Chapter 5
It’s beena busy week since Emma ran out on me. Aside from Zola somehow escaping my apartment once, the new living arrangements are working out well. I’ve met my new neighbor, Eva, and her dog Oliver. Vincente has been over to see the place, and tonight we are out for night-before-the-first-day-of-program drinks.
Unlike last week, I am not inspired to take anyone home. Perhaps it is that we spent too much time talking about the upcoming year of teaching or that my mind is elsewhere with the move, but I didn’t encounter anyone that interested me. Even Vincente hasn’t let his eyes wander much. He’s married but still has opinions, and sometimes I think he’s more interested in my sex life than his own, which he calls “playing by the rules.”
But now, our conversation centers on the upcoming year. As one of the more senior faculty members of our university, I have a better chance of choosing my work. All of the faculty are busy as hell, but I get to pick my courses, and Vincente, a decade my junior, has less influence over what he works on.
“It’s a perfect topic,” he rants. “Gamification and environmentalism are both hot right now. I can’t believe the director isn’t going to add it to the curriculum.”
I grunt in sympathy. Our university has a new director managing the full-time MBA program, and there’s been a bit of upheaval over it. Our previous director stepped down because of health issues, or at least that’s the story. Unlike the previous two directors, he is not staying on as a professor, which makes me believe that the split was less amicable than the university presented.
“Director Greco hasn’t approached you about making any changes, has he?”
I shake my head. This year, I’m already taking on more than I would like. I have one full-time MBA and two undergraduate courses per term, and I’m expected to turn in one new case study a year in addition to publishing a book. And don’t forget about the consulting work.
For a man with a net worth in the eight figures, I shouldn’t be so busy. But outside of the university, I only have my cat and my ex-stepdaughter. My mother died a few years ago, my father before that, and I never had children of my own. Leaving the tech industry for academia wiped the slate clean, as most of my friends didn’t have time for someone they couldn’t network with.
It was a rude awakening, but I probably would have done the same thing.
“How do you think he’s doing, anyway?” Vincente asks. He flags the bartender down for another beer.
“The new director?” He nods. “He doesn’t have a straightforward job.”
Vincente laughs. “That is an understatement. I can’t imagine having to lead experts in leadership. It must feel like everyone’s looking over your shoulder all the time.”
Kind of like the expectations everyone has when they hear my last name.
“No one’s happy with an outside hire,” I add. “Especially not one with such a history of fundraising.”
Vincente makes a face of disgust. Even among a group of academics that understand the bottom line, no one enjoys fundraising. “You teach Change Management; surely you have some thoughts.”
I point at Vincente. “See. Exactly that.”
Vincente laughs, and I get away with that non-answer, and the conversation moves on to something else.
Back in my new apartment hours later, I prepare for bed. Zola sits in a wooden bowl I have on the table reserved for her. She never sits in it just right, her weight off to one side enough that I worry she’s going to tip the bowl over, but she never does. At least, not this bowl, anyway.
There’s also a pinecone in it. She refuses to sit in the bowl if I take the pinecone out.
I flop onto the mattress. At some point Zola will move to the bed with me, but for now, she’s happy with the bowl and pinecone, so I figure I’ll have some “alone time.” I rest my hand on my dick over the black briefs.
My mind drifts back, as it has often this past week, to Emma.
I don’t know why Emma ran out, and I’ve played it over and over in my mind since then. I made sure she felt safe, her friends knew where she was, she’d found the making out in the car hot, her kisses and the taste of her pussy were all signaling to me that she had been enjoying herself.
In my sex life, I’ve always found that things are never straightforward and simple, but I am frustrated that Emma just ran without talking about it. Bottling things up does not make for satisfying sex.
Perhaps it’s best then. I couldn’t be that for her, somehow, and besides, she’s gone back to the States, and I’ll never see her again.
That doesn’t mean I can’t think about it, though. I remember getting to my knees in front of Emma and allow myself to think about how that would have played out; using my lips, tongue, and teeth on her until she shoved her hands into my hair and ground onto my face. Or maybe she’d come fast, desperate for me.
My dick hardens, and I shove the waistband down, taking a firm grip. I close my eyes and stroke, thinking about fucking her right there in the hallway after she’s come, or walking her back to my bed. How would I have fucked her? I don’t know why she ran away, but I hope she would want something other than lights off and under-the-covers sex. Maybe she’d?—
On the other side of the wall, a raucous barking starts up, so loud it makes me jump, my hand leaving my dick as if guilty of something.
“Oliver! Shut up!” Eva shouts, loud enough to be heard over the barks. “God damnit!”
I’ve heard Oliver a few times through the wall; usually, he barks when someone’s at her door, but he quiets down quickly. Eva, I almost never hear, though she has a loud voice. It’s not as loud as Oliver, apparently. I wait until all is quiet and then start up again, keeping my mouth shut because while Oliver is loud, I don’t want to risk my neighbor hearing me.
