Chapter 45
COLE
Dr. Whitman set her glasses on top of the folder between them and leaned back in her chair. “All right,” she said, “let’s look ahead. Next year’s schedule is nearly locked, but there’s some flexibility in the upper-level seminars.”
She slid a single sheet toward me. Clean, efficient, already half annotated in blue ink.
“We’d like you to keep the Renaissance seminar in the spring. It fills immediately every year, and frankly, no one else teaches it the way you do.”
I glanced down at the draft syllabus.
HIST 642: Power, Patronage, and the Self in Renaissance Europe
Below it, my familiar structure:
Petrarch, Castiglione, Machiavelli, identity as performance, intellect as currency, ambition as survival.
“I was thinking of revising the final unit,” I said. “Less political theory, more lived experience. Letters. Marginalia. How scholars understood themselves, not just how they were remembered.”
Whitman smiled. “That’s exactly why students fight to get into your courses.” She paused, tapping her pen once. “It also dovetails nicely with your research.”
She flipped to another page. “Your manuscript, the Renaissance scholar in exile. Still on track?”
“Yes,” I said automatically. Too automatically. “I’m expanding the chapter on self-imposed exile. The cost of choosing work over place. Over people.”
She looked up then, her expression thoughtful rather than evaluative. “That tension is what makes it interesting,” she said. “And timely.”
She made another note. “We’d also like you to take on the junior colloquium next fall. Once tenure is finalized, it makes sense for you to have a stronger mentoring role.”
Once tenure is finalized.
The phrase landed heavier than it should have.
Whitman continued, unhurried. “Nothing you need to decide today. Just review the assignments and let me know if you have concerns.”
Concerns? Yeah. A lot of them.
She gathered the papers, her movements precise, practiced. The faint citrus scent of her hand lotion reached me as I stood. It was a similar, clean understated scent Juliette used. The thought caught me off guard, sharp enough that I looked away.
“Of course,” I said. “I’ll take a look.”
I slipped the syllabus back into its folder just as my phone buzzed in my pocket.
I didn’t check it.
Because I already knew what wouldn’t be there.
I hadn’t texted Juliette since I left, and she hadn’t texted me.
“Is there anything else on your mind?” Dr. Whitman asked when I didn’t immediately leave.
Yeah, there’s a lot on my mind.
“No. I think we’re all set. I’ll let you know about the colloquium, but I agree that makes sense.”
Her smile was academic. Polite.
“Thank you, Dr. Whitman. I appreciate the flexibility to teach these topics.”
“Joyce. I think we’re beyond titles.”
At this point, I was a nearly tenured professor, a colleague to her, although I had been since I was hired.
But there was a hierarchy here, an unspoken one.
Until I accepted that ten-year, I was replaceable.
But now, I’d be expected to retire in this position.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“Joyce. I appreciate all you’ve done. Hope you have a great weekend.”
“Same to you,” she said, already rolling her chair away from the small table we’d been meeting at toward her desk. She was a notorious workaholic. Divorced twice. Single. Her love was her work, not unlike my father.
I could hear every step I took as I walked down the hall to my own office. The building was mostly empty, and from the looks of it, Dr. Whitman and I were the only two here.
I’d planned to stay for a few hours and catch up on some research. I was all about the views while working, and my office view was as good as any. I stared at buildings, but also plenty of trees, rooftops of New York’s Upper West Side in the distance. The perfect balance of nature and city.
A view any New Yorker would die for.
But I suddenly had no interest in looking out of my office window or conducting research.
Instead, I made my way to the Heights Bar and Grill. Inside, during the semester, it would be filled with Columbia professors and even a few students. During the summer, there was a different crowd entirely. I didn’t recognize anyone.
I sat at the bar, its wood faded from years of elbows like mine sitting on it.
“How’s it going?”
Elliot, or Eli as everyone knew him, had once been an English major at Columbia.
He’d never managed to finish his PhD and had taught for a few years in high school, eventually returning to his college job here.
He’d often said bartending might not pay as well as teaching, but it was more lively and suited him better. Everyone liked him. Including me.
“No complaints.”
Not true.
“Rye. Neat.”
He went to work. “Must’ve been one hell of a meeting if you’re drinking at lunch.”
Meeting was fine. My life, unfortunately, was not.
“Settled up for the semester.” And then I added, “They offered me tenure.”
Eli smiled as if he knew the gravitas of my declaration. He reached across the bar and shook my hand.
“Congratulations. You deserve it.”
I did, but that was beside the point.
“Thanks.”
“That one’s on the house.”
I lifted my glass in silent thanks and took a sip. “Let’s pair this with a burger, medium well.”
Eli went over to his ordering pad and said out loud, “Burger. Medium well. Skip the lettuce and tomato.”
He moved on to another customer.
I’d always liked the fact that he knew my order, the familiarity of coming to the same place and getting to know everyone.
I’d always thought it was like a little slice of Cedar Falls here in the city. But today it didn’t feel like that at all.
This place felt cold. Empty.
It was like the comfort I’d found here belonged to another person and not me, like I’d stepped into this place just a little too late.
When Eli returned to check on me, I asked the question I’d always wondered about him.
“Do you ever regret it? The life path you didn’t take?”
I’d hoped it wasn’t rude. Eli was pretty forthcoming with his past to pretty much everyone. It bound him to the university and its patrons, making him a part of the club.
He didn’t look offended. Eli put his hands on the bar and looked upward, as if thinking or attempting to find guidance from above.
“It’s not regret. I think this place was a good decision for me.
I like people, staying up late. I’ve always been a night owl.
Teaching wasn’t for me. So no, I don’t regret it.
Looking back, I don’t think I was on the right path to begin with.
Although”—he snapped his hands on the bar, about to move away to serve a new customer—“it took me a long time to stop calling it temporary.”
“Enough about me. What can I get ya?” he said to a couple who sat a few seats from me. Tourists who’d either stumbled in here by accident or had found this place to be “a local favorite” online somewhere.
It took me a long time to stop calling it temporary. So at the beginning, he must’ve wanted to go back, finish his degree. Even though he never really wanted to teach.
There was no question our lives paralleled. My path was my father’s, my brother’s.
Never mine.
I took another sip, just as Eli plopped down a burger in front of me.
I didn’t reach for it, though. Instead, I reached for my phone.
I began a text message.
Cole
Sorry I left early without notice.
I erased that.
Cole
How’s it going in Cedar Falls?
I erased that too.
Texting her without having any idea about its purpose was premature. It was why I hadn’t texted Jules all week.
And the fact that she hadn’t texted me said as much about her as what I’d learned firsthand.
Juliette was a woman who had her shit together. She knew what she wanted. She’d done enough work on herself to know things many people take years to learn.
I put my phone away, grabbed the burger, and took a bite. Until I knew what the hell I was doing with my life, I wouldn’t pull her back into it.