This part of the room was high ceilinged and bright, its rows of worktables illuminated by the large, glass-fronted exterior wall. Atop the tables were old-style cafeteria trays, each tray laden with skulls, ribs, mandibles, vertebrae, pubic bones, arm bones, hand bones, foot bones, or some combination thereof, giving the room the look of a skeletal spare-parts shop. “Hey, I need me a left tibia,” I imagined a one-legged customer hopping in and saying. “Y’all got any of them?” “Loads,” my salesman-self would answer. “What make and model you aiming for?” The customer would look down at the stump of his leg, making sure he got the specifications right. “A 1963 male, ’bout six foot one.” “You’re in luck,” I’d say. “Got one, good as new, never broken. Installation not included.”
My imaginary spare-parts sale was interrupted by a series of three dull thuds just outside the door, each thud punctuated by a curse. “Dammit. Damn it. Dammit!!!” I turned and opened the door just in time to see a two-foot stack of books teetering wildly in the overloaded left arm of my assistant, Miranda. As the leaning tower of books approached its tipping point, she reflexively swung her right hand over to stabilize it. Unfortunately, her right hand was clutching a Starbucks cup, which smacked against the books, popping off the lid, collapsing the cup, and sending liquid cascading over her hand and onto the three books that I had heard thud to the floor. I readied my ears for the litany of profanity that was sure to ensue—Miranda cussed frequently, creatively, and with considerable gusto—but she simply stared at the crushed cup, the dripping hand, and the sodden books . . . and then burst into peals of laughter. And it was the laughter that finally nudged the tower of books to its tipping point. For a moment the stack—still a single unit—seemed to hang in the air, as if both time and gravity had been suspended. Then, slowly, the structure came apart in midair, book after book tumbling into a pile at her feet.
“You do know how to make an entrance,” I said. “You okay?”
She nodded, still laughing too hard to speak.
“Sorry about your coffee,” I offered. “And your books.”
“It’s okay,” she finally managed to gasp out. “I was bringing you tea.” She howled afresh. “Oh, and they’re your books, not mine.”
Now it was my turn to stare. Sure enough, the spines and covers in the puddle were familiar ones. And, in spite of myself and my love of my books, it was my turn to laugh, too.
CHAPTER 2
THE BAD NEWS WAS, ONE OF THE BOOKS MIRANDA had been carrying was now thoroughly soaked, as soggy as a two-hundred-page tea bag. The good news was, the sodden mess was the osteology field guide that I myself had written years before.
“Sorry, Dr. B,” Miranda said, holding the book by one corner as it drained into the trash can beside the desk.
“I have a spare copy,” I said. “Actually, hundreds of spare copies. Boxes and boxes of them, crammed in the closet of my office. Peggy’s been after me for years to get rid of some of them.” The truth was, Peggy, my secretary, had been after me to get rid of all of them. “They’re not the latest edition,” Peggy liked to point out. “No first editions, either. Nothing worth saving. And the longer they sit in that closet, the moldier and more outdated they get.”
I eyed the other books Miranda had been lugging, which ranged from osteology references to radiology texts. “Why are you bringing these back? You finally getting worried about your library fines?” It was a running joke, my pretense that she was racking up years’ worth of overdue fines on the books I had loaned her.
“Why should I worry?” she cracked. “What’s a few thousand bucks between indentured servant and master?”
That, too, was a running joke, one that had more than a kernel of truth in it: Graduate assistants worked long hours for low pay, and Miranda was now nearing the seven-year mark in her servitude. If she’d been a faculty member instead of a student, she’d be eligible for tenure now.
“Actually, I’m through with them,” she said.
“Through?”
“Through. I sent it to the printer this morning.”
“It?” She nodded but said nothing, waiting for me to figure out what she meant. It took me longer than it should have. “Your dissertation? You finished?”
“Yup. That’s why I’m late—I was up all night making revisions. But it’s done, by damn.” She flashed me a smile—a smile that combined pride, relief, and also, I now noticed, exhaustion. And yet remarkably, she—the one who’d been up all night—had gone to the trouble to buy me a cup of tea on her way in. True, the tea was now only a puddle of good intentions, but I appreciated the gesture.
“That’s great, Miranda. I’m thrilled,” I said. But the word came out sounding flat and forced, and I realized that “thrilled” wasn’t the whole truth. The whole truth was, now that Miranda was finishing her Ph.D. she’d be leaving, and I would miss her: her expertise, her reliability, her sassiness, and her friendship. “Thrilled” was only a small part of the large, complicated truth of what I felt as I contemplated her departure.