Part Nineteen

Desmond Cutter was born into a lot of money, which was a good thing, because he was singularly ill-equipped to accomplish anything meaningful in his life.

Because of that, he went to St. John’s College, in Annapolis, where he did not distinguish himself at all, except that he was the last person to ring the bell upon turning in his senior thesis. And his fly was down when he did it.

In his defense, his parents had bought him a charming townhouse in the beautiful historic district of Annapolis, just a few blocks from the City Dock. Which meant that when he finished his paper he had to walk a considerable distance to campus. Cursed with a bladder the size of a walnut, this meant he had to make a brief pit stop behind a bush on State Circle en route to turning in his paper. Cursed with a superego even smaller than his bladder, he forgot to zip…

His paper was about Joseph Conrad. That’s not important.

Anyhow, upon graduation Des returned to his parents’ home in Savannah, Georgia, and while not particularly agoraphobic, he never really found cause to venture outside of it again. His parents died, staff came and went, and Des lived a fairly short, reasonably happy, and entirely indoor life before dying late in the Carter administration.

Upon his death came two gruesome discoveries. First, during his long seclusion he had written just over 600 romance novels, none of which were publishable, because while reasonably well written and true to the romance formula, they were all soft-core gay porn. In the late 1970s, there really wasn’t a market for all-male Harlequin novels.

Second, he left a will that bequeathed everything to St. John’s College but which included a positively Byzantine set of conditions, codicils, and caveats. Most of which he had written himself, apparently whenever the mood struck him. The lawyers St. John’s hired to try to wriggle out of some of the more bizarre conditions were, candidly, dismayed. A layman – a borderline psychotic layman, at that – a borderline psychotic layman whose legal background consisted of leafing through a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary which he’d acquired as his sole reference text when writing a gay-porn-romance version of 12 Angry Men – had managed to draft a will that would hold up in virtually any court in South Carolina or Maryland.

One of the provisions of the will endowed the Chrysoloras Visiting Scholar program. The Trustees wanted a new fine arts center, not a visiting scholar program. Des Cutter gave the school the charming historic-district townhouse, a valuable piece of real estate, but directed that it could only be used to house the Chrysoloras scholar. He gave the school big piles of money but insisted that all of it would revert to his Savannah elementary school if St. John’s cancelled any of the programs his will set up. Not just the visiting scholar program (with residence) but the annual contest to give $500 to the person who wrote the best tribute to Pythagoras (the visiting scholar had to be one of the judges) and the requirement that the school build at least four more men’s rooms scattered across the campus.

(The school ducked the Ode To Pythagoras competition requirement by simply not publicizing it. Once in a great while the Dean would take pity on a student in dire financial straits, whisper in his or her ear, and the prize would be awarded to the year’s sole contestant.)

The Chrysoloras scholar had few official duties. He or she had to offer a twice-a-week seminar. He or she had to offer a campus-wide lecture twice each semester, on any topic. He or she had to live in the charming townhouse.

That was about it. The visiting scholars uniformly regarded it as a sweet gig. The pay was good. Their only complaint was that they could only do it for one year.

In 1985 an unofficial duty was added to the list – the Chrysoloras scholar always attended the annual Island of Misfit Toys thanksgiving dinner for students who were stuck on campus over the weekend.

In the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighty-Seven the founder of the Misfit Toys feast, one Preacher S. Haywood, was a junior at St. John’s College. He lived in a surprisingly spacious Cape Cod off Prince George’s Street just a few blocks down from campus. His housemate, the resourceful and piercingly intelligent Nicholas D’Alessio, had procured a lease on the house the summer before, while Preacher was away attempting to strain Franco-American relations even more than the makers of Spaghetti-os had. Nick was rightfully proud of the charming yet affordable home, which beat the hell out of the homely brick rancher they’d live in the year before.

A third housemate, a tall and somewhat effete young man named Mark Carleton, hadn’t lived in the dump over by the hospital, and while he liked the house, he was so happy to be off-campus that he didn’t really care that it was infinitely superior to the abode Preacher had obtained.

