Goods

Goods

1

She moved out of the dorms the day after she found cum on her sheets. Oh, she’d made an excuse, claiming terrible allergies—but it was the cum. Until then, it had been relatively painless to deal with her roommate and her roommate’s string of boys. A month and a half into college, Monica hadn’t suspected it would set the tone for the next three years. She didn’t date. She mostly avoided people in general. Still, she expected to fall in love. But with each devoid year, that expectation devolved into frustration. Then she met him. He loved her, she knew it. He just, couldn’t show it, not here, not now. But that’s all right, she thought, she’d waited this long and she could stand another six months. Not until he made love to her, she told herself, even though the thought of it made her tingle. No, she was waiting for love, waiting to prove that everything everyone said was wrong, because you can find that one special man, who will make you a woman—his woman—and the happiness of finding that one person will rightfully be magnified by her commitment to herself.

It’s just too bad he’s married. But separated! I’m not a whore, Monica thought, I’d never break up a marriage. She was crossing the quad, alone in her thoughts, and it made her feel like a spy, because no one would ever suspect it. Except her sister, and Ben. But they were safe, mostly… They were her handlers, or maybe they were fellow spies, all on the same side.

Her sister hated it. The idea, that a student and professor were romantically involved—even though they hadn’t done anything, yet—was abhorrent. Aja had dated, unlike Monica, and she knew what boys were after, even when those boys were thirty-three.

“You remember Ryan?” Aja had said, immediately, as if cued, when Monica finally confessed to her. “You remember how nice he was, how sweet and smart he could be, so that even mother liked him?” A pause, then her whole body stiffened into a regal posture, “You don’t know the real reason why I stopped seeing him.”

“The real reason?” Monica loved that moment. Whenever things were boring her in O-chem—and it was so often lately—she’d go back and say it again, “The real reason? I thought you said…”

“No.” And her eyes grew wide and she clicked her tongue and shook her head and for a second, looked just like their mother. “No. That’s what I said. No. When I went to Los Angeles with Tracy…  Ryan went with us.”

Monica gasped in response, but it wasn’t disapproval, though that’s what her sister believed, it was excitement. “You didn’t!”

“And when we were there, we spent the whole day together. We talked, and talked, about everything. And we went out… and I drank. And I felt so excited, so… such lust, that I almost told Tracy to spend the night at her boyfriend’s house.” Here, with wide eyes, she drew her thumb and finger together, barely touching, so that Monica could only see a speck of light between them, “And she would have done it. And I would have done it.”

Monica gasped again, and then she was so flushed that Aja surely thought her sister to be filled with shame.

“But it was only because I’d been around boys—like that—that I didn’t. I was ready.” She glared at Monica. “You are a little girl, and you don’t know what boys can do, to make you think that you want it more than anything.”

What could they do, Monica had thought, what and how? “You won’t tell mother, will you?”

“I won’t.” Aja replied softly, and channeled their mother again, “But you be careful, or you’ll have me to answer to.”

Ben was different. Ben had told her to leap on him and shower him with kisses and seduce him. His face lit up whenever he talked about it, and he grinned with evil delight every time he gave her that advice. And Monica would always yell at him and act very embarrassed and proper, and then storm off. And Ben would smile that enormous smile and she’d always look back and shake her head.

And then she’d sneak off, to the lab in the basement of the Fritzhof Building, or the bathroom on the second floor of the library, the one that was private. And when she was sure she was alone, she’d meet with Professor Weston. Dr. Weston.

“Dr. Weston,” She’d say in that voice she practiced in her car, so breathless that it was barely audible. “Dr. Weston, I’ve, I’ve tried to wait.”  And then she’d moan, a long, “Ooooh. But I can’t.” And she’d drop her head and look up at him and say, “I’m a good girl, but it’s too much, even for me.”

And her hand would touch the very top of her breast, just the tips of the fingers. Running along the curves, and then down, to find a hard, dark nipple. With a squeeze she’d feel the tingle run down, warming her stomach, warming her special spot.

“But we can’t Monica,” He’d respond, “It wouldn’t be right, not for me or you. We have to…”

“No James,” She’d cut him off, just barely touching his lips with her finger. And then her other hand would caress his rod, “No, this is what we have to do.”

Barely thinking, she’d unbuttoned her pants, and was rubbing her spot. Fast at first, and then slower, as she thought about pleasuring him and how he’d pleasure her. She licked her fingers and thought, that’s his tongue, his tongue on me. In me. Her other hand, desperate, ran from breast to nipple, finally holding her neck, then holding the wall, holding herself up.

She’d caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, once. Legs spread wide, in those silly boots. Her hand deep in her panties, her face flush, her eyes half-closed. What Ben would give to see her like this, she’d thought, and then it came. It built up in her stomach and her thighs. She felt so warm and electric, and then the first wave would crash into her. She tried to keep quiet, but it was so hard. Once, she’d really let loose, and she wondered if someone in the library, walking by the door, had heard her and what he’d think.

Last time it felt so good that she just leaned against the wall for a few minutes. The cold ceramic against her back, her bottom, trying valiantly, and failing, to cool her off. And then, she’d follow the ritual, re-buttoning, re-zipping, making herself presentable again. She’d never been caught, never be caught, because she wasn’t just a spy. No, Monica was a master spy.

Her phone buzzed, and it was like those shock paddles doctors use to restart a failing heart. She looked around and realized she’d walked past Jersey Hall, walked practically off campus. Her phone buzzed again, she was late. It insisted, and it said ‘Lita’ just as insistently.

“Hey girl,” the voice rang out, “What’cha up to?”

“Class.” Monica responded, her tone matching her pace. “Late!”

“Really?” Lita sounded honestly disappointed. “Blow it off, come shopping with me.”

“I can’t go shopping,” Monica responded, “I’ve missed this class twice already! Remy’ll kill me!”

“Pleaaaaase.” Lita put on her best pout, she wasn’t very good at it, even when it was earnest. “But I need some air, girl, and the freshest air is at Deisel.”

“I can’t.” Monica was in front of Jersey, there was no reception in there, Lita was making her late. “Really. I want to, but I’ve got to be in this class.”

“Monica, you have to. I promise I’ll make it up to you. We’ll study, real hard. Just, later. Come on.”

“Oh. All right! But you’re responsible for my downfall!” Monica closed the phone, grimaced at the building and considered sticking her tongue out at it, but decided against it.

Lita was in front of the steps on Second Street. Beautiful Lita, blond and elegant. “The hottest girl at State,” Ben called her.

“Well, who’s the second hottest?” Monica had replied, jealous, but only intellectually.

“It’s a rotating position at second.” And then that smile.

“But I’ve got the same build,” Monica sometimes wanted to retort, “And I’m a full cup larger! And I’m Persian! And I’ve got beautiful, long, black hair like the Princess from Alladin!” But she never said that. No, all she’d ever said about Lita was, “Yeah, she doesn’t like you.” Monica only said it once, but it had the proper effect.

“Doesn’t like me, what’s not to like?!” Ben was too skilled at being pompous to show any real hurt. He was fine, Monica always acknowledged, intellectually. Not fine, like “Let’s get a burrito at the Caf for lunch,” but fine, as in, “Oh my, that brother is fine!”

Lita never explained her distaste for Ben and Monica never pursued an explanation, fearful that it would add fuel to Ben’s argument: “That anyone who says they wouldn’t date a black guy is racist.”  Sometimes he’d add, “Same goes for any guy who says he’s only attracted to Asian girls or blonde girls or whatever. Racist. Me,” And that smile, “I’m attracted to hotties of all creeds.”

2

The great thing about shopping with Lita, Monica thought, was that they both had the same style. Lita didn’t know Mohommed, and sometimes she’d wear a shirt that showed off her belly, but for the most part, they had the same taste—stylish and conservative, but sexy. Her outfits were the only thing her dear Dr. Weston got, after all, she had to make it worthwhile.

They bought matching jumpsuits, Lita’s in burgundy, Monica’s in forest green. Monica loved being stylish and in the mall, with her gorgeous friend, the center of attention no matter where they went. All the little voices in her head said it wasn’t important, and she acknowledged that, but it was fun, so much fun.

They walked into Victoria’s Secret and it was as close to bad as Monica could get. She always protested when they did it, because Monica wasn’t allowed to have anything lurid, and so it was just for show. And, of course, for James, where the occasional negligee or boustier would make its appearance, shocking him, because he never thought she was that kind of girl.

Lita had an armful of sinfully small, tiny pieces of fabric. She hardly dated, Monica knew, but when she did she must have made them very, very happy. Monica had one bra that was allowed, and three that would never see her dresser, lest her mother put her in the convent. At the dressing room they found the same unhappy salesgirl who didn’t want to check in the back for Lita’s favorite in a 34C. “There’s only one room open.” She said and then looked past them.

Monica smiled, “It’s okay, I can wait.”

“It’s gonna be a while.” ‘Anne’ offered no further explanation.

But Lita didn’t smile, and didn’t take the key, she only scowled at the salesgirl. “We’ll use the same room.”

Anne gave a look and a sigh, “You can’t do that, and besides, you’d have too many items together to do that.”

Monica’s heart was racing—the same changing room? She’d done it before with Lita, and it had been tiny and they’d been elbowing and bumping into each other the entire time. But that was at Nordstrom’s, trying on jeans. She was too distracted to hear Lita’s response, too distracted to notice that it was directed at her.

“Hey,” And this time Lita elbowed her, “Grab the key, let’s go.”

