Chapter 10

Being in my office again, surrounded by the books and the piles of papers, seemed almost unreal. A reassertion of the mundane upon my rather recent foray into the realm of the bizarre. I still had a job. The women in my life still had classes, and things still had to be done.

But lord it was hard. It bothered the bodily and emotional sense. Hell, what I wanted to do was take a few weeks off and spend the time exploring every sensation that we could invoke in each other. My mind kept flowing back to that sensation of joy. That amazing feeling that had flowed through me. It was almost addictive.

Addicted. What a word to consider. Did it fit? Well, I mean, we could all stop any time we wanted to. One word from Julie or Trish and I would of course stop. It didn't have to happen again. No matter how much any of us might want it to.

I marked down a paper from a B to a C for use of appeal to authority with no supporting citation. While that guy might have a following on...

There was a knock on my office door. Three quick raps. Simple, and professional. A knock that definitely wasn't a freshman's. Those tended to be quieter, with more hesitation. After a while you got to guess who was at the door, merely from the way it sounded.

"Yah?" I placed a finger on the sentence of the paper I was on, and laid the red pen on the table. If it was important, they'd immediately tell me, and if it wasn't I didn't want to lose my place.

The door opened, and the first thing I noticed was the hat. Sun hat. Tan with a vermillion band. It was actually rather striking, and I took note of the fact that the young woman who was wearing it was also wearing very thick, dark sunglasses.

"Hi, Professor? Can I come in?" Her voice was far stronger than I had imagined from someone who was trying to stay inconspicuous. At least that's what I gathered the hat and sunglasses were for.

"Sure," I stood up as she entered the room, and gestured to the the "Student Chair" I had set up. It wasn't the best chair In the world, but for an old cloth wingback, it wasn't bad. I honestly had bought it at the dump for five bucks. I at least had shampooed it before putting it in here when I got the office.

"Thanks," She shut the door behind her, and I noticed her hair underneath the hat. Vibrant color. Azure, and some of what looked like burgundy.

She turned again, and I finally got a good look at her face. High cheekbones, and a very pale shade of lipstick. She wasn't "Made Up" but clearly took the time to take care of her appearance. I couldn't see her eyes behind the glasses, nor very much of her at all, since she was wearing a long sleeved blouse and slacks which completely covered her legs.

I realized that I was letting my gaze roam all over her when I found myself contemplating her bust size. Forcefully, I pulled my gaze to where her covered eyes resided.

"Hi, you're... ?" I asked, trying to picture where I knew her from. I didn't recall her from any of my classes.

"I'm Courtney. I don't have any of your classes." She explained, her voice calm but confident. Not a freshman.

"Ok, Hi Courtney." I smiled, returning to my seat "So, what can I do for you?"

"I'd like you to..." She paused for a moment, taking a breath, "I want to know what's going on with you and Julie?"

"She lives with me," I stated, leaving out vast tracts of information that could easily result in a meeting with an ethics panel.

"Yeah, I know that. But she's been acting really weird since she moved in with you and Trish, and I'm worried about her." Courtney's expression was completely unreadable. The glasses, the hat. I couldn't get any kind of sense on what she was thinking.

"Ok, so I take it you're her friend." I opened, trying to change the subject a little.

"Yeah," Courtney pursed her lips slightly before continuing, "But she has been really distracted recently. It's like she has something she doesn't want to talk about. I think you know what it is, and I think you have something to do with it."

She was right of course. Of course, explaining this to her would require opening up a whole can of worms that...

"Are you sleeping with her?" Courtney interrupted my train of thought with the blunt question.

"Am I..." I began, about to deny everything...

"I'm not going to call the dean or anything, I just want to know. She's my friend, and she's keeping secrets from me. She was doing fine in class, so I know she's not sleeping with you for grades." Her blunt statements were a bit disconcerting. I wasn't used to this kind of aggressive inquisition, especially from a student.

"Look, I don't think that's any of your..." I began, trying to change the subject again.

