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  The sole purpose of the gathering was her supervisor’s need for company. Dr. Harsh liked to treat his students frequently to drinks and dinners. With no wife or dependents, a salary of eighty thousand was not going to spend itself.

  When I met Dr. Harsh, he appeared to conform to the stereotype of the absent-minded professor. He had a shock of white hair that was spectacularly unkempt, enormous glasses that made one eye literally bigger than the other, and an ugly knit sweater, which had been put on inside out. The tag was sticking out. He talked with hardly a second’s pause. As soon as I shook his hand, he started.

  “Nice to meet you. I heard about you. I think Julianne’s friend, Mike, mentioned you. This is the one, right, Julianne? Mike said you had appeared in a television commercial. I don’t watch television myself, so I can’t say I’ve seen your work. But that sounds exciting. Is it exciting?”

  He was nodding his head and smiling mischievously as if already assured of the answer.

  I said, “Well—”

  “I find it exciting, but then, I’m in the cloistered hallways of academia all the time, and other people’s jobs always seem exciting to me. Mike told me you had your shirt off. He remembers the commercial very well.”

  He was still grinning — almost on the verge of laughing. Mike had not yet arrived, but Dr. Harsh looked around as if he might be there, hoping that someone would share the joke. He was birdlike. His head did not stop moving.

  Julianne leaned in close and said to me, “I know you’re hungry. You better make a break for it soon, or else he’ll trap you and you’ll starve.”

  It was a buffet, so if you didn’t take care of yourself, no one else would. Half of the group was sitting at a big table; the other half was still standing. Behind us, there was a long window, and beyond it, the darkness of the river valley. Perched on the far bank were the tall towers of downtown. I was taking all this in while Dr. Harsh kept talking.

  “I suppose sex can be used to sell everything nowadays. I was in the theatre the other day — it’s only at films that I see commercials nowadays — and there was a very provocative little feature from the tourist board of Cuba, with women wearing very little and whipping themselves up in a frenzy as they did the salsa or tango or whatever it was, and the slogan was, ‘Come with us.’ Full of innuendo. And it certainly made me think of going to Cuba. They are beautiful and happy people down there, that’s what I hear, for the most part. Provided you’re not on the wrong side of Fidel.” He laughed nervously. “But another side of me thought, isn’t that sad? Isn’t it sad that there is hardly any mystery to romance nowadays? I have sat, reading my book, in the quadrangle on a hot summer’s day, and have watched a young man woo a woman with nothing more than grunting, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ And then the fellow proceeds to talk about how he drank himself into oblivion the other night. Then he proceeds to get her number. I hardly call that wooing. Is there still wooing going on? I don’t know anything. Julianne, did Luke woo you?”

  Julianne nodded. She was tugging on my hand, but I didn’t see how we could so quickly get away.

  “He did? I’m pleased to hear it. I just don’t think anyone holds a candle to the great poets of the past when it comes to wooing. ‘Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, lady, were no crime.’”

  He had closed his eyes, as if in a dream, with his lips still moving even after the audible words had ceased.

  “We have to escape,” Julianne hissed into my ear.

  Suddenly, Dr. Harsh opened his eyes again.

  “Sorry. They transport me, the poets. They transport me. Don’t people want to be wooed like that anymore?”

  “We’re going to get some food, Dr. Harsh,” said Julianne, matter-of-factly.

  He was still caught up with the memory of the poets, so our escape was successful. We grabbed some plates at the far end of the buffet, filled them first with salad, olives, cold vegetables, then hot vegetables, roast beef, and gravy. As we walked with our obscenely overloaded plates, Julianne said, “I hate buffets.”

  We were accosted en route to the big table.

  “Julianne, look at you. How do you keep that figure the way you eat?”

  It was Mike, veering towards us at almost a canter. He gingerly plucked an olive from Julianne’s plate and popped it into his mouth.

  “You’re welcome,” said Julianne.

  “Hi Luke,” he said, giving me a nod of his head.

  “It’s Mike, right?” I said.

  I was not in the slightest doubt about his name. “You remember me,” he said triumphantly. He added, “There’s no way I’d forget you, Mr. Manspray.”

  We all sat down at the last available places at the table. There was a host of other characters there — most of them women — but I couldn’t remember their names for any more than a few seconds. All of a sudden, I had found myself in the midst of a lot of campus shoptalk that was impossible to follow without knowing the people they were gossiping about. This went on for quite a while before Julianne turned to me and said, “Sorry, this is probably all quite boring to you.”

  I shook my head and said, “No, it’s alright.”

  Having concluded a noisy declaration about how much he hated a particular undergraduate student of his, Mike also turned his attention to me.

  “You seem contemplative, Luke. What is going on inside that handsome head of yours?”

  “Isn’t it handsome?” said Julianne, stroking my hair.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What’s going on inside your handsome head?”

  “Very little, friend. Very little. I am wondering, is the waitress going to show up to take my wine order or should I go to the bar and bring a bottle back?”

  “You aren’t eating?” said Julianne.