It was the first door in, slightly larger than Monica’s closet, which made it twice the size of the changing rooms at Nordstrom’s. She wondered, off-hand, if it was the handicapped dressing room, and thus bigger than the rest. That’s the way it worked in bathrooms, right?

Lita pulled her shirt off immediately, smooth bronzed skin, without a tan line or a blemish, supporting Ben’s title. Her bra was low cut, un-patterned and black. She looked over at Monica and laughed, “What?” When Monica just shook her head, she turned around and said across her shoulder, “Can you get this for me?”

“Um,” Monica backed up a little, “No? I’d kind of feel weird about it.”

Lita reached back quickly and unclasped the strap, letting it fall forward, down her arms. Then she turned toward Monica, smiling crookedly, tiny pink nipples standing up on perfect, little breasts. “Weird?! Come on, they’re tits! You’ve got them, I’ve got them, you should be comfortable with them. They’re not dangerous. Really.”

Monica smiled sheepishly, “I’ve only seen mine and my sister’s. And yours, now. And stuff on the Internet.”

“On the Internet,” Lita stepped closer to Monica, and whispered conspiratorially “You look at porn?”

“No!” Monica whispered back, “But you can’t be on the Internet and not see breasts. You know that.”

“Sure…” Lita nodded. “You want to touch ‘em?”

“No!” And then Monica recoiled, bumping into the mirror.

“Good, because these are reserved for serious customers!”

And when Lita laughed, Monica felt relief, but for what she couldn’t say. She wanted to go, to tell Lita that she’d wait for the next dressing room, that she was just a silly, Muslim girl who couldn’t get over her silly, Muslim girl ways. But she didn’t know how Lita would respond, and she sort of knew she’d be mad, and she might even lose her as a friend, so instead of saying anything, she pulled off her shirt.

“Oh my God,” Lita whispered, “They’re huge! You’re a porn star!”

Monica blushed, all the way from her cheeks to her chest, her dark skin taking a reddish tint. Finally she stammered, in even more of a whisper, “You know my size!” She crossed her arms over her chest, hoping to make it look like mock indignation when really she felt incredibly vulnerable.

Lita laughed again and turned around, picking up the turquoise gel bra. She slipped it on and turned back to Monica, whispering, as she did, “Even with this, I’m still not your size!”

Monica forced a laugh as she reached behind her, unhooking her bra. It fell off, and she quickly picked up the most plain of the bras she’d picked out, a white sports bra with black piping, pulling it on in one, fluid motion.

“Your nipples,” Lita said, watching her, “Are so big. It’s not fair!”

With that she began to unbutton her pants, revealing the top of her panties, which matched the now discarded bra. She turned away from Monica, who smiled to herself, because she didn’t expect Lita to suddenly get shy on her. The pants fell down around her ankles and she stepped out of them. No tan lines, the same bronzed color all across her body, made more obvious by the tiny triangle of black fabric that made up the top of the thong.

Monica blushed further and then Lita did something she was entirely unprepared for. Still turned away from her, she stuck her thumbs in the band of her thong and pulled it down, slowly, legs straight, bending forward until Monica was looking right at everything that men wanted. She gasped.

“What are you doing!?!” She whispered, and hoped she sounded like her mother.

Lita turned around, planting her legs apart and putting her hands on her hips in a look of pure defiance. No tan lines, anywhere. There, Monica saw, running up from—it—was a perfect line of close-cropped blonde hair, the length and width her forefinger. She stood transfixed, staring at that precision-trimmed field of quarter-inch long hair.

“I want to see if this matches,” Monica didn’t even notice that Lita wasn’t holding or referring to anything. “And I’m not going to wear it over—”

Lita’s voice trailed off, and both girls looked toward the dressing room door, there were voices outside—male voices. Saying something, getting a response from the salesgirl.

“Great.” Lita said, “Now there’s a bunch of pervs out there.”  She was about to continue but when she saw the look on Monica’s face, she forgot what she was going to say, instead whispering, “What’s wrong?”

The silly little Muslim girl was doomed. She was in the changing room of a lingerie store, with a half-naked girl, when she was supposed to be at school, and fifteen feet away stood destruction.

“It’s my brother.” The words were barely audible. “And his friends.”

“What?!” Lita was whispering, too. They were both facing the door, now, Lita’s hands on Monica’s shoulders. Her lips right against Monica’s ear, hot, saying, “What are they doing here?”

Monica wanted to shrug Lita away from her but she was frozen, she listened to the voices speak some Arabic, and then whispered back, “They’re looking for something for Dubai’s girlfriend.”

Dubai’s real name was Raif Ali Ab-Zerid, but everyone called him Dubai, the city that his father owned half of. The father that provided him with his many toys. Monica didn’t like Riki spending time with him, didn’t want him to think that money was so important, but Dubai was a rock star among the Arabs at school.

“It’s okay,” Lita said, this time her lips brushed against Monica’s ears, and goosebumps ran down her body—she was glad she had the sports bra on. “We’ll just stay in here until they go.”

“You don’t understand, if my brother realizes I’m in here…”

“Well then you’d better be quiet!” Lita whispered. “Don’t worry, though, if it comes down to it, I’ll run out with no pants on, and you can sneak off when they chase after me. You can count on your Lita!”

Monica smiled and felt a little less worried. She listened to the boys, who’d made their way to the back of the store, near the dressing room. They were speaking Arabic, laced with cursing, expecting no one to understand them. It made her angry to listen, but she did.

“Any girl who rolls with Dubai knows the rules: She rides in my Benz, she rides on my cock. She eats my food, she eats my cum.”

“Oh man, you’re filthy!” It was her brother, and she couldn’t help but think, way to go, Riki! Way to stand up for being decent!

“Yeah, I’m filthy, every fucking night. And you wish you could be, too.”

“Hey!” This time it was Hakeem, who Monica had yet to see demonstrate one redeemable trait. “You guys aren’t going to believe this, but there two girls in that dressing room. Man, don’t look! Be sly. I saw their feet.”

Monica recoiled, pushing up against Lita, who wrapped her arms around her stomach, as if she was catching her.

“What is it?” Lita asked, slowly, right next to her, again creating gooseflesh all over Monica’s body.

“It’s—They know there’re two of us.”

Monica could feel Lita smile against her ear, “Do they know it’s us?” Monica only shook her head.

“And they’re right out there…” Lita’s voice, soft and liquid, had taken on a different tone, “Then you’d better not make a sound.”

Monica noticed that Lita’s hands were moving, around her stomach, her hips. What was she doing?! She wanted to scream but she knew that her brother would see her with no shirt, Lita wearing even less, and how would she explain it? Lita’s hand crept upward, until she felt its back against the bottom of the breast. She could feel Lita’s knuckle and thumb pressing through the fabric.

“Lita, don’t!” She whispered, furtively, “I don’t—”

“Quiet, quiet or they’ll know,” Lita said back, as if for emphasis, she licked Monica’s ear, her tongue, like her hands—like all of Lita—strong, sensual. “Trust me, Monica, you’ll want this.”

Monica stood rigid, Lita’s right hand on her right hip, slowly massaging, grasping. The fingers of her left reached under Monica’s bra and slowly, teasingly, pulled it up. She felt the fingertips against the smooth flesh of her chest, and the fear of staying in the room or leaving it, and Lita’s tongue, her lips and hot breath against her ear.

The tension of it all culminated in the tight, dark mounds of flesh that tipped each of Monica’s breasts—a tension Lita’s fingertips showed no signs of reducing. Monica heard her say something, but there was too much breath, and it came out like a low growl, and when as she said it her whole body shuddered and she pressed Monica against her. Lita felt like a furnace.

“I’ve always wanted to do this.” Lita whispered as Monica tried to concentrate on the voices, outside, but couldn’t, then she felt a hand on her zipper, “I’m going to make you feel so good.”

Lita’s hand reached down, against the bushy hair of Monica’s crotch, and it felt so warm as to be unreal. It was hot, it was fire, she was burning her. She reached down, under the hair, her other hand squeezing her breast, now her nipple, now carressing her face, the crooks of her elbows pressing against her chest and hip.

The hand touched her special spot, first under the lips, then pushing them apart and rubbing it directly. Lita’s hand still felt so hot, and Monica thought she’d have to know she wasn’t wet, didn’t want this. And then she must have realized, because the hand pulled away.

And Monica began to think about what had just happened, whether she and Lita could still be friends, when she heard that voice in her ear say, “Don’t be scared, I’ll make you feel so good.” And then Monica felt Lita’s lips open, felt Lita put her fingers in her mouth, felt Lita lick them, all of it against Monica’s ear.

And the hand went back, and the other resumed its exploration of Monica’s chest and neck. Lita pulled a little away from Monica’s ear, concentrating more as she rubbed her spot, as she furtively touched Monica inside and around. She wasn’t quite in the right position, Monica realized, but Lita seemed as frozen in her spot as Monica was.

She tried to concentrate on the Arabic, on Dubai’s filthy voice saying, “ Besides, why should I respect these girls, they don’t even fucking respect themselves.”

“American girls, fine. But if you ever did that with my sister… It’s good bye, Dubai.”

Their friends laughed, but Dubai was silent.

“Your sister,” He laughed, “I’ll have to wait until that black guy is done with her.”

Riki’s voice grew low, “They’re just friends.”

Lita’s nail pinched her, she jerked back and Lita grabbed her butt and pressed it into her hand. She was getting wet now, and swollen, and it did feel good, but she didn’t want to think about it.

“Friends? Little, innocent Monica. She doesn’t talk to guys. I guess she was saving up—for a big, black stud. When he’s done with her…”

“Watch it, man.”

The warmth.

