On Cross Campus, a festive air seemed to soften the edges of the pale yellow stone walls of Yale. Four male students, two of them shirtless, tore through the newly planted grass at the center of the quadrangle, grunting their way through a game of Ultimate Frisbee. One young woman, wearing white shorts and a Harvard T-shirt, lay listless on the edge of grass, her back against a blackened wall. Her eyes were closed. Her face was pockmarked with acne scars. Three blue examination books rested carelessly on her lap. Subject: Organic Chemistry. Grade: in the thick red slash of a hurried marker, ninety-three. Her hair was scraggly and unwashed. The armpits of her T-shirt had yellowed. Yet a beatific smile was on her face. And the sun seemed warmer than ever.
At the other side of the quadrangle, another young woman, in a short, black skirt and a black blouse that seemed a second skin over her slim and attractive body, danced wildly on the grass. From the third floor of Calhoun College, Madonna’s “Holiday” pulsed through two speakers. Her name was Alesha Brown. A piece of paper was in her hand. Hol-i-day! Cel-e-brate!
“Alesh! Hey! I just heard!” another girl shrieked from the dorm window with the blaring speakers. “Aiyyyi! Three ninety-two kicks ass in Cambridge!” Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!
Alesha Brown smiled and danced and waved the piece of paper over her head as her roommate started dancing, too, each mimicking the other and swaying to the rhythm of the music, their hands outstretched toward the heavens. Let’s celebrate!
“Alesh! To Rudy’s, honey pie! I’ll call Marla and Tina! Pa-r-ty!”
“Can’t! See ya at dinner, Sweet Face! Got one last thing to do! And I’m outta here!” Alesh yelled, still swinging her arms as she planted her bare feet in the espadrilles she had shed on the grass. Her shoulder-length chestnut hair shimmered in the sunlight. As she skipped toward Harkness Hall, her pointy breasts bounced against her blouse. One of the boys playing Frisbee missed a long pass because he was staring at this beauty sprinting past them, at her sleek, long legs and tight waist, and that magnificent, perfectly protruding ass so out of reach for all of them. Alesha Brown was gorgeous. She was savvy. Now she was on her way to Harvard Law School. Almost.
She pulled open the heavy wooden doors of Harkness and immediately dashed into one of the restrooms next to the German department’s office. Alesha strode into an empty stall, peed quickly and brushed her hair with a long pocket comb from her purse. She splashed water on her face, rinsed her mouth and double-checked the row and schedule of birth control pills on the small pink plastic grid of pills. She glanced at her watch. It was five minutes past 4:00 p.m. She stared at a test schedule somebody had pilfered from the hallways of Harkness and posted in the restroom. TAKE BACK THE DAY! somebody had scrawled on it in heavy, blue ink. Two full weeks of finals remained for everyone else, but not for seniors. Cel-e-brate!
Alesha Brown knocked on Werner Hopfgartner’s door. She imagined the old professor looking up slowly and frowning. He was probably reading the article on Max Frisch he had just published, the one he had bragged about in class, the kind he had regularly published with the greatest of ease years ago. Alesha remembered a conversation Hopfgartner had casually mentioned before, that “young bastard Rittman” cutting Hopfgartner with, “You must be so looking forward to doing nothing,” and Hopfgartner stiffening angrily in his chair as if the Jonathan P. Harkness Professor of Literature and Philosophy should be ready for the trash heap!
She rapped sharply on the door again, and heard a chair slowly drag across the wooden floor. Professor Hopfgartner had also bragged to her about other forthcoming “excellent articles” on Thomas Bernhard, and another on Christa Wolf, and another, all in one final, glorious year for old Werner Hopfgartner. It was as if Hopfgartner were collecting gems and admiring them. But of course, Alesha had never seen the prof in the stacks, only Helmut, his little gnome, oblivious to the world, to everything and everybody, in the darkness surrounded by books.
“Yes? Alesha, mein hübsches Mädchen, please come in.”
