Falling Away With Ire/Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

Tonight

 

                 

            A bespeckled boy with enormous glasses that hung lopsidedly off his face, started at Dolly's question.

            "Perhaps Abast- or, sorry?" The poor target of her wrath muttered, abashed. He blushed furiously. He cleared his throat before starting over. "Mmm. Professor Watermarble, I didn't- "

            "That's Pro-fess-or Clearwater," she said through clenched teeth.

            "Well how was I supposed to know?" the boy blundered, "they both have something to do with water. Professor Abast would not have made a big deal." At this a ruffling of admiring laugher from the student's peers traveled with boisterous ring throughout the classroom. Dolly's head was pounding. She fathomed the ache was beginning to spread elsewhere in her system. Her whole body was feeling some form of resistance, although it most likely had to do with her pesky students. She blew out a small sigh to her right side, though undoubtedly this had a humorous effect. She called upon her inward strength to school her features back into wonderful, saving, inscrutability.

            "Detention, Crispley. And if I hear another word . . . " she let her warning linger, and the class immediately grew silent under her icy stare.

            She took another jerky breath that was exhaled with an abrupt rush. Not wanting to show any meager amount of effort in reinstating her control, she began, again, enumerating her lesson while her eyes were determinably seeking any sign of malfunction in her student's behavior. Alas, to her slight disappointment, her pupils were now on their ground.

           

            Night fell against the windows as she softly closed her drawer enclosing the assignments. Dolly reached up in a most uncharacteristic gesture to the eye of any other person, to, for a mere moment, press a finger, before allowing several to run through her silky hair, fingering their golden, syrupy strands before removing the inhibited ones. As the bun fell out of its knot, she smiled devilishly, as though she were a veila, a notion that suited her reckless fancies. Then she sighed sadly, her green eyes strangely dulled over in a weird sort of bell-that-tarnished mime act. Perhaps the night before her field of vision had been robbed of its admirable ability, one which no soul had ever been able to accomplish. When Dolly worked nights, a subtle change crossed over every line of her own tangible portrait, instilling her heart with a life and a fervor that rushed through every ventricle in her system, performing a miracle over her that no one had ever been privileged to see unless it was an inadvertent, terribly unfortunate accident for that poor person. Tonight, though, that person would have been just peachy fine in her perspective, she bitterly mused.  For at this hour, my usual grasped, bit of sorrowful peace that I have but for a limited time in my busy schedule- word  spat in her head- has not come. Oh, let the world know me every minute! Take it all away from me, for a moment of beauty cannot transpire.

            Her instincts confirmed her ruminations in a slight knock.

            "Oh, bother with them!" she cried forcefully, and flung open the door.

            She stared at a cup of tea, before her eyes betrayed her to the clamped white fingers that enclosed the piece of alike white porcelain, to scope out, thereupon, the entire physical body. Unbidden, her own body started to vibrate. The eyes that were continuing to betray her met the face attached to this farce, this thing with a-

            "Ms. Clearwater." She just stared. "May I come in?" he asked her in a low voice. Her lips formed into some sort of a half-o, but for once in her life, a being greater than herself who was much more merciful than she could ever now be, made her say,

            "Professor?" Should she admit him? What reason could there be to allow him entrance? She voiced something that meant more than the face words. "Why should I admit you?" A dreaded pause.

            "I think the question," he said in a low voice, "remains, why should you not?" She racked her brain, but she could not come up with any viable answer. He took a step closer to her. "You've removed your hair," he observed.

            "Professor, professor- "

            "Dolly, it has been too long. I cannot wait for you any longer." Dolly knew with her heart of hearts that transition into some kind of a romance would be caustic. It must be. How then would she be made into a pawn in such a racy game? Race, indeed, game. All of the criss-crossed, interlocking, competing notions in her head were cumulating, but the professor was a shrewd man, and stepped lightly aside.