All three men had signed up to take the seminar offered by that year’s Chrysoloras scholar, an Irishwoman named Moira Callahan. The description offered by the college read as follows:

“'Truth, Fact, and the Oral Tradition.' This year’s Chrysolorian seminar explores the importance of myth as a means of transmitting cultural truths, and the evolution of history as a normative medium. Dr. Moira Callahan received her undergraduate degree from Trinity College in her native Ireland, and her canidatus in ancient languages at Heidelberg. After a fellowship in epistemology at the University of Copenhagen she obtained her Ph.D. in comparative mythology from Oxford University, where she lectures in pre-Christian European history.”

So on a cheery September day in Annapolis (where it doesn’t become autumn until October) the three housemates sat in a classroom with a dozen other St. Johns students with, truly, no idea what the class was about. They had taken it primarily because this promised to be the first visiting scholar in three years who could speak intelligible English.

To the extent that anticipated anything, it was some chalk-dusted antiquities scholar with bad dentition. Just so long as it was someone they could understand. So they got to class a little early. They chatted. They joked. They waited.

And, a few minutes late, Moira Callahan swirled into the room and all chatter stopped.

It’s hard to chat, of course, when one’s jaw is on the ground.

Moira Callahan was beautiful. Not pretty, not attractive, not comely. Beautiful. Everyone-in-the-room-shut-up beautiful. Gay-men-and-straight-women-reconsider-their-options beautiful. Moira Callahan was, at that time, fast approaching her 30th birthday but she had that rare gift for hitting an optimal physical state and sort of… hovering there, indifferent to time, so that nobody was quite sure if she was a remarkably self-assured 25-year-old or a remarkably smooth-browed 35-year-old.

Her hair was copper and lava, her skin was flawless cream, her breasts scoffed at Newtonian physics, her cheekbones defied Plotinus. Each student mentally composed pastoral lays to the brilliant new-cut grass of her eyes, the rose petal lips, the curve of cheek and hip and calf that shamed the arc of space.

She was a hottie.

She carried a spear.

“Incipit táin bó Cualnge,” she said, without any introduction.

“Fect n-oen do Ailill & do Meidb íar n-dergud a rígleptha dóib i Cruachanráith Chonnacht, arrecaim comrad chind-cherchailli eturru.”

The students – those who had stopped ogling the new professor – looked at one another, bewildered.

“Let’s see how smart you are,” Callahan said. “Anybody here speak Gaelic? No? Good. What oral history did I just begin telling you?”

They looked at one another anew, even more bewildered. Except for Preacher Haywood, so leaned back in his seat and laughed.

She pointed the spear at him fiercely. “Let’s hear it,” she said. “Or were you just laughing at your own ignorance?”

“I didn’t hear you say Finn McCool,” he said, “so that must be the Ulster Cattle Raid.”

“That shows how much you know,” she said. “It could have been any one of a hundred other tales. But you’re right. Táin bó Cualnge is the Cattle-Raid of Cooley, the main part of the Ulster saga. 'Once upon a time, Ailill and Medb spread their royal bed in Cruachan, the stronghold of Connacht, and such was the pillow-talk that arose between them.'”

Fucking show-off, Nick and most of the others thought, glaring at Preacher.

“So tell me, smart guy, is the story of actual events?” she pressed on.

“No,” Preacher guessed.

“Wrong!” she snapped. “You, next to him. You’re thinking he’s just a showoff, right? Here’s your chance to show him up. Is this a story of actual events?”

“Yes,” Nick replied, by process of elimination.

“Wrong! The answer is, it doesn’t make any goddamn difference! It’s a good story. When a bunch of Irish boys were sitting in a drafty, smoke-filled hall watching their elders get drunk off their asses, shivering in part with cold and in part with terror at their first taste of battle against the English swine the next morning, they listened to this story about a 17-year-old taking names and kicking ass, and it helped them get a little sleep. Helped them charge headlong into a thicket of English arrows the next day.

“Today you can pick up a book that gives you a very detailed and factually precise account of the landing at Normandy. That’s not going to do anyone a damn bit of good the next time someone sticks a rifle in his hands. But Gary Cooper at High Noon…? That’s the difference between truth and fact. Fact is objectively verifiable. Truth is intuitive. In this culture we need them both, but for some reason we’ve set up this silly dichotomy between the two. For the next few months you’re going to hear lots and lots of stories, the veracity of which is… well, is irrelevant. You need to focus on whether they’re true, not whether they’re factual. And each one of you is going to perform an oral history of your own. NOT write one. Sweet Jesus, all I need is 15 adolescent weepies. You’re to find one pre-literate history, memorize a twenty-minute chunk of it, and deliver it.