The professor’s large basement office in Harkness Hall resembled a grand, disheveled closet. An ornate wooden desk was positioned diagonally across a far corner, facing out, so the old man could easily scan his lair. Behind the professor, near the fireproof ceiling, a row of rectangular windows revealed, through heavy wrought-iron bars, an occasional pair of sneakers pounding the sidewalk of Wall Street.
Against one beige wall was a row of metal cabinets, about chest high, on top of which were more books, piles of papers and a Styrofoam cup. In front of these cabinets, a bare, wooden chair was angled toward the professor’s desk, for supplicants. Here Alesha sat, crossing her legs tightly in front of her. Against the other wall was a comfortable, blue sofa with a glass-topped coffee table in front of it, strewn with more papers and copies of articles. Surrounding the hallway door, like a multicolored arch, were teak bookshelves. Alesha tapped her foot impatiently on the linoleum floor and possessed a cheery look about her.
“Well, Alesha, your final, right? Excellent as always,” Professor Hopfgartner said in a thick, German accent, yet still enunciating every English word clearly, tediously, as if he directed a spelling bee. He handed her the blue books, glancing at the supple roundness of her breasts. Werner Hopfgartner’s eyes, like quivery blue moons, darted to and fro. His face had the chiseled look of salmon-colored granite. He flicked off his reading glasses and poured himself another shot of bourbon. The liquor was never far from his fingers.
“My God! Didn’t know you’d already finished grading. I’m so psyched! This is great!” she squeaked, sliding her body forward to the edge of the chair.
“You need only apply yourself, my dear girl. I’ve told you that many times before. Remember last year? One of the best in Contemporary German Literature. And you did it all on your own,” Professor Hopfgartner said, not looking at Alesha, flipping through a stack of term papers on his desk. Apparently he had the wrong class. “I don’t know what happened at the end of this semester. I didn’t see you at the seminar for—what?—the last four or five weeks?”
“I’m sorry, Professor Hopfgartner. Really and honestly. God, this last semester was a killer. Law school apps, my senior paper–I pulled two all-nighters in a row, and almost a third one, to finish it! I almost died,” she said, not really worried, tapping her heel against the floor to some unknown rhythm. She crossed her legs again, dangling her arms indifferently by the sides of the chair. Even if it took three hours and she missed dinner, she wasn’t coming out of this room until it was over. This was it. She had just won her own glorious ticket to ride. Just this, and she could finally walk away from Yale, free and clear.
“I know you’re a smart girl. Lebendig. I saw it in your eyes immediately as soon as you walked into my class last year. A smart girl with a great future. Beauty, a good mind and something special. Something extra. A thing many others don’t have and can’t learn. Guts. Fight. Hunger,” he said, still pretending to look for something she knew he didn’t have. “But this semester, well. Maybe it was just too much to do. Too short a time.”
“I almost did everything. Except for this class. I thought I could catch up later,” Alesha said in a pleading voice, high-pitched like a plaintive, feline growl. “I loved your class last year! You’re the best professor I’ve had at Yale! I just had to take your class this semester. Absolutely had to! And now I’ve ruined everything! Don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t saved me at mid-term! Don’t know what I’m going to do now.” Tears were dripping over her rosy cheeks. She stared directly at Hopfgartner. Her foot was still rapping the floor.
“Now, Alesha. Everything will be fine. You are an excellent student. There’s no need for this. Your final paper isn’t here, right?”
“Oh, my God! I tried so hard! I was trying to do everything! I just simply couldn’t! I don’t know what to do, Professor Hopfgartner. Please help me! This is the only thing I have left,” she said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “What am I going to tell my parents if I can’t graduate?”
“Nein, nein. That’s not going to happen, my sweet Alesha. We have an understanding, richtig? No need for panic. But you do know, that paper was worth a third of your grade. It was an important paper. Some of your classmates spent months working on it. I don’t know how I can dismiss it completely.”
