Had he ever been inside before? I asked him, when we were settled.
He did not answer me. He was sitting on a folding chair with his hands clasped together, looking at his shoes. He hadn’t said anything in a while, and looked a little pathetic, so small in that grand space, storage containers stacked to the windows on either side, with only a camp light to see by in the falling light. Edgar approached and stood behind him. I winced, but all he did was cup the professor’s neck lightly with one hand. He bent down and whispered, “Are you all right?”
Professor K—— laughed shortly. “No,” he said. “No, I am not.”
“Okay, okay.” Edgar began to rub his shoulders. “It’s okay.”
Edgar looked at me and smiled sympathetically. I alone knew what this smile meant. It meant it was time to go forward, to live. Before I knew it, he’d led the professor over to an old industrial desk—some remnant from the National Guard—and softly instructed him to grab onto it.
Did I want to watch? No.
I just wanted to listen.
There were no words at all, of course, only the shuffling of feet, the friction of clothing, the occasional sound of Edgar’s murmur, and a cry or two—the professor—something like the cry of a person stumbling upon an unspeakable vision. Watching the last of the sun fade through the western windows, I thought about what the professor had really taught me: he’d taught me that the body was a design. A brilliant design, a very tidy machine, a collaboration of limbs and joints, all working together to get itself down the street, or to raise a glass to its lips, or to crouch in a corner and hide. No need to get too emotional about it or march around campuses and in general take things too much to heart. A belt buckle clattered to the floor. The desk juddered as it was pushed a little further. The professor cried out again, a warble of pain. I wondered how Edgar and I would speak of this later, on the mattress, under the streetlight.
We drove the professor back to College Hill. Up onto Benefit Street, left at the Athaneaum, arriving at the back gates of the main quad, where graduates egress with diplomas each May. He sat in the back, not saying a word.
When we pulled in front of the professor’s building on George Street, Edgar turned and put his hand over the seat bench.
“Which one’s your car, honey?” he asked Professor K——.
Professor K—— stayed silent.
“Hey,” Edgar said, swatting his leg.
The professor jumped. He looked at me. “I don’t understand this,” he said, and started to cry.
“I know you don’t,” I said. “I know you don’t.”
“Which one is your car?” growled Edgar.
The professor looked around. He started shivering. “That one,” he said.
“Good,” said Edgar, leaning over the backseat and opening the professor’s door for him. “See you next week.”
“What?” said the professor.
“We’d like to see you again,” said Edgar. “Does next week work for you?”
“Again?”
I turned around. George Street was behind us, leading gently uphill to the heart of the campus, a bower of aged trees, a vision of New England worthiness.
I said, “If you don’t show up here again this same time next week, I will tell your wife what you did to me, and I will tell the chair of your department what you did to me.”
Professor K—— looked at me without recognition.
“He understands,” said Edgar. “He understands the terms. After all, he’s a very smart man. He’s an expert. He’s a professor.”
*
Not unfrequently, in these relationships-that-are-not-relationships, there can be very graceful victims. That is, people who can smile and appear happy and even grateful, even when there’s a metaphorical gun to their ribs. I used to think these people were all women. But recently I have come to think, no, men can do it too, men can be graceful victims, and it has made me feel more warmly toward them, actually. Every time Edgar and I pick up Professor K——, I feel a rush of sympathy for him, the way he stands with one hand cinching his coat together against the cold, or when he troubles to bring an umbrella, and as we pull up in front of his office on George Street, he looks off into the treetops, almost politely, as if he is writing poetry in his head, as if things are going precisely as he planned.
FEMUR
BY HESTER KAPLAN