“Any questions? ‘Course not, what could be clearer?” she said, without even a pretense at waiting for someone to ask a question. “Now, if this class was delivered by someone more organized you would all be receiving a list of the oral histories we’ll be analyzing in class. But if I was more organized I wouldn’t be nearly as fascinating. So instead when you find one you want to do, tell me, and I’ll let you know if I’m going to cover it instead. That means don’t look for the obvious ones. And there’s a reward for being the first one to come up with one. That reward being, you get to go first and get it over with. Plus, of course, you can really bugger your friends, because it’s first-come, first-served.”

“Where are we supposed to find these stories?” a girl named Madeline Barker said, having quickly determined that there was no sense in waiting for a pause for questions.

“What the hell are you asking me for?” Callahan retorted. “You go to this school, not me. Don’t you have a library or something? Any other questions? OK, then let’s continue.”

And she performed part of “The Combat of Ferdiad and Cuchulain,” which lasted the rest of the class – she performed it in English – and they were mesmerized, they were spell-bound, they heard and recognized Truth.

Twice a week she performed for them, interrupting the recitation to talk about the why and hows and wherefores. “Truth is not facts and dates,” she would remind them, demanding that they learn facts and dates anyhow – not of the events IN the sagas, but about their performance. How many times did Alexander hear Homer sung before launching a campaign to conquer the world – in the name of reclaiming Troy? What did it mean when the monks Christianized Beowulf? Why would they do it? What stories did the Mughals tell their foot soldiers when they swept into India?

No matter how intimate and/or heated the discussions, there was absolutely no question that Moira ran the class. She flatly refused to learn the names of anyone in the classroom. When pressed to address a person directly, she would simply refer to them by some readily apparent (to her) aspect of the person’s appearance, personality, or aspect. “You with the expensive haircut,” or “no, the one with the lazy eye.” It helped reinforce her position of authority.

And the classroom filled with the detritus of her performances. Artifacts. Spears, helmets, zithers, rosaries, rice bowls. Other users of the room complained. She ignored them, mostly. At length one of her fellow faculty members found a convenient way to persuade her to pick up after herself. “One of these bastards is going to steal something,” he told her.

(His name was Philip Pierce. She was keeping an eye on him. He was all right looking, in a scrawny sort of way. Happily married and a bit unsure of himself. A good combination, in her estimate. The kind you could lure into bed and count on to keep his mouth shut, and not do anything crazy like start chasing her around. She hadn’t been celibate long enough for that – yet – but it might come to that. Although some of those strapping Navy lads she saw around town might fit the bill, too. Except the young ones tended to wear their hearts on their sleeves.)

So one day right before her birthday – on the autumnal equinox, something nobody in Annapolis knew, any more than they knew it would be her 30th – she decided she would drag some of these heavy iron props back into her office. When the class was over she pressed a student into service.

“Hey, you,” she said. Half a dozen people turned around. “No, the good looking one. No, not you, I said good looking. Yes, you. Let’s put those muscles to work, shall we? I need to clear out some of this business.” She gestured at the pile of Iron Age weapons.

And Preacher Haywood scooped them all up in his arms. They weighed a ton.

“Out to your car?” he said brightly, trying not to act that they weighed a lot more than he had guessed.

She had only meant her office, one floor up. And she had only meant for him to grab one or two things. But if he insisted on demonstrating his stupid manliness…

“Just follow me,” she said, and led him down the stairs and twelve blocks across Annapolis on a rather warm and humid September day.

She deliberately walked a little fast, and listened for the clatter of heavy iron on pavement. Perhaps, she mused distantly, followed by the wetter thunk of college student hitting pavement; his face began to grow alarmingly red somewhere around Church Circle.

First he reddened. Then the perspiration sprang out on his brow. She was glad to see this slight dint in his savoir faire. The load in his arms shifted. Just a little more, she thought, and he would be properly chagrined. And then they were at her charming little house down by the City Dock, near Union and Conduit. She slowed her previously brisk pace to a leisurely saunter but he’d won this round merely by staying on his feet. And on some level she knew it was just round one.

“Jesus, you look like your head’s about to explode,” she said to him. “Come in and have a drink, or I’ll lose my job for killing a student.”

