Testing Kate (8 page)

Chapter Ten

I
finally survived a Socratic grilling by Hoffman without humiliating myself. I answered all of his questions until he grudgingly moved on to his next victim. After class, Jen and Lexi took me to the student union to celebrate.

“I was terrified Hoffman was going to call on me today. I didn’t do the reading,” Jen said, once we sat down with our pizza slices and sodas.

“I thought you were going home last night to study,” I said. I’d seen Jen just before she left the library the night before, with Addison—who shamelessly sponged rides off all of us—in tow.

Jen shrugged. “I was tired, so I went to bed early,” she said shortly.

I looked at her. Jen had been preoccupied all morning and hadn’t been her usual chirpy self. “Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Fine,” Jen said, giving me a quick smile before gazing at a group of undergraduate men at the next table. They were wearing fraternity T-shirts and flip-flops and kept calling each other “Dude!” in loud voices.

“Hot-guy alert,” Jen said.

“They’re babies,” Lexi said.

“
Hot
babies,” Jen replied.

“I’m off the market,” Lexi said smugly.

“When do we finally get to meet the mysterious Jacob Reid?” I asked. I’d seen Lexi’s law-professor boyfriend around school but hadn’t yet been introduced.

Lexi made a face.

“I tried talking Jacob into coming out with us one night, but he’s worried about how it would look if someone saw us together,” Lexi said.

“Then why is he dating you?” I asked. “If he’s so worried that it will get him into trouble?”

Lexi smiled happily. “Because he can’t help himself. He’s smitten,” she said.

It occurred to me—not for the first time—that Jacob might just be using Lexi. As far as I could tell, their relationship boiled down to her going over to his apartment and sleeping with him.

“Don’t look now, but you’ll never believe who just came in,” Lexi said in a hushed whisper.

I turned…and felt a jolt of dread. Professor Richard Hoffman. He was waiting in line to order food.

“He’s the last person I want to see right now,” I said.

Hoffman stood with his arms crossed and his pelvis shifted forward and looked peevish as usual. He glanced around the room, and when his eyes fell on our table, we all jumped a little and quickly looked down at our slices of pizza.

“Did he see us staring at him?” Jen asked.

“God, I hope not,” Lexi said. “It’s bad enough that he’s seeing us with Kate.”

“Hey!” I said.

“No offense, but Hoffman hates you,” Lexi said. “And I don’t want him to associate me with you.”

“Who’s that with him?” Jen asked.

“I’ve never seen her before. I don’t think she’s a law professor,” Lexi said.

I looked up and saw that a petite woman had joined Hoffman in line. She was wearing a brown suit with a nipped-in waist and pencil skirt, and a pair of killer brown crocodile high heels.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “That’s Dean Sullivan. I saw her a few weeks ago. Remember? She was the one I talked to after Hoffman told me that law school wasn’t the right place for me.”

“Really? They look awfully…cozy. Do you think they’re dating?” Lexi said.

“I think she’s married,” I said, remembering the family photos I’d seen in her office.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not seeing each other,” Lexi said.

We scrutinized the pair, looking for signs of romantic interest. Sullivan kept finding reasons to touch Hoffman’s arm, I noticed, and he laughed heartily at something she said, throwing his head back as he guffawed. It made him look almost…jolly. In a creepy way. And while we watched them, I started to feel an uneasiness spread through me. I’d trusted Sullivan. I’d told her how much I hated Hoffman, how I knew he was gunning for me. Even worse, I’d
believed
her when she said she’d help me if Hoffman continued to harass me. But now that I knew that at the very least she and Hoffman were good friends, and possibly even more. For all I knew, her relationship with him was the reason she hadn’t done anything to help me. Or…

“Oh, no,” I groaned.

“What?” Jen asked.

“Do you think she told Hoffman that I told her he’s out to get me? And that I tried to get transferred out of his class?” I asked.

“No. I’m sure she wouldn’t,” Jen said soothingly.

“Well,” Lexi said, a knowing look crossing her narrow face, “what would you do if you were sleeping with someone, and a third party came to you with a complaint about your lover. Would you tell him?”

We all pondered this for a minute.

“Yes,” Jen said finally.

I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I probably would too. Which means I’m screwed.”

“Not necessarily,” Jen said. “Up until today, he hadn’t called on you in weeks.”

Sullivan and Hoffman had moved up to the counter and were ordering their food.

“It’s definitely a date,” Lexi said knowingly. “He’s paying for lunch.”