“Don’t tell me to watch it, when you don’t even know what your own sister is up to.”

The weight.

“They’re just—”

“Tell me,” Dubai said, “Where is she right now?”

“In class. Where you’re supposed to be.”

The waves.

“No she’s not,” Smugness, “She almost made it to class, I saw it with my own eyes, but somebody called her. Somebody important, because she just turned around and walked off.”

“What?!”

“Settle down, what’s the worst that could happen? They’re just—Riki. Goddammit!” The voice was fading, but then it yelled out, in smoothly-accented English, “Goodbye ladies!”

3

She didn’t hear from Lita until Friday, and for those three days Monica had thrown herself back in time to her freshman year. She’d had a 3.83 that first year, when all she did was go to class or hide in the basement of the library. She’d taken a class on Asian history, outside her major and on a lark, and she still smiled when she thought how the professor reacted to her obsessive studying. Where’d you get that, he’d ask after she’d quote some obscure fact. She’d dutifully respond that it was in the old Soviet People’s History of China and Mongolia in the 19th Century or the 1963 Oxford Review of Politics. Where’d you find that, Professor Gill would always ask. Down the hall from basecamp, she’d want to respond. But he wouldn’t have got the joke, so she just told him it was in the school library.

Then she made friends, mostly her sister’s friends, but still. And her grades slipped, then they tumbled, until she’d managed a solid three point oh, cumulative. It wasn’t that she was partying, or dating, that’s for sure. She just never found herself back at basecamp anymore, never seemed to have the time to go study more than she had to, but now she did. There was no reception in the basement of the library, so she didn’t know if she missed anybody’s attempts to get ahold of her, unless they left a message, which they didn’t.

But she’d already made plans to study with Lita on Friday. She wrote up an E-mail, told Lita she wouldn’t be able to make it, because, her, sister was coming into town next week. Then she deleted it—it sounded so fake. Still, heading over to Lita’s place seemed weird, at least until she’d had a chance to think about things, so instead she sent,

Hey girl!!!

I have to head home after school and take care of some errands. :( You know how traffic is, so I don’t think I can make it back up to study.  I’m sorry!!  I know it’s a hassle but if u want, u could drive down here.  Sorry!!!

Luv, Mon

She sent it in the morning and then went to the library, until Physics. It was a beautiful day—only 3 o’clock—but she headed home, anyway. Her mother tried to put her to work, but Monica claimed she had a mid-term and needed to study. The master spy curled up with Harry Potter and the Wizard of Azkhaban. She’d avoided her E-mail, hadn’t even looked at her phone, but at 5:12, she opened Hotmail, and there were three messages in her inbox, one from James and a pair from Lita.

Stupid, she thought, when she read James’ offer of sushi and ice cream, if she was free that afternoon. Lita’s first E-mail made her feel even less intelligent, but relieved. No worries, Lita wrote, I’ll head by if you’re done early, but otherwise, let’s just try for some other time. Monica went back to James’ E-mail, and reread his quirky prose, and berated herself for being so silly. She composed a dramatic, though not quite truthful, response, telling him she’d needed sushi all day, and ice cream for the last three hours.

She ended the E-mail by typing, If you could find it in your heart to I’ll make it up to you. She sent it, quickly, and then asked herself, what was she implying? She’d made flirty remarks before, and he knew that they weren’t serious. Maybe, though, maybe the thing with Lita was a sign, that it was time she’d started being a little more open. They could at least kiss, right?

Then she opened Lita’s second E-mail.

It turned out she was going to be down there, anyway, driving a friend to the airport, so she’d stop by around 6, to see if Monica was back. She shut down her computer, and stood up, and looked around, and thought about telling her mother that she was going out, when there was a knock on her door.

“Monica.” It was her father.

“Yes, Daddy?” She turned around, and saw his broad, short frame standing in her doorway, a sour look on his face.

“Where were you Tuesday?”

She wasn’t really a master spy, and she knew it, because she couldn’t lie. She was a great sneak, a brilliant planner of sneaky things, a great implementer of sneakiness, but a terrible liar. All she could do was respond, “Why?”

“Your brother called me at work,” he paused, maybe hoping for a denial, “he said you missed your class because you’d gone out with a boy.”

The conversation went downhill very quickly. Monica denied it, she had to, she couldn’t even lie about being bad, and it enraged her father. He understood, he said, that she’d want to date, expected it. Look how he was with Aja, he told her. What he couldn’t stand was the idea that she was sneaking around with this boy, what did she have to hide?

She sounded so guilty when she argued that she could only expect him to not believe her, and she kept saying that. He was a good man, she loved him, but how could she explain, without saying anything. Monica never mentioned Lita, never mentioned Riki talking about cumming in girl’s mouths with that bastard Dubai. She wanted to, wanted to yell about both of them, but instead she just blithered about Ben being okay and how she wasn’t interested in him, and sounded as guilty as Judas.

Then her father began issuing ultimatums, and with each, he’d thrust a finger into the air or into Monica’s face. He grew bright red, and loud, and Monica tried to tell him that she was out with Lita, tried to tell him three times that they went shopping. But each time, before she could even get out more than three words, her father would cut her off and return to his raging gesticulation.

And then it was 5:53 and the doorbell rang.

“Daddy, I’m sorry,” Monica said quickly, “I’d invited Lita over to study tonight. I’ll tell her something came up, don’t worry.”

His face softened at this and he said gently, in Arabic, “I want you to come straight home from school until the end of the month. And I want you to understand that you are being punished, but not for spending time with a boy. It’s because you didn’t let your parents know, and we deserve to know.”

The entire time, even though she’d been flustered, she hadn’t thought to cry, but now, she could feel everything coming out, “I’m sorry, Daddy. But—Lita.”

“You can still study with her. Actually, you can have people over.” He stopped, a long while, “Even this boy, as long as we know.”  And then he smiled that bountiful smile of his, that had saved him countless times in Iran, helped him build enough of a fortune to move his wife and infant daughter to America, “Till the end of the month. Any longer and you’d go stir-crazy and beat your poor father to death with your school books.”

They walked downstairs, where Monica’s mother was entertaining Lita with stories of life in Iran before and after the Shah.

Lita smiled, “Hey stranger! My day’s been so damn,” She stopped herself, a smiling look of shame on her face, Monica’s parents only laughed, and she continued, “So crazy. I’ve been up and down that stupid highway. Some moron almost rear-ended me—I thought I’d deleted my paper for Sykes. Crazy.” Monica’s parents loved Lita, and her presence had brought smiles out of both.

Lita headed up the stairs to Monica’s room, dramatically dropping her backpack and long coat on the floor and, with an enormous sigh, collapsing backward onto the bed.

Monica closed the door, “You have to tell my father I was out with you!”

Lita’s head came up, her face confused and a little angry, “Why, so he can be pissed at me for making you ditch class?”

“He’s not just pissed,” Monica’s face twisted into a clumsy, but effective, pout, “I’m grounded.”

Lita stared at her and started laughing. She tried to form words, but they were beaten down by the absurdity of Monica’s statement. Finally, she managed, “But you’re twenty-two!” More laughter killed what seemed to be a snide comment.

“I live here!” Monica’s volume dropped as she said it, to a conspiratorial whisper, “Those are the rules!”

“Monica,” Lita put her hand on Monica’s. She’d done it before, many times, but now Monica felt differently about it. “I know people who live at their parents’ place while they go to college, and they’ve never been grounded. Not one.”

“Well, they don’t have my mom and dad.” Monica thought to continue, but didn’t.

“No, they don’t,” and Lita laughed again, “Or any of the crazy stuff you’ve had drilled into you.”

Monica smiled, but she hated that statement. She grew up in a conservative Muslim household, she knew that, and it had strict rules, and her religion had strict rules. But she agreed with them. She wasn’t brainwashed, she’d thought about it and it seemed fine. She agreed with her father’s punishment, after all, why shouldn’t she talk to and trust her own father?

But she wasn’t some Bhurka-wearing robot. She was surreptitiously seeing a professor at college, and she was very fashionable, even while maintaining her own and her family’s dignity by keeping her arms and legs covered. And even though she’d done nothing with the professor, it was because she’d chosen not to, not because she couldn’t overcome her social engineering.

“But he thought I was sneaking around with Ben!” Monica waited for Lita to respond, and when she didn’t, went on, “If he knew I was just…”

“Just? Just what? That I was just fingerbanging you in the changing room at Victoria’s Secret while your brother and his friends stood outside?”

“No!” She felt the blood rush out of her face. “No,” she whispered, “No, no, no, no. You just have to tell him we were hanging out. That we—”

Lita was just staring up at the ceiling, now, “Did you like it?”

“What?”

Lita looked up, toward the foot of the bed and Monica, “When I was fingering you, did you like it.” She dropped her head back down on the pillow. “You came, you must’ve liked it.”

Normally, Monica planned out conversations well in advance. But here, she’d tried to avoid thinking of what she’d say. “Actually, I mean,” what did she mean? “I just don’t feel that way about you.”

“Bullshit!”

“No, really.” That was a response she could deal with, this turned it into an argument, and she always won arguments, “I mean, I guess I’m glad I tried it, but, I just don’t—”

“Fuck you!” Lita whispered, “You know what, let’s ask your dad,” Monica was flailing her arms in panic, “let’s ask him if when you rub a girl’s clit and she cums all over your hand, if that means she liked it.”

Monica was about to speak when Lita yelled, “Mr. Ijrah!!!”

Her world was collapsing, she couldn’t catch her breath, and then the door opened. Her father, her protector, smiling because he didn’t know yet what his most beloved daughter had done. Smiling, so sure of her goodness.

