I Locked My Professor's Office Door, and Left Belonging to Three Men novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Five Chairs

At Claudia's table Colin's fingers find Hannah under the cloth while Claudia asks about her chapter, and Claudia says at the door that Marcello has not looked at her once all night.

Claudia Ferrigno opened her front door with clay on her forearms and kissed me on the cheek.

"Hannah. You came."

"You asked me," I said.

My face was burning, and I hoped she thought it was the cold.

She smelled of woodsmoke and rosemary.

Behind her the hall of the brick house in Burns Park was warm and yellow and full of the smell of roasting chicken.

Marcello had walked in ahead of me with his coat over his arm, and he had not looked at his wife.

Claudia took my scarf and hung it on a peg that already held three others.

She leaned forward to do it, and a thin red thread slid out of her collar.

It held a small brass key.

She tucked it back in without noticing.

"Everyone's in the dining room," she said. "I've put you by Colin. He's shy, and you're not."

I almost laughed.

I almost cried instead.

The dining table was long and dark and old, and it had come from Claudia's grandmother in Ohio.

It seated ten and tonight it held five.

Claudia sat at the head with her glasses on their cord.

Marcello sat at the foot, far away, and carved the chicken with his eyes on the knife.

Nathan sat across from me with his napkin in his lap and his notebook nowhere in sight.

Colin sat on my right, and he put his napkin down so carefully that the silverware did not move.

My place card said Hannah, in Claudia's handwriting, in brown ink.

"Eat," Claudia said. "All of you look like you've been up a mountain."

I ate.

I do not know what I tasted.

"Marcello says you're on chapter three," Claudia said to me, passing the potatoes. "The cooks."

"The camp cooks and the boarding-house keepers. Michigan, Wisconsin, 1870 to 1910."

"Who paid them?" Claudia asked.

"Nobody paid them directly. The wives kept the boarding house."

I swallowed.

"The lumber company took the rent out of the men's wages."

Claudia's eyes lit up.

"I started on the same shelf," she said. "Boarding houses. A long time ago."

"Did you?"

"I had a whole chapter on the Saginaw valley. I loved it more than I've loved most people."

Marcello's knife stopped.

Under the table, something touched my knee.

It was Colin's hand.

It was very large and very warm, and it lay on my knee without any weight at all.

I did not move.

I kept my eyes on Claudia and kept my fork still.

"The Saginaw valley is exactly where I'm stuck," I said.

"Because of the ledgers?"

"Because the ledgers lie."

Claudia laughed, delighted.

Colin's hand slid up my thigh under my skirt.

He did it so slowly that I could count the inches.

His thumb brushed the seam of my underwear and stopped there, and I felt him wait.

I did not close my knees.

I pressed my thigh against his hand instead, and I heard him breathe out through his nose.

A foot touched my ankle under the table.

It was Nathan's, in a polished shoe.

He ran the side of it up my calf once and stopped.

When I looked at him across the table, he was spooning peas onto his plate with perfect attention.

Colin hooked one finger in the edge of my underwear and drew it aside.

His fingertip slid through the slick and found my clit.

My fork rang on the plate.

"Sorry," I said.

"You're tired," Claudia said kindly. "It's the end of the week."

"Yes."

Colin's finger circled, very light.

He moved down and pushed one thick finger into me, and then, gently, a second.

I clenched on them, and I felt him shudder through the whole length of his arm.

Claudia was looking at me, and I had to say something.

"The keepers were paid in credit," I said. "Credit at the camp store. So the books balance, and the women are poor."

"That's the chapter," Claudia said. "That's the whole chapter. Marcello, isn't that the chapter?"

Marcello looked up from the chicken.

His eyes met mine down the length of the table, and then he looked away.

"It's the chapter," he said, in a rough voice.

Colin's fingers curled inside me, and his thumb found my clit and pressed.

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

Pleasure rose in me in a long, tight, helpless line.

I wanted to put my head on the table.

I wanted to take his hand and hold it where it was and ride it until the glasses broke.

Across from me, Nathan set down his fork and watched my face.

His eyes never moved.

He knew exactly what was happening to me, and he did not smile, and I came apart under his stare.

It was a small silent orgasm, the kind that happens behind the teeth.

My thighs shook on Colin's hand.

My toes curled in my shoes.

I breathed through my nose.

Claudia said something about the Hollis article, and I nodded and answered, and I had no idea what I said.

"Hannah?"

Claudia was looking at me.

"Hannah, you've gone pink. Are you coming down with something?"

"Maybe," I said.

"Colin, pass her the water."

Colin withdrew his hand from under my skirt.

He did it gently, and he straightened my skirt over my knee with one fingertip before he let go.

Then he lifted the pitcher with the same hand and poured.

His hand was steady.

I took the glass from him, and our fingers touched, and neither of us let go.

I drank.

Claudia went on talking.

At the end of the table Marcello put down his knife.

He was staring at his plate, and I saw that he had not eaten any of what was on it.

At ten o'clock Claudia walked me to the door.

She wrapped a plate in foil and pressed it into my hands.

"Take this for tomorrow," she said. "Graduate students never eat."

"Thank you, Claudia."

I meant it.

I hated that I meant it.

She held the door and looked past me at the street for a moment.

Then she spoke more quietly, and it was not meant for the others.

"Marcello hasn't looked at me once tonight."

I did not move.

"He does that," Claudia said, "when there's something he's going to tell me."

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