Page 19 of The English Professor

Well, this changes things. I’m obviously not going to have the time this afternoon that I thought I’d have. I’ll have to rearrange everything.Goddamned Board of studies...

I need to find one of the departmental administrative assistants. I walk down a series of corridors and find Leyna to be the only one in the main office. She sits there typing and hasn’t noticed me yet. Her soft brown hair is tied up, a light fringe covering her forehead. Her brow is furrowed as she concentrates, looking down at a piece of paper and then back at the computer screen. My sullen mood is eased slightly, watching her cute, round face in a moment of concentration.

She must sense she is being watched and looks up. She smiles at me, and it feels like I’m seeing a friendly face in a crowd of hostiles. I focus on her smile, her lips. Their fullness and plum red colour. I find myself wondering what it would be like to feel their softness...

‘Good morning, Miss Burrows. Sorry to interrupt.’

‘It’s no bother,’ she says cheerfully. ‘To be honest, the distraction is welcome. These accounts are doing my head in! Just let me...’ She stands up and places a stack of papers in a corner of the office. ‘What can I do for you?’ she smiles brightly.

That mouth... I immediately push away the thought. ‘I need to talk to you about the time tabling for the second-year module I’m teaching, Late Victorian Scandal in Literature.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘I think the room’s already booked for another class.’

‘That’s strange. Let me have a look.’ She walks back over to her desk and leans down scrolling through pages on the computer. She’s wearing a typical Leyna outfit, a tiny blouse tucked into this extremely tight, form-fitting skirt that, when she bends over, makes my hands itch. I clench and unclench my fist in an attempt to rid myself of my hunger for her. She wears sheer black tights, and I can only just make out a beauty mark on the back of her left calf. I cross my arms as I wait for her to scan the schedule.

‘Oh, I see...’ She doesn’t finish her sentence, but takes a seat once more, continuing to stare and scroll at the computer screen. ‘Why don’t you come over here and have a look.’ I walk around her desk so that I’m standing behind her now. I bend forward to look at the screen. I’m so close to her I can smell the light perfume she wears and I have to fight the urge to breathe her in deeply.

She points at the screen. ‘Because it’s late in the term, it’s a bit of a struggle to find a room to put you all in. I can either put you in here or in here,’ she points at the computer screen. ‘Do you have a preference?’ She turns without realising I have bent over her shoulder and our faces are inches apart.

Do I have a preference?My preference includes whatever option allows me to kiss her senseless. I imagine her sprawled on a bed in front of me, smiling sweetly.

‘Either one is fine.’ I stand up quickly. I can’t be this close to her.

She fiddles with the keyboard once again. ‘Right, that’s sorted. You won’t have two classes showing up now for. What was it you were teaching again?’

‘Scandalous literature in the late Victorian period.’

‘Nowthatsounds like an interesting class,’ she says.

‘It’s fun to teach and, I’m told, interesting to take, if the student evaluations are anything to go by. It was initially a pet-project. I wasn’t sure if anyone would want to take the class since it’s fairly niche and forms much of my own research. But it’s been full ever since I first started to offer it a few years ago.’

‘What’s it about?’ she asks.

Her question shouldn’t thrill me but it does. I talk about my work all the time, but it’s as though Leyna’s question has turned on a tap and I find myself suddenly excited, telling her about my research and about the coursework. ‘It follows my own work on both the literature that caused scandal and literature in which scandal was a central theme. What’s considered scandalous to us now wasn’t necessarily scandalous to them, and vice versa.’ I find myself gibbering on about the fluidity of societal conventions, guilt, and shame. ‘Looking back at the literature, you can see the Victorians’ fascination with the self in extreme circumstances and the authors during this era returned time and again to this theme, subjecting their fictional characters to hyperbolic states—' Probably too late, I cut myself off. She’s probably bored senseless with all of this and I remind myself that not everyone shares my keen interest in the attitudes and appetites of the late Victorians. ‘Sorry. I have a tendency to ramble on... You probably need to get back to—'

‘No!’ she cuts me off. ‘I mean. I find you interesting—Imean, I find what you teach interesting!’ She quickly adds, ‘We’re still fascinated with the exercise of self-control, aren’t we?’ Quietly, she says, ‘Sometimes I think about what would happen if all the structures that discipline us, that keep us all in check, were to just fall apart.’

A smile steals across my face and I can’t help it. I whisper, ‘Anarchy.’

She seems to ponder this a second before replying, ‘Do you think that living without rules, free from state intervention, is anarchy?’

‘Structure affords us nice things. Being controlled, within reason, also makes for a calm and peaceful society. Wouldn’t you prefer to be controlled, obviously within reason, if it meant that you had other luxuries?

‘I’m not sure I would. But you’re saying you don’t mind being controlled—a little—if the pay-off is worth it.’

‘Errr...’ I mumble. I stare back at her, trying to figure out what it is we’re actually talking about. She’s somehow managed to turn the tables on me and I’m not sure which direction I ought to take.

She quirks her head and says, ‘Are you ashamed to talk about it? Because shame can be transformati—’

‘What?! Not at all!’ I feel like I ought to defend myself, from what, I’m not entirely certain. But it now feels like this isn’t some sort of theoretical conversation—it feels personal. ‘I teach a whole class on the subject.’

She says, ‘Teaching and living are two very different things, Professor.’

My pulse quickens and my heart rams against my chest. We’re both silent, staring back at one another and I feel like her stare is boring holes through to my soul, seeing through walls I had once thought were impenetrable.

But then, all of a sudden, her eyes lighten. Amusement dancing across her features she whispers, ‘Calm down, don’t be so serious. I’m fucking with you.’ There’s a glint in her eye and a playful grin tugging the corners of her lips.

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