Heart First, page 2
Her face doesn’t fall, which is already better than a good half of staunchly conservative Hudson Valley residents who think it’s a travesty that Lobell staff and students skew the vote blue. “Oh, that’s wonderful. What subject?”
“It’s called digital humanities.” Daniel winces internally. This is where he always loses people. “Basically, it’s about how to connect fields like literature and philosophy with IT and computers and things.”
“Sounds fascinating. Any projects I’d have heard of?”
He laughs self-deprecatingly. “Probably not. My last project was creating an immersive digital world for the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.”
She purses her lips and wags her head. “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him. I’ll have to look him up.”
“It’s pretty niche. The other thing we’re planning on starting this semester is pretty cool though. Sounds of the Hudson Valley.” It’s a project Daniel’s starting with a class this semester, one of the first anthropology crossover projects for the digital humanities group.
“Oh, like birdsong and the river?”
“That too.” He walks away from her car slowly as if that will make him look less suspicious. “But also human sounds, farmer’s markets, and apple-picking trips. Inside local businesses, if they agree to us recording there. We want to create a sort of digital sound-map of the valley.”
“I love that,” she says decisively. “You know, I have a friend who runs a coffee shop here in town. I bet she’d be thrilled. She has a lot of local singer-songwriters perform. Here, let me give you my card; I’ll set it up!”
Daniel’s willing to bet the cross section of local singer-songwriters and anthropology students is large enough to get him an in with or without Mrs. Cooper’s number, but he goes along with it anyway and slides her business card into his wallet. She’s a social worker, apparently. Who knew social workers cared about their cars so much?
Mercifully, before she can keep asking him about his job, Tony interrupts. “All right, Mrs. Cooper. I think you’re just about set. Let’s have a look at her to make sure.”
“Oh, Anthony,” she says and, horrifyingly, winks. “I know you took good care of her. You always do.”
Daniel stares at the floor to avoid eye contact with Tony.
Even worse, Mrs. Cooper then gets to her feet and goes to examine the car. Right by the side mirror on the driver’s side, she pauses to bend down and examine the paint job. For balance, her hand is pressed to his car, right where Daniel’s ass was not five minutes ago.
“Beautiful!” she exclaims. “I can practically see my reflection.”
Looking up, Daniel catches Tony staring straight at him like a spooked horse. He wonders what the chances are of a portal to another dimension opening up under him to swallow him whole.
Thankfully, the receptionist-slash-sister chooses that moment to snap her fingers in Daniel’s direction. “Hey, you.”
Daniel’s pretty sure he hears Tony mutter, “Jesus Christ, Gianna,” under his breath.
“I gotta ring you up; come on.” She walks back through to the office, the door slamming shut behind her.
With a last glance over at Tony, who’s watching Mrs. Cooper inspect her car, Daniel follows.
“What’d he do?” The receptionist—Gianna—is chewing gum again and staring straight at her computer screen through her thick black bangs. It’s hard not to feel like she hates him personally.
“Uh…” Daniel scrambles around his brain for the word Tony used. “It was, um…my muffler.”
“Fixed or replaced?”
“Fixed.”
She nods and types a few keystrokes.
“Oh, and he changed the oil,” Daniel adds.
“We don’t charge for that,” she says dismissively.
Weirdly, the way she says it makes Daniel feel bad for not knowing.
She types for a while. Daniel’s unsure if he should be adding any information, like his name or what kind of car he has, but she doesn’t ask.
Eventually, he realizes he’s probably supposed to make friendly small talk. That’s what you do in the Northeast when talking to strangers—unless you’re in New York City.
“So,” he says. “You’re, like, a proper family-run business.”
She doesn’t respond.
He perseveres. “That must be cool.”
It gets him a shrug at least. The points of her shoulders are sharp in the incredibly oversized dark sweater she’s wearing. “It’s not the worst.”
He suspects, from her, it’s a ringing endorsement.