“Yes, Lita, what is it.”

“Well, Monica was saying you wouldn’t like it,” And she looked over at Monica, a crooked smile on her face, “But I was wondering if I could spend the night.”

“Monica, don’t be so silly,” He then turned to Lita, “Of course you can, whenever you’d like. You’re welcome here whenever you’d like! Is that it?”

Monica looked at him, half-relieved, half in fear, “Yes, Ddaddy, that’s it.”

“Silly girls,” and then, as he closed the door, continued, “So silly. Dinner should be ready in an hour.”

Monica looked at Lita, “Thank you. Oh God, I was so scared.”

Lita smiled at her, “Don’t think you’re getting out of it that easy. You owe me.” And then she stood up and began to unbutton Monica’s pants.

“Lita, don’t,” She thought to push her away but she was too afraid of her father coming back. “Don’t, I don’t want to.”

Lita pulled the pants down a bit, then turned Monica around and gently pushed her down on the bed, “Of course you want to, you just don’t realize it.” She tugged the pants off by the cuffs, “because of your crazy background. You came, Monica, that means you liked it and that means you want it.”

Lita looked down at the newly exposed underwear, conservative but stylish. She smiled, her head cocked to the side, and for a second Monica thought that’s all she wanted, content just to look at her. Lita ran her fingers along the top seam, gently.

“You are so beautiful, Monica, more beautiful than any model,” and then with a sudden, animalistic motion, she pulled the thin cotton toward her, Monica’s hips, thighs, calves and feet raising with the motion. Lita grinned, and threw the underwear aside.

Monica opened the shower door and shrieked.

In shock, Aja crashed into the sink, knocking toothpaste and exfoliant and lipstick onto the floor. “What’s wrong with you?!” She yelled after recovering, “You get weirder every day!”

That’s right, Monica thought, reaching quickly for a towel. Her sister had arrived two days earlier, and she’d been jumpy around her the entire time.

“Yeah, it’s just different now. You know, because you don’t live here. Oh, Aja, I wish you still lived here.”

“Me, too.” She started brushing her teeth. “The food sucks in Dayton. Grad school sucks, too.” Spit. “And the boys in Dayton, God, I thought they were bad here!” Aja spat, “But at least you still have Riki.”

“Riki.” Monica said derisively. “He’s still living in the dorms, and I only see him long enough to get ogled by his friends.”

Aja laughed and started to brush her teeth. Monica picked up the hair dryer when her sister looked over and said, “Hey, what happened?”

Monica followed her stare down to the scab on her thigh. Lita, she wanted to say, she scratched me pulling off my underwear, but I didn’t notice until after she ate me out. Lita, she wished she could say, and I have been messing around and I think I want to stop but I don’t know how, but it’s only a couple months till graduation, and you’ll be here for a week, and I can just avoid her, it’s only seven weeks, right?

“Cut myself shaving.”

Aja looked, shrugged, “Oh. You should wax. Grown-ups wax.”

4

Monica sat at basecamp, an impressive array of books stacked on the table in front of her. Not content with mathematical theory, she’d piled on tomes relating the philosophy of math. Not content with physics, she’d found Capra’s The Tao of Physics. Not content with—but she’d only sat there, for two hours and, quick check, thirty-eight minutes, doing nothing.

Lita had called, again. Six times in two days. Monica’s father had relented, while Aja was visiting, on his punishment, and he’d made no mention of it since Aja had left. Aja was fun, though self-absorbed as always. They finally made it to Six Flags, which they’d been talking about since Aja started college. And then Aja left, on Sunday morning, and for two days the master spy had evaded, but this time she left a message.

“I’m coming over tonight at seven. You’d better be there, because if you’re not I’m going to tell anyone who is there the location of every mole on your body.”

Monica had run to basecamp after hearing it. She’d been down there ever since, and done nothing, but doodle in her notebook and read last week’s Time. She stared at her notebook, flipped it back a dozen pages to remember what good notes looked like, and there, in her lyrical script, were proofs and theorems of exceeding complexity.

She flipped to her set-up page, where she’d copied out Hultzoven’s proof of “Double-Integer Redundancy Theory”. Whenever she saw somebody coming, she’d flip to this page and manufacture such intense scrutiny and palpable thinking that no mortal could resist. Then, whenever they asked what she was doing, she’d mark off something at random, close the book and say, just math.

She’d marked it off too many times, she noticed, maybe it was time for a new set-up. She had this year’s M.I.T. mathematical journal, and she flipped it open—random problem generation. It opened on junk about real numbers, which while mathematically impressive looks kind of lame on paper, so she flipped to another page, and then realized she wasn’t alone.

Across the table, in between stacks of abstract physics and impenetrable math, reading The Watchmen—a comic book, a long, long comic book—was Ben. He seemed to pay no attention to her, as if they’d never met.

“What are you doing here?” She yelped. In her surprise she’d put no varnish on the statement, and it was only then that Monica realized how much basecamp was her sanctuary.

But Ben was dense, for all his esteemed brilliance, intellectually and otherwise, he couldn’t hear an undertone to save his life, “African American studies is kept on a small shelf, in the back of the unlit section of the basement.” He stopped. Considered. Continued, in cockney, “Down a flight of broken stairs, behind a door that reads, ‘Beware of the Leopard!”

“Behind the, what?”

“It was uh, a joke.”

Then Ben smiled, in that patronizing way, because Ben knew so much and he’d lived so much and I’m just a silly little Muslim girl, “Ben, what do you want?”

It was that easy, she knew. Ben didn’t have a subconscious, he never read into things, and if he’d been of even standard intelligence, this would have resulted in the kind of silly simplicity that would have made him a great jock or, something. But he really was smart, goddamn him, and if you just asked him things, he took them so seriously, and answered them so well, that maybe he could help.

“The Watchmen.” He said, simply, holding up the comic book, “It’s a graphic novel,” he corrected, “About superheroes. Only, it presupposes,” Was that a word? “That they’re all normal people, basically, along the same mold as Batman, except for one of them, whose truly super, and it deals with what it’s like, in their off-time, with each other. I was playing around on the card catalog and noticed the school had a copy. Pretty cool, hunh?”

“No.” She closed her notebook, “No. I mean, what are you doing down here?”

His face took on a stifled grin, “This where the book was. Apparently, it’s considered independent fiction.”

She didn’t want to play his stupid game, “You sat down there, and didn’t say a word to me. You just sat there. Without saying hi or anything. I’m busy and you’re distracting me. Can’t you see I’m studying.”

“No you’re not,” he still wasn’t taking her seriously, he never took her seriously. “You’ve been reading that magazine, and flipping through your notes. Time’s really turned into crap, it’s just Newsweek with a slightly different cover, I’d recommend U.S. News—”

“Don’t tell me what I’m doing!” Monica looked around at the books, searching, “You always think I’m so simple and you can laugh at me because of it!”

“You are simple!” And then he laughed, and Monica wanted to cry. “And simple isn’t bad!” Ben still didn’t take her, or the conversation, or anything seriously.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I don’t know anything, period.” It was all a game to him. Then he stopped, and his expression changed, very slowly, “Are you all right?”

“So I can’t get bothered by your being rude.” Monica didn’t realize how loud she’d become, “If I get offended by you, then that means something’s wrong. With me.” She was trying to stay angry, because she could feel tears coming.

Monica closed her notebook and stood up. Ben asked her again, asked her where she was going, and her response was to turn away and walk toward the stairs and up and out of the library. The sun broke her stride, and she stopped outside the heavy, glass library doors, as her eyes adjusted to the sudden change.

“Hey!” It was Ben, who looked washed out, like everything else, but coming into focus, “What just happened?”

She looked at him, and suddenly he looked like such a kid, his silly goatee, his silly Russian hat. She used to think he was so much more mature and exotic, but now he was just the college student he’d always been. What would he do, if she told him? Make some crack about how hot it was, agree with Lita. Still, she always ended up telling him things.

“I’m just really busy,” she began, “that doesn’t mean—” The tears were coming, she stopped.

Into the gap walked the reminder of just how childish Ben was. Her name was Janice, one his many, many female friends. She was, in Ben’s words, ‘gloriously slutty’ and was held as the counterpoint to his arguments against Monica’s virginity, her timidity, everything. And, of course, Janice didn’t notice that they were talking, didn’t care, she just walked right up.

“Mister Ridge.” She said, the mister lasting a full five seconds. “Who let you out?”

The smile returned to Ben’s face, Monica’s problems were that easily forgotten, and he smoothly quipped, “If only someone would let me in…”

Janice laughed, it was a crude and loud thing, as were the words that followed. “Get your mind out my gutter.”

“Janice,” Ben said with mock flourish, “My spectacular friend Monica. She’s brilliant and funny and deserves better people to hang out with than me. She’s also in a terrible mood and I’m trying to find out why.”

Janice looked at Monica, she had dirty blond hair, purposefully cut ragged, and a pretty, aquiline face. She smiled, and even her smile was crooked—everything about her was crooked, Monica realized. She was sexy, and hot, the way Audrey Hepburn looked whenever she was playing someone out of sorts or yet to be helped by well-meaning English nobility.

“I know Monica, we had Modern China together.” Monica didn’t remember her in that class, but she’d been a freshman. “She’s really smart.”

And then Janice smiled, and Monica wondered strange thoughts. Ben said something about how Janice was pissed off, then Monica realized it wasn’t Janice but herself, and glared at Ben, perturbed, and stepped back.

“Hi Janice, nothing’s wrong and I’ve got to go.” She turned and started walking. As soon as she got to her car, she turned up the music and drove. She started crying at the light and didn’t stop until she got home.

