“Please do. I promised Shannon I’d make sure that you did.”
Carla left, pulling the door closed firmly behind her. She was no fan of mine, I knew that, because my classes were more popular than hers. Even her own son, one of the star basketball players at Benton, had registered for my article-writing class as opposed to his mother’s, though I had a feeling that was more in part because the class was rumored to be easy. It wasn’t, and I’d given Seth a C, which was generous, though I
knew it pissed Carla off. Benton had a strict policy that its athletes maintain a GPA of 3.0 or higher in order to play, and the school also had a reputation for not employing teachers who were willing to give a pass to a student just because he or she happened to be a star athlete.
I went back to examining that ring of dried coffee when there was another knock at the door. I sighed.
“What, Carla?” I said. “What did you forget now?”
The door opened, but it wasn’t Carla; it was Tessa Donovan, the girl from my feature writing class who had looked so positively gutted when she got her paper back. She was certainly one of the better-looking students. Part of what made her so attractive, though, was the fact that she didn’t realize she was so good-looking. Benton actually had its fair share of hot chicks, but the majority of the hot ones knew that they were hot. This one, she didn’t have a clue.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Um, hi, I’m in your feature writing class?”
She had long brown hair that was pulled back into a ponytail, and a fringe of bangs cut straight across. She had our primary textbook, The Fundamentals of Feature Writing, clasped to her chest.
“Is that a question?”
A confused look crossed her face, but then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I . . . I’m just . . . I was wondering if I could talk to you about something.”
“Sure,” I said. “Have a seat.” I gestured to the blue plastic chair that sat at the front of my desk.
She sat down, placing her backpack, purse, and textbook on the floor next to her. For not the first time, I asked myself the riddle of: why did the female student need to carry both a backpack AND a purse? And in this particular instance, why not put the textbook INTO the backpack?
I refocused my attention on Tessa’s face, as she’d started to talk and I had no idea what it was she was saying.
“ …not the grade I was expecting to get. I worked really hard on that article. I’m not trying to insult you, or anything, though, or argue with you about the grade—”
“No?” I interrupted. “Because that kind of sounds like what you’re doing.”
Her eyes widened. She was attractive, but there were hundreds of attractive girls here at Benton. So many that it almost made you think being at least an eight on the attractiveness scale was a requirement for acceptance.
“No,” she said. “If you think that this article was only a C+, then I accept that. And I plan to go through all the comments and really make sure that I do better on my next assignment. But—here’s the thing. I know the semester is already more than halfway over. And I’m afraid that with this grade I’m not going to be able to get my GPA back to where it needs to be, unless there’s something else I can do.”
I nodded slowly. “I see.”
“So do you think something would be possible?”
“We can definitely take care of that.”
A look of visible relief crossed her face. “Oh, great,” she said.
“Yeah,” I continued. “Some sort of extra credit something or other that will be able to get that GPA of yours back up.”
She nodded. “Sure. What kind of extra credit assignment were you thinking? Or do you have a couple that I can choose from? I’m fine doing whatever it is you want.”
“Great,” I said, recalling that movie I had watched the other night. Clearly, this was my chance. I had put a request out to the universe, and the universe was (for once) delivering. “Here’s what I want then: I want you to be my sex toy.”
The air hung heavy in the room, and neither of us said anything for several seconds. I watched her face morph through several variations of shock, finally settling on confusion, because surely she had just completely misheard what I’d said.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“I want you to be my sex toy.” This was the moment when I could laugh it off and say I was just kidding, making a joke in very bad taste, or I could keep a straight face and go with it. Just having this taboo interaction was making me feel more alive than I had in recent memory, injecting my mundane life with some sort of excitement. She could report me to the dean for all I cared; getting fired now would really be a mercy.
But all she said was, “Oh.” Her face turned red. It looked like maybe she was about to cry, or burst out laughing. She did neither, though. She just shook her head, gathering her things. She stood up. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do that. I mean, I know I can’t do that. I guess . . . I guess I’ll just have to take the grade I’m getting now. I’ll try and do better, but I can’t . . . I can’t do what it is that you just said, Professor Rochman.” She was rambling and backing up toward the door as she spoke.
“You can call me Leo,” I said, as she exited, and I had to laugh at how lecherous the whole thing sounded.