She rings him up. It’s surprisingly cheap for car repair. Of course, the last time Daniel had his car looked at was two years ago when his ex-boyfriend, Jeff, started setting out statistics about regular car maintenance and automobile longevity at the breakfast table. Daniel’s been driving on his winter tires all year round since then.
“Thanks for squeezing me in on such short notice,” he says, mostly to be polite. Their website does indicate they take walk-ins.
Gianna shrugs again. “Thank Tony. He should be ready for you any minute.”
Daniel swallows around a sudden lump in his throat. He coughs. “Thanks.” He tries very resolutely not to interpret anything into the words ready for you.
He waits for another minute or two, but she’s taken out her phone again and started to tap out hurried messages with chewed-down fingernails. Taking it as a goodbye, he heads to the garage.
True to Gianna’s word, he’s just in time to see Tony driving Mrs. Cooper’s car onto the lot. She waves cheerily at Daniel as she follows it out.
He smiles weakly. “Nice to meet you,” he says into the empty garage.
In the two minutes it takes Tony to return, Daniel’s palms start to sweat.
Was he always like this? Vaguely, Daniel remembers a time in his life where he enjoyed flirting with handsome men. Probably it also made him nervous then, but this nervous?
“So,” Daniel starts.
“Sorry about Gianna.” Tony grimaces. The apples of his cheeks are pink, and Daniel’s pretty sure he left a tiny mark on Tony’s neck.
“Oh, no, she was—fine.”
“Good.”
For a long moment, neither of them says anything.
The phone in the office rings.
“Right, so, um, you’re all settled up?” Tony asks.
“Yeah. I—”
“Great. I’ll drive your car out.”
It’s probably a good thing Daniel can’t think of a way to segue into what they were doing before. Tony works here. Still, he feels a pang of regret as he follows his car out to the lot.
“Thanks,” he says as Tony gets out. He’s not sure whether he means thanks for driving my car out, thanks for fixing my car even though you didn’t have time, or thanks for making out with me.
Probably the latter, if he’s being honest.
“Anytime.” Tony gives him a weak smile.
Daniel really doesn’t mean to, but the words just slip off his tongue. “I might hold you to that.”
He’s almost certain he sees Tony grinning in the rearview mirror.
Chapter Two
It’s not that Daniel thinks of Tony constantly after he drives his perfectly functioning car back across the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. He’s not like that; even as a teenager, he was pretty chill about crushes and boyfriends, more practical than anything else.
Definitely not someone who has impromptu make-out sessions with a stranger in broad daylight in their place of work.
That’s probably why he finds himself thinking of it every now and again, like a song stuck in his head. It was unusual; it was risky. Sure, Daniel’s met guys at bars or clubs and gone home with them in the past, but that’s what you expect to do at bars and clubs. You don’t expect to randomly hook up with a mechanic at an auto workshop. It was so far out of the wheelhouse of Daniel’s regular behavior that it thrills him in hindsight to think of it. It’s not so much about Tony, he decides, as it is about himself and this unprecedented ability for spontaneity.
Not that Tony wasn’t great, of course.
He was really handsome, actually. The mustache was kind of unique, but the long hair in a ponytail at the back of his head, the close-shorn sides, the warm brown eyes, the nice ass… It wasn’t like he had six-pack abs or perfect features, but Daniel is impressed someone like that had gone for him. Outside of drunken hookups in his undergrad years, Daniel is pretty aware his most attractive feature is his brain. He’s not a troll or anything; he’s average.
It’s flattering, that’s all.
Maybe it shouldn’t still be flattering or thrilling to think about three weeks later, but Daniel can’t quite help that it is. He’s not obsessing or anything, but when he hears an engine rev loudly somewhere behind the rickety row of old stone buildings that house most of the literature faculty as well as the social scientists, he can’t help but grin at the memory it invokes.
“What’s got you so happy?” Colette Ravel, anthropology professor and Daniel’s downstairs neighbor, asks.
Daniel coughs. “Sorry. Just thinking.”