5

It was only four when she got home, and it was still a beautiful day. Monica went inside, avoiding her mother, who she was sure didn’t want to see her daughter with puffy eyes and ran mascara. She made it to the bathroom, and started to wash off the streaks on her face when she started crying again.

But here, she didn’t need to drive, and with the water running, she didn’t need to worry about how she sounded, and just in case she turned on the stereo. Aja had left her CD in it, and somehow this only made Monica worse.

Two songs ran and she realized she couldn’t stop crying. She wished her mother would hear her and break down the door, but as soon as she thought that, she made sure it was locked. The world was blurry for the second time that day, and she stumbled through the blur to the bath. She started pulling her clothes off, shirt first, a shoe, a sock, that stupid rhinestone pin she’d wore in her hair and then she saw herself in the mirror.

She’d done a terrible job cleaning off the mascera and only smeared her lipstick, and her hair was a mess and her eyes were swollen. Her lips, those big, full lips she was so proud of, were trembling absurdly and she still couldn’t stop crying. She closed her eyes, tore off the rest of her clothes, and lowered herself into the bathtub, half-full.

Damn, stupid, small tub, she thought, and cried harder. It was never big enough for the kind of baths people take on TV. She always had to pick between overfilling it and sloshing water onto the floor or making do with soaking her legs and her top in turns. She hated it, this stupid bathtub, and then she realized she was laughing.

It continued to fill up, and Monica thought about how silly she must have looked, raging against a bathtub. She laughed a little more, as the tub filled, and she felt at peace, for the first time since the dressing room. It was all like this stupid bathtub, it was all silly and not worth going so crazy over. She sprinkled saffron bath salt around her, and closed her eyes. This was the trick, to filling the tub right, she thought, as that warm water reached her nipples and she shut it off with her little brown feet: Do it while you’re in it.

Time, however much it felt like it, did not stand still. Monica could hear her phone buzz under the pile of clothes, but she didn’t answer it. The water cooled, and it was a different kind of pleasant. There was a tentative knock on the door.

“Monica.” Her mother’s voice was so lyrical, it seemed a shame to answer it. “Monica?”

“Yes, Momma, I’m here.”

“Honey, your father is home, we’ll be eating in an hour. I’ve made your favorite.” Monica smiled.

Lita showed up at 6:58.

Monica stayed in the den with her parents, talking about school and politics, until she started to see how much her parents liked Lita. Lita couldn’t believe the double standard applied to Israel, and that would have been enough to make her parents happy. But Lita was blunt and smart and had everything together. Lita was going to Hastings. Not her first choice, but they’d offered her a free ride.

No, Mrs. Ijrah, Lita wasn’t seeing anyone right now, she didn’t have time with her studies and her volunteer work. Yes, she worked down at the clinic. Oh, she majored in biology, she’d thought about being a doctor. No, it wasn’t so much that it was more money, just less blood. They all laughed so much.

When Lita finally mentioned studying, the two girls were ushered upstairs by Monica’s parents. Monica followed Lita into her room, leaving the door open. Lita set down her bag and closed it.

“You smell so good,” she said, as she grabbed Monica around her hips, “I couldn’t stop thinking about you the whole time down there, it was torture!”

Monica stiffened, and she stayed silent as Lita smelled her neck and then kissed it. Lita went on, “You even taste good! I want to lick you everywhere!”

“Lita.” It was all Monica could get out.

Lita stepped back, very dramatically, and smiled, “I’ve been thinking about it, how all this happened, and I think you’re right. Everything’s happened so fast. I, I kind of thought this is how it would go, but I’m going to tone things down, so that you feel comfortable.”

And then Lita smiled, and it held such seriousness and compassion that Monica felt a thousand pounds lighter. Everything was okay. Hey, she thought, maybe it would be fun. Maybe, but she was sure that this was just an opportunity to tone things down to nothing. She’d been avoiding James, out of guilt, and she feared her phone and her E-mail. Lita reached into her bag, producing two small silver objects.

Monica smiled, “What are those?”

Lita tried, but failed, to hide her excitement, “That’s a vibrator and this is my digital camera.” She sounded like she did when she was talking about law school, “This way, at least this way you can keep me company when you’re not around.”  Then she saw Monica’s eyes, and Lita’s smile cracked a bit, “I promise, I’ll just stand over here. You, you don’t have to think about me.”

Lita handed her the vibrator, a long, silver egg. Reflexively, Monica took it. She looked at it, stunned. Lita reached over and said something helpful as she switched it on. It buzzed. Monica’s look didn’t change.

“Well,” Lita offered, “You’ll have to take your pants off, you should probably take everything off, it’ll help you relax.”

Lita began to unbutton Monica’s slacks, but Monica pushed her away, set down the vibrator, and undid them herself. Robotically, she started taking off her shirt, slipped out of her panties and let her bra fell off. The entire time, her gaze kept going back to the strange object on her bed. She looked up, and Lita was touching herself, gently, her eyelids half-closed, her mouth just barely open.

Monica sat on the edge of her bed, her legs straddled open. Lita leaned against her dresser, fumbling with the camera. She aimed it and pressed the button, but nothing happened. She looked at it, fiddled with it and pointed it again, this time a beep and a flash confirming success. She smiled.

“I,” Then Monica stopped, “I rub this on my special spot?”

Lita laughed, “That’s not your spot, your spot’s inside. That’s your clit.” Then she added, helpfully, “Yeah, that end. Just like you’d do with your fingers,” and then, with relish, “but so much better.”

It felt strange, when she started. Monica was nervous, it tickled, but Lita was right, it felt good. She heard the beep again, but her eyes were closed, and James was kneeling in front of her, his hands on her thighs, his tongue on her clit. He kissed it, and she was startled by his rough lips. He squeezed her thigh, running his hand from her knee up to her belly.

The sound of the camera distracted her, but only momentarily. He moved away, teasing her lips, and his hand rested on her inner thigh, pressing with each lick. Monica imagined him swirling his tongue, and she could feel his lips, just slightly, as his head moved up and down.

The hand moved from her thigh to her breast, gently cupping it, rocking it in tune with his tongue. She wrapped her legs around his head and he playfully slapped her, then pinched her nipple, harder than she ever thought she’d like. She pushed his head into her crotch as her toes tingled and her back arched. She could hear him groaning, and could only respond with whimpers.

She came so hard that her eyes opened, and she saw Lita, feet dug in to the carpet, the top of her pants open. A tiny bit of peach-colored fabric was all Monica saw of her underwear, Lita’s hand desperately moving underneath it. She still held her camera, but it had been forgotten.

Monica closed her eyes and tried to find James, but he wasn’t there, and all she could think of was that long, tanned arm resting on a tightly extended leg. She still came, thinking about the hand gripping that camera so tight that it looked like it would snap any second.

She heard Lita start to moan, and whisper Monica’s name, and all Monica could think was how mad she was at her. It was better than anything she’d ever felt—at first. But when she opened her eyes, it was like turning off a faucet, and it ruined it. She’d felt guilty before, but this was different, this time she felt absurd and disappointed. She fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling as Lita’s desperate, gasping orgasm grew in volume.

Monica sat back up, ready to tell Lita to shut the hell up before her parents heard something, when Lita abruptly quieted. Her body still looked tense, and her eyes were still closed, and then she gave out a long, sighing groan and loosened. She looked up at Monica and start laughing like a naughty schoolgirl.

“That rocked so much!” Then Lita looked at Monica and her expression of obvious discontent, “You came, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” And you ruined it with your stupid camera, she thought.

Lita looked confused, “Do you want me to do anything?”

“No.” Monica’s voice said angrily.

“Okay.” Lita said in a small voice, and Monica felt she could have told her to do anything and that would have been the response.

Lita looked expectant, standing against the dresser, and Monica watched as her face shifted from expectant to concerned. She smiled, a fleeting and vulnerable thing, and said, “Look, Mon, if there’s anything I can do? Anything. I don’t want to lose you as a friend, even if it means losing this.”

The list, Monica thought, of things you could do. She was still angry, but Lita seemed so desperate, with her plaintive eyes and trepidatious half-smile. They were still friends, Monica realized, and they’d stay friends, and Lita was finally seeing what she’d done and how it was tearing Monica up. Monica smiled and let out a deep sigh, and she could see the hopeful response from Lita.

“I think I just want to go to bed,” and Monica laughed and started looking for her shirt, “it’s been such a long day.”

“You’ve got it,” Lita said, quickly and happily. But it wasn’t happiness, Monica could tell, it was relief, because she was starting to realize how she’d been acting the past two weeks.

Lita walked right toward Monica, whose eyes widened. But instead of reaching out for her nipple or cheek, she took the vibrator, somewhat sheepishly. Lita smiled that same smile—of guilt mixed with repentance—and pulled a little washcloth out of her bag. The sticky piece of silver plastic, once wrapped, was slipped it into a side pocket. Finally, she threw on that gorgeous, cream-colored long coat, and tied the long belt in a jaunty knot.

It was when she put the camera in her coat pocket that Monica remembered the pictures and said, “Could you…” and she stopped, hoping Lita would finish her sentence, but Lita only responded with a confused look as she walked toward the door, “Delete them?”

Lita stopped, her hand on the doorknob. There was a second of inaction and Monica remembered that she wasn’t even wearing panties. The look of confusion hardened on Lita’s face, and before disappearing out the door, she said, “Why would I do that?”

