Rawlins
So in the morning, he called the office of Alan Greywall, the chair of the parole board who would decide Max’s fate, and left a message.
His call was returned just as he was about to launch into his lecture for his undergraduate course, and he signaled to one of his TAs to vamp for a couple minutes while he answered his phone in the hallway.
“What for?” she asked sharply.
“Mr. Greywall is very busy,” said the clipped voice on the other end of the phone. “And he doesn’t take meetings regarding parole hearings. If you’re interested in writing an amicus letter, he will be happy to consider your perspective.”
There was a pause, silence on the other end of the phone.
Rawlins hated lying, not so much for the ethical quandary as for the way it made him nervous; he was used to speaking the truth with ease, but now he could feel himself breaking out in a sweat, and fought to keep his tone level.
“If Mr. Greywall will hear me out in person, I’d appreciate it.
And I promise, I’ll refrain from making my case more publicly. ”
There was another beat before the assistant replied coldly: “I will pass that along.”
All day, Rawlins kept refreshing his email, hoping for a response, distracted in his office and unable to focus on any of his work.
But before the email came, Lennox arrived unannounced at his door.
She didn’t knock, just strode into his office with her arms folded over her chest, making no effort to hide her displeasure.
“I just got off the phone with Max’s lawyer, who tells me that you’re trying to get a meeting, in person, with Greywall. After threatening him?”
“It wasn’t a threat,” Rawlins said. “I gave him an option.”
Lennox stared at him with a mix of anger and bewilderment. “I don’t understand what you’re doing. You know this won’t help.”
“I can be very persuasive,” he said casually. “Some consider me charming. A minor celebrity, even.”
He had expected Lennox to laugh. She did not. “Sure. Within the narrow confines of an academic world that Greywall utterly deplores.”
“All the more reason to change his mind. And what is there to lose at this point?”
“How about the reputation of our field?” Lennox shot back. “Your job? The college’s funding? The lawyer asked me to get you to back off.”
“Tell her she should thank me for doing her job,” Rawlins said. Then he softened. “Just trust me on this, Maggie. I really think it could work.”
Lennox shook her head, irritated, and left his office without closing the door.
The email from Greywall’s office came an hour later. Terse as he expected, but delivering the news that he had secured a thirty-minute meeting with Greywall, three weeks from now.
Three weeks, then. To take a rudimentary obscuration ritual to the next level. To achieve a deeper effect than, as far as he knew, had ever been attempted. To create a ritual that could truly change someone’s mind.
It was possible. It would have to be.
Over the following weeks, the problem of the obscuration ritual took up more and more of Rawlins’s mental bandwidth.
He attended to his own work in the most cursory manner.
His lesson planning was rote; his grading was lax.
He gave up making progress on the book that was due, informing his editor it would have to wait until next semester.
But his mind was continually pulled from the singular focus of the work by Ellsbeth.
He had hoped that having his carnal appetites sated would liberate his thinking, that the moratorium on emotional attachment would compartmentalize the whole thing, but it continued to expand its footprint on his mind.
And while her mature, matter-of-fact attitude had mostly placated his guilt about having a relationship with his student, he now wondered if he should feel guilty about using her—both sexually and intellectually.
He told himself to enjoy this more and think about it less.
Since he met Ellsbeth, their relationship had been fraught with second-guessing, contemplating consequences, carefully making sure not to hurt her or create a mess of drama.
Now she had given him permission to ignore the problem of emotional entanglement, so he could finally indulge his desire in the most simple, selfish way possible.
He was like the driver of a sports car who had finally left behind the stop-and-go of city traffic and opened up onto the highway.
Every debased thought and impulse he had only seemed to please her more—which prompted him to try to come up with more perverse pleasures (and ways of inflicting pain).
His mind drifted in faculty meetings and while undergrads droned on during their class presentations.
His cock hardened in the library, as though he were seventeen years old again and the thought of sex was omnipresent.
The difference was that it wasn’t just a thought now. A text or an email could lead to Ellsbeth half naked on the floor of his office an hour later. Then she’d be tugging up her jeans and heading off to class, leaving him at his desk, pleasantly confused by his own good fortune.
It was perfect. It was the thing he’d wanted his whole adult life—sexual gratification, without the challenges and vulnerabilities of a relationship.
And Ellsbeth was fully on board with this arrangement; it had been her idea in the first place, and he knew that her pride, her fierce independence, and her relentless ambition all meant that she would protect their secret.
So why did he still feel a twinge of dissatisfaction?
He tried to chalk up his misgivings to something fundamentally wrong with him, a perpetual inability to feel content, and he resolved to enjoy what was, on its face, an unimprovable situation.
Two days before his meeting with Greywall, Rawlins sat in his study in the waning light of late afternoon, rereading the ritual he had been agonizing over for weeks.
He felt stuck. The ritual had grown shockingly complex, a delicate balance of variables.
