I Locked My Professor's Office Door, and Left Belonging to Three Men novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Stacks

Marcello's POV

I told myself Friday night in the stacks was research.

At noon I had emailed Hannah, with the subject line "Hollis."

The article, I wrote, was on the sixth floor of the graduate library.

I did not tell her there was no article.

The sixth floor of the stacks is narrow and gray, with rows of steel shelves and motion lights that click off if you stand still.

I stood still on purpose.

I stood in the dark between the shelves of bound lumber trade journals and listened to the stairwell door.

It opened at ten past eight.

Her footsteps came down the row, quick and light, and the lights clacked on above her one by one.

She stopped at the end of my aisle with her braid over one shoulder.

She had her coat open, and under it she wore the gray cardigan from yesterday.

"There's no Hollis article," Hannah said.

"There's a Hollis article."

"Not on this floor."

"No," I said. "Not on this floor."

She walked toward me.

I am fifty-four years old.

I have sat on dissertation committees for thirty years, and I have a wife who has never once raised her voice in my kitchen.

I stood with my back against a shelf of 1894 trade journals.

I let a twenty-six-year-old woman walk down an aisle at me, and my knees were not reliable.

"You said not tonight," she said. "That was yesterday."

"I said it for a reason."

"I know the reason. I had dinner with her."

She stopped a foot away.

"I'm not asking, Marcello."

"I know," I said.

"Nobody decides for me."

"I know that too."

She went down on her knees on the cold concrete floor between the shelves.

She did it all at once, looking up at me.

Every sensible thought I owned went out through the soles of my shoes.

"Hannah. Not here."

"Then say no."

Her hands were on my belt.

I could have said no.

I want that to be on the record.

I could have said it in any of a dozen ways, and I said nothing.

She unbuckled me and opened the zipper.

She took me out of my trousers in her small cool hand.

I made a sound I have not made in twenty years.

"God," she said softly, looking at me. "Look at you."

"Hannah."

"You're so hard."

She put her mouth on me.

She started with the tip, a slow wet kiss and then the flat of her tongue.

I put one hand against the shelf and gripped the steel edge.

The lights above us clicked off.

Neither of us moved.

In the dark I felt her take me deeper, until I touched the back of her throat.

I swore under my breath.

"That's it," I whispered. "Oh, that's it. Take your time."

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