To Max’s surprise, even though the boy was wilting under Dani’s questioning about the thesis he supposedly had all worked out—it didn’t seem he had actually read the book, which sounded like it was meant to beThe Great Gatsby—she suddenly granted him a forty-eight-hour extension and abruptly dismissed him. “Happy holidays,” she said so flatly she might as well have been saying, “Good riddance.”
It was such an unexpected turnabout that Max, who had been lounging against the wall, stood up straight, startled.
“Are there any more students out there?” she asked the boy as he was on his way out.
“Students... no,” the boy said, making brief eye contact with Max as he breezed by in possession of an extension he did not deserve.
When Max stuck his head into Dani’s office, it was to find her peeling off a blue blazer to reveal a dress that looked like it belonged on Bettie Page instead of a literature professor.
“Oh!” She jumped.
“My apologies. I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m merely here to ask for an extension.”
She rolled her eyes in lieu of greeting him, sat at her desk, and pulled a small mirror out of a drawer. “You’re early,” she said to her reflection.
“My thesis is all ready to go.” He sat on the guest chair and, as she started applying a deep burgundy lipstick, revised his previous assertion that he could appreciate Dani’s hotness from a purely intellectual perspective. “Care to hear it?”
“I guarantee you I already have.”
“None of the characters inThe Great Gatsbyhave any inner life to speak of, making what is admittedly a masterfully written book into a mere melodrama.”
She glanced at him with one lip painted. The contrast between the brick red of the finished lip and the pinky-beige of the natural one certainly was... something. “An interesting line of thought.”
He thought she was going to say more, but when she merely returned to her task, he asked, “Why did you give that boy an extension? He was clearly feeding you lies. Does he know you at all?”
One eyebrow rose, though she was still looking at her reflection. “Doyouknow me at all?”
“I’m thinking the way to get an extension from Professor Martinez is to level with her. Own the fact that you erred—with time management or laziness or what have you—present a plan for ameliorating your error, and state your terms.”
Ah, that cracked her.She put the mirror down and truly looked at him.Almostlooked as though she might smile. “Did you hear the student before him?”
“No.”
“She asked for a twenty-four-hour extension because she works two part-time jobs and she fell asleep at her computer last night.”
“Did you grant it?”
“Yes. I told her to go home and take a nap and to take another week with the paper.”
The fact that he had been correct about how to handle Professor Martinez when you were a wayward student in need of mercy was strangely, sharply satisfying. “Why?”
“Because she shows up to class prepared and has never asked for anything before. Because I see her working at the campus Starbucks all the time, and if that’s only one job of two, that’s a little sobering.”
“Why did that boy get an extension, too? He sounded like his problem was merely laziness. I wouldn’t have pegged you as a pushover.”
“I have forty-seven American Lit papers to grade in the next week, so it doesn’t really matter to me when they come in. And frankly, it’s not worth the bad reviews on my student evaluations.”She put away her mirror and took out her phone and looked at it for a long moment. She seemed to be reading something.
He took the opportunity to contemplate the concept of Dani receiving bad reviews. It was difficult to imagine. Along with her unexpectedly blasé response to the boy’s request, it created a disturbance in the mental picture Max had of her, a surprising—and intriguing—lashing of paint across an image he’d thought complete.
“You ready?” She stood and reached for her coat, and his appreciation of her dress—and her lips, and hereverything—grew even less intellectual.
“You want to give me any background on the Picasso fanboy? Did you say his name was Vince?” he asked while he tried not to be too overt about his escalating appreciation. “Or about the new girlfriend?”
“Neither of them have any inner life to speak of, so nah.” She flashed him a little smile. It was pleasingly conspiratorial. “I’m sure you—” Her speech came to an abrupt halt as he rose from her guest chair. She froze with one arm in her coat and the other out. No part of her moved except her eyes, which traveled rapidly up and down his body.
He looked down at himself. “What? Not suitably dukeish casual?” The New York trip was a short one, so he only had the one suit with him. He’d almost worn it without a tie, but in the end he hadn’t been able to make himself do it. If a man was wearing a suit, he should wear a suit—all its pieces, not some haphazard, choose-your-own-adventure version of it.
“It was a pun on business casual,” she said.