By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes, thought Paul.
“Paul.” Gabriel nodded coolly, his eyes flickering to the now noticeable space in between Julianne and his research assistant. The Angelfucker. That’s right—hands off the angel, asshole.
“Miss Mitchell, how nice to see you again.” Gabriel smiled somewhat stiffly. “You’re looking smart, as always.”
Yes, brown-eyed angel, I heard what she said to you. Don’t worry, I’ll fix her.
“Miss Peterson.” Now Gabriel’s voice was cold, and he gestured to her to follow him as if she were a dog. You looked at Julianne as if she were trash. You won’t be doing that again. I’ll make sure of it.
Julia watched as he refused the coffee Christa bought for him and walked to the counter to order something else. She saw Christa’s shoulders trembling with rage.
Paul turned to Julia and sighed. “Now, where were we?”
She inhaled deeply and took a minute to focus before she did what she knew she needed to do. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’m sorry.” She looked down at her leather messenger bag, feeling very uncomfortable.
“I’m not sorry. I’m only sorry that you’re sorry.” Paul brought his face close to hers and smiled. “But it’s all right. I’m not upset or anything.”
“I don’t know what happened. I’m not usually like that—to just kiss someone.”
“I’m not just someone, am I?” He looked at her inquisitively. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for the longest time. Ever since that first seminar, I think. But that would have been too soon.”
He tried to persuade her to look at him, but she looked away. She looked toward another table and its two quarreling occupants. She sighed.
“Julia, the kiss doesn’t have to change anything. Think of it as a moment between friends. It doesn’t have to happen again, unless you want it to.” He searched her face, worriedly. “Would that make it better? If we left it like that?”
She nodded and squirmed. “I’m sorry, Paul. You’ve been nothing but nice to me.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I’m not looking for payment, here. I’m nice to you because I want to be. That’s why I bought you the CD. That’s why the poem reminds me of you. You inspire me.” He leaned closer so that he could whisper in her ear, acutely aware of the fact that a pair of angry sapphire eyes was suddenly focused on him. “Please don’t feel obligated to do anything that you don’t want to do. I’ll be your friend no matter what.” He paused. “It was a friendly little kiss, instead of a hug. But from now on, we can stick to hugs, if you want. And one day, if you want more…”
“I’m not ready,” she breathed, somewhat surprised that she found honest words to say and found them so quickly.
“I know that. That’s why I didn’t kiss you back much, even though I wanted to. But it was very nice. Thank you. I know you’re careful about who you let yourself get close to. I feel honored that you kissed me.”
He patted her hand and smiled at her again. She opened her mouth to say something, but he beat her to it.
“I could break Christa’s neck for what she said to you. I won’t bother talking to her next time.” His eyes darted to The Professor’s table where he noticed with some relief that the angry sapphire eyes were now fixated on Christa, who was bowing her head and close to tears.
Julia shrugged. “I don’t care.”
“I care. I saw how she was looking at you. And I felt your reaction: you cringed. You fucking cringed, Julia. Why didn’t you tell her to go to hell?”
“I don’t do things like that if I can help it. I try not to lower myself to her level. Sometimes, I just feel so…so surprised that someone is being nasty to me, I can’t think. I’m speechless.”
“People are…nasty to you?” Paul began to get angry.
“Sometimes.”
“Emerson?” he whispered.
“He’s coming around. You saw him just then—he was nice.”
Paul nodded reluctantly. Professor Dick-erson.
Julia fidgeted with her hands. “I don’t mean to be all…St. Francis of Assisi or something, but anyone can shout obscenities. Why should I become like her? Why not think that sometimes—just sometimes—you can overcome evil with silence? And let people hear their hatefulness in their own ears, without distraction. Maybe goodness is enough to expose evil for what it really is, sometimes. Rather than trying to stop evil with more evil. Not that I’m good. I don’t think that I’m good.” She paused and looked over at Paul. “I’m not making any sense.”
He simply smiled. “Of course you’re making sense. We talked about this in my Aquinas seminar—evil is its own punishment. Look at Christa. Do you think she’s happy? How could she be, behaving like that? Some people are so self-absorbed and deluded that all the shouting in the world wouldn’t be enough to convince them of their own shortcomings.”
“Or jog their memory,” Julia mumbled, gazing over at the other table and shaking her head.
The next day, she found herself in the Department of Italian Studies checking her mailbox before the Dante seminar. She was listening to the CD that Paul had given to her, which she’d finally agreed to accept and upload to her iPod. He was right; she’d fallen in love with the album immediately. And she found that she could write her thesis proposal while listening to his music much better than while listening to Mozart. Lacrimosa was far too depressing.
After days of finding nothing in her pigeonhole, she finally received some mail. Three pieces of mail, actually.
The first was an announcement of the rescheduling of Professor Emerson’s lecture, Lust in Dante’s Inferno: The Deadly Sin against the Self. Julia made note of the new date and planned on asking Paul if he would accompany her to the lecture.
The second piece of mail was a small cream-colored envelope. Julia opened it and was surprised to find that it contained a Starbucks gift card. It had been personalized, she saw, and the image on the card was a large light bulb. The text emblazoned across it read: You are very bright, Julianne.