“Not necessarily,” Jen argued. “Colleagues treat each other all the time.”

We were still watching them closely when Hoffman and Sullivan turned, each carrying a tray with a salad and beverage cup. Their eyes scanned the room for an empty table, and then, at the same time, they both looked directly at us. Lexi, Jen, and I all froze. This time we’d definitely been caught staring openly at them.

“They’re coming this way,” Jen whispered weakly.

Hoffman was walking toward us, Sullivan right behind him. Neither one looked particularly guilty about being seen out together.

“Ladies,” Hoffman said graciously, nodding his head toward us as they passed by to claim the booth just behind ours.

“Hi,” we chimed together, each one sounding more guilty than the other.

Teresa Sullivan smiled pleasantly at me. I returned her smile, although my cheeks felt hot and tight as I did so.

I was so unbelievably screwed.

Chapter Eleven

T
he first time I saw Graham, I instinctively didn’t like him.

What a pompous ass,
I thought, taking in the almost too-pretty face, the vintage tan corduroy jacket with leather knot buttons on the sleeves, the haughty pinch to his lips.

I was on my lunch break, eating a bowl of watery onion soup in the Cornell student union cafeteria, when I spotted him. He was crossing the room, striding between two rows of tables with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a leather folder tucked under his arm.

“Wow, he’s gorgeous,” my friend Donna, who worked in the admissions office with me, breathed. She looked at him wistfully, brushing her dark curls away from her round face.

“You think?” I said noncommittally. I’d never been attracted to pretty men, so I couldn’t see the appeal.

“Uh, yeah,” Donna said.

Graham didn’t look our way, didn’t seem to notice any of the women who were glancing at him. He sat down and pulled out a newspaper, oblivious to the attention.

He was probably used to it, I thought. What must it be like to go through life as one of the beautiful people, to have people like you and want to be near you just because you were blessed by a genetic quirk?

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I heard a voice behind me say. I turned and saw a thick, meaty guy with a buzz cut stand up, his hands gripping his stomach, his face a pasty white-green and damp with sweat. He’d been sitting at a table with four other guys, all of them large and muscular. Athletes, I assumed. They began to laugh at their friend’s distress.

“Here it comes,” one of them crowed.

“Fire in the hole!” another hooted.

“Hey, Fitz, you shouldn’t have done all of those Jäger-meister shots last night!”

I think it was the mention of the liquor that did it. The expression on Fitz’s face as he turned toward me held a mixture of nausea and horror as he realized what was about to happen. And then his body convulsed, and he started to gag, and a second later he was bent over and hurling up the five slices of pepperoni pizza and forty-two ounces of orange soda he’d just consumed.

Right down the front of my shirt.

I stared down at my vomit-soaked body. I could feel the sticky wetness seeping through the fabric onto my skin, and I plucked the top away from my body, trying to keep it from touching me.

“Ack,” I said, wondering if I was going to start vomiting too. The smell alone was enough to make me feel sick to my stomach. “Gah.”

“Sorry, dude,” Fitz mumbled, before running off in the direction of the men’s room.

“Oh. My. God,” Donna said, staring at me. She looked like she might throw up too. I had a vision of the entire cafeteria tossing up their lunches, in a grotesque chain reaction.

“I have to get out of here. I have to change,” I said desperately.

“Kate, why do these things always happen to you?” Donna asked, shaking her head in bewilderment. “You have the worst luck of anyone I’ve ever met.”

“How the hell should I know?” I snapped. “It’s not like I asked for him to vomit on me.”

Fitz’s friends, still at the next table, were howling with laughter. I turned to glare at them, but that just made them laugh even harder. Their faces were practically purple, and one had lowered his head down onto folded arms, his shoulders quivering with mirth.

“Assholes,” I hissed.

“Here, put this on.”

I turned, and the pretty guy was standing there, holding out his corduroy coat. He nodded toward the ladies’ room. “Go on in there and put it on. It buttons all the way up.”

I started to protest but realized that I didn’t really have a better alternative. It was either take him up on his offer or walk all the way across campus back to my office covered in vomit. And then I’d obviously have to go home early, which was so not going to thrill my boss, who thought that if he was in the office—even if he arrived early or stayed late—the staff should be there too.

“Thanks,” I said gratefully, accepting the coat. “You’ll have to give me your name and number so that I can return it.”

“I’m Graham,” he said.