“I thought maybe this sword couldn’t be put away unblooded,” he gasped.

“Good point,” she said, opening the door. In he staggered. “Take them upstairs,” she said breezily, “the first room on the right, can’t miss it.”

He eyed the narrow and very steep staircase a bit cautiously, then took a deep breath and began clambering up. She watched his struggled with a grin on her face. When he got to the top she went into the kitchen, grabbed two bottles off the counter, and glided up behind him.

The second room on the right was ostensibly a second bedroom, but during Callahan’s residency it was more like a museum storeroom. There were two steamer trunks on the floor and… objects everywhere. A Greek harp and a Chinese fan, a Scythian bridle and a Filipino kris.

Haywood had dumped the hardware onto the bed and was looking around at the collection when she came to the doorway.

“You’re ruining all of my props,” she said. “Try to act surprised when I show up with these in class, all right?”

“I can almost picture all of these things being crammed into those two trunks,” he said, not turning around, “but what I can’t picture is getting those giant, loaded trunks up that staircase.”

He turned, smiling, and took the beer from her hand.

“You sound just like those crybaby movers,” she said to him. “Oh, those stairs are too narrow. Oh, this is too heavy. Oh, I’ve broken my leg. Americans complain a lot.”

“Yet they got it up here,” he said. He took a long draught from the bottle. “Guinness. We complain about your steamer trunks, and you no doubt complain about local beer,” he said.

“Some of it is fine,” she said, “provided I can persuade someone to serve it at a reasonable temperature.” She took a considered swallow and looked at him looking around the room nonchalantly. He did not seem particularly intimidated by her, something she wasn’t used to and wasn’t sure she liked.

“There’s something about you I don’t like,” she said, to make him look at her, and shifted slightly to better display the knobs. That was her sister's saying. Display the knobs. The thought of it almost made her smile too much.

“Is it that I look at your face when I talk to you?” he said. “Because that’s only when you’re looking back.” He gave an easy half-grin.

“That’s a part of it,” she said, starting to smile back. She covered it with another pull on the bottle. “God, it’s hotter than hell up here. Let’s go down a bit.”

She turned and moved to the stairs, and heard the floorboards creak a bit behind her, and she trotted down in a very even, quick rhythm. She listened for his steps to mirror it; that’s when she knew she was winning, when he followed unquestioningly, when he mirrored her stride without even noticing it.

He glanced up at the hatch that led to the attic. She needs a fan, he thought. These old houses don’t have AC, but an attic fan would help some. Probably gets cold up here in the winter, too. With a long tug he drained another third of his bottle and walked slowly down the stairs, not touching the banister, each step measured and sure.

She stood at the bottom, angry and intrigued. Gay? Didn’t seem like it, but he seemed relatively unfazed by her customary aggressive sexuality. He held his own in the banter, too. A bit taciturn but not speechless, not stammering, not…

“So what’s your story?” she said, pretending to leaf through her junk mail. Nothing even remotely interesting.

“Story? I have no story,” he said, still giving the house a good once-over. “This place is nice. Hot, but nice.”

“It’s a self-guided tour,” she said, tossing the mail back on the table. “While you’re in there get us another bottle,” she called as he disappeared into the kitchen.

“Nice kitchen,” he said, re-emerging. It was his turn to hand her a beer.

“Sure,” she said.

“You have no food in it whatsoever.”

“I have half a bag of frozen chips in the freezer,” she said.

“I take it the pots and utensils aren’t yours?”

“Have you ever heard of a famous Irish chef?” she said.

“Ah, no.”

“There's a reason for that. But I pour some of those chips on a tray and stick them in the oven when I’m hungry and can’t go out. They taste like shite so usually I just go out.”

“And that great kitchen goes to waste.”

She shrugged.

“Can I use it?”

“What, you’re a cook, too? Poofter, I knew it,” she said, and laughed a bit cruelly.

“I’m not sure what poofta means,” he said, “but I haven’t had a house with a decent kitchen in years.”

She cocked her head and looked at him thoughtfully. “OK, make us some dinner,” she said. “I thought I saw a market around here.”

“Right down the block,” he said. He plopped into a big overstuffed chair.

That was part of it, she thought. He didn't refuse to do what she asked he just... didn't. At least not promptly.

