Barefoot: A Novel

along this would happen, as though she had predicted it. Brenda was so appal ed, she stood up.

“I have a lunch at one myself,” she said. “So if you’l excuse me . . .”

Brenda picked up the bottle of water but left the rest of her tray for Suzanne Atela to deal with. In seconds, Brenda was swal owed up in the crowd of hungry undergraduates.

She reached into her bag for her cel phone. Cal Walsh, instruct him to deny everything. They had no proof! Bil Franklin saw them together at the Cupping Room. And maybe someone saw them kissing in Parsons 204. Why had she been so stupid, so cavalier? It didn’t matter if they had proof or not, it was true—Brenda could deny it, but she would be lying. She was having a romantic and a sexual relationship with one of her students.

Disciplinary action would be taken. Her job was gone and with it her good name, her reputation. Brenda might have walked off Champion’s campus, taken the crosstown bus home, and never looked back, but there were things in her office she could not leave behind—certain papers, her first-edition Fleming Trainor. She raced back to the English Department.

Mrs. Pencaldron’s chair was empty, and a half-eaten Caesar salad sat on her desk blotter. When Brenda reached into her bag, her fingers came across a single key on a thin wire ring with a round paper tag that said (in Mrs. Pencaldron’s penciled script) Barrington Room. Brenda looked down the hal at the heavy, paneled door. There wasn’t time! She had to get out of there! Go to her office, get her things! The door seemed even more formidable now than it had been at the beginning of the semester, but in spite of that, or maybe because of that, Brenda was drawn down the hal . In the copy room, Augie Fisk stood at the Xerox machine, and his presence almost deterred her, but when Brenda breezed by, he didn’t even look up.

In her deposition, Brenda had admitted to being only partly conscious of her actions that afternoon. What she said was, I was upset. I was stunned, mortified, terribly confused. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t planning on stealing the painting. I just wanted . . .

Wanted what, Dr. Lyndon?

To see the painting one more time, she’d said. To say good-bye to it.

Brenda punched in the security code and unlocked the door to the Barrington Room, ful y prepared to find Mrs. Pencaldron sitting at the Queen Anne table, waiting for her. But the room was empty, hushed, just as it had been in the moments before Brenda’s class al semester long. Brenda felt an enormous sense of loss, the beginnings of mourning. Her career was dead, but the body not yet cold. And it was al her own stupid, stupid fault. Temptation had been placed in Brenda’s path, and instead of swerving around it, she had met it at a bar.

Brenda set her purse and the bottle of water down on the Queen Anne table, and she stood before the painting. She was trying to absorb it, to internalize it, because, certainly, she would never see it again. She wanted to rest her face against its surface, feel its texture under her cheek; she wanted to climb into the painting and lie down.

Brenda heard a noise. She turned to see Mrs. Pencaldron clapping at her, like she was a wayward dog. Mrs. Pencaldron snatched up the bottle of water from the Queen Anne table (it would indeed leave a pale ring).

“What are you doing in here?” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “You don’t belong in here! And this—” She shook the bottle of water and wiped at the table with the bottom of her blouse. “What were you thinking? You know the rules!”

“Sorry,” Brenda said. “I’m so sorry.”

“You know the rules, but you don’t fol ow them,” Mrs. Pencal-dron said. “Sorry does not begin to address your transgressions.”

Brenda held up her hands. “Okay, whatever. I came to get my things. I’m leaving.”

“I wil pack your things properly and send them to your home address,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “I suggest you leave this room and the department now, otherwise I wil cal campus security.”

“Campus security?” Brenda said. “There’s no need for that . . .” Brenda was dying to address Mrs. Pencaldron by her first name, but she didn’t know what it was. “I’m leaving.”

Augie Fisk appeared in the doorway. He looked at Brenda with a combination of pity and disgust. “We al heard,” he said. “Everyone knows. Did Atela fire you?”

“She didn’t have to,” Brenda said. “I’m leaving.”

“This isn’t going to be something you can walk away from,” Augie said. “This is going to stick. I mean, you can try to find another job, but you won’t be able to work anywhere accredited. Hel , you won’t even be able to teach high school. Maybe you should look into one of those online universities, where they don’t care what crimes you’ve committed.”

“It’s disgraceful,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. “I knew something wasn’t right with the two of you. Couldn’t put my finger on it, though, and certainly never expected that . . . but something, yes, I sensed something from the beginning.”

“We al thought you were a flash in the pan,” Augie said. “A woman as attractive as you, with your boutique subject matter, a specialty that no one else on earth knows about, that has no relevance to the rest of the canon. I knew you weren’t for real. There was something fishy about you, something artificial. We al knew it.”

“Stop it,” Brenda said. Couldn’t they see she was upset enough as it was?

“You stop it,” Mrs. Pencaldron said. She pointed to the door. “Leave, or I cal security.”

Not in her right mind. Terribly confused. And angry. Brenda hated Mrs. Pencaldron. She had never liked her but now she real y despised her.

And Augie Fisk—yuck!—with his thick shock of red hair and his pale, pinched lips. Flash in the pan? He had asked her out again and again, and each time Brenda turned him down, she felt worse. Not in her right mind. Fishy and artificial? An online university? After eight years of graduate school, the thousands of hours of reading and research? Al that work? The slavish devotion? Suddenly, Brenda was furious. She would not be ordered out of this room. She had done a good job; she was a good teacher.

We all knew it. Wel , wasn’t it easy to say so. Now.