  “No,” said Mike. “Not eating gets you drunker faster.”

  “You’re planning on getting drunk?”

  “Tipsy.”

  “Where’s Sharon?”

  “Sharon is going to be here any minute, actually. She is at home with Debbie, but the babysitter must have arrived by now.”

  “Debbie will be old enough to be a babysitter herself, soon,” said Julianne.

  “She’s only twelve.”

  He suddenly waved at someone. I looked and saw that a waitress had just emerged from another room. She was very pretty but nervous, and when Mike announced the long title of the French wine he wanted, she had a hard time following him. He repeated it three times.

  “That’s not expensive, is it?” said Julianne after the waitress had gone to get his order.

  Mike stroked his chin.

  “Oh no, not at all.”

  “Mike, how much is it?”

  “Harsh doesn’t mind. He takes pride in the size of the bill.”

  “Mike…”

  “Julianne…”

  He reached across the table suddenly, grabbed the hand that was finger-wagging at him, pulled it to his lips, and kissed it.

  “We’re penniless grad students,” he said.

  “You always get me into trouble with too much wine,” Julianne answered.

  “I love this woman,” said Mike to me. “You were wise to follow my advice and seduce her. You must have lured her with the power of Manspray.”

  I nodded my head and tried to smile.

  “I wasn’t so hard to seduce,” said Julianne.

  The wine arrived. Dr. Harsh appeared at our side, hovering. He seemed very pleased to see everyone drinking and eating. He asked Mike what the wine was. Mike told him and filled the prof’s glass.

  Dr. Harsh took a sip and announced that it was good.

  “Dr. Harsh, are you sure you won’t let us pay for once?” said Mike.

  Dr. Harsh vigourously shook his head.

  “The idea!”

  He informed us that he was ravenous and wandered off to the buffet. When he was gone, Julianne reprimanded Mike again.

  “If you ask him like that, you know he will say no. You should just leave the money
on the table, otherwise he won’t let you pay a dime.”

  “Exactly,” said Mike, and smiled at me.

  I didn’t know how to take Mike: he was interchangeably mocking me or coming on to me. I felt like I was always on my heels, not able to respond fast enough to the dizzying bobbing and weaving of his conversation. It didn’t help that he would fire a few sentences at Julianne — all of them university-related — then fire a few at me just at the moment that I had started to tune him out. When Dr. Harsh zeroed in on us, eager to talk to Julianne again, I was actually somewhat relieved. He was arched over us for a while, somewhat giraffe-like, still grazing on a plateful of cheese and bread. We got up and moved away from the table and stood in a cluster, so it was easier for Julianne and him to hear each other over the din. Mike had been distracted by a call on his cell phone.

  Dr. Harsh was clearly besotted by Julianne. Most of the conversation was about her dissertation, which was focused on the seventeenth-century poet Anne Bradstreet. Dr. Harsh did not waste a single opportunity to praise his prodigy. He smiled at me warmly every now and then.

  At about ten o’clock, when the evening had reached its peak, Mike’s partner entered. I say partner because they were not married, but you couldn’t really call a woman like that a “girlfriend.” She was the mother of his child. She was his cohabitant. She was his bedfellow. She was his partner in mischief.

  They were an odd couple. She had tough, leathery skin. As soon as she had shed her leather jacket, you could see that underneath her tight black T-shirt, she was remarkably strong. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that she weighed more than he did. The first thing I heard from her was a stream of invective towards him.

  “Nice fucking position you put me in. You forgot to call Michelle. She didn’t know she was babysitting tonight. Do you have Alzheimer’s? Why do you forget everything?”

  For once, Mike’s voice was scarcely audible. I think I heard him say sorry. I couldn’t help but turn away from Dr. Harsh and Julianne so that I could witness this.

  “Then I had to walk here in the freezing cold. The car won’t fucking start again.”

  “What do I know about cars?” I heard Mike say.

  “Yeah, what do you know about cars? What are you eating?”

  Since we’d left the table, Mike had furtively fetched himself a plate of salad.

  “Why don’t you have a drink, Sharon, and relax for once?”

  Mike’s grin was slowly returning to his face, as if he was aware of the curiosity of onlookers and was warming up to the act.

  “Do you ever eat a proper meal?” Sharon asked.

  “What’s wrong with what I’m eating?”

  “It’s always salads and tofu with you. You disappear when you turn sideways. Didn’t you see the meat? Why is everything you eat so fucking healthy?”

  “Anyone would think healthy eating is bad for you,” Mike retorted.

  “Does the waitress bring beers, or do I have to go to the bar?”

  “You better go to the bar. The waitress takes forever.”

  Sharon disappeared to the bar. Mike got up from his seat, left half a plate of salad, and joined our little group.

  “She’s on fire tonight,” he said.

  “I love Sharon,” said Julianne. “She’s hilarious.”

  Julianne seemed fairly tipsy, but it was always hard to tell with her. Drinking didn’t manifest itself in her face or movements, only by the increasing breeziness and merriment of her speech.