“So what’s your story?” he said.

“I asked first,” she said, leaning against the doorway that connected the living room to the dining room.”

“And I told you, I didn’t have one.”

“Then me neither.”

Mexican standoff. They looked at one another with the same quarter smile, the same barely perceptible arch to the eyebrows that said – bring it on. Except on some level she feared that he wasn't playing. That he was blissfully ignorant that there was any competition at all. Which made their stalemate even more frustrating.

“But you can’t cook,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“Besides the dust on the stove burners? Because if you cook, you also have to wash the dishes. Whenever I meet someone I try to imagine them washing the dishes. And I cannot, for the life of me, picture you scrubbing a pot.

She laughed. “Oh, lad, there are so many other things I can do, cooking never really comes up.”

“But still,” he said. He drained the bottle and got to his feet. “You’re like me. It bothers you when there’s something you can’t at least fake your way through.”

“So show me how to fake my way through dinner,” she told him, and wondered where in the world that came from.

“First we have to fake our way through shopping,” he said.

They walked out of the house and for just a brief moment it felt so normal and natural and easy that he almost stuck his arm out and she almost took it. But instead they sauntered down the street laughing and sparring, neither of them following the other, walking instead in elaborate looping orbits about one another so that they were never quite facing, never quite turned away.

It occurred to her that she had no idea what his name was.

“Preacher!” the man who ran the produce stall said cheerfully when they walked into the City Market. Preacher? she thought.

“Larry,” Preacher replied, nodding at the older man. “How’s business today?”

“Pretty good,” Larry told him. Haywood took some tomatoes, showed them to Callahan, who for her part was out of her element and hated feeling out of her element. She made a point of bending over in front of the greengrocer so he couldn’t help but look down her blouse a bit. It made her feel a little more in control. Haywood caressed the fruit almost obscenely; he was telling her about fresh ingredients but showing her his fingers on the curve of the flesh, dimpling the skin. Still he looked at the red plum tomatoes when he spoke, not her, and when they came to the dry goods stand he flirted a little with the older woman who rang up their dried pasta, parmesan cheese, dried herbs, extra virgin olive oil. The counter-girl giggled and laughed and when Preacher turned around she glared at Callahan, which helped Moira feel a bit more comfortable, too; the black man at the butcher’s stall gave them a few links of Italian sausage, eyed Moira, winked at Preacher (who ignored him); lastly the bakery, redolent of fresh loaves, and the bakery woman purposefully undercharged him.

Everyone called him Preacher. He knew everyone’s name. Moira fished a quart of Rocky Road ice cream out of the freezer in another stall and paid for it herself.

On the way back to her house he kept making her laugh, the bastard, but at one point she put her hand on his shoulder in a mock-playful mock-push and there was a slight hitch in his step then, a slight pause in his story about living over top of a bakery in France, and she thought: A bit skittish about being touched, are we? Round two to me. There was a chink in the armor after all. Nice muscles, though. No wonder he survived toting that crap halfway across town.

Then into the kitchen as the sun drooped low and the evening cooled a bit. They opened fresh beers while the water boiled. The tomatoes blanched. He fished them from the water, skins loosened, and ran cold water on them, and took her hand in his and showed her how the skin came off. “What we’re making is a fake pomodoro sauce,” he said. “As long as you don’t give it to an actual Italian you’ll be fine.” He stopped talking for a moment and they both became acutely aware of their position and she waited for him to suddenly pull away, giving her the best two out of three, but he didn’t.

“Almost fall,” he said, showing her how to quarter and crush the skinned tomatoes. “Darker noticeably earlier. Cooler in the evening. You’ll be trudging up Gloucester Street in the snow soon enough. Walking home in the dark.”

Idle conversation about the weather. But no pull-away. She decided to call that one a draw, because she hadn’t been able to say much of anything herself.

“Why do they call you Preacher?” she said.

“That’s my name.”

“Your given name,” incredulously.

“My given name,” matter-of-factly.

“Why did they name you that?”

“Oh, that’s a story in its own right,” he said, “suitable for one of your performances, complete with props.”

“A collar and cross?”

“A book about Cotton Mather, actually,” he said. He dropped dried spaghetti into boiling water and set the sauce to simmer. Garlic was crushed beneath the flat of a knife. Oregano and basil. “Again, never do this to an actual Italian, but in America – and in Ireland, is my guess – dried spaghetti will do just fine. The idea isn’t to actually make dinner, it’s just to fake your way through it.”

