a box of Kleenex. Shark Week, a shared passion of theirs, played in the background. Somehow, it was the perfect backdrop to spill everything.
“I feel like such an ass,” Honor said when she’d finished recounting the wretched evening. “And the thing is, I didn’t know how much I loved him till it was out there, you know? Does that make sense?”
“Sure, sure it does.” Dana drained her drink. “Listen, I hate to be insensitive here, but tell me the part about the parents one more time, okay?” she said with a wicked grin, and Honor snorted and complied, making Dana swear she’d never tell anyone, because as a hairdresser, Dana saw everyone, and knew everyone’s business, and was pretty liberal with sharing it.
“Comparing your vajay-jay to an old baseball glove...that’s going a little far, isn’t it?”
“It wasn’t my... Never mind. Let’s talk about something else. Oh, look at that guy’s stitches. I’m never swimming again.” She sat back, leaning against her raincoat. Stupid raincoat. Where was the shock and awe now, huh? Wadding it up, she tossed it on the floor.
“Hey, it’s not the coat’s fault. And that’s Burberry,” Dana said, retrieving it. “But no, I see your point. You hate it now, so I’m going to make the ultimate sacrifice and take it from you. I promise never to wear it in your presence.” She opened a closet, shoved the coat in and slammed the door.
Dana could be prickly, but she certainly had her moments. “So what now?” she asked as the guy on TV described what it was like to see his severed arm in a great white shark’s teeth.
Honor swallowed the sharp lump in her throat. “I don’t know. But I guess I can’t sleep with him anymore. I have a little pride, glove or no glove.”
“Good. It’s high time,” Dana said. “Now sit there and watch this next attack, and I’ll make us another round.”
FOR A GUY who taught mechanical engineering at a fourth-rate college in the middle of nowhere, Tom Barlow was packing them in.
At the university where he’d last taught, there’d been an actual engineering school, and his students were genuinely interested in the subject matter. Here, though, at tiny Wickham College, four of the original six attendees had stumbled into class, having left registration until too late, only taking mechanical engineering because it still had open slots. Two had seemed genuinely interested, until one, the girl, transferred to Carnegie Mellon.
But then, by the end of the second week, he suddenly had thirty-six students jammed into the little classroom. Each one of these new students was female, ranging in age from eighteen to possibly fifty-five. Suddenly, an astonishing array of girls and women had decided that mechanical engineering (whatever that was) had become their new passion in life.
The clothes were a bit of a problem. Tight, trashy, low-cut, low-riding, inappropriate. Tom tended to teach to the wall in the back of the room, not wanting to make eye contact with the hungry gazes of seventy-eight percent of his class.
He tried not to leave time for questions, as the Barbarian Horde, as he thought of them, tended to be inappropriate. Are you single? How old are you? Where’d you come from? Do you like foreign films/sushi/girls?
Then again, he needed this job. “Any questions?” he asked. Dozens of hands shot up. “Yes, Mr. Kearns,” he said gratefully to the one student in the class who was there out of interest in the subject.
According to his file, Jacob Kearns had been kicked out of MIT for doing drugs. He seemed on the straight and narrow now, at least, but Wickham College was a hundred steps down academically. Then again, Tom knew all about shooting himself in the foot, career-wise.
“Dr. Barlow, with the hovercraft project, I was wondering how you’d calculate the escape velocity?”
“Good question. The escape velocity is the speed at which the kinetic energy of your object, along with its gravitational potential energy, is zero. Make sense?” The Barbarian Horde (those who were listening) looked confused.
“Definitely,” Jacob said. “Thanks.”
Thirty seconds to the bell. “Listen up,” he said. “Your homework is to read chapters six and seven in your texts and answer all the study questions at the end of both as well as pass in your term project proposals. Those of you who flunked the hovercraft estimates have to do them again.” Hopefully, he could break the Horde with a ridiculous workload. “Anything else?”
A hand went up. One of the Barbarians, of course. “Yes?” he said briskly.
“Are you British?” she asked, getting a ripple of giggles from a third of the class, whose mental age appeared to be twelve.
“I’ve answered that in a previous class. Any other questions that pertain to mechanical engineering, then? No? Great. Cheerio.”
“Oh, my God, he said ‘Cheerio,’” said a blonde dressed like a Cockney prostitute.
The bell rang, and the Barbarian Horde surged toward his desk. “Mr. Kearns, please stay a minute,” Tom said.
Seven female students clustered around him. “So do you think I could, like, work for an architect or something?” one asked.
“I’ve no idea,” he answered.
“I mean, after this class.” She lowered her gaze to his mouth. Crikey. Made him want to shower.
“Pass the class first, then apply and see,” he said.
“Do you want to hang out at the pub, Tom?” asked another of the BH. “I’d love to buy you a drink.”
“That’d be inappropriate,” he answered.
“I’m totally legal,” she said with a leer.
“If you don’t have any questions related to the lesson today, get out, please.” He smiled to soften the words, and with a lot of pouty lips and hair tossing, the Barbarian Horde departed.
Tom waited till the other kids were out of earshot. “Jacob, would you be interested in interning for me?”
“Yeah! Sure! Um, doing what?”
“I customize airplanes here and there. Got a project coming up. It might be good on your CV.”
“What’s a CV?”
“A résumé.”
“Sure!” Jacob said again. “That’d be great.”
“You can’t be using, of course. Will that be a problem?”
The kid flushed. “No. I’m in NA and all that. Clean for thirteen months.” He pushed his hands into his pockets. “I have to pee in a cup every month to come here. The health office has my records.”
“Good. I’ll give you a shout when I need you.”
“Thanks, Dr. Barlow. Thanks a lot.”
Tom