Julia looked at the back of the card and saw that the value was one hundred dollars. Holy shit, she thought. That’s a lot of coffee. It was obvious who had sent it to her and why. Nevertheless, she was very, very surprised. Until she withdrew the third piece of mail.
The third piece was a long, sleek envelope, which she quickly opened. It was from the chair of the Department of Italian Studies congratulating her on winning a bursary. She read no further than the amount, which was five thousand dollars per semester, payable on top of her regular graduate student stipend.
O gods of all really poor graduate students with very small hobbit-hole-not-fit-for-a-dog apartments, thank you, thank you, thank you!
“Julianne, are you all right?” The voice of Mrs. Jenkins, comforting and gentle, wafted over her shocked body.
She stumbled uncertainly to Mrs. Jenkins’ desk and wordlessly handed her the award letter.
“Oh yes, I heard about this.” She grinned amiably. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? These bursaries are few and far between, and suddenly on Monday morning we received a call saying that some foundation had donated thousands of dollars for this award.”
Julia nodded, still in shock.
Mrs. Jenkins glanced down at the letter. “I wonder who he is.”
“Who he is?”
“The person the bursary is named after.”
“I didn’t read that far.”
Mrs. Jenkins held the letter up and pointed to a block of bold print. “It says that you are the recipient of the M. P. Emerson Bursary. I was just wondering who M. P. Emerson is. I wonder if he’s a relative of Professor Emerson. Although Emerson is a common enough name. It’s probably just a coincidence.”
Chapter 12
Professor Emerson saw light spilling from underneath the door of his library carrel, but since Paul had pasted brown craft paper over the narrow window in the door, Gabriel couldn’t peer inside. He was surprised to find Paul worki
ng so late on a Thursday night. It was ten-thirty in the evening, and the library would be closing in thirty minutes.
Gabriel fished around in his pocket for his keys and opened the door without knocking. What he saw inside completely floored him. Curled up in a chair was Miss Mitchell, her head resting on folded arms that were poised elegantly on the desktop. Her eyes were closed, her mouth partially open but not quite smiling. Her cheeks were flushed with sleep, her chest rising and falling slowly, soothingly, like the waves of the ocean against a quiet beach. He stood in the doorway entranced, thinking that the simple sound of her breathing would make an excellent relaxation CD. One he could imagine falling asleep to again and again.
Her laptop was open, and Gabriel saw her screen saver, which was a slide show of hand drawn illustrations of what looked like a children’s story—something with animals—including a funny-looking white bunny with long ears that fell to its feet. The strains of music filled the air, and Gabriel realized that the sound was coming from her computer. He saw a CD with a rabbit on it. Gabriel began to wonder why Miss Mitchell was so obsessed with bunnies.
Perhaps she has an Easter fetish? Gabriel was halfway through a very elaborate imagining of what an Easter fetish might include before he came to his senses. He quickly entered the carrel and closed the door behind him, taking care to lock it. It would not be good for the two of them to be caught together like this.
He regarded her peaceful form, not wishing to disturb her or to intrude upon what looked like a very pleasant dream. Now she was smiling. He located the book he was seeking, preparing to leave her in peace, when his eyes alighted on a small notebook that lay just out of reach of her fingers.
Gabriel, he read. My Gabriel.
The sight of his name written lovingly, albeit randomly, several times in her notebook beckoned to him like a soft Siren call and sent a thrill coursing up and down his back. He was momentarily frozen, his hand hovering in midair.
Of course, it was possible that she was writing about another Gabriel. It seemed too incredible for her to be writing about him and calling him her own.
Gazing at her, he knew that if he stayed everything would change. He knew that if he touched her, he wouldn’t be able to resist the urge—the undeniable and primal urge—to claim the beautiful and pure Miss Mitchell. She was there, waiting for him, calling to him, her vanilla scent heavy in the small, too warm space.
My Gabriel. He imagined her voice laving across his name the way a lover’s tongue moves across the skin…His mind traveled at light speed as he envisioned pulling her into his arms. Kissing her, embracing her. Lifting her onto the desk and pressing himself between her knees, her hands tugging at his hair, his sweater, his shirt, undoing his bow tie and flinging it to the floor.
His fingers would explore her wavy hair and trace gentle lines across her neck, causing every space, every pore, to explode into scarlet—his nose nuzzling her cheek, her ear, her perfect milk-white throat. He would feel her pulse at her neck and find himself strangely calmed by the gentle rhythm, and he would feel connected to the beating of her heart, especially as it would begin to quicken beneath his touch. He would wonder if they were close enough, would their hearts beat synchronously…or was that simply a poet’s fancy?
She would be shy at first. But he would be gently insistent, whispering words of sweet seduction into her hair. He would tell her whatever she wanted to hear, and she would believe it. His hands would drop from her shoulders and inch over her lovely and innocent curves, marveling at her receptivity as she blossomed under his touch.