“I hope it’s about how to get our students around the Hudson Valley without us having to drive them.” She leans back in her creaky office chair, eyebrows raised. He’s so envious of her easy poise. She looks like a professor, even though, like him, she’s barely past thirty. Maybe it’s her style; it seems she has an endless supply of slinky, silky blouses in jewel tones that pop against her dark skin. She wears them with high-waisted slacks and understated jewelry, and somehow, she always looks relentlessly professional, elegant, and competent.
Daniel has two pairs of work pants he doesn’t hate, and if he ruins one in a way he can’t fix, he’s fucked.
“Ugh,” he groans. “Why are there no car-sharing apps on campus?”
“Because Lobell is barely a real place,” Colette returns seamlessly. “I had three books go missing in the mail before I started ordering them to my home address instead of to the office.”
“Okay, but is that the mail or is that buildings and grounds?”
“Shh,” Colette admonishes. “If you say that too loud, they’ll hear you.”
“Anyway, the only reason you get your books now is because I always sign for your packages.”
“Yeah, well, you spend way too much time at home.” She shrugs. “Sorry for having a life.”
It’s a terrible Americanism absolutely butchered by her French accent. He tries not to be insulted by the content as well because she’s not wrong.
There just isn’t a lot to do in Rhinebeck, and Daniel doesn’t love socializing enough to drive a half hour to Germantown to attend the opening of an obscure documentary in the freezing cold independent theater with Colette and Mario from the film department. The last time he did, it was about some horrific Welsh myth involving horse skulls, and he had to drive home alone in the dark, and he couldn’t sleep for hours.
Worse yet, he could take the train down to the city on the weekends and hang out with Paul, his best friend from grad school. It’s not that he doesn’t have fun when he does, it’s that he spends the next week and a half recovering from it. It’s very much a once-a-semester pleasure.
He’s getting older, and as an old guy, it turns out he really likes staying home in his cozy apartment with his bad-tempered cat, watching Netflix and reading. It was a more acceptable character trait when he was still living with Jeff, but he’s working on owning being a hermit.
It’s either accepting his fate or making ill-advised public hookups a habit. Sternly, Daniel tells himself the latter doesn’t sound attractive at all.
He’s lying.
Sighing, he stretches. The second chair in Colette’s cramped, top-floor office is not that comfortable. “So. Transport.”
“Right,” Colette sighs. “I mean, we can set aside a session or two for fieldwork and drive the students around then, but nonetheless, there are two of us and twenty-five of them.”
“Also, the syllabus is jam-packed,” Daniel reminds her. He’s a little skeptical about the three classes reserved entirely for the theory of participant observation. Most of the students taking the class are interested in crossing off their social science credit while getting another class for their concentration in digital humanities, with only a handful of actual anthro majors signed up. It’s not that Daniel doesn’t respect Colette’s expertise; it’s that he’s pretty sure the ethics of anthropological research will be lost on a bunch of kids for whom sitting in a coffee shop in Tivoli, New York, population 1021, with a recording device, will form the sum total of their efforts.
“I can’t do weekends,” Colette tells him.
“I won’t do weekends,” Daniel tells her.
They stare at each other, helpless.
“I guess we have to hope a couple of them have cars and they can carpool?” he offers.
“I guess,” she agrees hesitantly. She drums her fingers on her desk for a second, staring out the door as someone walks past. Then, far too loudly, she yells, “Hey, Mario?”
Daniel cringes.
Seconds later, Mario’s head pops in through the door. “It’s-a me-a.”
“I have a question for you,” Collette says, while Daniel rubs at his mouth to hide that he’s smiling at the joke. Mario’s ego is big enough, and he’s made the joke so many times Daniel really shouldn’t still think it’s funny.
“Shoot.” Mario leans against the doorway with his arms folded. He has his shirtsleeves rolled up, and his dark hair is perfectly coiffed. If only he weren’t so straight, Daniel thinks, not for the first time. Mario is distractingly good-looking and pleasantly even-tempered and funny. Students flock to him; staff and faculty admire him. Daniel wonders if Colette is immune to it because she’s not into men; she seems to like him in a much less fawning way than everyone else.
