Alexandra Sokoloff - The Unseen

“Oh, I never talk about writing projects. Stops the internal momentum,” Laurel said lightly. And I wouldn’t talk to you about it if I did have an idea, she thought to herself. I know your kind. Sharks.

And even as she thought it, a voice spoke behind her.

“Don’t trust him.”

She turned, startled. Hovering on her other side was the good-looking professor she’d seen with the groupies, now sans nubile hangers-on. He was even more attractive up close… Laurel could feel his energy as a kind of heat radiating from him.

There was obviously a history between the two men—she could sense Kornbluth beginning to bristle.

“Excuse me, but I hardly see—” Konbluth started.

“No, obviously you don’t. Don’t you have anything better to do than bully the new hires? This guy”—the tall, freckled young professor leaned in closer to Laurel and nodded at Kornbluth, whose face has turned three shades of red—“the legend in his own mind. Don’t trust him. He’ll stab you in the back just as soon as look at you, won’t you, Kornbluth?”

“Now see here, Cody—,” Kornbluth started.

The other professor—Cody?—cocked his head and looked at Kornbluth with a frown. “Is that your phone? Might be your agent calling.” He gestured to Kornbluth’s hand and Kornbluth automatically glanced at his Treo.

“Hah!” Cody pointed at him. “Made you look.”

Kornbluth shot him a disgusted look and tromped off through the milling faculty, leaving Laurel and Cody behind.

“Consider yourself rescued,” Professor Cody grinned at her.

Why does everyone think I need rescuing? Laurel wondered, but she had no time for a response before Cody barreled on. “Kornbluth is the Great White of the department. Shark, I mean—no race allusions intended. Don’t let the diminutive stature and lack of any quantifiable social skills fool you. He’s a killer. Any new hire is looked on as a threat to be annihilated.”

“A threat—” Laurel started, but he was already answering her.

“—to his rise in the department. Isn’t that what we all want, here in the Bermuda Triangle of academia?”

It certainly was beginning to occur to her.

“The man is just about strangling himself with his own ambition,” Cody said. “Of course, when I use the term ‘ambition’ about this crowd I’m using it very, very loosely. He is right about one thing, though—it’s all about the money.”

The brash and annoyingly attractive man in front of her had not a trace of a Southern accent. In fact, there was a suspiciously Valley lilt to his voice. As if he’d read her mind, he pointed to his own chest.

“Brendan Cody, CBT.” He meant Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Everyone in the room so far—besides Kornbluth—had introduced themselves by their specialty. Brendan Cody continued, rattling off: “BA/MA Berkeley, doctorate USF, thirty-three, six-one, black and blue—that always sounds ominous, doesn’t it?—love piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.”

He was so jovial and was talking so fast that Laurel wondered if he might be manic as well as being a little drunk; certainly he radiated the kind of slightly out-of-control charisma you often found in cyclothymic bipolarity. Also, she knew USF, University of San Francisco, to be a Jesuit school. Which meant Irish probably. More shades of Matt, which means you steer away. Laurel opened her mouth to excuse herself, feign a bathroom run or something, when he said abruptly:

“What were you doing before, when you were looking over the room? Categorizing?” She was surprised that he’d noticed, and guessed what she was doing. He nodded sagely. “You Myers-Briggs people are all alike. I’m ESFP, by the way. Myers-Briggs passes the time, but what’s way more interesting is identifying the out-and-out psychotics.”

“The—what?” she said, startled.

“Because statistically, there are some. Thirty-six full professors, twenty associates, twenty-five teaching assistants—chances are we’ve got three full psychotics, two associate psychotics, and two and a half assistant psychos. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

It did, but Laurel wasn’t entirely sure what it was making her think.

Cody reached out to a passing waiter and snagged two more glasses of champagne, handing Laurel one without missing a beat in his monologue. “The university environment is a hotbed anyway,” he informed her, as he clinked his glass with hers and took a healthy swig of champagne. “Cheers. It’s a virtual Petri dish for nurturing neuroses. Gifted and sensitive minds, ambition, stress, sex, debt. It’s a wonder more people don’t snap.” Despite the weirdness of the conversation, Laurel was beginning to suspect he was hitting on her, which must have been an automatic gesture on his part rather than a sincere one, as clearly he had his pick of teaching assistants.

“Not only that, but I think the collective angst of previous generations imprints on the entire environment. And magnifies with each subsequent generation.”

By this time Laurel was almost certain Brendan Cody was manic—or even on something. At the same time, she was acutely aware that, one-sided as it was, it was the longest adult conversation she’d had since her arrival in North Carolina.

“Your specialty has been occupational testing, right?” He faked a yawn. “Earth-shattering—”

“I love occupational testing,” she said, bristling. “It’s about helping people recognize their own talents—and potential—things they didn’t even know they could do.”

“Why, that’s delightfully fresh and uncynical of you, Dr. MacDonald. But what about your hidden gifts? Is conducting occupational testing tapping your hidden potential? Is this what you wanted to do when you grew up?” He was being facetious, of course, but to Laurel’s dismay she found herself suddenly on the verge of tears.

Brendan Cody seemed oblivious. “How did you end up in God’s country, anyway? You look like you’re practically dying of culture shock. Nice dress, by the way. No one in this room can look at anyone else,” he said, and his voice was casual, but he bent closer to her when he said it, and her heart tightened in her chest.

Exactly like Matt exactly like Matt exactly like Matt

And suddenly she was back in the dream, in the dark hall… with the curtains blowing, the smell of jasmine, the mirror… the mirror…

No. No. Not again.

She backed up from Brendan Cody who was looking at her with concern, and she saw he was speaking but she couldn’t hear a word, a word…

And once again, she fled—fled the room, fled the party, fled brash young Professor Brendan Cody, fled her colleagues and her department chair, without so much as a good-bye.

Outside the University Club, Laurel walked blindly on the oak-lined paths into the deepening sunset, with the dark spiked silhouettes of Gothic buildings around her, and no idea where she was going.

Great… that’s just great. You can’t even make it through a cocktail party. How do you think you’re going to survive the year? she berated herself.

What am I doing here? What have I done? I’ve torpedoed my entire life, I’ve landed in the middle of nowhere, and I’m going to be fired if I don’t come up with some knockout proposal by… I don’t even know by when.

She laughed, but it was a strangled sound; she was again dangerously close to tears. Brendan Cody’s questions taunted her, like hives prickling under her skin: “And what about your hidden gifts, Professor MacDonald? Is this what you wanted to do when you grew up?”