higher caliber of party, yes. This isn’t high school. We don’t have to be the losers waiting
to get invited out. I’ve wasted too many good outfits on you.”
“Okay, I’ll wear a skirt if you wear a skirt,” Alex said. “Also … I’m going to need to
borrow a skirt.” No one dressed up for frat parties, but if Mercy wanted to look cute for a
bunch of guys in hazmat suits, then that was what they would do. “You should wear those
boots you have with all the laces. I’m going back for seconds.”
The basso belladonna kicked in just as she was stacking peanut butter pancakes onto her tray, and she drew in a sharp breath as she came wide awake. It felt a little like someone cracking an ice-cold egg on the nape of your neck. Of course, it was at that moment that Professor Belbalm waved her over from her table below the leaded windows
in the corner of the dining room, her sleek white hair gleaming like a seal’s head breaching
a wave.
“Fuck,” Alex said under her breath, and then cringed when Belbalm’s mouth quirked as
if she’d heard her.
“Gimme a minute,” she told Mercy, and set down her tray at their table.
Marguerite Belbalm was French but spoke flawless English. Her hair was snow white
and fell in a smooth, severe bob that looked like it had been carved from bone and set carefully on her head like a helmet, so little did it move. She wore asymmetrical black garments that hung in supremely chic folds, and she had a stillness that made Alex twitch.
Alex had been in awe of her from the first glimpse of her slender, immaculate form at the
Jonathan Edwards orientation, since the first whiff of her peppery perfume. She was a women’s studies professor, the head of JE College, and one of the youngest people to ever
achieve tenure. Alex didn’t know exactly what tenure implied or if “young” meant thirty
or forty or fifty. Belbalm might have been any of those, depending on the light. Right now,
with the basso belladonna in Alex’s system, Belbalm looked a dewy thirty and the light pinging off her white hair glittered like tiny shooting stars.
“Hi,” Alex said, hovering behind one of the wooden chairs.
“Alexandra,” Belbalm said, resting her chin on her folded hands. She always got Alex’s
name wrong, and Alex never corrected her. Admitting her name was Galaxy to this
woman was unthinkable. “I know you’re breakfasting with your friend, but I need to steal
you away.” Breakfasting had to be the classiest verb Alex had ever heard. Right up there with summering. “You have a moment?” Her questions never sounded like questions.
“You’ll come to the office, yes? So that we can talk.”
“Of course.” Alex said, when what she really wanted to ask was, Am I in trouble?
When Alex was put on academic probation at the end of her first semester, Belbalm had
given her the news sitting in her elegantly appointed office, three of Alex’s papers laid out before her: one on The Right Stuff, for her sociology class on organizational disasters; one on Elizabeth Bishop’s “Late Air,” a poem she’d chosen for its meager length, only to realize she had nothing to say about it and couldn’t even use up space with nice long quotes; and one for her class on Swift, which she’d thought would be fun because of Gulliver’s Travels. As it turned out, the Gulliver’s Travels she’d read had been for children and nothing like the impenetrable original.
At the time, Belbalm had smoothed her hand over the typed pages and gently said that
Alex should have disclosed her learning disability. “You’re dyslexic, yes?”
“Yes,” Alex had lied, because she needed some reason for how very far behind
everyone else she was. Alex had the sense she should be ashamed of failing to correct Belbalm, but she’d take all the help she could get.
So now what? They were too early in the semester for Alex to have screwed up all over
again.
Belbalm winked and gave Alex’s hand a squeeze. “It’s nothing terrible. You needn’t look quite so much like you’re ready to flee.” Her fingers were cool and bony, hard as marble; a single large stone glinted dark gray on her ring finger. Alex knew she was staring, but the drug in her system had made the ring a mountain, an altar, a planet in orbit.