But not thirty seconds later, Oliver barks again, and I have to listen to Eva repeat her admonishments.
I stroke myself again, much quieter this time, nearly holding my breath. A few strokes in, Oliver barks. I sit up, gesturing wildly to the empty room. I’m not making any noise, but somehow, Oliver is barking at me. I live next door to a masturbation detection alarm with four legs and supersonic hearing.
There goes my sex life.
My father would hate this,I think as I walk into the university building on Monday. It’s fairly unremarkable from the outside; a tan brick front that looks much like any other building in the district of Borgo, but inside houses one of the best International MBA programs in the world.
That wouldn’t have mattered to him, though.
Offredi men don’t teach; they do!
We don’t work for other people.
When I was your age…
That one almost stops me in my tracks. Because in two years, that sentence will end with “…I was dead.”
I heard my dad start that sentence plenty of times. When I was your age, I was putting food on the table by going door to door. When I was your age, I made my first million. When I was your age…
Dad had always wanted me to take the same path that he had. He wanted me to start as he did, with nothing in my pockets, and he did the best he could to make that a reality. I was supposed to make my own path, and when it was easier for me than it had been for him—at first—that had made him angry.
The Offredi name took me far in life because when people heard it, doors opened. Maybe they thought I would lead them to my dad. So, despite Dad trying his hardest, I was never short of opportunities. Teaching business to young, wide-eyed students is one of them, and although my father would hate having a son who is a lowly professor, I take a deep satisfaction in knowing that it was my—our—last name that got me the job.
And now, instead of refusing to help the next generation, I have helped hundreds of MBA students elevate their careers and success. Where my dad refused to reach down and lend a hand, I am building stairs.
I trot up the stairs to the first floor where my office is. Technically, it’s not the first day of the program, as courses won’t formally start for two weeks, but there is a week reserved for orientation and then a week to discuss current events’ impact on business. I’ll be attending a few sessions plus meetings within my department.
I’ve already been over the curriculum and the schedule, and there’s not much for me to do but show my face today.
My office is small—a long line in a hallway of equally small offices. I say hello to a few colleagues and give polite head nods to the few that are new. When I get to my office, I close the door behind me, set my bag down on the desk, and slump into my seat.
I didn’t expect the walk in to dredge up so many thoughts about my father. Even decades after his death, he still lingers like a specter in my life.
If Dad was still alive, what would I say? What would he say?
There’s nothing like the death of a loved one to make you realize how little you knew them. I thought—hoped, maybe—that someday there would be a reconciliation between us. That someday I’d work for him, alongside him, after having made my own way. After I’d made him proud, I guess.
Instead, he died suddenly, an aneurism when he was fifty-eight. Not that fifty-eight is terribly young—I snort at the thought—but Dad had still been at the top of his game.
And his will had been a shock. Two silent investors I hadn’t known existed had the first right of refusal to buy his shares in the import company he’d built. The rest of his assets—namely, money—went to me, his only recognized child and the man he’d told to make his own way his entire life.
I didn’t know what to make of that. He didn’t want me to have the business, but he gave me all his money when he’d refused to seed my first startup, when he’d refused to pay for my college, when he’d refused…
Well, regardless, here I am about to teach the basics of business to the bright minds of the future.
There’s a knock on the door and at my curt, “yes,” it swings open to reveal Vincente. “Hey, feeling good for the first day?”
I shed my thoughts and shake Vincente’s hand. “Ready to teach Business Analytics to a bunch of twenty-year-olds?” I ask, naming my first course of the year that’ll start in two weeks. “Absolutely.”
“Not quite Organizational Behaviors,” he teases, naming his own course, “so I’m sure you can handle it.”
I walk back around my desk and pull a few things out of my bag that I don’t need before I sling it over my shoulder.
“Wait,” Vincente says. “You’ve been attacked.”
My brow wrinkles in confusion, and he gestures at my gray sleeve. I twist my arm and see a collection of short, black hairs on the back of my elbow, where it’s hard for me to see.
“Zola got you again.”
“Shit. How does she always know exactly where to sit so that I can’t see it? I swear to god I left my jacket on the bed for thirty seconds.”
“She’s the devil,” Vincente points out. Zola hates him, but he’s also not a cat person.
We take a few minutes to get my jacket off and give the sleeve a vigorous rubbing. “I need to bring a lint roller and stash it in my drawer,” I grumble.
“Or get rid of the cat.”
“No wonder she hates you.”
“She hates everyone.”
Dressed once again, we make our way out to the hallway, and I close my door behind us. “She likes me.”
He eyes me skeptically. Just before we moved to the new apartment, Zola made her displeasure well-known, and I had a few angry scratches on my arms. Even before that, she hid when anyone came over. She’s always been like that, ever since I adopted her. But in the new place, her anger lurks in the living spaces even when she doesn’t. I’d forgotten how bad the wrath of Zola can be.
“She needs to get used to her new space,” I say for the fifteenth time in a few days. “She’ll be fine.”