"Ok, so you're not going to be straight with me." Courtney cut me off sharply. "Look, I came here because I figured that at least you would give me a straight answer and not play games. If she's screwing you, fine. If she's not, fine. Either way, I'm worried about her, and if I can't figure out what to do here, my next step is to walk right over to the counselors and tell them everything I know."

And that would cause the Dean to go nuts. If he knew that I had students living in my house, he'd have concerns. If he figured out I was having what the psych department would call psychotic episodes ... and then add in the unprotected sex with two young women...

"Ok. Stop!" I rose to my feet again. Courtney had risen from hers already. "Look, have a seat, but lose the Carmen Sandiego act, ok?"

"The ... who?" Courtney asked, returning to her seat.

"Sorry, probably before your time. Can you lose the hat and shades please, I don't like talking to someone hiding from me." I tried to be diplomatic.

"I'm not..." A flash of red seemed to cross her face, and suddenly I noticed that her skin was extremely pale. When she continued speaking her voice seemed somewhat more nervous. "Look, I need the glasses. I can lose the hat, but please don't freak out."

"Ok," I nodded, and with my assent, she lifted the hat off of her head, placing it upon her lap. When her hair came into view I took note of the dye job. Shades of Red and blue, which seemed to be applied in layers, giving her hair a unusual look. The white blonde roots underneath seemed out of place, like she had gone back afterwords and bleached them. For an instant, the slight breeze that she had generated through the motion brought the odor of the beach to me. No, it wasn't the beach, it was sunscreen.

"Ok," she looked at me, and I could see that her sunglasses were still obscuring her eyes.

"Is it too bright..." I began, trying to think about medical conditions that caused sensitivity to light.

"No, I don't need it dark or anything, just the glare... " She sighed. "Ok, I'm legally blind. If you want to close the windows I can pull out my coke bottles."

"I'm sorry." I mumbled, rising to my feet to do just that.

"So you want to start? Go ahead. I've heard them all." She sighed, fishing into a small bag which I hadn't noticed her carrying in.

"Heard..." I wasn't sure what to say. Behind the glasses which she put on I could see the pale blue of her eyes.

"Which one should I start with?" Her voice had become challenging. Almost Angry. For an instant I felt that I had committed some horrible faux-pas that I didn't even comprehend. "There's a snow storm outside, OH GOD SHE'S Invisible!!!"

"I wasn't going to..." I realized where she was going with this. Childhood insults that she expected to hear. Hell, even at college she probably heard them every day.

"Whole Milk, Snow White, Oh look God made a typo, do your parents keep you in the basement for being..."

"Stop! I'm sorry. Look, I wasn't going to make fun of you. I just..." I breathed out, realizing that what I had done was the very thing that often opened her up to ridicule. "I just wanted to see what your reaction was going to be to what I had to say. I..." Suddenly I was struck by how incredibly beautiful she was.

The tinge of anger in her eyes, combined with what she had done to her hair and the subtle touches of makeup just coalesced to create a vision of loveliness. Why anyone would mock this woman for being who she was...

"I won't be mad if you do," Courtney stated. A flat statement. A statement that she had obviously made many times before. "Go ahead, get them out. Everybody else does."

"Yeah, I slept with Julie. Once." And I soon would again, I hoped.

" ... you..." Her mouth gaped open in surprise. She had obviously braced herself for what she thought of as inevitable. "Wait ... were you going to..."

"And yes, I'm sort of in a relationship with Trish," I continued, trying to avoid her discomfort. "And no, we don't know where this is going, and yes we're all kinds of winging it."

"Oh..." Courtney paused, thinking about what I had said. "So ... Julie's just ... Ok ... so that means that she's ... wait is she ... oh woah..." her hand came up to cover her mouth as it gaped open in surprise.

"I don't know what she told, oh wait, you're her friend." I remembered that conversation we had regarding not talking to other people. "Physi ... ology major?"

"Psychology," she smiled, "Yes. I'm just so used to it, you know? Everybody always has to make the jokes."