6

The light blinded her again, but she couldn’t afford to be disoriented, because she was late for class. Again. As usual. She’d spent too much time at basecamp, copying Reischlach’s proof on ascending real numbers, which was so filled with gobbledygook—Reishlach had his own system of notation, some say designed specifically at odds with the rest of the civilized world—that she’d likely stump and impress fellow math majors. It centered her, and she found that the more time she spent copying obscure math into her notebook, the more she felt at peace. But it took forever, and she was late, again.

The blur in front of her chirped, “Monica!” It was Lita. She’d returned to normal, and they’d hung out a couple times that week, talking about graduation and professors and the weather. “Let’s get a some food, I’m starving!”

Lita was dressed in a duck suit, with bells on her head and an eight-foot long alligator tail stuck to her butt. Finally Monica focused, and reality wasn’t quite so interesting. She had her hair up in a bun, her eyes obscured by those half-shaded sunglasses that made her look like a Spanish princess.

“I can’t, I’m already late for class!” Monica said, and started walking by her. “I’ll give you a call when I get out, okay?”

The course, a study of the cultural import of Eastern thought in Enlightenment art, covered Monica’s requirements to take something about art, and history… and cultural studies. She’d done an excellent job of avoiding her general ed requirements throughout college, and it was only because Dr. Monroe, the department head, liked her so much that she could count one class for three different slots.

Like any class that was taken purely for its utilitarian benefit, she hated it. The students were a mix of freshmen from every major, having only their naivete and lack of education in common. She spoke rarely, even less than she did in other classes, and when it happened, she always regretted it.

“See, it’s like television shows, and how they used to try so hard to have diversity, but it lost its weight, because it was contrived. The introduction of Japanese method in Western art,” she said, just to keep herself from falling asleep, again, from the heat, “is important, even if it had only happened once. It wasn’t contrived, they didn’t do it because they were forced, they did it because they thought it had value.”

She regretted it for two reasons. The first made her sigh and stare down at her notebook immediately after speaking. That wasn’t what she wanted to say. What the hell did that have to do with TV, anyway? And she’d forgotten the other examples, and she didn’t want to just repeat what the teacher had said about Manet and his second-floor legs. But that was nothing compared to the onrushing reason number two.

“That’s so true,” blonde freshman boy with the hipster style said, and Monica knew he was still staring at her when he was talking, “I remember watching, like, Saved by the Bell and thinking…” he paused.

He’d gone for speed and hoped that he’d figure out something to say while he held the floor. Monica had once devised a labeling system for the various ways that boys tried to impress her or flatter her or strut for her. This was method three, Francisco variant. It was followed by baseball-boy’s talking about UPN and young Republican trying to tie in HBO.

Monica looked up, just a little, and saw Ben, sitting across the room, smiling right at her. She scrunched her face in silent recrimination, at him and his kind. His smile only grew. He hadn’t stopped the mess that her comment started, he only grinned. Normally he’d jump in, bring the class back to some semblance of educational respectability, but not this time.

It lasted three more minutes—three minutes and thirty-eight seconds, by Monica’s unofficial count—when professor Elias said, “Can we please stop talking about television and get back to talking about something more 18th century?” He was only a lecturer but the freshmen didn’t realize it, and the room grew heavy with silence.

Like one of his comic book heroes, Ben, who’d gone from grinning at Monica to staring down at his notebook, slowly raised his head. If he’d had glasses or a costume under his shirt, it wouldn’t have made a difference. The Ben in public discourse more resembled his father, the preacher, and when he spoke—his voice deep, rich, joyous—it established him as the center of discussion.

“Monica is right, of course,” he started, and she almost got up and ran to the bathroom.

He kept going, but all she heard was the throbbing tone that seemed to echo off the walls. Ben had asked her once why all the freshmen girls didn’t treat him like the freshmen boys in the class treated her. This is why, she thought, because when I talk, I sound like a kid, and when you talk, you sound like the dean. Freshman boys think they know how to handle kids, freshmen girls are scared of the dean.

“I hate you.” She said it as soon as they made it out of the building. “I hate how nobody takes what I say seriously and you can say whatever you want and everybody thinks you’re wise.”

Ben hit her. On the shoulder, more of a shove than anything. Still. He was the only person who touched her, the only person that didn’t treat her like a doll. It was one of his less endearing traits, and she’d learned not to make a case for her personal space, because it resulted in more abuse.

“Hey!” She yelled.

“Don’t hey me, you jerk.” His eyes were sparkling, “I only repeated what you’d said.”

“Yeah,” Monica looked straight ahead, “But when you said it…”

“I know,” he laughed, “Isn’t it great. Hey, you made me take this class. I could’ve been taking Sex and Sexuality. With Janice.”

“Doesn’t she tutor you for that class, anyway?”

“Janice? Nope.” His smile momentarily shrank to a smirk, it looked like he was considering something, “You want to get something to eat?”

Monica remembered Lita and considered inviting Ben, but realized it would just be a mess of unrequited affection, the tension of which might drive them all crazy. “Sorry, I’ve got plans.”

“With your boyfriend?” Ben’s playful voice sounded the same as his condescending voice.

“No.”

“You sure, because I could’ve sworn I just saw him head down to the caf.” He pointed, as if for emphasis, in the direction of the main building.

Monica’s head snapped over, “What? He’s not here on Wednesdays.”

Ben continued with the voice, emphasizing the words and increasing in annoyance, “Really? How strange, then, that you’ve got plans and he just happens to be here.”

“Shut up!” She felt herself smiling, beaming, and wanted to punch Ben, for emphasis, “Stop that, I’m never telling you anything, again!”

“Get out of here,” his normal voice had returned, “I’ve got things to do.”

She smiled, and turned dramatically, toward the cafeteria. She was floating, she hadn’t seen her professor in three days, and that was in class and didn’t count anymore. Her braid bounced as she bounded up the steps and into the dining hall. He wasn’t there. She looked around, wondering if Ben had tricked her. She’d kill him. No, death was too good…

The apple muffled voice pulled her out of thoughts of maiming, “I was hoping to run into you.”

She whipped around, the feeling came back and she felt so happy to struggle with her smile and her desire to hug her gangly true love. “You’re not supposed to be here.” She cocked her head suspiciously.

“I had conferences,” Dr. James Weston responded, perfectly calm, “And now I’m done and I was thinking of consuming some coffee.”

His demeanor was a challenge, and she matched it, becoming pleasantly studious. “Well, I was just leaving, I’m done for the day.”

They turned and walked out, two feet apart. He spoke of the papers he’d been grading, she listened dutifully. She talked about her imbecilic classmates, avoiding mention of Ben, who Monica saved for those times when she wanted to make her dear professor jealous. They reached his car, and when the doors closed and they were safely isolated from the rest of the world, the tone changed.

“I missed you,” James said, “And you owe me three E-mails.”

“You don’t want me to write them simply out of expectation,” Monica replied as the car backed out of its too-tight space.

“There was a time when that was important,” he chuckled, “That was about three E-mails ago. I don’t care anymore if they’re perfunctory, I just want to hear from you. You can send me spam!” He grew unnecessarily serious, “I’m just kidding, of course, I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything, you don’t. You know that, right?”

She wanted to confirm his doubts, make sure he knew that she knew that theirs was not a relationship, it was a relationship in waiting. They’d agreed, not until she’d graduated. She wanted to let him know that everything was going according to schedule, that he’d keep teaching here and she’d go to school right down the street, so there’d be no conflict of interest. She wanted to say, again, that she’d waited a long time, and that three more months wasn’t going to be a problem. She wanted to. But all Monica could do was cry.

She was smiling at him, a painful, shamed smile, as the tears rolled down her cheeks. Then, he said something, asked if she was alright, or something, and that’s when Monica lost control. It hurt, to cry as hard as she did, and it only slowed when she gasped for air. She collapsed over the console of James’ Volvo, crashing into his lap, and she heard a terrible sound, making her wonder, for a second, if she’d caused him to veer off the road, until she realized the half-moan, half-scream was coming from her.

“Oh my God,” James kept repeating, interspersed with, “Are you okay?” and “What is it, Monica?” He kept driving, forever it seemed like, and when he finally stopped he lifted her up and clumsily draped Monica’s thin frame onto her seat.

She tried to stop crying, and gave up, and just started talking, confessing, through the sobs. She told him everything—the pictures, the dressing room, her father—and when she was done, still crying but softly, she begged him to forgive her.

“Forgive you,” James whispered, “Oh, sweetie, no. No, no, no.” He reached over, and took her hand, “There’s nothing to forgive, do you understand? Lita did this, not you.”

“But I let her.” She looked up at him, her braid had unraveled, and there was hair everywhere. “I let her, and I was waiting for you, and I let her ruin it, ruin me.”

James chuckled, “You’re a little messy, but you’re not ruined.” He grew more serious, “I think, though, that someone should talk to her…”

Monica’s eyes widened, “No! It’s over. There’s nothing to talk about. There’s nothing else, I just wanted to tell you. I only want you to know,” her crying stopped and her voice was very low, “Because I love you.”

“Okay.” James put laid her hand on her knee, “But I don’t think I should be the only one who knows. You can’t bottle this up. But… I’ll let you decide when and if and how.” He smiled at her, very deliberately, “Now, what you need more than anything, is some rest.”

Monica only stared at him in response, with a look that was painfully transparant to her 36-year old target. He smiled at her and started the car. They drove back to campus in silence, Monica putting her hair in a loose bun.

James stopped and Monica whispered, “Thank you,” before getting out.

The next three hours—sneaking to her car, the interminable drive home and avoiding her mother on the way to the bath—left her exhausted. Still, when she finally laid down on her bed, she felt wide awake. As much as she’d been fantasizing about sleep the entire afternoon, suddenly she couldn’t. She just lay there. And then the phone rang.