A week later, after I had the coat laundered, I called Graham to arrange to return it to him, and we ended up talking on the phone for nearly two hours. Graham had recently taken a biking tour through Ireland—he actually did stuff like that—and he made me laugh when he told me about a supposed bed-and-breakfast he’d stayed in, where his room turned out to be the very pink and very frilly bedroom of the proprietor’s teen daughter. The girl in question was in a sulk over being forced to sleep on the couch, and she and her mother spent most of the night screaming Gaelic curses at each other over the din of the television.

At the end of the call, Graham asked me out to dinner, and I accepted. And, much later, after we’d moved in together, Graham confessed to me that when he was a young boy, school bus bullies had routinely called him a faggot, sneering at his finely chiseled cheekbones and full, pouting mouth. He’d started habitually pressing his lips together, trying to make them less pronounced and less noticeable; it was a habit he carried into adulthood.

It turned out Graham wasn’t vain after all. Not even a little bit. He was just as self-conscious as the rest of us.

Jen and I went jogging together around Audubon Park, shaded by the arching branches of one-hundred-year-old oak trees. The park was located across St. Charles Avenue from the Tulane campus, and since it was a sunny but cool Sunday afternoon, there was a busy throng of people out walking, running, bicycling, even picnicking.

I had a theory that if I got into shape, it would give me more stamina for studying. When I mentioned it to Jen, she volunteered to go running with me.

“I have got to start exercising,” she’d explained. “My ass is getting big.”

We met in the Magazine Street parking lot. After stretching for a few minutes, we started at a light trot, moving in a counterclockwise circle around the pavement loop.

“Did you go out last night?” I asked Jen. There had been a Bar Review at the Columns Hotel, but I’d passed on it. Instead, I went shopping yet again with Armstrong, this time for a sleek new bedroom set at a furniture store out in Metairie. Afterward, he took me out to dinner at an Italian restaurant that was—creepily—located in a converted funeral home. We had yet to do any actual work on his book, but I’d started to really look forward to my time with him. It was refreshing to be with someone who wasn’t attached to the law school in any way. And Armstrong was a born storyteller, particularly knowledgeable in Southern mythology, so hanging out with him was a bit like spending time with a gay Mark Twain.

“Yes…Bar…Review,” Jen wheezed.

She’s in even worse shape than I am, I thought.

“Who did you go with? Lexi?”

“Can’t…breathe,” Jen wheezed.

She came to a sudden stop and folded herself over, bracing her hands against her knees.

“I need to take a break,” she gasped.

I glanced at my watch. We’d only been running for three minutes. But Jen staggered off the pavement and collapsed on a wooden bench overlooking the duck pond. I sat down next to her. It was a pretty place to stop and rest, except for the rank odor of bird shit.

“Yeah, Lexi and I went to the Columns with Addison and Nick. And guess who was there,” Jen said, once she could breathe again.

“Who?”

“The mysterious Jacob Reid,” Jen said.

“No, really? Did he hang out with you guys?”

Jen shook her head. “Not at all. I don’t think he knew there was going to be a Bar Review that night. He was with some friends at the bar when we got there. And as soon as he saw Lexi, he went all pale and quiet, and then he left ten minutes later without even saying a word to her.”

“Are you serious?” I asked. I knew Jacob was worried that someone at the school might find out about their relationship, but even so. Leaving without speaking to Lexi was pretty low.

Jen nodded. “Lexi was pissed. She ended up downing about five martinis and spent the rest of the night flirting with Addison. Which he just loved, of course.”

“I thought she said she wasn’t interested in Add,” I said.

“She’s not. She was just using him to make herself feel better.”

“You know, I’ve had a bad feeling about Jacob from the beginning,” I said. “I thought he might just be using Lexi for sex.”

“You could be right. I know he called her on her cell phone, late, like right when we were getting to leave, and asked her to come over,” Jen said.

“Please tell me she didn’t go.”

Jen nodded. “Addison drove both of us home, and she had him drop her at Jacob’s apartment.”

I sighed. “Lexi’s smart enough to know better.”

“I don’t know if any of us are really smart when it comes to relationships,” Jen said darkly.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “What happened to Nick?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said Addison drove you and Lexi home. Did Nick go with you?”

“What do you think?”

“Don’t tell me he hooked up again.”