“Maybe this is asking too much. I’ll say it. I don’t know what you’ll think of me. I enjoyed being with you in March. It was the best thing that happened to me all year. I mean it. It was absolutely thrilling! I dreamed about it over and over again. There! I’ve said it! I just don’t know what to do,” Alesha said seductively, in a husky voice this time, at the edge of her chair. She brushed back her chestnut hair again, thought about winking at the old geezer, but knew she had to play her part in this pleading, painstaking chase. A crude move could easily ruin it. As soon as he stood up, she stood up, too, seemingly quivering, her back straight like a rod, waiting with her eyes as wide open as his.
Professor Hopfgartner strode slowly toward her until his bluish, burgundy jacket brushed against her chest. Although he was taller than she—just under six feet, while Alesha was five-feet-eight inches tall—she was statuesque, muscular, angular, even lithe, but he only stocky, creakily slow, stiff, like an upright turtle just in sight of a delectable treat. Werner Hopfgartner raised a chubby, blotchy hand to her cheek of silk and light and caressed it, almost as a grandfather would.
“Are you sure about this, mein Liebling? Do only what is right. For you.”
“Yes,” Alesha whispered, edging closer to him, “This is what I want.”
She reached up and kissed him slowly on the mouth. His whiskers were rough, and he smelled of bourbon and stale cigar smoke. Her lips fluttered over his mouth, and just before she pulled away she flicked her tongue ever so delicately over the dry edge of his upper lip.
“I enjoy being with you,” she repeated as she stepped back, clasped his hand between hers, kissed it and lifted it gently to her left breast. Werner Hopfgartner’s eyes were owl-like. He took another step back, almost coming to attention as he gazed at a full view of his prize. He marched to the door and locked it.
The professor turned off the fluorescent light above them and flicked on the reading lamp on his desk. As he pulled the window curtains shut, she glanced at the wall clock and noticed it was just past 4:30 p.m. Almost perfect, she thought. Already the halls were quiet without classes, and the finals that had started at 2:00 p.m. were about to end. The last secretary would also be gone exactly at 5:00 p.m. She would give the old man a splendid farewell to his penultimate year. He turned around, and Alesha was already waiting for him on the couch. He took off his jacket and folded it on the seat of his desk chair.
“My dear, come here,” he murmured to her hoarsely, and she slid closer to him and began kissing him ever so slowly on his neck, over his cheeks, on his lips. At mid-term, Alesha had been too quick, too aggressive. Oh, how the old man had chastised her! He exhorted her to take a certain pace, stepping back and threatening to stop, then and there, if she insisted on her haphazard idiocy. But Alesha Brown was a smart girl. She learned quickly. She had been almost delicate by the end of that first tryst, pleasing him to the very pit of his stomach. Much, much better than a Sarah Goodman, Hopfgartner had once mumbled, who would always be cursed with a certain clumsiness.
Alesha breathed heavily, and fluttered tiny kisses over the professor’s face, waiting for his next move. If it took a century, she didn’t care. This was easy, it was relatively quick, and last time—although she hated to admit it to herself—she had almost finished. The old guy could really do it if he was given half a chance. Soon she would be off to Europe for two months with her roommates.
She felt one of the professor’s hands, a gnarly, impatient claw, grab one of her breasts, and she moaned softly. The hand jumped from breast to breast, intermittently squeezing hard and fingering her nipples lightly. Alesha closed her eyes, rested her head against the back of the couch and pushed her chin up as Werner Hopfgartner greedily licked her neck and panted, “Ja, meine Schöne, ja.” Suddenly, another hand swooped in between her legs and grabbed her crotch roughly. She was reminded of a wrestler hoisting an opponent by the trunks for an explosive body slam. Alesha spread her legs willingly. She thrust her hips into that clamp of fingers, yet he pulled quickly away. Only a test, a taunt, a declaration to invade a boundary at will. The swoon and whim of power. “Ja, mein Alles.”