“So why not just a jar of sauce?” she said. “And who is Cotton Mather?”

“Because bottled spaghetti sauce is to spaghetti sauce what Budweiser is to beer,” he said. “You wouldn’t serve anyone Budweiser, would you?”

“I had it my first night here,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I wanted to see what American beer was like.”

“So you know,” he said. “Look, here’s the absolute most important part of faking your way through this dinner. First, when you put a little salt in the pomodoro, don’t just pour it from the shaker into the pot. Pour it into your hand, so you can see how much you’re using.”

“How much do I use?”

“If I gave you an exact amount, it wouldn’t be any fun,” he said. “You pour some in your hand, and put it in the sauce, and try it. If it’s not enough, put more in.”

“What if it’s too much?”

“Don’t put in too much. But look, here’s the key to the fake cooking. After you pour a little in your hand…” and he poured a pinch on his palm, “don’t just dump it in the pot. You have to kind of throw it in there.” He used his other hand to pick it up in his fingertips and then jabbed his hand toward the pot and snapped it back, like a snake striking. “See, that makes people think you know what you’re doing.”

“Oh, let me try,” she said. He poured a little in his hand, and she took a pinch (her fingertips stroking the skin of his palm) and shot it into the pot.

“See?” he laughed.

“Oh, I felt like Julia Childs,” she said. “But who is Cotton Mather?”

“A 17th century Puritan minister,” he told her. “In New England.”

“You don’t seem like the Puritan type.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Here’s another way to fake it. I notice you have stolen sugar packets in one other these cabinets.

“Yes, I took those from a Denny’s a few days ago. In case I made some tea.”

“Take a pinch of sugar from that packet and toss it in the pot, too.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Sugar? On spaghetti?”

“Just a pinch. It cuts the acidity of the tomatoes a little, but mostly it makes you look like you know something.”

She did as instructed. “I like this flinging food about,” she said, laughing.

He dumped the spaghetti into a colander and steam filled the kitchen. The air was starchy for a moment, and she felt her blouse cling a bit.

“Not a dish for a hot summer day,” she noted.

He shrugged. “If the kitchen isn’t fragrant and overheated, it’s not really cooking,” he told her.

"My mum used to say the same thing about the bedroom,” she said, and he laughed easily. Not a hint of a blush. Damn, she thought.

The sausage browned in olive oil and the magnetic charnel scent of the meat blended with the steam, and the tang of the pomodoro. She wet her lips without realizing it, and he drained some fat from the frying pan.

“Where did you learn this, exactly?” she said.

He poured the sauce onto the sausages and inhaled deeply. “Salsicce al pomodoro. They tell me that’s what Naples smells like,” he said.

“Smelled like another Italian city with bad sewers, to me,” she said. The sausages simmered and the spices wafted throughout the house and a man walking down the sidewalk was suddenly very hungry. And his dog started humping his leg uncontrollably.

“We undercooked the pasta a bit,” Preacher said. He dumped some of it into the simmering pan and turned it slowly, languidly through the sauce until it was dressed and had softened just a bit more. “Nothing worse than mushy pasta, so you need to leave room for this last turn. The other thing is this -- boil the pasta in salty water. Should be as salty as the ocean.”

She was watching him, intent on what he was doing. He has the strong hands, she thought, seeing him stir. “You do this all the time, right?” she said. “The whole sexy sensitive gourmet thing?”

He looked up at her laughing. “I told you, I haven’t had a decent kitchen since I moved out here. Plus, I have too much fun cooking to try to be impressive while doing it.”

She had to know if it was -- as she sincerely hoped -- a lie. Because if this was him being unimpressive... She looked straight at him, held him with her eyes. Her brilliant green against his hazel eyes gold-flecked. At first and even second glance there was something a little too smooth and easy and… effortless for her taste. She liked men – and women – who were a little uncomfortable in her presence. But more alarmingly she detected, lurking far in the background, something wild and lonely and sad. Something feral. She could stand to look directly at it, briefly, but she knew that there were more than a few who couldn’t, more than a few college girls who got just a glimpse of it and…

“Wipe that smirk off your face,” she said, smiling more broadly as the faint grin faded from him. “You’re just making dinner. I know some of these college girls suddenly find some irresistible force-field between their knees when you give them that look, but you need to remember when you’re way outside your league.”

