Dr. Comstock is expecting you,” Karen says, already looking back at her computer through reading glasses.
“Thanks,” I say, and push open the door.
Behind a huge wooden desk, surrounded by bookshelves, is Dr. Comstock, as he prefers to be called. I’ve never called him Gerald to his face and never will. The only person I’ve heard get away with it was Ezekiel Thurston, an emeritus professor who just turned ninety-three and who’s been around for so long that he could probably get away with burning the place down.
“Professor Loveless,” he says, waving a hand at me while still looking through his glasses at his computer monitor. “Have a seat.”
I sit, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee, and wait. In academia, almost everything is some kind of psychological power play — all about who can make someone else wait the longest, who can inconvenience someone else the most, who has to call who professor and who can get away with first names.
It’s my Achilles heel. I’m straightforward to a fault and have never been able to shake the notion that everyone else is, as well. I’m an awful liar. I hate saying what I don’t mean, even when I know it’s good for my career.
So I wait for Dr. Comstock to acknowledge me. I’ve still got plenty of time to get to campus, so I don’t mind watching the sun stream in through the big windows at the front of the office, scanning the titles of the books on the bookshelves.