Page 86 of Katabasis
“They were just here,” she kept saying. “I had them printed yesterday, they were just here.”
“Alice,” said Professor Grimes.
She stood, turned around.
He crossed the room and took her face in his hands.
It could have been a romantic gesture, but all Alice registered then was how trapped she felt. Her cheeks squished in the man’s iron grip. Up close, his face was solarge, unbearably large, as if inflated on a television screen.
The features she’d pined for all those nights—those thick, dark brows; that sharp-edged nose—inches away, they suddenly seemed grotesque. Too human, toowanting. All the qualities she admired—genius, brilliance, a sharp and cruel intellect—inscribed after all in a crude and mortal body. His breath was sharp, sour, and she suppressed a gag.
How quickly the buzz vanished. Her laughter died in her throat.
“I know.” He mistook her trembling for delight. “I’ve seen it in your eyes, Alice. I feel it too.”
“No,” she choked.
“It’s all right.” His hand caressed the back of her head. His eyes surveyed hers, and his lips split into a smile. She’d spent years admiring that smile; the warmth of his charisma. Now it horrified her. All manufactured charm, all caprice. My, how white his teeth were.
His other hand traced her waist. Moved lower.
“You fucking tease,” he said.
“God, your ribs,” he said.
Alice thought her heart might explode out her chest; she actually thought she might before things progressed further. Never in her life had she felt so like a trapped animal; weak, helpless, caught in a cage entirely of her own making.
What shamed her most about that night, the memory she could never drive out of her skull, was how close she’d come to saying yes to it all.
It would have made everything so easy, if she’d just given Professor Grimes what he wanted. He’d have satisfied his urges. He’d have been sated, happy with her, and that might have given her some reprieve. In the tired moments after she might have asked for some guidance on her research proposal. She might have asked him to put in a good word for her when she applied for extra funding that summer. She might even have gotten some pleasure out of it. She was sure that, if she split her mind in two, if she ignored all the parts of her that were screaming, if she sank back into her tipsy stupid buzz, then she could turn it into a fun night that got a bit wild.
And it might continue, because if you said yes once it meant you said yes to all times in the future. But then she only had three years to go. In three years, she would graduate, collect her recommendation letters, and move on to some new institution where her work would be so dazzling that soon everyone would ignore the rumors that floated around her. And perhaps before then, his eye would have landed on some other bright-eyed, bushy-tailed first-year, leaving Alice free to concentrate on her work.
One could tolerate anything for just three years.
She softened in his grip; felt her lips opening up for his. And she would have succumbed right there, if she hadn’t felt a sudden, overriding wave of disgust.
He wasn’t just any fellow in the department. This man was her advisor. The guardian of her mind. Herteacher.
“I don’t want this.” It took every ounce of strength she had to push those words past her throat. “Professor—”
His lips grazed her neck. “What’s that?”
“I don’t...”
To her horror, she saw movement over his shoulder.
There across the lab, in the faraway rectangle of light, stood Peter Murdoch. Books in hand, a pack of chalk stacked on the top, standing frozen in the doorway with one hand lifted as if he’d been about to knock.
Professor Grimes never saw Peter. But Alice watched Peter back slowly away from the door, his mouth slightly agape. Their eyes met just for an instant, just over Professor Grimes’s shoulder, before Peter turned and hurried away.
“Please.” At last she found the strength to break from his grip. He did not want to let her go—she had to wrench, really fight to break his grip, and the sudden violence seemed at last to convince him her protestations were not, in fact, flirtation. “I don’t—”
“Don’t be afraid.”
“No!” she shrieked—the first real sound she’d made; at least, the first time he seemed to hear her. It worked. He started backward. She wriggled out of his grasp.
“Alice,” he called as she hurried down the hallway. Ever so calm. As if they’d done nothing but look at syllabi. His voice grew stern. “Alice, come here. You come back here.”