And that’s two out of three to me, she thought, as there was a two-beat pause before he came up with a response.

“Believe me,” he said, “I knew I was beaten before we even left campus.” He turned his gaze back to the pan late in the sentence. Too soon and he was looking away in embarrassment. Too late and he was watching for her reaction. He did it just right.

Oh, he’s good, she thought. Worst of all there was a certain vague inflection that let her know he wasn’t even competing, let alone worried about being beaten.

So they ate their meal with fresh Italian bread and parmesan cheese and he told her that he had half a dozen things he could fake his way through like that and nobody would be the wiser.

“Isn’t it easier to just wear a tight blouse and get him to take me to a nice restaurant?” she said.

“That doesn’t work with everybody.”

“It has so far.”

He shrugged, chewing, raising his glass. “Not with me,” he said offhandedly, and she laughed loudly, even as she thought:

Damn, two to two.

"To me it’s just bangers and mash, without the mash,” she said, pushing the remains around on her plate. It was delicious, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. As if he had somehow missed the pace with which she’d shoveled it into her face. As if he missed much of anything.

“I’ve never actually heard someone from Ireland use the term bangers and mash before,” he said. “I mean I’ve read about it, but I didn’t know it really existed.”

“Don’t push your luck with me, lad,” she said. “Filling my belly doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t like you. You’re not like the others.”

“You don’t like the others, either,” he pointed out.

“Good point.”

She sat in the dining room and worked on her fourth beer. The remains of dinner lolled before her and he stood in the kitchen rinsing the pots. His sleeves were pushed up a bit and the hair on his forearms was damp. And she told herself she was getting up to get the ice cream and, maybe, two spoons, but halfway across the floor she knew it was going to be some time before they got to the ice cream.

He shut off the faucet yet seemed to be – was genuinely, she decided much later – truly surprised, when she grabbed him and stood on her toes and put her mouth over his.

Then she was tearing at his shirt. Then her skirt was around her hips but it was his hand there, first, and down her leg, and another traced her face even as their breath grew ragged. It was too much for a moment, and then not quite enough, back and forth, so that as they moved into the living room and their clothes came off they would pull apart and then lunge back for one another, she for her part determined that this would be a round he would not win, he for his as seemingly unaware of the competition as before. He looked her in the eyes. He never closed his eyes. When he pressed her against the arch connecting dining room and living room and her legs wrapped around him and his right hand moved unerringly to that spot behind her knee and her head fell back and her nails pressed into his neck his eyes remained open, and he wouldn’t… go…, damn him, and into the living room and naked and the lights on and the front curtain open (it’s not as if anyone was on the porch… it’s not as if either of them would have really cared anyhow, by that time) and the only sound she made was breathing, damn her, and her eyes stayed open the whole time, even when he traced her neck with his lips, and let her feel just a hint of teeth near the larynx, he knew her eyes were open, and when she tugged at his hair, and pressed her face into his collarbone, eyes open.

And she resolved she wouldn’t let his opened eyes keep from enjoying it, anyhow, and Jesus, she thought, when they finally got that far, what a Kegel, he could crush bricks with that pubococcygeus, didn’t really even have to slow down much, I mean he needed work, but he can find that spot on my hip without missing, and that place on my jaw, right there, and not just placement, angle and velocity, too, once he feels a response, it’s like he’s got a map of me in his head…

Preacher Haywood often remarked that he couldn’t think and screw at the same time, so one assumes his interior monologue was far less interesting. On the other hand, there were many people – including most of his former lovers – who suspected that was a big fat lie, perhaps the only one Preacher ever told. Although why he would choose that particular lie was beyond knowing.

There was a moment – very brief – during which Dr. Moira Callahan wondered about possible ramifications of sleeping with one of her students. It wasn’t an ethical qualm, exactly; Callahan was such a good Nietzschean that she both despised Nietzsche and never, ever considered herself bound by other people’s ethical considerations – it was more of an idle musing that passed quickly. At the same time she had, for the first twenty minutes or so, a serene confidence that this was going to be a one-time thing, and counted herself very lucky that of all her students, Preacher was the least likely to be bothered by that.

An hour later she had other plans.