“Please,” he said quietly, tugging at her blouse. Alesha pulled her black blouse over her head one hand at a time. This time she didn’t immediately remove her brassiere, but waited for him to do it. Professor Hopfgartner pinched it open from the front, with nearly a casual ease. Alesha’s big, brown eyes feigned surprise. He kissed her lower neck, his face like sandpaper, and plunged into the soft whiteness of her breasts, sucking them in spasms, as if gagging on the plethora of skin and fat, and—Alesha swore later—biting her nipples until they were raw. Oh, and how delicious these pinches were! Her skin almost breaking. A precipice. Then a sweet reprieve. Was she already somewhere high above Place de la Révolution or Montparnasse, a light breeze dancing across a darkened terrace of red and yellow roses? Or was she actually still at Yale?
She sensed another hand rub the inside of her thighs rhythmically, the gray and shiny head still attached to her chest like a lamprey. Alesha stared at the gray cabinets in front of them and imagined a cloudy afternoon, a lonely fountain with cherubic angels. Professor Hopfgartner suddenly grunted in a protracted, phlegmatic cough, and just as abruptly a claw yanked aside the crotch of her panties and thrust two sharp fingernails into her vagina. She yelped, and then exhaled rapidly, rewarding him with another languorous moan. “Ja, meine Schöne.” His fingers flickered inside her like tiny ballerina legs. Alesha began to relax and open up and steady her breathing with soft little whimpers. Her skin was radiating warmth, and she was wet. She was a very smart little girl.
“Let me kiss you down there, Professor Hopfgartner. I want so much to please you,” she pleaded, almost out of breath, her body arched on the sofa seat and nearly sliding off. So she was fucking a dirty old man who was so insecure, so weird, that she hadn’t even seen him naked the first time. That wasn’t going to happen today. Hey, doggie-style was sweet for her too. But this time Alesha Brown wanted a good hard look at it.
Werner Hopfgartner stared at her with huge, blue orbs. Astonished? Daydreaming? Simply calculating his fortune? He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his khakis and pulled his pants and boxer shorts to his knees. The professor looked as if he were sitting on a newfangled sofa-toilet. Before Alesha kneeled in front of him, she unhooked her skirt and dropped it on the floor behind her with an effortless twirl of her body.
Even in this near darkness, she could see that his skin was a glimmering white, like the scales on a lizard’s belly. His paunch hung above his little soldier and created what seemed like a rocky, white cave. Rocky because enormous ridges of wrinkles, more like wavy folds and creases, crisscrossed his abdomen and dangled from his thighs. And white because his hair was frosty, brittle, only softer and darker atop his testicles. A faint acidic scent wafted up from his loins, as well as the much more overwhelming odor of the elderly. The smell of fine dust and decay. She kissed his little soldier, but she was taken aback. It was tiny. A wrinkled, deflated pinky! Could this have been what had really nailed her before?
“Ja, mein Liebling, ja. Nur langsamer, bitte. Verstanden?”
“Natürlich, mein Herr.”
It seemed hours before he started to come around. She knew it would take time. In March it had taken at least this long, if not longer, with her hand blindly groping at the bulge in his trousers until her wrist was sore. Now she was clearly focused. The thing-in-itself in front of her without a barrier between them. What would Heidegger have said about possessing such a delicate morsel of an object? Salty and almost creamy. Like the underside of kugel. Alesha nearly laughed, but quickly stifled herself. The professor would not have understood. Ah, was that a tingle? A precious quiver from the near-dead? Finally this old soldier heard the clarion call to another good fight.
Like a water balloon slowly being filled, the professor’s penis became erect at a ceremonious pace. And she encouraged it heartily. Alesha licked and caressed it, teased it and withdrew. She barely seemed to notice his studied silence. She herself was almost hyperventilating, trying to maintain that flow of interest as a torrent. To aggrandize it. To convert play-acting into being. Anything less, and she would have dissolved into tearful laughter. Allow a sliver of doubt into drama, and the impossible would metamorphose into the ridiculous.