She listened to the first three rings before she considered the possibility that her mother wasn’t going to answer. On the fourth, she scrambled to her feet and ran into the hallway. She grabbed the phone, heard a jumble of sound as recorded father and machine shut-off and person talking melded into one. Then, a pause, as the machine and the other voice and her recorded father and she all seemed to wait, politely, to let the other speak.

“Hello?” Monica said, tentatively.

“Is Monica there?” It was Lita, cheerful and polite.

“Oh, hi Lita,” Monica replied, “Sorry about that, I didn’t realize, I mean, I was trying to—”

“We have to talk.” Lita’s voice was suddenly icy. “We have to talk right now.”

Monica was silent, confused, “Okay. What’s up?”

More silence. And then, slowly, as if each syllable had to be painfully drawn out of Lita’s throat, “Not on the phone.”

“But, what’s wrong, Lita?” She said, filled with non-specific worry.

“Are your parents home?” Was Lita’s only response.

“Yes.” Monica said quickly. Her mind raced, “Lita, what is it?”

Lita ignored her question, “You have to come over here, then.” And then her voice cracked with emotion and pain. “And if you don’t, then I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Monica didn’t say anything. She wondered what Lita meant, if she was going to hurt herself, wondered what happened, if it was Monica or something else. She thought, idly, that before all this, she wouldn’t have wasted any time, she would have just jumped in the car, to help her friend. She felt a sudden guilt.

“Okay, Lita. I’m right out the door, I’ll see you in half an hour.” Monica walked back to her room and picked up her cell phone off the dresser—8 missed calls. “Lita? My phone was off, well, my ringer, but I’m turning it back on, in case you need to get ahold of me. Lita?”

There was only silence.

“I’m leaving, Lita, I’ll see you in a bit, don’t worry.” She finally said and hung up the phone.

She left through the kitchen, avoiding her mother, and she got back in her car, only this time when she looked in the mirror she looked like a human being and not a wreck. Everything would be easier to explain over the phone, later. It was twenty minutes before the cell-phone finally buzzed, and when she picked it up, she was surprised to hear her mother’s voice.

“Monica.” She said each syllable in a distinct and exotic manner, “Your father and I won’t be home tonight.”

“Oh.” Was her only response. She tried to think of something else to say but failed, until finally her mother filled the empty space.

“Yes, we’re down at your uncle’s house, and we’ll be here until very late.” And then silence. A long, long silence. And finally, just before Monica screamed in frustration, her mother said, “What is wrong with you, child, don’t you want to know why?”

The big green sign said her exit was two miles ahead. “Of course I want to know. Is everything alright?” Monica had never been good at feigning interest.

“Satva is getting married!” Her mother said with explosiveness. “To a software engineer! In six months, we have so little time!”

Satva was Monica’s cousin. That was the only thing they had in common. They’d never got along. That anyone would want to marry that fat sow was, “Wonderful! Great! Wow.”

“I know you don’t like her,” her mother responded, “But you will have to help out. Now, there is plenty of food in the kitchen, or you can come down here.” Her tone confirmed that the last half of the invitation was only theoretically possible—Satva felt the same way about Monica.

“Do you mind if I go to Lita’s?” Monica asked tentatively.

Her mother sounded suddenly suspicious, “Yes. Going to see Lita is fine. Is that all you’re going to do?”

She pulled into the exit lane, “Yes, momma. I promise.”

It was one of those stucco apartment buildings that dotted the city. They were all ugly and unimaginative, but this one was particularly so, with its brown paint and purple window treatments. Monica had been here before, though never inside, and when she pressed 4, Lita’s number, she heard a garbled voice and a buzz.

The interior was just as bad—old ugly carpet and a staircase on its eighth coat of off-white paint. It smelled funny, almost bad, but not yet, in a way that made Monica think she wouldn’t be surprised if it was utterly offensive the next time she came here. There were four flights of stairs, but it only took one to get to Lita’s door.

She knocked and it opened immediately, and Lita stood there, her hair up, her eyes swollen, shaking. She was barefoot, in sweats—stylish and tight. She stared at Monica, her mouth open slightly, lips shaking slightly, like the rest of her body.

“What is it?” Monica asked, loud and scared.

Lita gave a half-hearted laugh and walked, dazedly, to the door. She closed it, and turned to Monica, and mouthed a few soundless words. She rubbed her forehead and when she tried to talk, her chest just shuddered a little. Monica reached over and touched her shoulder.

“Where,” Lita finally said, slowly, “Are your parents?”

Monica looked at he, confused, “What do you mean?”

At that, Lita grabbed her neck, and threw her into the mountains and cranes of a Japanese screen. Monica shrieked and sprawled out, breaking the center panel of the screen and landing in a heap.

“WHERE,” Lita yelled, each word individual and slow, “ARE, YOUR, PARENTS?!”

Monica looked back at her, she couldn’t talk, couldn’t move. She felt, vaguely, a dull pain on her rump, felt the pieces of screen and hanger that she sat on. When she said nothing, Lita came at her. She leapt on Monica, small hands grabbing her throat.

“Where!?” Lita kept yelling, “Where?! WHERE?! WHERE!? Where!?”

The words became unreal with repetition, and the room was spinning, and then it was shrinking, when she finally tried to talk. “Satva.” She said quietly, barely able to make a sound, and then Lita let go of her and she continued, in a hoarse voice, “They went to San Jose, with,” she coughed, “my cousin.”

Then Lita slapped her, hard, and got up, and started crying. She walked away from Monica, and said slowly, “So they weren’t there, and you lied to me.”

Monica stood up, there was a warm, sweet taste in her mouth, “No. I mean, I didn’t—”

“SHUT UP!” Lita yelled, and threw a glass at her. It shattered on the wall, behind Monica. “Stop lying to me! You cunt! You little whore! I hate you!”

“I’m leaving,” Monica said without emotion. She was scared, “I’m sorry, Lita, but I have to go.”

Lita was crying and whatever she said in response was drowned out by the sobs. Then, when it was obvious that Monica hadn’t heard or hadn’t cared, she repeated herself, with deliberation and venom, “You think you can go back to him, you bitch? And tell him about crazy Lita and how she felt you up!”

Monica turned around, eyes and mouth wide. She started shaking her head, “No, no, no, no, no, he didn’t talk to you.”

“Oh yeah he did,” Lita licked her lips, “Told me all about how I raped you. Raped you! Like you weren’t there, begging me to do it!” She waited, and when Monica said nothing, she kept going, “Go ahead, get the fuck out of here. I can’t wait to tell everyone who you’re fucking!”

“We’re not!” Monica said, and she started crying, “We haven’t!”

Lita’s eyes lit up, “And then I can tell them how we’ve been doing it, and you told your little professor, and he came onto me!” Her smile grew as she thought out her scenario, “And how I told him I wouldn’t fuck him, because I only like girls, and how he called me a fucking dyke and felt me up! Let’s see him keep his job after that.”

“You can’t do that.” Monica finally said.

“Get out.” Lita responded. “Get the fuck out, I’ve got to make a call to the school.”

“Please,” Monica cried, “Please, don’t.”

Lita was breathing so hard that her chest was heaving, and she swaggered up to Monica, and roughly began loosening her belt. Monica said nothing, and then her pants fell down around her ankles, and she felt Lita’s hot palms on her hips. She pulled her shirt off, and ran her hands over Monica’s chest and thighs.

“Take off your shoes,” Lita said as she walked over to a bag next to the bed, “And your underwear.”

Monica did as she was told, panties and bra joining the little pile at her feet. Lita walked up to her and emptied out the bag. There was lube and a long, dark red strap-on. Monica was ready to see them, assumed it would be something like that, but there was something else. A hat. A light green Monterey Aquarium hat, exactly like the one James wore.

“Turn around,” Lita whispered, “Put your hands on the wall. You love him so much,” She put on the hat, then the strap-on, “More than me. Well, now you get to fuck him.”

And Monica felt the stiff, cool plastic run between her legs, to be buried deep inside her. She screamed in pain, and even though it was slick, it hurt. She felt the leather slap against her butt, and Lita grabbed her hair and pulled it back, hard. Her other hand ran under Monica’s hip, and pulled her protesting bottom toward Lita’s crotch.

“You like that?” Lita shrieked it in between hyperventilating breaths, “You like being fucked! Is it everything you want?!”

Monica could barely concentrate, “Please,” she finally said, “It hurts, slow down, not, not so hard. Please.”

“It hurts?!” Lita howled as she rammed the fake cock even harder into Monica. “You hurt me! Now, I’m hurting you! If you were sweet to me, I’d be sweet to you!”

Then she pulled Monica’s head and hips sharply to the left and they both fell, Lita still on top of Monica. Lita dug her nails into Monica’s back, pushing her down into the mottled carpet, until finally Monica’s elbow slipped out from under her and her face and chest crashed into the ground.

She felt a hard slap on her butt and Lita yelled filth at her, over and over. There was no theme or direction to the vulgarities she heard about her twat, or how much of a slut she was, or how she loved it, and did she love it, and did she know how tight her cunt was and look at how hot she was.

Monica gave up begging Lita to stop, and her crying was only punctuated by little shrieks of pain. She tried to avoid making any sound though, because each time it seemed to spur Lita on to even lower depths of abuse, verbal and painfully physical. Lita stopped, but before Monica could think it was over, she found herself on her back, her legs pushed up against her shoulders.

