The Unseen

CHAPTER THREE

Laurel drained her champagne glass in one gulp, which she realized seconds too late was probably not the brightest idea, given that she’d had nothing but the one cup of coffee all day. But the bubbles ran through her in a warming rush and it was all she could do not to dash after the waiter to grab another.

Instead, she put the empty glass down on a table of hors d’oeuvres and forced herself to focus. Around her the elegant, high-raftered University Club teemed with the cocktail-fueled chatter of her thirty-five new colleagues on the faculty of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, mingling, jockeying, and cruising.

She took a breath and moved into the crowd, swallowing terror. As she’d started to suspect after that look Tyler had given her, the leggy aspect of her attire was turning out to be not her greatest idea, either. The minimalist black that would have been understated in L.A. made her stand out like, well, like a runway model amid the colorful (and baggy) Chico’s casual of her older female colleagues. Even as she thought it, a short, wiry, bespectacled woman with bad skin turned and gave her a blistering look that made Laurel practically desperate for more champagne.

And she was attracting far more attention than she’d wanted from the male contingent, many of whom couldn’t seem to raise their eyes above her hemline. She glanced back over her shoulder and realized she was still being stalked by a large and flat-footed associate professor with a ruddy face who’d cornered her with obvious lust, eyes crawling over every inch of her body even as he continually called her “Ma’am.” Laurel wondered fleetingly if anyone in the history of hookups had ever actually gotten laid by “Ma’aming” the object of his affection, though she didn’t expect the associate was a representative example.

As the associate started for her, she quickly stepped up to the nearest cluster of colleagues, nodding and smiling as if she were completely absorbed in the conversation.

But no one in the circle acknowledged her, and the topic of conversation was being ominously uniform.

“—just got the Peabody grant…”

“—proposals due on the nineteenth…”

“—book comes out from Macmillan in the fall…”

There seemed not a single faculty member in the group, or in the room, who was not talking about his or her most recent publication or pending grant proposals. Laurel shifted on her feet, her smile dying by the second. She knew her position at Duke was contingent on publication or the bringing in of grant money—preferably both. That stipulation had been clearly spelled out in both her qualifying interviews and her contract.

The “publish or perish” aspect of university careers was not new to her; she’d grown up seeing her professor mother slaving over articles after a full day of lecturing. The truth was, even though Laurel had faked her way through the Duke interview with what she knew sounded like an impressive overview of her research and publication plans, a series of interconnected articles on Myers-Briggs personality types and test scores as a factor in choosing professions, she’d had not the slightest hint of passion for the project since—

Since Matt. Since the dream.

How can I write anything about personality and the self when I have no self left?

Laurel murmured “Excuse me” to the circle, and edged herself out of the group. She paused by another table of appetizers with her stomach churning in anxiety, and again scanned the room full of her colleagues, looking for a remotely friendly face.

A ripple of feminine laughter drifted from across the room and Laurel turned to look. Beside the grand piano, a dynamic, dark-haired man in his early thirties, with broad shoulders and crackling blue-gray eyes and a dusting of Irish-looking freckles over his handsome and lively face, was surrounded by young female grad students, all hanging on his every word.

Laurel’s face shadowed. Shades of Matt. Definitely the last thing I need. She looked quickly away from him.

She reached for an appetizer—some kind of chicken sate—just to look busy. Relax, she ordered herself. She glanced around the room and started a categorizing game to calm herself—classifying the people around her according to Myers-Briggs basic personality factors. The good-looking professor was definitely an ESFP (Extravert, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving), a combination of qualities that inevitably resulted in more charm than was good for anyone. The hostile woman in the baggy suit: ENTJ, the self-proclaimed judge. And that bearded man holding court by the fireplace—

Laurel started as she recognized Dr. Unger, the department chair, whom, of course, she’d met during her interviews. Like most psychology department chairs he had a hint of Freud about him, even though Duke’s academic reputation leaned toward neuroscience. Laurel swallowed the last bite of chicken, took a breath, and forced herself to go up and say hello.

“Laurel MacDonald,” she prompted the chair, as he turned toward her with a quizzical look.

“Of course, Dr. MacDonald,” he said smoothly, and she started slightly at the “Doctor.” He grandly managed not to sneak a look at her legs.

Laurel smiled what she hoped was a competent and professorial smile. “I just wanted to say thanks for the welcome and the party. It’s so nice to meet everyone all at once,” she lied.

Dr. Unger gave her a complacent and toothy smile back. “Yes, we want the faculty to know each other. The department encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly on grant projects, so don’t be shy about approaching anyone with ideas. We’re on the books to discuss your proposal, aren’t we?”