“We’re going to need to arrange transport for our students around the Hudson Valley. Could you help us drive around with the van?”
Mario’s lips twist. Even that looks good. “Depends on when.”
“We were thinking of using a class slot, so a Tuesday or Thursday morning sometime late in the semester.”
He nods slowly. “That ought to work; my classes are in the evenings.”
Right, Daniel remembers. The bane of the film studies teacher: late classes for evening screenings. A terrible fate.
“Thanks,” Colette says. “We owe you one.”
“And I would like to cash in.” He grins. “Will you give me a lift home later?”
Colette looks to Daniel. They live in the same building and almost always carpool—for a given value of the word “carpool.” Colette’s value, as far as Daniel can tell after two years, is “Daniel drives, and Colette occasionally gives him gas money or pays for brunch.”
“Sure,” he says. “What time are you heading back?”
Mario groans. “I have an intro section till four. After that, I would like the sweet release of death, but I will take a ride home and a stiff drink.”
“I can offer the latter, but I’d prefer not to murder you.”
“Sweet.” Mario makes a dorky little fist pump. “Hey, uh, Colette?”
“Hm?” Colette hums, not looking up from the calendar app on her computer, probably trying to imagine which part of their syllabus she can squeeze another appointment into.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Mario seems hesitant. “Andrew Clayfield stopped by my office again.”
Colette makes a face. “Still about…”
Mario nods.
She sighs. “I suppose we can’t dissuade him if that’s what he really wants.”
“Is this the cannibalism guy?” Daniel asks.
“Yeah,” Mario says. “He took Colette’s class on pre-Christian practices in Christian religious ceremonies last year, and it got him really obsessed.”
“Pre-Christian is an inexact term.” Colette examines her fingernails, a clear sign she’s trying to project disinterest even though the point is probably at the heart of what she was trying to teach in that class in the first place. Sometimes, she’s just as much a nerd as the next academic. “Not all religions are pre-Christian, nor are all other spiritual practices that get mixed up in it.”
“Forgive me.” Mario’s tone is dry. “I was distracted by the student trying to sell me on the short film about a man-eating corpses.”
Daniel shudders.
“Do you think he’ll actually make the film?” Colette asks.
Mario shrugs. “In terms of talent, not really. I mean, he can make a film, but it won’t be good.”
“He’s a student; I’m not expecting a Scorsese. What about in terms of content—is it doable?”
“You want to see it,” Daniel realizes.
“It would be interesting,” Colette defends. “There’s a lot of cannibalistic imagery in Christianity, and the sin-eater is such a fascinating concept—”
“The sin-eater,” Daniel repeats. “It even sounds like a third-rate horror movie.”
“Which is what it would be.” Mario doesn’t even look at Daniel. He’s studying Colette intensely, a smile playing around his lips. “If you cochair the board for his senior project, I’ll let him do it.”
Colette snaps her fingers. “Deal.”
Daniel shakes his head. “You’re both severely messed up. And it sounds like that student needs to go to counseling.”
“Such an American.” Colette clucks her tongue. “Sometimes our darkest impulses reveal our greatest capabilities.”
“And sometimes we create terrible student films about cannibalizing corpses,” Mario finishes.
“We have a responsibility to our students,” Daniel tries. “To—”
“To support their full creative potential.” Colette’s tone is serious, even if she’s smiling a little. They’re going to spend weeks debating this; Daniel can already tell. “I fully agree.”
“I’m finished with you both.” Daniel sits forward. “I’m going to try to forget this conversation ever happened.” He levers himself up out of the creaky chair, ducking so he doesn’t hit his head on the slanted roof of Colette’s office. She gives him a lazy salute as he starts to head toward the door, but his exit is blocked by five foot nothing of Stacy Allan. She may be a full head shorter than Daniel, but she makes up for it with sheer presence. It’s not her dress style—classic suburban mom, all jeans and T-shirts with dumb slogans—or the rest of her appearance, although she has the kind of bangs that look strangely girlish and bouncy on a woman who must be well over forty. It’s her personality.
