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I WOKE UP ON THE FLOOR next to the couch. I’d been dreaming about earthquakes and collapsing buildings. The sounds of thunderous destruction quickly resolved to someone banging on the door. I was still struggling to stand up when the door clicked open, and Pat and Emma pushed their way in.
I blinked stupidly and looked at my wrist, which didn’t help, as I wasn’t wearing a watch. I’d fallen off the couch and barely missed cracking my head on the coffee table, upon which sat a heap of still-ungraded papers and a half-empty mug of coffee.
“It’s five-thirty.” Emma plumped down on my couch. “Cocktail hour. Yes, I would like a glass of wine, since you asked. Hey, I brought a video for us to watch.”
“It’s already five-thirty? I slept through the whole afternoon. I was hoping to get through this stack of papers.”
“Why?” Pat asked. “Aren’t you on administrative leave?”
“I’ll have some of your Cabernet,” Emma said. “The one in the purple and pink box.”
“You’ll drink that? Sure. Pat? Coffee?”
“No thanks. No, on second thought, yeah. I’ll have coffee. Thanks.”
I got our drinks and the three of us settled on the couch. Emma took a few healthy gulps and put down her nearly empty wine glass on my coffee table. I quietly lifted her glass and slid a coaster underneath.
“So Molly,” Pat asked, “What happened?”
“Did they let you keep Officer Cutie Pie?” Emma chimed in. “Where is he? Is he here?”
“Emma, gross. He was like sixteen years old.”
“Did you get fired?” Pat asked.
“No, I did not get fired. Thanks for assuming that, though. No, it’s because, I don’t know, Dan thinks I’m getting burned out. He’s concerned about my well-being, I guess.”
“What did you do?” Pat asked.
“Yeah,” Emma echoed. “What did you do?”
“Nothing major. I forgot to erase the whiteboard after class. So Dan put me on administrative leave and arranged to have my classes covered.”
“Dan’s pretty efficient,” Emma said. “You know he already got a replacement for you on our committee. Are you not supposed to come to committee meetings?”
“I’m supposed to stay home and rest.”
“You two are on a committee together?” Pat asked.
“Committee on the Status of Women. We were supposed to have a meeting today. So who was there from College of Commerce?”
“You’ll love this,” Emma grimaced. “Rodge Cowper.”
“Oh, that’s an interesting choice,” I said.
“Isn’t it because of Rodge that everyone in your department has to keep your office doors open if you have a student in there?” Pat asked.
“Exactly. The Rodge Cowper Rule. So how did the meeting go?”
“Well,” Emma said, “Rodge came strutting in, you know how he is.”
“Covering his insecurity with a brittle shell of cartoonish machismo,” Pat said. “That poor guy is a midlife crisis on wheels. Did he lick his finger and smooth his eyebrows?”
“I don’t think Rodge actually does that,” I said.
“Finger guns?”
“He does do the finger guns.”
“So he walks into our meeting ten minutes late, right?” Emma said. “And we’re having a pretty serious conversation about campus safety and putting more call boxes in, stuff like that. So Rodge busts out with, ‘Hello ladies, I’m here to help you wage war on the nuclear family, the American male, and Christmas.’”
“Oh brother,” said Pat.
“So Betty Jackson says, ‘We love Christmas, Rodge. You should see our version of the Nutcracker.’”
“So Dan put you on leave and took you off your committees because you forgot to erase the whiteboard one time?” Pat asked.
“It wasn’t only that. The thing was, I’d left the class discussion notes up from when we went over The Goebbels Experiment.”
“Paid or unpaid leave?” Emma asked.
“I think it comes out of my sick leave,” I said.
“Not bad,” Emma mused. “Really? All you had to do was forget to erase the board?”
“There’s something else too,” I said. “I guess someone reported me for displaying unusual behavior at the last SRO session.”
“I don’t see why anyone would complain about that,” Emma said. “I thought it was the best faculty development session ever. Hey, can I move this stuff you have on the coffee table? What is this mess anyway?”
“Oh, these are the draft project proposals from the business planning class. I don’t trust Rodge to do a good job giving them feedback.”
“The writing, huh?” Pat asked. “Listen, I do what I can in intro comp, but I can’t spin straw into gold.”
“No, that’s not the problem,” I said. “The problem is, I’m looking at these plans, and I know some of my students are only doing this for the class credit, but there are some who are serious about trying to start these businesses. I’m seeing all of these shiny, naïve dream-bubbles that are about to get popped by the hatpin of reality.”
“The hatpin of reality?” Emma rolled her eyes. “Who says stuff like that?”