For no man would have touched her like that before. Eventually, she would be eager and responsive to him. Oh, so responsive. They would kiss, and it would be electric—intense—explosive. Their tongues would tangle and tango together desperately, as if they had never kissed before.
She would be wearing too many clothes. He’d want to tease her out of them and spread feather-light kisses against every inch of perfect porcelain skin. Especially her lovely throat and its metro of bluish veins. She would blush like Eve, but he would kiss away her nervousness. Soon she would be naked and open before him, thinking only of him and his rapt admiration, and not the feel of the carrel air against pale, pink flesh.
He would praise her with oaths and odes and soft murmurings of sweet pet names, and she would not feel shame. Honey, sweet girl, dear, my lovely…He would make her believe in his adoration, and her belief would not be entirely false.
Eventually the teasing and tingling would be too much, and he’d lean her back gently, cradling the back of her head in his hand. He’d keep his hand there throughout, for he would be worried he might hurt her. He would not have her head banging against the desk like an unloved toy.
He was not a cruel lover. He would not be rough or indifferent. He would be erotic, passionate but gentle. For he knew what she was. And he would wish her to be pleased as much as he, her first time. But he desired her spread out beneath him, breathless and inviting, her eyes wide and unblinking, blazing with desire.
His other hand would flex across her lower back, the sweet expanse of arched skin, and he’d gaze into her large and liquid eyes as she gasped and moaned. He would make her moan. Only him.
She’d bite her lip, her eyes half-closed as he slid toward her, willing her with whispered words to relax as she gave herself to him. It would go easier for her that way, the first time. He would still and not rush. He would pause and not tear. He would stop, perhaps?
His beautiful, perfect brown-eyed angel…her chest rising and falling quickly, the flush of her cheeks blooming across her entire body. She would be a rose in his eyes, and she would flower beneath him. For he would be kind, and she would open. He would watch entranced, almost as if it were occurring in slow motion…sight, scent, sound, taste, touch…as she transformed from maiden to matron through loss of maidenhead, all because of him. All because of him.
Maidenhead? There would be blood. For the price of sin was always blood. And a little death.
Gabriel’s heart stopped. It lay silent for half a beat then thudded double time as a new awareness crashed over him. Metaphysical poetry, long forgotten from his days at Magdalen College, sprang to his lips. For in that instant, he saw very clearly that he, Professor Gabriel O. Emerson, would-be seducer of the lovely and innocent Julianne, was a flea.
The words of John Donne echoed in his ears:
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;
And this, alas! is more than we would do.
He knew why his subconscious mind chose that moment to foist Donne’s poetry upon him; the poem was an argument for seduction. Donne spoke to his prospective lover, a virgin, and argued that her loss of virginity was less consequential than the swatting of a flea. She should give herself to him quickly, without a second thought. Without hesitation. Without regret.
As soon as the words presented themselves, Gabriel knew that they were perfect for him. Perfect for what he was contemplating doing to her. Perfect for his own self-justification.
Tasting. Taking. Sucking. Sinning. Draining. Abandoning.
She was pure. She was innocent. He wanted her.
Facilis descensus Averni.
But he would not be the one to make her bleed. He could not, would not, make another girl bleed for the rest of his life. All thoughts of seduction and mad, passionate fucking on desks and chairs, against walls and bookshelves and windows, immediately gave way. He would not take her. He would not mark her and claim what he had no right to claim.
Gabriel Emerson was a trite and only semi-repentant sinner. Preoccupied with the fairer sex and his
own physical pleasure, he knew he was governed by lust. Never did that thirst give way to something more, something approximating love. Nevertheless, despite these and other moral failings, despite his constant inability to resist temptation, Gabriel still had one last moral principle that governed his behavior. One line he would not cross.
Professor Emerson did not seduce virgins. He did not take virginity, ever, even if it was freely offered. He did not slake his thirst with innocence; he fed only on those who had already tasted and who in tasting, wanted more. And he was not about to violate his last and only moral principle for an hour or two of salacious satisfaction with a delectable graduate student in his study carrel. Even a fallen angel had his principles.
Gabriel would leave her virtue intact. He would leave her as he found her, the blushing brown-eyed angel, surrounded by bunnies, curled up like a kitten in her little chair. She would sleep unruffled, unkissed, untouched, and unmolested. His hand tightened on the doorknob, and just as he was about to unlock the door, he heard the sounds of stirring behind him.
He sighed and hung his head. He wasn’t foregoing a night of pleasure with her out of hatred but out of love—for the goodness he craved and wished his life had been. And perhaps out of love for the memory of his former self, before all the sin and vice took root and grew, like a patch of thorns turning and twisting and choking out his virtues. Gabriel’s hand left the doorknob, and he drew in a very deep breath. He straightened his shoulders and closed his eyes, wondering what he would say to her.
He slowly turned around and saw Miss Mitchell groan slightly and stretch. Her eyelids fluttered, and she stifled a yawn with the fan of her hand.
But her eyes flew open when she saw Professor Emerson standing by the door. Startled, she let out a yelp and flew backward out of her chair and against the wall. She cowered in confusion, and it almost broke Gabriel’s heart. (Which would have at least proven that he had one.)