  “The trials and tribulations of a family man,” said Dr. Harsh.

  “Strange. I don’t see you as a family man,” said Julianne to Mike.

  “I don’t either. I see Luke more as a family man.”

  “Luke?” Julianne said. “Luke is a lone wolf. Appearances are deceiving.”

  “A wolf, eh? Is he hungry like the wolf? Does she satisfy your hunger, Mr. Manspray?”

  Dr. Harsh emitted a very squeaky laugh at this. All of a sudden, there was something of a six-year-old in him — a naughty boy doing something he shouldn’t.

  Sharon appeared with a bottle of Kokanee. She was introduced to me and re-introduced to Dr. Harsh.

  “You’re Mr. Manspray,” she said to me, with a tone that seemed like a challenge to a fight.

  I sighed.

  “Yes, I’m Mr. Manspray.”

  “The dog that was with you in the commercial — we used to own one of them.”

  “A Jack Russell?”

  “Yeah, a Jack Russell. They’re great dogs. I loved that dog more than any other dog I ever had.”

  “He was a good performer,” I said. “Very well trained.”

  “Your glass is empty,” she said, eyeing my wineglass. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  I felt compelled to accept the offer. We went to the bar together and left the others. I decided to switch from wine to beer.

  “You don’t need to buy,” I said, as Sharon reached for some cash.

  She smiled and glared at me. She was capable of doing both at the same time.

  “You’re our guest here,” she said. “I like to buy drinks for guests.”

  It seemed a matter of principle for her. I accepted the bottle of Kokanee and clinked it against hers.

  “I owe you one,” I said.

  “No you don’t,” she said. “It’s a pleasure buying a beer for a nice-looking guy like you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you a bit out of your element, Luke?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” I said.

  “When these guys get together, they talk a lot of bullshit. Especially that Harsh guy. I can’t follow him at all. But he always pays. I’ve been drunk at every single one of these things. It’s tough to say no to free booze.”

  “But you paid for these yourself.”

  “He’ll be ordering a pitcher any minute, and from then on it’ll be free. Mike always talks him into ordering a pitcher. I’m the only here one who drinks beer. I’m always a wreck at work the next day.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “I work in Refinery Row. I sit in a room and check that nothing is going to blow up or leak. I got my certificate in under two years, and now I make eighty grand a year, but I’m bored out of my mind every day.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I don’t like to talk about it. The money is just too good. We have a kid. Stuff like that matters with a kid.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Over the course of this conversation, Sharon hardly took her eyes from me. It was intimidating. The conversation didn’t stray from the straight and narrow, but what we talked about didn’t seem to be what we were really talking about. I had the unmistakable impression that she wanted to go to bed with me. The conversation would have gone on endlessly if Mike hadn’t interrupted.

  “Harsh gave me some money for another bottle of wine,” he said, waving a twenty in our faces and grinning.

  “You’re a whore, Mike.”

  “That’s why you love me.”

  When I returned to Julianne’s side, she said, “You were gone for a long time.”

  “I was with Sharon.”

  I whispered into her ear.

  “She’s scary.”

  “She likes you,” said Julianne. Then she put her arm around me and squeezed me close. “But you’re mine. All mine! Let’s go home soon, okay?”

  24

  To say goodbye to everyone, Julianne needed about an hour, especially for Dr. Harsh and Mike. I had to endure being called Mr. Manspray several more times. I told myself to shut up and take it for Julianne’s sake, but once we were finally liberated and walking home, it didn’t take much for my bottled irritation to come out. She asked why I was so quiet. I said, no reason. It was just a nice night, that was all. But really, there was not much special about the night. The sky had clouded over, and across the street, there were drunk students shouting at each other. “Ninjas take samurais any day!” one thundered. “Comple
te bullshit!” another retorted.

  Julianne asked me again what was wrong. I simply asked her, point blank, what the hell was wrong with Mike? Why did he have to drag up my Manspray days at every opportunity?

  “It’s funny,” she said.

  “Not for me it isn’t,” I replied.

  She let go of my hand so that she could get her toque out of her pocket and pull it over her head. When she was done this, she did not reach for my hand again.

  “You’ve laughed at your Manspray days plenty of times,” she said.

  “That’s me laughing at me,” I pointed out. “That’s okay.”

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “What do you mean, whatever?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s pick up the pace. I’m freezing.”

  “No, what do you mean, whatever?”

  Julianne stopped abruptly. She turned to me and folded her arms.

  “When you stand there and glare at someone like this, it’s pretty off-putting, Luke.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s how you were with Mike. You didn’t make the slightest effort to be nice. You looked at him like you wanted to strangle him.”

  “I did want to strangle him.”

  “Come on, can’t you try to be nice?”

  “He was mocking me relentlessly the whole night.”

  “He just wanted to make you laugh.”

  “Well, he failed.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She continued walking. I had to hurry after her. We remained silent the rest of the way. She unlocked the front door of her house. We busied ourselves with taking off our shoes and coats. Finally we arrived at the moment where there was no distraction, no choice but to talk to one another.