Laurel’s heart skipped a beat. Had she missed something? It occurred to her that she hadn’t checked her phone messages for probably a week now—but she couldn’t exactly ask him the date of their appointment. Instead she stammered, “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Excellent,” Unger said heartily. “Your aunt has been a credit to the university. We expect great things from you as well.”

Laurel blinked and had to scramble to remember what he was talking about. My aunt?

“Your Aunt Margaret?” Unger prompted her, frowning.

Aunt Margaret. Yes. Right.

Laurel had only met her Aunt Margaret twice, both times when she was little more than a toddler, had not seen her since she’d arrived in Durham. The truth was, when Laurel had called to accept the Duke position she had not remembered the North Carolina family connection at all, not until she’d called her mother at Stanford to announce her decision.

Meredith had gone completely silent—in fact, the silence had gone on and on—until Laurel realized that she had for the first time in her entire thirty-one years succeeded in astonishing her dry and unflappable mother.

“North Carolina?” Meredith finally said, with an unaccustomed hint of Southern accent. And it had not been until that second that Laurel recalled that North Carolina was her mother’s home state—that even though she’d left right after high school, Meredith had grown up not half an hour from Duke, that her older brother and sister were Duke alumni, that Laurel’s Aunt Margaret was a celebrated professor on the medical school faculty.

To be fair, it was not a case of total amnesia on Laurel’s part. Meredith rarely mentioned her past. She’d left the South at seventeen, and headed for California, never to return for more than a few weekend visits.

And why was that, exactly? Laurel was just starting to wonder when a voice broke through her thoughts.

“Professor MacDonald?” The department chair was speaking to her, an edge in his voice. Laurel forced herself to focus and return to the party.

“Yes… thank you. I’ll certainly try to live up to that,” she said lamely.

Thankfully, there were others waiting behind her to pay homage and she stepped aside so the next supplicants could have their turn.

Laurel turned and very nearly collided with a bespectacled, somewhat unkempt little man hovering beside her. He gave her a shrewd look. “Hope your proposal is a knockout. Because he’s serious as a heart attack.” Laurel recognized the little man from the departmental Web site: J. Walter Kornbluth, the department’s acknowledged prodigy. At the age of thirty-two he’d already published two acclaimed popular psychology books on abnormal psychology, one of which, Head Cases, had been optioned for television.

It’s not enough to teach anymore, Laurel thought glumly. You need an agent and manager.

Kornbluth didn’t bother to introduce himself; he seemed to expect her to know him. “If you want a tip—forget about articles or grants, although bringing in some money doesn’t hurt. But these days anything less than a book doesn’t cut it.”

A book? Laurel thought. I can barely get dressed in the morning.

He continued smugly. “They dumped two associate profs last semester when they didn’t get the publishing deals they were angling for. No book deal, no grant money, no job.”

Kornbluth had taken out his Treo and was scrolling through his e-mail as he talked, a habit Laurel had found appalling in Los Angeles and which seemed to her even more pretentious at a faculty party.

She felt her hackles rising. “I can’t imagine that will be a problem. I’m excited about what I’m doing.”

“And what would that be?” The pompous little man peered at her over his horn-rims.

“Oh, I never talk about writing projects. Stops the internal momentum,” Laurel said lightly. And I wouldn’t talk to you about it if I did have an idea, she thought to herself. I know your kind. Sharks.

And even as she thought it, a voice spoke behind her.

“Don’t trust him.”

She turned, startled. Hovering on her other side was the good-looking professor she’d seen with the groupies, now sans nubile hangers-on. He was even more attractive up close… Laurel could feel his energy as a kind of heat radiating from him.

There was obviously a history between the two men—she could sense Kornbluth beginning to bristle.

“Excuse me, but I hardly see—” Konbluth started.

“No, obviously you don’t. Don’t you have anything better to do than bully the new hires? This guy”—the tall, freckled young professor leaned in closer to Laurel and nodded at Kornbluth, whose face has turned three shades of red—“the legend in his own mind. Don’t trust him. He’ll stab you in the back just as soon as look at you, won’t you, Kornbluth?”

“Now see here, Cody—,” Kornbluth started.

The other professor—Cody?—cocked his head and looked at Kornbluth with a frown. “Is that your phone? Might be your agent calling.” He gestured to Kornbluth’s hand and Kornbluth automatically glanced at his Treo.

“Hah!” Cody pointed at him. “Made you look.”

