Testing Kate (16 page)

“Um, hi,” I said, wondering if I looked as wild-eyed as I felt. Had he heard me?
Had he?

“Are you having a nice dinner?” Hoffman asked, as though we were just old friends meeting up.

“Yes. Yes, we are,” I said. I looked at Armstrong. “This is Armstrong McKenna. Armstrong…this is, um”—Don’t say Professor Satan, don’t say Professor Satan—“Professor Richard Hoffman. He teaches at the law school.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Armstrong said pleasantly, extending his hand out to Hoffman.

“I know you by reputation, of course,” Hoffman said. He smiled thinly. “And how do you know Ms. Bennett?”

“She’s my research assistant,” Armstrong said. “And my right arm. I’ve been lost without her for the past three weeks.”

“How…extraordinary,” Hoffman said dryly. I considered stomping on his foot. “Are you out celebrating, Ms. Bennett? I know grades came out today. I hope you were pleased with how you did,” Hoffman continued. And this time when he looked at me, I could have sworn I saw a malevolent glitter in his eyes. I gaped up at him. Was he
gloating
? Should I confront him? Maybe if he was so eager to let me know what he’d done, he’d come right out and admit to violating the Honor Code.

The silence stretched awkwardly between us until it was verging on the point of rudeness. And then, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Hoffman’s pale eyes suddenly slid down…to my cleavage. I glanced down and saw that an extra button on my black oxford shirt had come undone, offering a glimpse of my lace-edged bra.

I flushed with embarrassment, a red stain that started at my cheeks and crept down until it covered the exposed skin. I wanted to button the shirt back up—in fact, button it all the way to my neck—but I resisted the urge. It would be like handing Hoffman a victory.

“We
are
celebrating,” Armstrong said, apparently unaware that Hoffman had just graduated from asshole to lech. “Kate received the highest grade in her Contracts class.”

“Did she indeed?” Hoffman said, his eyebrows arched up, and I blushed even darker, now with fury at the insinuation that he wouldn’t have thought it possible for me to shine academically.

“They’re ready to seat us, Richard,” a woman said, appearing at Hoffman’s side and tucking her arm around his. His date, I presumed, although I wondered where that left Dean Sullivan. The woman was blonde and pretty. She looked glamorous in a black sweater ringed with a fur collar and charcoal gray pants, although she’d made the mistake of encircling her mouth in mauve liner that was a shade darker than her lipstick, which gave her a slightly tacky, Jersey Girl look.

“It was nice to meet you, Dr. McKenna,” Hoffman said to Armstrong. He nodded to me. “Ms. Bennett. Oh, and by the way…I didn’t eat the shrimp. I just had the flu.”

Oh,
fuck
.

And then Hoffman turned and followed the hostess and his date off to their table while I stared after them, openmouthed and horrified.

“What a pompous asshole,” Armstrong said as he glanced at the bill the waitress had left on the table.

“Oh. My. God. He heard me telling you about how he
puked
on Justice Ginsburg,” I whispered. “Hoffman
heard
me making fun of him. I’m doomed.
Doomed.
He already hates me…now he’s going
destroy
me.”

“It’s remarkable, if you think about it.”

“What is?” I asked. The veal and
pommes frites
I’d just consumed were sitting in my stomach in a heavy, congealed mass.

“Do you know what the odds are of randomly bumping into someone in a city, much less of being overheard by the very person you’re gossiping about? Statistically, it’s practically an impossibility.”

“Not for me,” I said grimly. “I’m cursed. No one believes me, but I am. I have the worst luck in the history of bad luck.”

“Which reminds me,” Armstrong said. He pulled a small wrapped package out of his jacket pocket and pushed it across the table toward me. “A late Christmas present.”

“You already gave me a present,” I protested. Armstrong had given me a ridiculously high bonus. Since we hadn’t actually done any work yet, I’d tried to refuse the bonus and all of my paychecks, but Armstrong had insisted.

My fingers were still shaking with horror after the exchange with Hoffman, but I managed to unwrap the paper. A snowy white rabbit’s foot on a chain fell into my hand.

“Um…a foot. Thanks,” I said, without any enthusiasm. What was he going to get me for my birthday, a stuffed bird?

“For luck,” Armstrong said. He rolled his eyes heavenward at my ignorance. “What are they not teaching you in school these days? Don’t you know a lucky rabbit’s foot when you see it?”

“Oh,” I said, realization dawning. “Because of my bad-luck streak.”

“Because of your bad-luck
epidemic,
” Armstrong corrected me. “And after your run-in with Professor Prick back there, you’re going to need this more than ever. Keep it close. Tuck it in your brassiere.”

I sputtered with laughter. “Thanks, but no matter how bad my bad luck gets, I’m not going to start stuffing my bra with dismembered rabbit parts.”

“Suit yourself,” Armstrong said, shaking his head.

Just to be safe, though, I slipped the rabbit’s foot into my purse.