            "You keep a neat classroom, Dolly." She wanted to prevent his eyes from the curiosity quest that was sure to be a stickler bee in the hot, awful beech- sucker-

            "None of it is yours," she hissed venomously. The words had a poison in them. "Don't think that I would allow any of this in your estimation of things which you know to be yours in your imaginary mind." He stiffened for a minute, much to her great surprise and deeper satisfaction.

            "What precisely, are you talking of?" She moved slowly. "Everyone knows how colorful is language. You are a gifted writer. Your imagination must be even wealthier- in fact, it must be tempting." His black eyes lingered over her features, brushing over them with soft black lashes until stopping- on her lips. "But," Dolly spoke in a subdued tone, " they aren't real." He met her eyes. She could see a question stirring in them, which never surfaced. Hers was a silent answer that parched her throat, where it died. "Come, Professor Abast. Let's enjoy the night together. We still have things to discuss,'' she said, leading him over to the settee  which overlooked the classroom from the side. "You never told me what happened earlier when you took that precipitous phone call."

            "There is nothing to tell, Dolly." He sighed.

            "Oh, really? Then why did you return here?" she dared him. He raised his eyebrow.

            "Did you think that it would not be noticed?" Her words were venomous. A syrupy coffee of a brownish-black  with rough stones in it that were all transmitted in the strange liquid, albeit dangerous sustenance of her words. How it was possible that- no, she wouldn't allow herself to think it.

            "What are you thinking about?" He moved to place a hand upon her cheek. She closed her eyes for a mere moment.

            "I am not talking of anything." Her quiet words held some kind of a promise, but so subtle were her own desires that there was no one who was able to catch them. Not in that cold room, in which she had folded her arms quietly, but even more, securely, across her chest, her green eyes a shelter of the most promising of promises. The hand into which she was leaning meant that she was not trying hard enough to hide away these traitorous pleasures, though.

            "How daaare you!" Swiftly she backed away  from her professor. His eyes changed. She could not say how.

            "Your hiding something," She stated. Those black eyes flitted to the side. It was not typical for him to show any type of bald emotion, so this uncharacteristic gesture meant more than she liked to fathom. "What are you hiding, Professor?" The silhouette of what made the appearance of a large black phantom that had somehow darkened into reality before her smiled thinly.

            "You know that I was called away earlier from your comfortably furnished arrangements?"

            "Yes . . . "

            "The phone call did not concern a child. Again he paused in his speech. Interminable time and space stretched between them.

            "Professor," she said suddenly. He looked up from whatever reverie he had been engaged in. "Your tea is getting cold. Let me get you some more." When he met her eyes, she smiled sincerely. Yet there was something broken about it.

           

            Long into the night Dolly Clearwater and her professor talked over various topics that  were reminiscent of the times they had spent together when she had been a student under his tutelage. She forgot, somehow. It passed through her ever-guarded chambers of things that she kept locked away. Dolly did not take it in stride in order to commit murder to these ideas with rapid speed, tonight. Her grudge she had been holding, although the very idea that she held one would have been a scandalous notion to which she never would have admitted, fell mercifully away with discretion. Utmost discretion. And she was so exhausted.

            She lied down upon her own settee, a cup of tantalizing tea resting on the stones beneath her, promising a warm kind of solace.

            "Professor Abast. I've learned so much from you this summer. You really are a master writer. I- I'm sorry that I never told you." The words sounded unnatural, cold, but they somehow transmitted more. The professor quietly arose from his chair. She half-rose, curious to see what was compelling him. He opened the storage chest near the back of the room that was purposed for her English classes. When he re-entered, a grand piano served as his companion that seemed to be a little less complacent under his tired arms.

            "Tonight," he said, looking at her. She nodded. Then she sunk back into her cushions. Tonight, the sounds wafting to her tired ears fluently, effortlessly, and easily, fulfilled every wish that she had ever denied herself, and his nimble fingers washed away all of the lined masks her face had worn in a beautifully cunning manner, so that before the night was through, she never realized that her features were again completely innocent. She was in bliss.

 

            And, before he left, he kissed her sleeping cheek.