Chapter 4: TGIF

Normally, one or both are awake early, but on the Friday morning after the birthday party both Trisha and Tony are awoken by the alarm clock. Tony hits the button on the clock, but it is Trisha that is the first to roll out of bed.

“I thought as professors we were supposed to set our own hours?” she grumbles.

Trisha needs to get to campus early for a department-wide meeting to discuss several new policies being considered for the following year. While the infectiousness of the pandemic may be mostly over, there were still consequences that would be felt for many more years. The meeting was at 8:30 and then she had a long break until her 1:00 class.

Knowing that Trisha needed to get to campus early, Tony had agreed to meet a graduate student he was supervising early so she could get out of town for a weekend ski-trip with her boyfriend. Tony’s schedule only included the meeting with the student, but then he hoped to make progress reviewing the latest draft of a paper he was coauthoring with a professor from his alma mater – The University of Illinois.

Trisha exits the shower and grabs a towel as Tony slips by her and enters the stall, cranking on the hot water to the fullest.

Trisha wraps the towel around her body and heads into the closet to choose an outfit for the day. When she returns to the bedroom she quickly scans Tony’s dresser and end table for a coupon. She does not see anything. It was less than eight hours since she gave him the book, but she would not have been surprised to see a torn out page ready to be given to her when he exited the shower.

She starts dressing as Tony exits the shower and begins to shave. He makes a similar trip into the closet to find a pair of slacks and shirt, and then enters the bedroom to finish his simple job of buttoning the shirt, zipping and buttoning his pants, and slipping on a pair of shoes. Meanwhile, Trisha is just finishing her makeup and still needs to finish dressing.

“Do you want cereal or eggs for breakfast?” Tony asks as he exits the bedroom.

Trisha calls out, “Neither for me. The department is catering a breakfast before the meeting. Their subtle way of trying to get people there on time.”

Eating alone, Tony stands over the sink and eats a small bowl of cereal. He also takes a protein bar and puts it in his pocket for later.

Trisha finds him rinsing the cereal bowl and putting it in the dishwasher.

“Eat at the sink again, you heathen?” she jokes.

He shrugs as he swats her playfully on the butt before she can spin out of the way.

“C’mon,” he says, “let’s get moving. I want to stop at the Coffee Haus drive through.”

Most days they drive separately since there always seems to be a last-minute crisis that requires one of them to stay later than expected. Since today’s schedule was light and they didn’t foresee anyone working past mid-afternoon, they rode together in one car.

Tony drops Trisha off at her building and then heads to the other side of campus and his regular parking spot in the garage. He parks, grabs his backpack, and causally strolls to his office when the realization that he is now another decade older overwhelms his conscious thought. It is a powerful but fleeting thought that is gone by the time he reaches his office. Forty!

The student Tony met with had done a great job preparing for the meeting and was able to articulate her ideas for her masters thesis quickly and succinctly. Tony was impressed and only needed to give her a few small pointers before giving her the go-ahead to begin outline the actual paper that would be used in her defense meeting with the other committee members.