Chapter Seventeen

T
hat’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Jen said. She turned so pale, the spattering of freckles covering her nose and cheeks stood out prominently against her paper-white skin. We were all sitting in the courtyard after a painfully boring Property lecture, and while Jen and Addison chain-smoked, I recounted my run-in with Hoffman at La Crêpe Nanou.

“Are you going to drop out of school? Move away? Change your name?” Addison asked.

“Add,” Lexi said warningly. I was glad to see that her anger—or jealousy, if Nick was right—from the previous day had passed.

“What? That’s what I’d do,” he said. “Hoffman’s going to slice and dice her in class tomorrow.”

“Addison! That’s not helping!” Jen exclaimed, glaring at him.

“What are you going to do?” Nick asked.

“What can I do?” I said, hating the way my chest was pinching and swelling. I took a deep, ragged breath, hoping to quell the tears before they started leaking out. “I can’t take it back. I can’t get out of his class. I can’t do anything.” I shrugged helplessly.

“You have to talk to Dean Sullivan,” Nick said quietly.

“And say what?” I asked. “That Hoffman overheard me making fun of him? Yeah, I’m sure that will go over well.”

“Was his date really that attractive?” Lexi asked, frowning.

“She looked like a slightly tacky interior designer—very well groomed, although not with the greatest taste. Look, I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I said. I stood up and heaved my knapsack, laden down with textbooks, onto my shoulder. I had Con Law tomorrow and knew with a sickening certainty that Addison was right: Hoffman would be gunning for me. I had to be prepared for him, even if that meant throwing my shoulder out from lugging all of my textbooks home with me.

“Do you want a ride home?” Dana asked. She’d been sitting quietly, perched on the edge of the stone bench. Her hair was still braided, although some of the brown curls were starting to escape, rising up in kinky wisps over the cornrows.

“You’re leaving?” I asked, surprised. Dana usually camped out at the school library all day. She even had claimed her own cubicle on the second floor of the library, tucked back behind the stacks. It was well known within our study group that if you needed to get ahold of Dana, it was far more reliable to leave a Post-it note stuck to the wall of her cubicle than to leave a message on her answering machine.

Dana nodded. “Didn’t I tell you? My parents gave me a puppy for Christmas,” she said, grinning. “I’m going to have to start studying at home, because he doesn’t like being alone for that long.”

“A puppy! Really? What kind?” I asked.

“A poodle,” she said. “I named him Oliver Wendell Holmes.”

Holmes had the worst breath I’d ever smelled. It was like something that had crawled into a garbage Dumpster and fermented there until even the cockroaches were offended. But it was hard to hold it against the little guy. From his bright coal eyes to his tail, which whirled in constant motion, he was a charming little dog. I held my breath while he attacked me with stinky puppy kisses, licking my face as though it were a hamburger iced with liver-infused frosting.

“He’s adorable,” I panted, when Holmes had turned his attention back to Dana and I was able to breathe freely again.

“Thanks,” she said happily. Dana gathered the squirming mass of black fur into her arms and hugged him to her chest. “I’ve been wanting a dog forever, but my mom is allergic so I couldn’t have one growing up.”

“What made you choose a poodle?” I asked.

“They’re really smart. And clean,” Dana said.

“I can see why you got him. It’s hard to be stressed out when he’s around,” I remarked, watching Holmes, who had squirmed free from Dana’s embrace, begin to spin in circles, chasing his tail. I’d have to take her word for it on the “smart” part.

“I thought the same thing,” Dana said. She watched Holmes scamper about, her face shining with happiness.

“I should probably get home, though. I have to be prepared for Hoffman tomorrow.”

“I’ve never had a problem with him,” Dana said. “He’s always been pretty nice to me. Well, maybe not
nice,
but…”

“I know what you mean. He hasn’t targeted you,” I said. “But you sat in the front row last semester and raised your hand a lot.”

“Maybe you should try doing that.”

“I can’t sit in the front row. The seating chart’s already been drawn up.”

“No, but you could try raising your hand more,” Dana said.

“But…,” I began, and then stopped. Because as much as I wanted to dismiss her idea—volunteer in Hoffman’s class? It was suicide!—maybe she did have a point.

“Hoffman always goes easier on the students who volunteer a lot. I’ve noticed that,” Dana said.

“It could be too late. I may have already pissed him off too much,” I said.

“Maybe,” Dana said. She scooped Holmes back up and giggled as he writhed toward her, his long pink tongue outstretched. “But what do you have to lose?”

“How did Chief Justice Warren define
justifiability
in
Flast v. Cohen
?” Hoffman queried.

“What are you doing?” Nick whispered.

I stretched my hand farther up into the air and ignored him. I didn’t even dare pass notes in Hoffman’s class, much less carry on a whispered conversation.

“Put your hand down,” Nick hissed.

Hoffman’s flat eyes swept over the class. I thrust my hand up a little higher to catch his attention. Hoffman stared at me for a long moment. I returned his gaze, keeping my hand up in the air.

“Kate, are you insane?” Nick asked. He was still whispering, but the room was so quiet, his voice carried.

“Mr. Crosby, are you volunteering?” Hoffman asked mildly.