“It’s called digital humanities.” Daniel winces internally. This is where he always loses people. “Basically, it’s about how to connect fields like literature and philosophy with IT and computers and things.”
“Sounds fascinating. Any projects I’d have heard of?”
He laughs self-deprecatingly. “Probably not. My last project was creating an immersive digital world for the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.”
She purses her lips and wags her head. “I’m afraid I’ve never heard of him. I’ll have to look him up.”
“It’s pretty niche. The other thing we’re planning on starting this semester is pretty cool though. Sounds of the Hudson Valley.” It’s a project Daniel’s starting with a class this semester, one of the first anthropology crossover projects for the digital humanities group.
“Oh, like birdsong and the river?”
“That too.” He walks away from her car slowly as if that will make him look less suspicious. “But also human sounds, farmer’s markets, and apple-picking trips. Inside local businesses, if they agree to us recording there. We want to create a sort of digital sound-map of the valley.”
“I love that,” she says decisively. “You know, I have a friend who runs a coffee shop here in town. I bet she’d be thrilled. She has a lot of local singer-songwriters perform. Here, let me give you my card; I’ll set it up!”
Daniel’s willing to bet the cross section of local singer-songwriters and anthropology students is large enough to get him an in with or without Mrs. Cooper’s number, but he goes along with it anyway and slides her business card into his wallet. She’s a social worker, apparently. Who knew social workers cared about their cars so much?
Mercifully, before she can keep asking him about his job, Tony interrupts. “All right, Mrs. Cooper. I think you’re just about set. Let’s have a look at her to make sure.”
“Oh, Anthony,” she says and, horrifyingly, winks. “I know you took good care of her. You always do.”
Daniel stares at the floor to avoid eye contact with Tony.
Even worse, Mrs. Cooper then gets to her feet and goes to examine the car. Right by the side mirror on the driver’s side, she pauses to bend down and examine the paint job. For balance, her hand is pressed to his car, right where Daniel’s ass was not five minutes ago.
“Beautiful!” she exclaims. “I can practically see my reflection.”
Looking up, Daniel catches Tony staring straight at him like a spooked horse. He wonders what the chances are of a portal to another dimension opening up under him to swallow him whole.
Thankfully, the receptionist-slash-sister chooses that moment to snap her fingers in Daniel’s direction. “Hey, you.”
Daniel’s pretty sure he hears Tony mutter, “Jesus Christ, Gianna,” under his breath.
“I gotta ring you up; come on.” She walks back through to the office, the door slamming shut behind her.
With a last glance over at Tony, who’s watching Mrs. Cooper inspect her car, Daniel follows.
“What’d he do?” The receptionist—Gianna—is chewing gum again and staring straight at her computer screen through her thick black bangs. It’s hard not to feel like she hates him personally.
“Uh…” Daniel scrambles around his brain for the word Tony used. “It was, um…my muffler.”
“Fixed or replaced?”
“Fixed.”
She nods and types a few keystrokes.
“Oh, and he changed the oil,” Daniel adds.
“We don’t charge for that,” she says dismissively.
Weirdly, the way she says it makes Daniel feel bad for not knowing.
She types for a while. Daniel’s unsure if he should be adding any information, like his name or what kind of car he has, but she doesn’t ask.
Eventually, he realizes he’s probably supposed to make friendly small talk. That’s what you do in the Northeast when talking to strangers—unless you’re in New York City.
“So,” he says. “You’re, like, a proper family-run business.”
She doesn’t respond.
He perseveres. “That must be cool.”
It gets him a shrug at least. The points of her shoulders are sharp in the incredibly oversized dark sweater she’s wearing. “It’s not the worst.”
He suspects, from her, it’s a ringing endorsement.
She rings him up. It’s surprisingly cheap for car repair. Of course, the last time Daniel had his car looked at was two years ago when his ex-boyfriend, Jeff, started setting out statistics about regular car maintenance and automobile longevity at the breakfast table. Daniel’s been driving on his winter tires all year round since then.
