Teach Me(9)

Hopefully she’ll figure it out and change her schedule.

In the meantime, I have more pressing matters to attend to. Namely, in less than one hour, a meeting with the dean to discuss that Eliot seminar.



#



“The schedule is set, Kingston.” Dean Pierson peers up at me through his ridiculously tiny spectacles, perched like a teardrop on the tip of his nose. It’s a wonder he can see anything at all. He certainly can’t see the direction out of his own arsehole.

“Screw the bloody curriculum, Daniel. Can’t you understand what this means?” I gesticulate widely to make the point, and nearly knock a bust of Adonis or some similarly ridiculous Greek figure from the dean’s favorite bookshelf. His office is packed to the brim with odds and ends like that—a cheap sextant dangling from the corner of a 6x10” reproduction map of the ancient world, capped by a Yeats quote that looks like it was carved from wood at a local yard sale.

Tacky, from wall to wall. That’s all I can think every time I’m in here. Now I need to make this lover of all things cheap see the opportunity in a diamond in the rough. “Never before seen work. From Eliot himself.”

The dean mutters something that sounds suspiciously like Americans. I wish he’d spit that a little louder. Maybe the exchange students passing by outside the wide open office door would have a thing or two to say about his opinions.

But I ignore the low blow.

“Come on, Daniel. You know as well as I do what kind of merit it would bring the college. Not to mention funding.” That makes the old bastard pause for a moment. He might not like disruption, change, or American poets, but he loves his grant money. “There’s at least three founders I know just off the top of my head who would dig up their parents’ graves and sell the bones for a chance to fund a discovery like this.”

“If you’re right,” he points out. “If they’re not just some pretty scribbles by an unknown unnamed first year who happened to be in attendance here at the same time as your man. This college was chock-full to bursting with American would-be poet laureates in that era, you’ll recall. How can you be sure the papers don’t belong to one of them? And it’s awfully handy you just happened to stumble across these now, with your consideration for tenure fast approaching.”

My fists clench and unclench at my sides. That’s bloody rich. Dean Perjurer Pierson, accusing me of faking something. Granted, there were no convictions during the five forgery scandals in which our lovely dean here has been embroiled during his long and storied career, but five times, really? You do the math. One of those at least must be legit.

Maybe that’s why he’s so cautious about letting me run with the Eliot story now.

“Look,” I manage through gritted teeth. “If you won’t let me run a full seminar, at least give me a couple of research assistants. They don’t even have to be PhD candidates; I’m not picky. Undergrads if you prefer. I just want a couple more eyes on this project than my own. You know, to be sure I’m not just conveniently hallucinating similarities in tone.” I inject a certain amount of venom into that last statement.

He stares me down, and I can practically hear the tiny cogs in his brain cranking. He wants to turn me down for the hell of it now. Say no just to watch me yell and shout.

But he won’t. Pierson might be a rat, but he’s a smart rat. How else would he keep his post through all the knee-deep shit he’s waded into?

“Fine. One undergraduate. No more.”

Now I clench my fists for a different reason—to keep from punching the air in celebration. Okay, so it’s not the full seminar I hoped for. But a dedicated research aid and I can tackle this headlong, no problem. I’ll select based on research experience and writing ability. I can use my eighteenth century class as a pool, see how they do on the Heaney assignment.

My mind is racing so fast with preparations that it takes me a moment to notice Pierson has already slammed his office door shut in my face, stranding me in the middle of the quiet, mid-morning college hallway, a few steps from the registrar’s office.

I turn on my heel, ready to storm back to my office and start putting a list of potentials together, when I nearly trip headlong over a student.

I blink a few times at the girl blocking my path down the hallway. She’s almost a head shorter than me, her huge blue eyes locked on mine beneath a cloud of runaway auburn waves. Something about the purse of her lips makes my mind immediately run to places I’m not proud of. My eyes want to drift along her curves, drink in the way her low-cut shirt exposes her collarbones and the hint of cleavage beneath, not enough to be revealing, just enough to make me know there’s a lot she could reveal to the right guy. I lock my eyes onto her face instead, but that doesn’t help quell the beast.