There was the primary effect, which would render the subject compliant and susceptible, but it now needed to be modified with both a delay mechanism and, even more difficult, a time dilation.
The mathematics required multivariable calculus to determine the interplay of effects, and it wasn’t apparent to him in what order the different components of the ritual should be conducted.
The natural solution would be to test the ritual, to put it into practice, study the effects, and revise if necessary.
But something this dangerous, this wildly illegal, could not be field-tested.
He had to get it perfect on the basis of theory alone.
On his own, he knew he could only do so much.
Every scholar had blind spots; Rawlins needed someone to bounce his ideas off, someone who could offer a fresh perspective, and there was only one person he could possibly go to.
But he needed to maintain the facade that this was entirely an academic exercise, so he could not reasonably summon her over for that purpose alone.
It needed to feel more casual, an afterthought.
Fortunately, his mind had no difficulty cooking up a reason to invite her over. He sent her a message instructing her to stop by a sex shop after class and purchase a new vibrator.
An hour later, Ellsbeth was naked and tied to a chair in his study.
He took his time teasing her with the toy.
They had been together enough that he knew her cues well—the way she gasped when he surprised her, bit her lip impatiently when he backed off, and shivered when she got close.
He felt like a conductor and her body was his orchestra; the music of her pleasure swelled at his command when he slid the pulsating toy up her thigh and pressed it against her clit, only to then move it off, creating one mini-crescendo and decrescendo after another.
She writhed and whimpered and groaned, loving and infuriated by his teasing in equal measure—until at last he pulled her forward to the edge of the chair and entered her so that he could feel her climax and join her in the release they both needed.
Afterward, he untied the ropes, letting his fingers linger on the red lines they had left on her wrists and thighs as she squirmed against them. “I like it,” she said as he kissed the marks.
“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” he asked offhandedly. “I’m making risotto with mushrooms and peas, and there will be plenty to share.”
“Oh, thanks, but I should get home,” Ellsbeth said, reaching for her underwear. “I’ve got the reading you assigned. And a paper due for Sapersky’s seminar.”
Rawlins glanced at his phone. It was only four o’clock. “Well, you could get to work here while I start cooking,” he said, gesturing toward the desk. “We’ll eat, talk about what we’re working on…”
“I appreciate that, but I think here I might be a bit distracted,” she told him, standing up and brushing past him.
“I’m sure we could offset the distraction,” he said, intercepting her with a hand on her waist. “If you had a brilliant professor helping you with your work, I bet it would go much faster.”
“You don’t make it easy, but I really should go.” She smiled, but he sensed a tightness around her eyes. What had felt like flirtation a second ago suddenly seemed to him like wheedling. Ellsbeth had been letting him down nicely.
Part of him wanted to adopt a tone of authoritative command, to tell her to stay in the confidently direct way he knew that she enjoyed. But to do so now felt ugly and even desperate, and he worried it would ruin the playful dynamic.
Another part of him wanted to tell her the truth: That he needed her help.
That he was actually planning to use obscuration, and he needed it to work.
But that was too risky. It raised too many questions he didn’t want to answer.
And he worried that needing her would somehow crack the illusion of the roles they had agreed to take on.
So instead he retreated, stepping away from her and trying to keep his voice light.
“Yes, you should get back home, before I come up with another punishment.” He left the room while Ellsbeth put her clothes back on, busying himself in the kitchen; when she emerged, they said a goodbye that was friendly but perfunctory.
Ellsbeth did not exactly slam the door behind her, but pulled it shut with a thunderous finality.
The sound echoed through the house, making Rawlins more acutely aware of the size—and emptiness—of his home.
He glanced toward the front room as though he might catch her departing and see the expression on her face—anger?
Irritation? Sadness?—but she was gone and there was nothing to see but the sculpture in the foyer, wobbling on its pedestal.
In Ellsbeth’s absence, the house felt oddly like a museum without visitors; he could see the rows of books in his study, the ceremonial masks hung in the dining room. All those items he had filled the house with, to imbue it with the joy of his travels and his learning, now seemed cold and dead.
He grabbed his phone to put on music and fill the silence while he cooked, and could not help but wonder what Ellsbeth listened to.
Did she like jazz? He imagined trying to explain to her the spontaneous complexities of Charlie Parker, the history of bebop that informed mid-century jazz experimentation.
He wanted to let her choose what would come next, to feign horror at whatever song she might select.
He craved the sort of teasing, bantering debate he knew they could have. About music. About anything.
Those conversations were for couples. For the interpersonal dance of discovering each other’s minds and tastes and habits. And that was not what they had agreed to.
He tried to appreciate the fact that he could listen to whatever he damn well pleased. But as he scrolled through playlists, nothing struck his fancy. No longer in the mood to cook, he ordered takeout that he would eat alone while reviewing the ritual.
Tonight was the night. He had not gotten to ask for Ellsbeth’s input after all, but he would have to make do without it. The most difficult, high-stakes ritual of his life, and he was on his own.