As I left, the sun was abandoning the campus to a swift and quiet darkness. The days were growing shorter, and the timers on the lights had not fully caught up with the arrival of autumn. Nor had the air conditioning. I pulled my jacket tighter and noticed with a hint of resignation that in a few more weeks I would no longer be able to button it if I did not take some action. After quickly dismissing a romantic sentiment of hibernation with only a notebook and several bottles of scotch just like the one in the cupboard at my apartment, I resolved to finish the bottle as quickly as possible and not buy another. And perhaps eat fewer sweets.
My vanity plates are new enough to still surprise me sometimes, and I felt a surge of pride as I recognized the familiar name on my nine year-old Altima. One of my students, Megan Keats, sat behind the wheel of the blue Camry beside it, fiddling with her phone, the large display illuminating the whole interior in the twilight. I am not without my faults, and this particular campus, with its wealthy student body, can occasionally elicit a subtle hint of jealousy when I see things like a student with a newer car and brighter phone than those belonging to me, a published author and their professor.
What would I do with such gadgets though? I could scarcely think of anyone I'd like to email from the car, and my fans on Twitter seem content with the occasional tweet, meticulously edited for spelling errors caused by my novice thumbs pressing several of the tiny numbers at once. I reached into my pocket to retrieve my keys, and recalling my vanity plates made me feel better almost at once.
Someone had left a folded page of notebook paper inserted carefully into the door frame. My mind instantly began to wander, as it often does, while I approached and drew the paper out.
Perhaps a student, having read my recently published short story, had developed a passionate and awkward affection for me. Possibly Megan even, with her large eyes and slightly uneven teeth, having received a B+ on her latest revision of a poorly-conceived story, had read beyond the hastily scribbled comments and become encouraged enough to seek emotional contact, albeit shyly and somewhat impersonally.
Or maybe Allison Wade had indeed noticed me absently staring at the garish logo adorning the front of her tube-top, and the way the small nipples underneath had been enlisted as punctuation by the brisk air of the class room. Maybe she had thought to establish a more appropriate setting in which to advance her adequate breasts, naked and quivering, toward my vision like eager hermits spurred into the sun by the inexpensive liquid courage so abundant in the bellies of the academic.
It was not as clearly defined as all this.
In the center of the paper, crisscrossed by imprecise creases, were scrawled the words “Good luck figuring this one out” in blue ink followed by three exclamation points and a hastily drawn smiley face, which in retrospect, seemed suspiciously more exuberant than the average smiley face. I took small comfort in the fact that the handwriting seemed feminine to me.
Slightly confused, I peered surreptitiously into the blue car, half expecting to see Megan observing my reaction to the discovery, but she was obliviously thumbing her gaudy phone. I wondered briefly if Megan used her many layers of makeup to cover a blotchy complexion as I seemed to notice a faint pimple on her prominent chin.
I put the message carefully into my pocket, and drove into the last of the orange and pink to my apartment where I sit typing this over a glass of scotch.