“Thanks for squeezing me in on such short notice,” he says, mostly to be polite. Their website does indicate they take walk-ins.
Gianna shrugs again. “Thank Tony. He should be ready for you any minute.”
Daniel swallows around a sudden lump in his throat. He coughs. “Thanks.” He tries very resolutely not to interpret anything into the words ready for you.
He waits for another minute or two, but she’s taken out her phone again and started to tap out hurried messages with chewed-down fingernails. Taking it as a goodbye, he heads to the garage.
True to Gianna’s word, he’s just in time to see Tony driving Mrs. Cooper’s car onto the lot. She waves cheerily at Daniel as she follows it out.
He smiles weakly. “Nice to meet you,” he says into the empty garage.
In the two minutes it takes Tony to return, Daniel’s palms start to sweat.
Was he always like this? Vaguely, Daniel remembers a time in his life where he enjoyed flirting with handsome men. Probably it also made him nervous then, but this nervous?
“So,” Daniel starts.
“Sorry about Gianna.” Tony grimaces. The apples of his cheeks are pink, and Daniel’s pretty sure he left a tiny mark on Tony’s neck.
“Oh, no, she was—fine.”
“Good.”
For a long moment, neither of them says anything.
The phone in the office rings.
“Right, so, um, you’re all settled up?” Tony asks.
“Yeah. I—”
“Great. I’ll drive your car out.”
It’s probably a good thing Daniel can’t think of a way to segue into what they were doing before. Tony works here. Still, he feels a pang of regret as he follows his car out to the lot.
“Thanks,” he says as Tony gets out. He’s not sure whether he means thanks for driving my car out, thanks for fixing my car even though you didn’t have time, or thanks for making out with me.
Probably the latter, if he’s being honest.
“Anytime.” Tony gives him a weak smile.
Daniel really doesn’t mean to, but the words just slip off his tongue. “I might hold you to that.”
He’s almost certain he sees Tony grinning in the rearview mirror.
Chapter Two
It’s not that Daniel thinks of Tony constantly after he drives his perfectly functioning car back across the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. He’s not like that; even as a teenager, he was pretty chill about crushes and boyfriends, more practical than anything else.
Definitely not someone who has impromptu make-out sessions with a stranger in broad daylight in their place of work.
That’s probably why he finds himself thinking of it every now and again, like a song stuck in his head. It was unusual; it was risky. Sure, Daniel’s met guys at bars or clubs and gone home with them in the past, but that’s what you expect to do at bars and clubs. You don’t expect to randomly hook up with a mechanic at an auto workshop. It was so far out of the wheelhouse of Daniel’s regular behavior that it thrills him in hindsight to think of it. It’s not so much about Tony, he decides, as it is about himself and this unprecedented ability for spontaneity.
Not that Tony wasn’t great, of course.
He was really handsome, actually. The mustache was kind of unique, but the long hair in a ponytail at the back of his head, the close-shorn sides, the warm brown eyes, the nice ass… It wasn’t like he had six-pack abs or perfect features, but Daniel is impressed someone like that had gone for him. Outside of drunken hookups in his undergrad years, Daniel is pretty aware his most attractive feature is his brain. He’s not a troll or anything; he’s average.
It’s flattering, that’s all.
Maybe it shouldn’t still be flattering or thrilling to think about three weeks later, but Daniel can’t quite help that it is. He’s not obsessing or anything, but when he hears an engine rev loudly somewhere behind the rickety row of old stone buildings that house most of the literature faculty as well as the social scientists, he can’t help but grin at the memory it invokes.
“What’s got you so happy?” Colette Ravel, anthropology professor and Daniel’s downstairs neighbor, asks.
Daniel coughs. “Sorry. Just thinking.”
