Stay Up With Me

Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash Read Free Book Online
Authors: Tom Barbash
Tags: General Fiction
each with a glimmer or two of earnest intelligence, but predominated by overbaked platitudes. When I got to Rachel Weisman’s paper, I began to slow down to the point where I was rereading for the sheer pleasure of encountering her words again. The ideas were exciting, and the sentences exceedingly lucid, even mesmerizing. It didn’t matter to me that it was substantially shorter than what I’d asked for. I actually preferred it. I read a few of the paragraphs aloud, and then it struck me that something was off about them.
    At first I couldn’t tell what, and then I recognized that Rajiv had written the paper. It was in his vocabulary, and it reflected closely his thinking. But then I considered, Wasn’t it perfectly possible and even likely for them to talk about the subject? And wouldn’t she hear some of his ideas and agree with them, and then be unable to avoid them for purposes of forming her own thesis?
    I simply heard Rajiv’s tenor voice as I read it, and when I tried to hear hers, the voice wouldn’t come forth. I considered simply asking her to write a different paper, but her response, I knew, would be justifiable outrage. They would both hate me.
    The bottom line is I accepted Rachel’s paper, but I only gave her a B. She stormed—or maybe just walked—into my office saying she’d never once in her life gotten a B for a grade; that her worse mark had been a B+. I said: “There’s always a first time, isn’t there?”
    Somehow that came out more, well, sexual than I wanted it to, and I realized that we were standing quite close at the time, and I backed away.
    She was studying my birthmark again, or maybe my eyes.
    â€œHe’s right about you, isn’t he?” Rachel said.
    She held her mouth in an ill-mannered smirk.
    I said, No, Rajiv wasn’t likely to be right about me. There was much about me my son didn’t know but that was not a conversation I felt like having with a student. The paper was good but I had questions as to its authenticity, I said. She could write an addendum, or she could write a paper on how she’d arrived at her ideas, and I’d certainly have a look.
    Â 
    I thought that afternoon and evening about that line— He’s right about you . And I tried to think of what that might mean. I have never done anything to compromise my position as tenured professor at a first-rate liberal arts college. And even if I had, I couldn’t imagine why my son would report such a thing.
    I began to believe that Rachel might bring the matter up with a dean and so I mentally prepared for such a confrontation.
    Had my door been ajar?
    â€œIt was,” I said in practice.
    Did I have any burning reasons for questioning the authenticity of the paper, and was there any reason I had to stand virtually on top of her while I had been having this discussion?
    â€œI wasn’t on top of her, and the paper simply didn’t sound like her.”
    And how was it that she knew so much about the inside of my home?
    â€œWhat did she say about it?”
    â€œWhat did you mean by there’s always a first time?” the dean would ask me.
    â€œWe were talking of her grade,” I would say.
    â€œYou were flirting with her while you were talking of her grade?”
    â€œShe’s sleeping with my son,” I would say.
    â€œWell, how did that happen?” he would then ask, and I’d have to say, “They met at my house.”
    â€œDid it occur to you that that wasn’t a good idea?”
    â€œHow can you stop a couple of horny kids?”
    I actually said this aloud.
    â€œIt would be best if you refrained from describing a student under your supervision as horny, ” the dean would say.
    â€œI’ve done nothing,” I’d say, but neither of us would believe that was true.
    But it never came to that. Ultimately I gave her an A.
    Â 
    Rachel stopped by my room the night after

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