I gestured at the pile of papers. “One sports bar or restaurant or shoe store after another. They do the break-even analysis, they know there’s no way the business can survive, but they refuse to abandon the Dream. I don’t know why we even teach this class in an undergrad program. You’re not supposed to go out and start a business out of thin air. You’re supposed to work in the industry for a few years first. Build up your contact list, figure out what the customers want that they don’t already have. That’s what Donnie did.”
“Speaking of Donnie,” Pat said, “does he know what happened? How are you going to explain your unexpected vacation to him?”
“Don’t listen to Pat. Donnie doesn’t have to know about this. You don’t have to tell him anything. What’s wrong with wanting to start a restaurant, though? Why is that such a bad idea?”
“We have expensive inputs and an extremely price-conscious market on this side of the island. Add plenty of competition, fickle customers, and high fixed costs—”
Pat started to make exaggerated snoring noises. I ignored him.
“If you’re down near the hotels where all the tour—sorry, the visitors are, you might be able to make it on volume but otherwise, it’s tough. By the way, I think you’re not supposed to be looking at those. Unless you want to help me grade them?”
I got up to help myself to another glass of wine. I took Emma’s now-empty glass back for a refill too.
“Hey, Molly!” Emma was holding up one of the papers. “This is Sherry’s! Did you see it?”
“Emma, I don’t think you’re supposed to read those. I’m already in enough trouble. I don’t need a FERPA violation on my record too.” I returned with two brimming wine glasses and set them down on coasters.
Emma handed me Sherry’s paper.
“Read this.”
Sherry’s proposed product was a portable device that could detect and disrupt a wireless signal.
“Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. An original business idea. I’d actually buy this. Too bad it’s probably illegal.”
“I know! A wearable Wi-Fi jammer! I wonder if it can kill the Wi-Fi in the classroom. If it can, I want one.”
“Yeah, sounds pretty useful,” Pat said. “Sign me up!”
“I just busted one little princess in my class,” Emma said. “She claimed she needed her laptop to take notes, so I’ve been letting her use it. So after class, I saw she’d been posting messages, during my lecture if you can believe it. So hungover LOL, BIO 101 lecture so board, spelled B-O-A-R-D, Nakamura ruined my weekend, stuff like that. If I could block Wi-Fi in my classroom, I wouldn’t have to worry about any of that. Or about students who use cell phones to cheat on tests.”
“How did you know what your student posted?” I asked.
“She friended me at the beginning of the semester, and I guess she forgot. So, you want us to take these papers back up to your department?”
“I want to write some feedback on them first.”
“Didn’t Dan tell you not to?” Emma said. “You gonna disobey your dean?”
“I’m not sure I trust Rodge to—”
“That’s Dan’s decision,” Emma interrupted. “Not yours. Come on, let’s watch a movie.”
“Is it a comedy? I hope it’s a comedy.”
Emma’s movie was not a comedy. It was a depressing drama about a doting mother making one sacrifice after another for her self-centered, ungrateful child.
“Why doesn’t anyone call the daughter out on her self-destructive behavior?” I complained. “Everyone’s indulging her!”
“Hit a little close to home?” Pat asked.
“Maybe. I feel sorry for the mother. I have no sympathy for the daughter. And this movie is not lifting my spirits.”
“Molly, you have to watch it to the end,” Emma said.
“Yeah, maybe there’s a happy ending,” Pat said. “Maybe the ungrateful daughter dies.”
“That wouldn’t be a happy ending, because it’s still sad for the mother. There’s no good way out of this except maybe the daughter getting a personality transplant. Come on, if Davison made a bad decision and ended up dead because of it, Donnie would be devastated.”
“Well, I want to watch the movie,” Pat said.
“I guess I don’t understand the appeal of sad movies. Why should I pay to be depressed? I can feel depressed for free.”
“Just watch the rest of it,” Emma commanded. I did.
“Well, that was nice and depressing,” I said when it was all over. “Thanks. Now it’s too late to start grading.”
“You don’t have to do any grading,” Pat said. “Rodge is teaching your classes, and you’re not even supposed to go back onto campus.”
“Yeah, Molly. Dan told you to take a break.”
“You’re going to have a lot of free time now,” Pat added. “I know doing nothing while someone else teaches your students is probably a control freak’s worst nightmare, but you’ll have to get used to it.”
“I think we have time for another movie,” Emma said.
“Wait. Are you saying I’m a control freak? Do you both think that?”
Emma concentrated on queuing up the next movie, and Pat acted like he hadn’t heard me.