“I’l be thirty this month,” Brenda said.
“Much closer to their age. They must find you intriguing.”
“Intriguing?” Brenda said. “Oh, I kind of doubt that.”
Bil Franklin was drinking a Michelob. He brought the bottle to his lips. He had a gray handlebar mustache. A handlebar mustache. Something about the mustache rang a bel , but why? Brenda got a funny-sick feeling in her stomach. It was a real y bad paranoid suspicion. Real y bad.
Through three bites of pasta salad, she watched Suzanne Atela conferring with the head caterer. Dr. Atela was pointing; Brenda heard the word
“coffee.” Brenda had to stand up. She wanted to look at Bil Franklin from across the room. She pretended to be headed for the punch bowl, though the punch was the color of Pepto-Bismol, and no one had touched it. She lingered, trying to get a good, long look without getting caught. Okay. He drank from his bottle, he saw her, he winked. Winked.
Brenda looked away, horrified. Horrified!
The man at the end of the bar at the Cupping Room the night Brenda met Walsh, the night she kissed Walsh and flaunted her hot longing for al to see . . . the man who offered to buy her a drink was Bil Franklin.
Brenda cancel ed Walsh without explanation, and nine o’clock found him leaning against Brenda’s buzzer until she let him in.
On purpose, she was wearing sweatpants. Since they were no longer to be lovers, he could see her looking grubby. Ancient Philadelphia marathon T-shirt, ponytail, no makeup. Wel , a little makeup. Brenda took a long time with the dead bolts. She didn’t want to see him.
“What’s going on?” he said. “You sounded bloody awful on the phone. What happened?”
Walsh stepped inside, and she locked the door back up. Her apartment, at least, was safe. She took her clothes off before Walsh could get a good look at them.
Later, as they lay in bed sweating and spent, Walsh kissed her temple. Some days he seemed much older than he real y was. Maybe because he was from Australia.
“You’re upset,” he said. “Tel me what happened.”
She inhaled. “One of the professors in the department . . . the drama guy, Bil Franklin . . .”
“Uncle Pervy?” Walsh said.
“Yes. He was at the Cupping Room the night we were there.”
“He was? How do you know? Did he tel you?”
“I recognized him,” Brenda said. “He tried to buy me a drink. I remember him. At the other end of the bar. He was wearing the same suit he wore to the luncheon. And his mustache, with the curlicue ends al waxed, you don’t forget something like that. He winked at me. Oh, God. It’s awful.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t some other bloke with the same suit?”
“I wish it was,” Brenda said. “But I’m sure. And I mean,
“Intriguing?”
“He knows. It was the way he said it. He knows, Walsh. Okay, that’s it. I
“Come on,” Walsh said.
“We have to stop,” Brenda said. “If I get fired, my career is over. My whole professional life. Everything I’ve worked for, the things I’m building on.
Because I would like to stay at Champion, and if Champion doesn’t want to offer me anything permanent, then I would like to teach someplace else.
I can’t have a weird sexual thing on my record. No one wil hire me.”
“I can’t stop,” Walsh said. “I don’t want to stop.”
“I don’t want to stop, either,” Brenda said. “Obviously. But is this any way to conduct a relationship? Sneaking around, hoping nobody catches us?”
“It hasn’t seemed to bother you before.”
“Wel , now everything’s different.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“I can’t believe you care what Uncle Pervy thinks. I hear stories about that guy al the time.”
“Yeah, but not with undergraduates. Not with his
“No, but stil . That guy has too many skeletons in his own closet to blow the whistle on us . . .”
Brenda slid out of bed and stumbled through the dark apartment to the front door, where she found her sweats in a pile on the floor. Brenda put them on. She thought about how much she loved her class. But Walsh was part of that class and part of why she loved it was because he was in it.
She thought of Bil Franklin winking at her. Ugh!