“I hope it’s about how to get our students around the Hudson Valley without us having to drive them.” She leans back in her creaky office chair, eyebrows raised. He’s so envious of her easy poise. She looks like a professor, even though, like him, she’s barely past thirty. Maybe it’s her style; it seems she has an endless supply of slinky, silky blouses in jewel tones that pop against her dark skin. She wears them with high-waisted slacks and understated jewelry, and somehow, she always looks relentlessly professional, elegant, and competent.
Daniel has two pairs of work pants he doesn’t hate, and if he ruins one in a way he can’t fix, he’s fucked.
“Ugh,” he groans. “Why are there no car-sharing apps on campus?”
“Because Lobell is barely a real place,” Colette returns seamlessly. “I had three books go missing in the mail before I started ordering them to my home address instead of to the office.”
“Okay, but is that the mail or is that buildings and grounds?”
“Shh,” Colette admonishes. “If you say that too loud, they’ll hear you.”
“Anyway, the only reason you get your books now is because I always sign for your packages.”
“Yeah, well, you spend way too much time at home.” She shrugs. “Sorry for having a life.”
It’s a terrible Americanism absolutely butchered by her French accent. He tries not to be insulted by the content as well because she’s not wrong.
There just isn’t a lot to do in Rhinebeck, and Daniel doesn’t love socializing enough to drive a half hour to Germantown to attend the opening of an obscure documentary in the freezing cold independent theater with Colette and Mario from the film department. The last time he did, it was about some horrific Welsh myth involving horse skulls, and he had to drive home alone in the dark, and he couldn’t sleep for hours.
Worse yet, he could take the train down to the city on the weekends and hang out with Paul, his best friend from grad school. It’s not that he doesn’t have fun when he does, it’s that he spends the next week and a half recovering from it. It’s very much a once-a-semester pleasure.
He’s getting older, and as an old guy, it turns out he really likes staying home in his cozy apartment with his bad-tempered cat, watching Netflix and reading. It was a more acceptable character trait when he was still living with Jeff, but he’s working on owning being a hermit.
It’s either accepting his fate or making ill-advised public hookups a habit. Sternly, Daniel tells himself the latter doesn’t sound attractive at all.
He’s lying.
Sighing, he stretches. The second chair in Colette’s cramped, top-floor office is not that comfortable. “So. Transport.”
“Right,” Colette sighs. “I mean, we can set aside a session or two for fieldwork and drive the students around then, but nonetheless, there are two of us and twenty-five of them.”
“Also, the syllabus is jam-packed,” Daniel reminds her. He’s a little skeptical about the three classes reserved entirely for the theory of participant observation. Most of the students taking the class are interested in crossing off their social science credit while getting another class for their concentration in digital humanities, with only a handful of actual anthro majors signed up. It’s not that Daniel doesn’t respect Colette’s expertise; it’s that he’s pretty sure the ethics of anthropological research will be lost on a bunch of kids for whom sitting in a coffee shop in Tivoli, New York, population 1021, with a recording device, will form the sum total of their efforts.
“I can’t do weekends,” Colette tells him.
“I won’t do weekends,” Daniel tells her.
They stare at each other, helpless.
“I guess we have to hope a couple of them have cars and they can carpool?” he offers.
“I guess,” she agrees hesitantly. She drums her fingers on her desk for a second, staring out the door as someone walks past. Then, far too loudly, she yells, “Hey, Mario?”
Daniel cringes.
Seconds later, Mario’s head pops in through the door. “It’s-a me-a.”
“I have a question for you,” Collette says, while Daniel rubs at his mouth to hide that he’s smiling at the joke. Mario’s ego is big enough, and he’s made the joke so many times Daniel really shouldn’t still think it’s funny.
“Shoot.” Mario leans against the doorway with his arms folded. He has his shirtsleeves rolled up, and his dark hair is perfectly coiffed. If only he weren’t so straight, Daniel thinks, not for the first time. Mario is distractingly good-looking and pleasantly even-tempered and funny. Students flock to him; staff and faculty admire him. Daniel wonders if Colette is immune to it because she’s not into men; she seems to like him in a much less fawning way than everyone else.