“Professor, please, my God! I can’t wait any longer!” she screamed and tore off her panties. In the next instant, she was prostrate on the sofa, still panting furiously like a quarter horse, and he was inside of her. His talons clenched her perfect, half-moon hips. His face flushed with blood, gasping.
Perhaps Werner Hopfgartner would have been no match for these muscular thighs and perfectly tapered back and rock-like biceps and triceps had Alesha released herself completely to him. She gave him only what she imagined he could take, and then just a bit more for herself, enough to keep her happy and on the way toward ultimate freedom. Back and forth. Slowly and then a little faster. To one side and then gently to the other. Like the only perfect song they could have between them. She moaned, this time for real. She was definitely on her way out of the nether world of New Haven.
And then something awfully strange happened. Stranger than even a 74-year-old man having sex with a young vixen of twenty-one. Just as she had almost willed herself to the precipice, despite flashes in her mind that she was fucking a bowel of oatmeal, a sharp slap stung her behind like a splash of acid. Slap! Slap! Slap! Alesha tried to wiggle away, but he had her now. The pain was bright against her skin. She thought she saw red spots in the darkness. She pushed against him more forcefully. Slap! Slap! Slap! She liked it. Oh, such exquisite pain! Slap! Slap! Slap! She pushed harder and screamed. Who was fucking whom now? Slap! Slap! Slap! His fingers were like bait hooks on her thighs. Slap! Slap! Slap! What utter, impossible sweetness! What tremendous power! Slap! Slap! Slap! She exploded like a super nova. For years thereafter, she would fondly remember that moment of heaven and think of how he had done her such an unexpected favor. When Alesha Brown finally came down from her black universe, she heard the professor’s own sonorous explications of joy. “Mein Gott! Mein Gott!”
After a few minutes of silence, she finally wiggled free. He immediately turned off the reading lamp, and they dressed in complete darkness.
“Ready, Alesha, my dear?”
“Yes. Here I am.”
The fluorescent lamp above their heads flickered and snapped into an almost painful brightness around them. Alesha sat on the sofa, combing her hair, not one stitch out of place. The professor stood at the doorway, still without his jacket but otherwise unruffled, the crease on his khakis razor-sharp. Only his hair betrayed any evidence of the previous tussle, spiky at the temples, matted down with sweat on his forehead. Alesha stared at the professor and almost giggled, but said nothing. A wet spot, the size of a quarter, punctuated the round bulge on his crotch. Suddenly it seemed to her an endearing symbol to remember him by.
“That was quite wonderful,” he said, still motionless by the door, ready for this final exit.
“For me too,” she said, picking up her purse and slinging it over her shoulder. “I’m going to miss you so much.”
“You have been a wonderful student. An excellent one. And I am confident about your future. If you ever need my recommendation, I will give you only the best one. You deserve nothing less.”
“Thank you, Professor Hopfgartner. Maybe I’ll stop by before graduation. Please take care of yourself.”
“I’ll certainly be here. Good luck, again,” he said, the door open. She reached up and kissed him on the lips again, and this time he seemed shocked, his eyes bulging out of their sockets in a fiery azure. But the hallways were deserted. There was no one around. Only a few hallway lights were still on.
As Alesha Brown walked away and pushed through the hallway doors—she turned around for one last look—she saw Werner Hopfgartner felt quite satisfied with the perfection of all of this, as if he had just sipped the last drop of a fine and exquisite whiskey. That was the look on his face. Soon the old man would begin his long walk home, and that wonderful burning sensation around his loins would make his face glow pleasantly, too. She imagined before the professor readied himself to leave that he would listen carefully, because if Hopfgartner was anything he was careful to the point of paranoia, trying to detect any inadvertent squeak of a chair moving, or a sneeze, or even the click click click of a computer keyboard. But if there was nothing, if Harkness Hall seemed empty of life, then Professor Hopfgartner would lock his office door, walk home and relive every second with her in his mind.