She looked into those beautiful eyes, now half-closed in pleasure. Lita’s stomach, gorgeous and toned, undulating as it thrust too much into Monica. She barely noticed the feeling of the dildo beyond the pain, a slight tingle, which might have been pleasure, but just the possibility made her hate it more. She saw Lita’s lips moving, realized she was saying something, something she didn’t want to hear.

“Tell me how you want it,” She was repeating over and over, along with, “Call me James.”

She ground her pelvis into Monica’s. With each movement, Lita let out a little gasp, her nipples hard and tight. Somehow, on her back, it hurt even more, and Monica felt as if she was being torn in half. Then she noticed that she was saying something, repeating it without stop, in rhythm with Lita’s attack on her purity. The words had come from Lita, that much she knew, she’d told her to say just that, and she did what she was told.

“Fuck me, James,” her voice was ragged from crying, “fuck me harder!”

Monica detaches herself from her dear professor.

—

“Your mother and I have discussed it. We don’t want you to attend school overseas.”

She heard the words and tried to reconcile them with the words she’d just read aloud. Monica tried to respond, but only looked up at him.

“There are schools within three hours of here that have accepted you, that cost less and are considered better than Essex. Now, you’re welcome to follow your sister’s path and go halfway across the country, but not halfway across the world.”

“Then why did you let me apply?!”

“Because you wanted to. Your sister is still in the country and we see her five times a year. If you go to England, how often will you cross an ocean for us? Twice?”

She only applied to Essex on a whim, she had no intention of leaving her dear professor, or her parents. The only other schools to which she’d sent applications were Berkeley, the University of San Francisco, Stanford and San Francisco State.

Her voice grew low, “I don’t need your permission, I can do this on my own.”

Her father was replaced by one of the Shah’s colonels. His happy voice lost all tone, “Do not presume to stand in my house, telling me you will travel the world at my expense, and tell me what you can and cannot do. You are a grown woman, it is true, but I will make the final decision on any choice that I pay for. I cannot hold you here, but I will not be ransomed, to commit actions I do not agree with.”

She hissed the words, barely audible, “I hate you.”

Her father’s eyes started to widen, but he caught them, and his face grew stern. But Monica never saw his supreme self-control, she’d turned away, toward her room. There was nothing there. She left, she walked right past her rather, who said nothing and made no motion to stop her, out the door, to her car and drove.

When Lita opened the door, all Monica said was, “I never kissed anyone before I kissed you,” and hit her, hard, and even though Monica spent all her time in a basement, all her time reading, and even though Lita worked out religiously, anger and desperatation added enough weight to the blow to send Lita sprawling across the room.

“I’ve never!” she said as she ran toward her and began kicking her, “Kissed anyone, but you!” Each syllable was punctuated by a high school, junior varsity, plant and shoot. “I didn’t kiss Ben!” She could hear Lita gasping, “I’ll never kiss James! I’ll never kiss anyone,” she could feel Lita had stopped making any attempt to block her tiny feet, “without thinking, about kissing, you!”

She stopped and finally heard Lita crying, begging her to stop, in a small, painful voice. Monica started crying and half-stumbled away, only to run back and kick her again, and then she started running around the room. She threw Lita’s beautiful Japanese screen against the wall, and threw schoolbooks and papers and little Japanese toys—all on her bookshelf—across the room.

She stopped, surprised to hear her own labored breathing. Then she took Lita’s camera off her desk, and tried to delete the pictures, but couldn’t, until she was so frustrated she threw it against the wall, too, and smashed it under her little DKNY boot. She looked over and saw that Lita was now sitting against the wall, crying, hands on her knees, head on her hands, eyes barely looking up to watch the destruction.

She sat down in front of Lita’s computer, turning just slightly toward Lita to say, “Where are they?”

“Stop it!” was the sobbing reply, “Stop it, I love you! Why are you doing this?”

“Where!” She yelled as she threw the little, day-glo stapler, “Where! Where! Where!” Each word punctuated by another little piece of desktop esoterica.

“They’re all on CD, I’d never leave them where somebody could find them,” Lita pleaded, “They’re all on CD, on the shelf—Monica’s mix.”

“My what?” Monica yelled back.

“Mix,” Lita cried harder, “That’s what it’s called.”

Monica tore through the flimsy, plastic CD tower, scattering cases and disks, until she found the one. She tried to break the whole case, but couldn’t, and that, more than anything else, seemed to be the worst part. Finally she opened it, and bent the CD until it shattered, with a thousand sparkling shards flying everywhere, her finger cut in the sudden destruction.

“I’m sorry,” Lita whispered. Monica didn’t respond, she just left.

—

“It is an endowment for two years at Oxford, the selected candidate will study under Richard Walbright.”

“And you get to pick who?”

“No, I can only recommend to Richard, and I’m sure he’s asked other schools for candidates, as well.”

“Who did you have in mind?”

“Elizabeth Hu, Jameson Alder and Annabelle Hartsbough. They are the top students in this field, and all three are already accepted to Oxford, so there would be little doubt as to their academic qualifications.”

“Do you think you could put my name on the list?”

“I’m afraid I cannot, in good conscience, recommend you for this endowment, Ms. Ijrah. Perhaps you could ask doctor Munroe.”

“But he didn’t ask any of the other professors, they asked you.”

“You’re a very bright student, Monica,” Pacha said, and somehow managed to make her first name sound even more formal than her surname, “but every year you perform less and less. I do not give my opinion lightly, and if I were to mention you for this, I would feel required to voice my concern about your work ethic.”

“Isn’t there anything I can do to change your mind?” What was she offering, she thought to herself.

“Of course not, if there was, I would have said so.”

“Please”, she said, her voice too low and desperate, “Anything.”

“You cannot make up for long-term choices,” he said, standing up and walking out, leaving her alone in his office, “with short-term fixes.”

She spent the rest of the day thinking of ways to compromise him, to get something against him, to make him select her. She didn’t know how, but she had to, now. She kept wondering what his voice, always stoic, would sound like if she had power over him.

“Monica, what are you doing,” he said, and it took a few seconds before she realized it wasn’t imagined, it was Dr. Pacha, standing directly behind her.

“Nothing!” She fell off the bench, and and looked up at him, on the verge of tears—guilt, she was sure, written all over her face.

“Nothing!” He bellowed, she’d never heard him like this, people were staring. “You call this nothing?”

She couldn’t even move, couldn’t even stand up from her scared, half-curled, half-crouched state. Her face felt cold, and everything around her grew crisp. She felt small, and shrinking, she could feel the looks of people around her. It was a beautiful, hot, near-summer day, and they were wondering why she was ruining it. Pacha wasn’t even looking at her now, he was moving, floating, around the bench, toward the table.

Everyone turned away. No one cared. It was all growing so big, and she felt like she was drowning. Pacha was laughing now.

“Why didn’t you just say so.” He looked over at her, seeming not to care that she was still sprawled on the ground. “I’ve always told you, leave humility to those that can’t achieve. Grown-ups have no use for it.” He stopped talking, mouth still open, shaking his head, “How did you ever get a handle on the system of notation?”

“It wasn’t easy,” the words sort of slipped out of her, “But there were articles, theories on why he did what he did. His sigma makes sense once you understand that he already assumes these shifts in scale. I think,” she paused, but Pacha said nothing, “I think he was trying to create his own physics.”

She went on, answering each of his questions in turn, she always studied up on the theories in her notebooks, she didn’t want to sound like she didn’t know what she was talking about if someone challenged her. But something happened, the more questions Pacha asked, the more talking Monica did, until she noticed he hadn’t said a word for minutes. She closed her mouth, abruptly.

“You may be right,” he responded to whatever she’d said. “I don’t know, though, I just don’t know, Ms. Ijrah.” He looked off into the distance, glanced back at her notebook, and then at her, a smirk on his face. The smirk disappeared, replaced with a quizzical look. “Why are you sitting on the ground?”

He called Oxford fifteen minutes later, pointedly letting Monica listen in as he spoke to his old roommate, the renowned Richard Walbright. It was four o’clock in the morning in London, but Pacha had firsthand experience with Walbright’s acclaimed sleeping habits, or lack thereof, more precisely.

“Richard, it’s Ahmed. I bumped into your student on my way to lunch.”

“Right, who’s that, then, I didn’t even know one of my boys was at your little school.”

“She’s your future pupil, you haven’t met her, yet.”

“Well that’s spectacular, Ahmed. I’m sure in between my television interviews, my copious social commitments, Janice, the dogs and advising the prime minister, I’ll have more than enough time to give each of your little fish a personal tour of the grounds. Hell, I’ll tuck each of them into bed every night, and read them a story, and feed them biscuits. Just like I did for you.”

Pacha smiled. “No, Richard, I found your student.”

“They’ll get due consideration. Old waterhead wants me to take one of his boys, and Wang has some genius from Norway. I’ll have them fight it out in a pit, with swords, and slide rules, and I’ll throw some lions in, for that classical feel.”

“Richard, she’s been spending the last three years working on Reishlach,” Pacha began flipping through Monica’s notebook, “And Uri, and Kammermand and Jarvis,” with the last name he looked over at Monica, eyebrows high, smiling and nodding at her in respect.

The pause from the other end of the line lasted well beyond the two second delay. Monica grew uncomfortable, but Pacha only stood there, smiling, waiting.

Finally, the Scottish accent shot out of the speakerphone, “Bullshit.”

“I’m afraid not,” Pacha responded.

“Raven or writing desk?”

“Raven.”

Another long pause.

“Alright, I’ll take her.”

She called her father at work and for the next three weeks, not a day went by that he didn’t mention his brilliant daughter and her upcoming attendance to that fine institution.