“That’s him, Kris, look, that’s my professor I was telling you about.”
“Food guy?”
“Foodways. He even posted a meme on the class website about how where there’s a food will, there’s a foodway.”
“That’s not even a pun.”
“But he’s so human Kris. It’s sort of cute how it isn’t funny.”
“What are you going to do, fuck him?”
Wednesday came, and Phyllis found herself drawing the scratchy blue curtains in her dorm room to get ready for office hour. There had been no doubt in her mind that she would change clothing after her morning class that day, that the leggings and class hoodie she was wearing weren’t quite right for the next scene. She scanned the clothes in her closet, governed by no particular style or colour scheme, and chose an orange top with a keyhole just above the chest area. She tied a silver scarf around her scalp like a headband and pulled a few pieces out at the front. Romantic, but effortless. North American college campus meets provincial village. Phyllis rummaged in her makeup bag for the eyeliner she had bought this morning and carefully unfastened its cardboard wrapping. White eyeliner makes your eyes look bigger, Kris had said. She peeled back her waterline and began to draw a thin line, barely there, how Kris explained it. Satisfied, she smeared a lump of Vaseline on her lips and headed across campus.
Professor Klein’s office was smaller and brighter than Phyllis expected it to be. His only framed photo was of a drooling basset hound, which struck Phyllis as an interesting choice of dog. She had considered him more of an Irish setter sort of guy.
“I don’t know what my favourite food is yet. How do I know what I like best if I haven’t tried everything?”
Professor Klein looked perplexed as Phyllis sat on the wooden chair in front of him, smiling shyly, hands folded in her lap.
“Food studies is a discipline invested in choice, Phyllis. You will never try every food in this world, and that’s the point. All it takes is a walk through Kensington Market to see how vast and colourful our foodscape is.”
Did he see me there?
“It’s about deciding which foods are worth our inquiry. Which academic doors are worth opening. Thanks for coming to my office hour, by the way. You’d be surprised how few students show up. None, actually, despite my encouragement. I’m competing with Intro to Mediaeval Torture.”
Phyllis was only half listening, as part of her attention was devoted to making sure her legs were crossed in a natural-looking manner. There were also her hands to worry about, which turned a blue-ish red when she felt nervous.
“Anyways, Phyllis, it’s okay not to have an idea for your final paper yet. This is the first week of what I hope will prove to be an exciting and stimulating academic journey together.”
Stimulating? Together?
“You are welcome to come to office hour whenever you’d like, and we can discuss whatever topics pique your interest as our course unfolds.”
Our course.
Phyllis attended every office hour but two that semester. She grew to enjoy learning about the history of food and developed an enthusiasm for a potential paper on apple pie. Or at least talking about it. One Wednesday, Phyllis made Professor Klein laugh. Something about her nan’s apple pie recipe using too much cinnamon. The next week, their conversation drifted toward the personal.
“Where are you from, Phyllis? I realise I’ve never asked.”
“Baby Creek. I’m sure you haven’t heard of it.”
“Baby Creek. Au contraire, Mademoiselle Blake. I probably know more about your hometown than you do.”
Phyllis both beamed and cringed whenever Professor Klein lapsed into French.
“That was the last town in the province to repeal prohibition. And now they’ve got the highest rates of alcohol consumption per capita. I use it as a case study in my seminar course on twentieth-century imbibement.”
Phyllis’ cheeks reddened as she told her professor that she’d never heard that statistic before, and to please, go on, that does sound interesting. She barely stopped to reflect on whether she was lying but had a vague recollection of seeing a local museum exhibition on the subject a few years back.
It didn’t matter. Phyllis could listen to Professor Klein talk about anything, for as long as he was willing. Office hour was hers, and she revelled in its intimacy. It was thrilling to look her professor in the eye a moment longer than necessary. To stare at his mouth while he spoke to see if he’d turn away. To form a triangle: eyes, lips, eyes again. There was safety in the space of their Wednesday meetings because the roles they played were half scripted. There was a peculiar freedom in the possibility of improvisation. Of imagining the scenarios this new world allowed. They might lock eyes across the room at a faculty event. Her, the freshman server. Him, the celebrated academic. The warmth of a wink that would mean recognition. The awe of his colleagues at his brilliant young protegée. The closeness of a whisper. Maybe, in the summer, when I’m no longer marking your essays.
On Thursdays, Phyllis and Kris would lie on Kris’s bed and talk about the weeks they’d had.
“He’s definitely into you, Phyllis. For one, you wore that tiny skirt this week. And you give him attention. All any guy wants is attention from a younger girl. But you’re his student. He’s like thirty. It’s not like anything’s going to happen. It would be way too risky.”
“You don’t know that for sure, Kris.”
The dining hall, too, was the site of frequent girlish incursions into the depth and status of Phyllis’s meetings with Professor Klein. Gossip bounced off plastic plates piled high with contradictory assortments of cheese pizza, weak curry, and vegetable gyoza. While Kris asserted that Phyllis’s situation would remain static, a girl named Annika told a story about her older sister’s friend, whose appetite for her professors could only be curbed by not one, not two, but three erudite men. Phyllis laughed with her friends while feeling uninterested in the food on her plate. There were too many foodways to keep track of. The thought of their meeting inside her stomach made her feel nauseous and full. She craved a feeling instead of a substance. Like the satisfaction of an enjoyable office hour, or the bright green flash of Henry’s messages on her phone screen as she swiped them away to make him wait.
The next Wednesday was the third last of the term, and the last time Phyllis would attend Professor Klein’s office hour. She sat patiently on her wooden chair, her mouth parted slightly as Professor Klein gently critiqued her draft paper. He scooched his chair closer to show her his red markings, so that his desk was beside rather than between them.
“You could be a little bolder in paragraph three. Right here, see, you use ‘may’ and ‘might,’ when you don’t really need to. Say what you feel. Be confident in your argument, Phyllis. You’ve worked very hard this semester, and this essay is your chance to show me what you’ve learned.”
“Thank you, Professor Klein.”
“Please, call me Dave.”
The timeline is unclear, but sometime during the next five seconds Phyllis felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand erect as a highland dance troupe. An unwelcome element had landed on her thigh—bare beneath her skirt—and had rested there. The hand was firm and rough, but skinny, quite unlike Henry’s. However, any curiosity Phyllis felt about the hand’s shape was overwhelmed by dismay. Its confidence was perverse. There was no tremor, no hesitation. The hand was alive. It made a choice. For two, three, four one-thousands, flesh sat atop flesh, as if perfectly called for. Its audacity astounded Phyllis. Five one-thousand, six. The scene was shifting, certainly, it already had. Phyllis Blake rose and, without a word, left Dave’s office as if physically expelled.
Kris laughed about it, wrapped in Phyllis’s throw blanket. “I didn’t think you had it in you. Nice one. What were you expecting? Yeah, he’s a professor. But he’s still a guy.”
That night, after Kris had said goodnight and gone to her own room, Phyllis took out the glass jar Henry had given her. For when you miss me. She knew she didn’t. Not in the way he wanted her to. But she drew out a slip of pink construction paper anyway.
I love u because your delicious.
Phyllis stared at the boyish handwriting and laughed. She laughed so hard that her ribs began to heave like a starving kitten’s, and her arms felt like lead weights. Kris banged on the door to ask what the matter was. Her shoulders shook. Her chest felt oddly concave. Maybe she was just hungry.
