"When?" he asked.
"As soon as I get the final grades in, a little under three weeks. I may be away 'till summer, I'm afraid. Maybe longer."
"The puppies?"
"Yes, we'll have to think about them. Could you come by one day and we'll talk?"
Eliot grunted en assent.
"Over the weekend?"
He grunted again. She thanked him and heard the telephone go dead in her ear. She put her own phone on its rest and then leaned forward, her elbows on the table and her hands buried in her hair.
Her hair smelled warm, faintly of coconut from the shampoo she used. It felt soft and thick to her fingers, a luxuriant, well-styled and well-cared-for head of hair. She bent her head further forward until the wavy mass tumbled down onto the table, forming a cave around her face. This is the longest it's been in seventeen years, she thought; almost five years worth of hair, smooth, thick, and alive. She pulled a handful around and pressed it against her face, inhaling the smell. She thought, it's no wonder hair has been such an issue and a symbol over the centuries. The tactile glory of the stuff.
I will miss it, she thought.
Chapter Three
Final Exam
Religious Studies 204, The Prophet and Prophetic Speech
Prof Anne Waverly
Choose three of the following questions. As you should know by now, having been in this class all term, there are often no right or wrong answers, simply arguments to be explored. You will be expected to support any opinions or statements with chapter and verse or specific references. Extra points will be given for the use of extra-canonical writings.
1. What was the role of the prophet in ancient Israel? Give an example of a twentieth century prophet, and explore the similarities and differences.
2. Trace the development of the prophetic idea of "speaking with God."
3. What are the essential differences in world view between First Isaiah and Third Isaiah? Can we determine what influenced these differences, and can we say how they affect the two concepts of God?
4. To what extent did Old Testament prophecy correspond to what we would now describe as mental illness? Choose two specific examples.
5. Describe some of the differences between prophet and messiah in first century Jewish thought.
6. Was Jesus a prophet? Was Paul? Why?
7. If Jesus were born today, how would he live and who would his followers be?
From the notes of Professor Anne Waverly
At four-thirty, the departmental secretary was just getting ready to leave for the day.
"Hello, Tazzie. Have I managed to catch Antony?"
"He called to say he'd be five minutes late, but better give him ten. You know, you really don't look too hot."
"Just tired, Tazzie."
"Don't get sick, honey. Anything I can get for you?"
"No, you run along."
"I think I will. I have to pop into the store and pick up some things for dinner."
"Hot date?"
"Warm, anyway. When can I come out and look at the pups?" Tazzie was on her feet, turning off the computer and retrieving her purse from a drawer.
"Give it another week or two. But really, Tazzie, you don't want a dog when you have a full-time job."
"Actually, I was thinking of my brother. His wife wants a puppy, and she's home with the kids all day."
"Have her come and look at them, then."
"A couple of weeks?"
"Good. They ought to have individual personalities by then."
Anne thought she was going to have to eject the woman out the door by force, but eventually she left, with one last warning about stray viruses. When she had gone, Anne went into Antony Makepeace's office and lowered herself into one of his tatty, overstuffed chairs to wait for him. She eased her bad leg out in front of her and leaned her head back to rest on the chair.
The office had not changed much since she had first seen it nearly eighteen years before, five months after losing her family. She had come in that door a shell-shocked, bereft young woman one narrow step from suicide, but this office had somehow made an impression on her. Antony had been missing that time, too, she remembered now, and she had sat in this same chair, waiting for him in the silence and the smell of books, looking at the leaves of the tree that grew outside one window and at the small birds that came and squabbled on the feeding tray at the other. She had fallen asleep, slipped into the easiest sleep for months, and woke an hour later to find Professor Antony James Makepeace, half-glasses on his nose and pen in his hand, matter-of-factly going about his work of grading papers, ten feet from where she slept.
She wasn't far from dozing off this time when he returned. He was grayer than he had been eighteen years earlier, and a little thinner, but still big and shambolic with the same warm, welcoming, and patient expression on his long face and an identical pair of half-glasses tucked into his breast pocket.
Instead of holding out his hand, though, this time he leaned down and kissed her cheek. "Don't get up, Anne. You look comfortable. Let me fix a cup of tea and I'll sit with you. Like a cup?"
"Thanks, I would."
"Not Earl Grey." His broad back was to her but his voice smiled.
"Flowery rubbish. You'll never convert me, Antony."
"I live in hope. How are the puppies getting on?"
They talked of her dogs and his cats while the electric kettle boiled and the tea was made, and he brought two mugs and a once-colorful cookie tin, now dented and worn down to bare metal at the edges, over to the arrangement of chairs and sat down with a sigh. The age of compulsory retirement had been done away with some years before, or he would not be there, but he had begun to make tentative noises about retiring, and had firmly said this would be his last turn as department chair.
The two old friends drank their tea and ate the cookies his wife made every week, and when the bottom of his cup was reached, Makepeace dusted off his fingers and said, "Now tell me, my dear, what I can do for you."
"I'm really sorry about the short notice," she replied, "but I'm going to have to ask you to get someone to take my classes for the coming quarter."
Surprise and administrative concern gave way almost instantly to a deeper, more immediate anxiety.
"Tazzie said you sounded tired…" he ventured.
Anne shook her head. "It's nothing like that. Glen McCarthy showed up yesterday."
He reared back in the armchair looking stricken, almost angry.
"No, Anne. Oh, no. Not again."
"I'm afraid so."
"I thought you were finished with that nonsense."
"So did I."
"Let someone else do it."
"They don't have anyone else."
"Make them find someone."
"Antony, I have to do it. It's the only reason I'm here."
"My dear Anne, you cannot continue to feel responsible for the world's actions. You have done your part—more than your part—and at great cost. Let it go."
"I can't, Tonio. I thought I could when I saw him yesterday. I tried all night to pick up the phone and tell him to go to hell, but I couldn't." She said nothing about her sure conviction that Glen McCarthy had handled her with his usual Machiavellian skill, putting her off balance from the beginning by deliberately appearing without warning and in the one place where she could not scream at him to fuck off—and by bringing the young policewoman along to distract Anne and keep her polite. He had even taken care to put his telephone number on the inside of the manila envelope, so she would be forced to open it and handle the papers even if she had already decided to refuse the case. From any other man, she might have thought the actions accidental, but not McCarthy: he was quite subtle enough to have planned his attack meticulously. And, he was very determined.