Kornbluth shot him a disgusted look and tromped off through the milling faculty, leaving Laurel and Cody behind.

“Consider yourself rescued,” Professor Cody grinned at her.

Why does everyone think I need rescuing? Laurel wondered, but she had no time for a response before Cody barreled on. “Kornbluth is the Great White of the department. Shark, I mean—no race allusions intended. Don’t let the diminutive stature and lack of any quantifiable social skills fool you. He’s a killer. Any new hire is looked on as a threat to be annihilated.”

“A threat—” Laurel started, but he was already answering her.

“—to his rise in the department. Isn’t that what we all want, here in the Bermuda Triangle of academia?”

It certainly was beginning to occur to her.

“The man is just about strangling himself with his own ambition,” Cody said. “Of course, when I use the term ‘ambition’ about this crowd I’m using it very, very loosely. He is right about one thing, though—it’s all about the money.”

The brash and annoyingly attractive man in front of her had not a trace of a Southern accent. In fact, there was a suspiciously Valley lilt to his voice. As if he’d read her mind, he pointed to his own chest.

“Brendan Cody, CBT.” He meant Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Everyone in the room so far—besides Kornbluth—had introduced themselves by their specialty. Brendan Cody continued, rattling off: “BA/MA Berkeley, doctorate USF, thirty-three, six-one, black and blue—that always sounds ominous, doesn’t it?—love piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.”

He was so jovial and was talking so fast that Laurel wondered if he might be manic as well as being a little drunk; certainly he radiated the kind of slightly out-of-control charisma you often found in cyclothymic bipolarity. Also, she knew USF, University of San Francisco, to be a Jesuit school. Which meant Irish probably. More shades of Matt, which means you steer away. Laurel opened her mouth to excuse herself, feign a bathroom run or something, when he said abruptly:

“What were you doing before, when you were looking over the room? Categorizing?” She was surprised that he’d noticed, and guessed what she was doing. He nodded sagely. “You Myers-Briggs people are all alike. I’m ESFP, by the way. Myers-Briggs passes the time, but what’s way more interesting is identifying the out-and-out psychotics.”

“The—what?” she said, startled.

“Because statistically, there are some. Thirty-six full professors, twenty associates, twenty-five teaching assistants—chances are we’ve got three full psychotics, two associate psychotics, and two and a half assistant psychos. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

It did, but Laurel wasn’t entirely sure what it was making her think.

Cody reached out to a passing waiter and snagged two more glasses of champagne, handing Laurel one without missing a beat in his monologue. “The university environment is a hotbed anyway,” he informed her, as he clinked his glass with hers and took a healthy swig of champagne. “Cheers. It’s a virtual Petri dish for nurturing neuroses. Gifted and sensitive minds, ambition, stress, sex, debt. It’s a wonder more people don’t snap.” Despite the weirdness of the conversation, Laurel was beginning to suspect he was hitting on her, which must have been an automatic gesture on his part rather than a sincere one, as clearly he had his pick of teaching assistants.

“Not only that, but I think the collective angst of previous generations imprints on the entire environment. And magnifies with each subsequent generation.”

By this time Laurel was almost certain Brendan Cody was manic—or even on something. At the same time, she was acutely aware that, one-sided as it was, it was the longest adult conversation she’d had since her arrival in North Carolina.

“Your specialty has been occupational testing, right?” He faked a yawn. “Earth-shattering—”

“I love occupational testing,” she said, bristling. “It’s about helping people recognize their own talents—and potential—things they didn’t even know they could do.”

“Why, that’s delightfully fresh and uncynical of you, Dr. MacDonald. But what about your hidden gifts? Is conducting occupational testing tapping your hidden potential? Is this what you wanted to do when you grew up?” He was being facetious, of course, but to Laurel’s dismay she found herself suddenly on the verge of tears.

Brendan Cody seemed oblivious. “How did you end up in God’s country, anyway? You look like you’re practically dying of culture shock. Nice dress, by the way. No one in this room can look at anyone else,” he said, and his voice was casual, but he bent closer to her when he said it, and her heart tightened in her chest.

Exactly like Matt exactly like Matt exactly like Matt

And suddenly she was back in the dream, in the dark hall… with the curtains blowing, the smell of jasmine, the mirror… the mirror…

No. No. Not again.

She backed up from Brendan Cody who was looking at her with concern, and she saw he was speaking but she couldn’t hear a word, a word…

And once again, she fled—fled the room, fled the party, fled brash young Professor Brendan Cody, fled her colleagues and her department chair, without so much as a good-bye.