Page 23 of Damaged Professor

Abby laughs, hard enough that she has to put a hand over her mouth. Her eyes crinkle up at the corners when she does. I’m taken with the look. “What did you even say?” She giggles. “I could never find the right cadence.” I tell her.

“Holy shit! Okay, you’re right. That… That doesn’t sound good.”

“My friend used to say it sounded like a cat hacking up a hairball.” I shake my head. “Languages have never come easily to me.”

“I can see that. But—” She gestures at the house with one hand. “It looks like teaching’s kept you pretty comfortable.”

“I’ll be honest, this isn’t all from a professor’s salary. Tenure is nice, but it’s not that nice. My grandfather left my family his entire estate when he passed away. Between the inheritance and what a couple of his homes sold for—it’s left us pretty set.”

A pause.

That’s more information than I normally offer on the subject. Honestly, most people just get a hum and a shrug from me when the topic comes up. I learned when I was a lot younger not to flash my money around to the wrong people, or else they’d probably not want to be around me for the right reasons.

But when I do decide to share with someone the fact that I’m incredibly wealthy, it’s usually easy enough to just tell them about my grandfather and move on. But… something about Abby makes me want to show off a little. I take a bite of my chicken, savoring the sweet and salty zing of it.

When I’m done chewing, I tell her, “I have a few books out, too. They've done well for me.”

To my great joy, that’s what catches her attention more. She perks right up in her seat, instantly interested in what I have to say. “You do?”

“Yeah,” I explain. “I have a few copies of them in the living room. I can show them to you when we’re done eating if you want. They aren’t novels—they’re historical pieces on a few of my past-time studies.”

“Like what?”

“Modern rural myths and their historical connotations,” I say. “That one’s my favorite.”

“Like Mel’s Hole?”

“And Skinwalker Ranch,” I say, nodding. “Exactly.”

“I’ve only read a few studies on those,” admits Abby. “But I’d love to see what you’ve written. Maybe it’s something that you could loan me.”

“Stay the night,” I tell her. “And you can read them over coffee in the morning.”

The request comes before I can actually think about it—I blame this sort of instinctive need for her to spend more time here. And I don’t often have people over who are actually interested in my work. I’ll admit that it’s a bit of a dry topic.

Legends are almost always grounded in some amount of history, and there’s always been something thrilling to me about being able to look at that history and almost tear it into pieces.

Legends operate within a realm of uncertainty, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t grounded in history. I want people to be able to understand that the concept of a bottomless pit that brings dead dogs back to life, moth-man's relation to disasters like Chernobyl, and even the Jersey Devil are all rooted in the context of the moment in which that legend was first uttered.

But all this—it’s not the kind of thing that most people want to dissect at the dinner table. But Abby is interested, not in the kind of ‘I’m just being polite’ interest that my brother’s wife gives me, no. She has a genuine love for learning things, and a passion for seeing how that new knowledge can affect her perception of the world around us.

For every example that I bring up, she has interesting questions and a connected topic. I can’t remember the last time that I spent this much time talking while I ate—or the last time that I so thoroughly enjoyed myself while I had company over.

Abby’s a brilliant young lady, and between the good food, the strong wine, and the amazing company, it’s no wonder that we both end up losing track of time.

“The difference between a legend and a myth is that a legend has a necessity to it,” I explain. “It romanticizes what’s happening on a local level, sometimes even referencing an individual person.”

Abby nods along enthusiastically. Her fork scrapes noisily over the surface of the plate as she drags her chicken bite through the last of the brown butter and garlic sauce. “That’s amazing. You must have had an incredible thesis paper when you were getting ready to graduate.”

“I was a horrible student,” I tell her, with a laugh. The chair legs scrape over the hardwood floor as I get up, making to grab both of our wine glasses. Abby follows me into the kitchen as I fetch us more wine. “I never submitted anything on time, because I couldn’t get my work condensed down into something smaller. They were always telling me that they couldn’t read through the whole paper, and I needed to get better at editing.”

“Did you?”

“No, no, that’s actually why I started writing the books. I thought, well, I won’t need to edit anything down if I’m writing it myself. Of course, that didn’t actually help me with any of my classes.” I put the bottle of wine away and turn around, nearly bumping into Abby.

When did she come around to this side of the island counter? When did she get so close?

“I want to read your books,” she says, leaning close to me, just like she did in class earlier today, when we first talked about this new little arrangement of ours. “I want… I want to know more about you, about your studies. Just—” She plucks both cups of wine out of my hands and sets them on the counter behind me. “Maybe not right now.”

---