Jen nodded. “He’s like some sort of a superhero when it comes to meeting women. And you wouldn’t think it to look at him. He’s cute, but still. He isn’t even that big of a flirt. I think it’s the All-American guy-next-door thing he has going on. Women are naturally drawn to that, don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” I said, not convinced. “So who was it this time? I hope not someone from the law school. The last time he hooked up with someone from school, he spent the next few weeks skulking around campus, trying not to run into her.”

“Actually, yeah. He left with Hannah Green,” Jen said.

“Who’s that?”

“She’s a One-L, although she’s not in our section. She’s pretty. Very thin, light-blonde hair. You know, the one Addison calls ‘Cameron Diaz,’ although I don’t think she looks anything like her.”

“I know who you’re talking about. Addison must have been beside himself. He’s in love with her.”

“Really? He didn’t seem to care. But, then again, he had Lexi to distract him.”

We sat quietly, watching the ducks glide along the small pond. One of the ducks looked back at me, his small eyes bright with interest, as he waited to see if I’d toss him a saltine.

“How’s your love life going? You and Graham, I mean.”

“Oh…good. I guess.”

“What’s going on?” Jen asked. “You have to tell me; I get my vicarious thrills living through my single friends.”

I snorted. “I haven’t even seen Graham in over a month. Not since that weekend he surprised me.”

“But he decided he couldn’t live without you and came and found you. That must have been incredible. Make-up sex always is.”

“I’ve always thought that make-up sex is overrated.”

“And to think I had this vision of the two of you all tangled up in bed, feeding each other cut-up pieces of mango and papaya,” Jen said.

I looked at her, my eyebrows raised.

“I told you, I live vicariously through my single friends,” she said, and laughed. Jen had a great laugh, deep and froggy and completely unself-conscious.

I kicked the grass in front of me with the toe of my running sneaker. A man clasping the hand of a towheaded girl appeared beside us. The little girl wore her hair in two sloppy pigtails and was dressed from head to toe in bright Crayola purple.

“Here, give the ducks some bread, Lyssa,” he said.

Lyssa clasped the slice of bread her father handed her and winged it like a Frisbee into the pond. The ducks all paddled furiously over to the soggy, sinking bread slice, bossing each other in loud honks as they fought over who would get the prize.

“Honey, you’re supposed to break it into crumbs first,” the father said gently, handing her another slice.

“Okay, Daddy,” she said, and this time she shredded the bread into confetti before she dumped it into the water. Lyssa clasped her plump hands together, eagerly waiting to see what would happen next. She gurgled with laughter as the ducks dove again and again, grabbing the bread bits. It startled me when I looked at the bland fleshy face of Lyssa’s father, as he watched his daughter indulgently, and realized that he was probably only a few years older than me. Parents weren’t supposed to be
my
age.

“The weird thing is that I hadn’t planned to get involved with anyone this year, much less get back together with Graham,” I said.

Jen nodded. “But you can’t control who you fall in love with. Or when.”

“True,” I said. “Do you think Lexi is in love with Jacob?”

“I don’t know. I think she thinks she is. I don’t know what she was like with guys she’s dated in the past. Although it’s hard to believe that only a few months ago, none of us knew each other. Now I feel like I know you and Lexi as well as I do my old high school friends. Better even.”

“Boot camp is supposed to be like that too,” I said. “Although the army would probably be a cakewalk compared to law school.”

“No joke. Did I ever tell you that the first time I saw you was when you and Nick came into Crim together? I thought you guys were a couple,” Jen said.

“I thought the same thing about Lexi and Addison,” I said.

Suddenly Jen sighed, and the smile vanished from her face. “God, sometimes I really wish I was still single.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” Jen asked, looking startled. I realized that she’d been spacing out and I’d intruded on her thoughts.

“You said you wish you were still single,” I reminded her. “Are you and Sean having problems?”

“Oh…no. There’s nothing to talk about, really,” she said, although tension dragged at the outer corners of her eyes, and her mouth curled into a frown. “We’re fine. Sometimes marriage is just…well, it’s not what you think it’s going to be,” she said carefully.

I looked at Jen, not saying anything. The conversation had suddenly become too serious to gloss it over with any of the idle gossip about our classmates that usually occupied us. Who had hooked up with whom at the latest Bar Review. Whether the guy who had fallen out of his second-story window had been drunk. Whether it really was true that one of the Two-Ls was putting herself through law school by stripping at a club in the Quarter. But I had never been married, so I didn’t have any real insight into what Jen was going through. Was it something serious, like her husband cheating on her? Or was it just that being around her single friends made her feel confined?