“We’re going to need to arrange transport for our students around the Hudson Valley. Could you help us drive around with the van?”
Mario’s lips twist. Even that looks good. “Depends on when.”
“We were thinking of using a class slot, so a Tuesday or Thursday morning sometime late in the semester.”
He nods slowly. “That ought to work; my classes are in the evenings.”
Right, Daniel remembers. The bane of the film studies teacher: late classes for evening screenings. A terrible fate.
“Thanks,” Colette says. “We owe you one.”
“And I would like to cash in.” He grins. “Will you give me a lift home later?”
Colette looks to Daniel. They live in the same building and almost always carpool—for a given value of the word “carpool.” Colette’s value, as far as Daniel can tell after two years, is “Daniel drives, and Colette occasionally gives him gas money or pays for brunch.”
“Sure,” he says. “What time are you heading back?”
Mario groans. “I have an intro section till four. After that, I would like the sweet release of death, but I will take a ride home and a stiff drink.”
“I can offer the latter, but I’d prefer not to murder you.”
“Sweet.” Mario makes a dorky little fist pump. “Hey, uh, Colette?”
“Hm?” Colette hums, not looking up from the calendar app on her computer, probably trying to imagine which part of their syllabus she can squeeze another appointment into.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Mario seems hesitant. “Andrew Clayfield stopped by my office again.”
Colette makes a face. “Still about…”
Mario nods.
She sighs. “I suppose we can’t dissuade him if that’s what he really wants.”
“Is this the cannibalism guy?” Daniel asks.
“Yeah,” Mario says. “He took Colette’s class on pre-Christian practices in Christian religious ceremonies last year, and it got him really obsessed.”
“Pre-Christian is an inexact term.” Colette examines her fingernails, a clear sign she’s trying to project disinterest even though the point is probably at the heart of what she was trying to teach in that class in the first place. Sometimes, she’s just as much a nerd as the next academic. “Not all religions are pre-Christian, nor are all other spiritual practices that get mixed up in it.”
“Forgive me.” Mario’s tone is dry. “I was distracted by the student trying to sell me on the short film about a man-eating corpses.”
Daniel shudders.
“Do you think he’ll actually make the film?” Colette asks.
Mario shrugs. “In terms of talent, not really. I mean, he can make a film, but it won’t be good.”
“He’s a student; I’m not expecting a Scorsese. What about in terms of content—is it doable?”
“You want to see it,” Daniel realizes.
“It would be interesting,” Colette defends. “There’s a lot of cannibalistic imagery in Christianity, and the sin-eater is such a fascinating concept—”
“The sin-eater,” Daniel repeats. “It even sounds like a third-rate horror movie.”
“Which is what it would be.” Mario doesn’t even look at Daniel. He’s studying Colette intensely, a smile playing around his lips. “If you cochair the board for his senior project, I’ll let him do it.”
Colette snaps her fingers. “Deal.”
Daniel shakes his head. “You’re both severely messed up. And it sounds like that student needs to go to counseling.”
“Such an American.” Colette clucks her tongue. “Sometimes our darkest impulses reveal our greatest capabilities.”
“And sometimes we create terrible student films about cannibalizing corpses,” Mario finishes.
“We have a responsibility to our students,” Daniel tries. “To—”
“To support their full creative potential.” Colette’s tone is serious, even if she’s smiling a little. They’re going to spend weeks debating this; Daniel can already tell. “I fully agree.”
“I’m finished with you both.” Daniel sits forward. “I’m going to try to forget this conversation ever happened.” He levers himself up out of the creaky chair, ducking so he doesn’t hit his head on the slanted roof of Colette’s office. She gives him a lazy salute as he starts to head toward the door, but his exit is blocked by five foot nothing of Stacy Allan. She may be a full head shorter than Daniel, but she makes up for it with sheer presence. It’s not her dress style—classic suburban mom, all jeans and T-shirts with dumb slogans—or the rest of her appearance, although she has the kind of bangs that look strangely girlish and bouncy on a woman who must be well over forty. It’s her personality.