Shit.
Nick had just been trying to help me. I raised my hand even higher, so that one butt cheek was actually lifting up off my chair, and I waved it around a bit, the way I’d seen Dana do.

“Yes, Ms. Bennett, I see you. You can put your hand down now,” Hoffman said, the words laced with acid. I lowered my hand and glanced at Nick, who seemed to have frozen. I’d never seen him have such trouble being called on before. He’d even suffered through a withering Hoffman examination during our first semester and lived to joke about it afterward.

“I don’t know,” Nick said softly.

“Speak up, Mr. Crosby, the rest of the class would like to hear you.”

“I don’t know,” Nick said. “I…I didn’t read the assignment.”

Hoffman looked at Nick with a sour mixture of amusement and scorn. “Is that so? Perhaps you should rethink your friendships, Mr. Crosby. It seems that Ms. Bennett’s lackadaisical approach to her studies is rubbing off on you.”

To my surprise, Nick chuckled. “I’ll take that under advisement,” he said, shooting me a self-assured grin. The class tittered. Hoffman’s lectures weren’t normally ripe for a laugh, so we’d take what we could get.

Hoffman, however, was not amused.

“There’s nothing humorous about incompetence, Mr. Crosby. Or bad judgment,” Hoffman snapped. “Perhaps some of Ms. Bennett’s other friends will be more helpful. Mr. Quinn,” Hoffman said, his eyes snapping over to Addison, who was suddenly sitting up very straight in his chair. “The holding of
Flast v. Cohen,
please.”

By the time class was over, Hoffman had grilled Addison, Jen, and Lexi, sneering at their responses and goading each of them in turn. And even though I raised my hand with each question—although now instead of trying to win his favor, all I wanted to do was to draw his attention away from my friends—Hoffman studiously ignored me. It was awful.

“Well. That was fun. I guess I better read up for Friday,” Nick said cheerfully, tossing his books into his black messenger bag.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I felt sick, actually physically ill. Bile churned in my stomach. “I know he only went after you guys because of me.”

“Don’t worry about it, chicky,” Addison said, shrugging. “It had to happen sometime. He didn’t call on me once last semester, so I was overdue.”

But Lexi and Jen weren’t so forgiving. Jen had been hit especially hard when she wavered on the holding in
Village of Arlington Heights
. Hoffman needled her until she fell silent, unable to say anything else. Now that class was over, she stood up and hurried from the room without a word to any of us. Before she left, I could see tears shimmering in her eyes.

Lexi turned and looked at me. “Jesus, Kate, why did you have to go and piss him off again?” she huffed, and then she left too, tossing her hair as she stomped off.

“Forget them,” Nick said.

“Yeah, it’s not your fault. I should never have told you the shrimp story,” Addison said.

“No, I’m glad you did. It was a good story,” I said miserably.

It was for my friends’ sake, and not my own, that I went to see Teresa Sullivan again. This time I made an appointment ahead of time.

“Kate Bennett?” Teresa Sullivan said when she walked into the reception area where I was waiting for her. Her face arranged itself into a polite smile that made me wonder if she remembered me.

I followed Sullivan back to her office and sat in the same chair I’d occupied on my first visit there. The pictures of her husband and pigtailed daughter were the same, although there was a new one of the family standing in front of a Christmas tree. I wondered if the handsome husband with his chiseled jaw and confident stare suspected that his wife was having an affair with a middle-aged prick. And what would happen to the little redheaded girl if her parents ended up divorcing over Hoffman? Would she be forced to pack her Barbies into a pink overnight bag and spend the rest of her childhood schlepping back and forth to each parent’s house, per the terms of the custody agreement?

“We’ve met before, correct,” Teresa Sullivan said. It was less of a question than a statement.

I nodded. “At the beginning of the fall semester,” I said.

Teresa Sullivan consulted an unmarked manila folder sitting on her desk. “Oh, right. You were concerned about Professor Hoffman’s treatment of you,” she said.

I nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s why I’m here again,” I said.

And then I told her. All of it, even the part about Hoffman putting the dot on the cover of my blue-book exam and the stupid story about Hoffman throwing up bad shrimp on Justice Ginsburg’s lap.

“And now he’s started targeting my friends. In fact, for the past three classes, he’s called on my friends almost exclusively, mocking them, berating them,” I concluded.

Teresa Sullivan looked at me thoughtfully. While I’d been talking, she’d kicked off her high heels—today they were black crocodile with four-inch needlelike heels—and tucked one of her stockinged feet up under her leg.

“As unfair as it may seem, Professor Hoffman is free to run his class as he sees fit, even if that means calling on some students more than others. But marking a blue book—that’s a serious accusation,” Teresa Sullivan said. She flipped open the folder and began writing something on a sheet of paper within.

“I…I know that you and Professor Hoffman are friends,” I said hesitantly. “So if you don’t feel comfortable handling this, I can talk to another member of the administration.”

“I don’t understand,” Sullivan said, frowning a little as she looked at me. “I wouldn’t say I know Professor Hoffman especially better than any other member of the faculty.”

“But…I saw you having lunch together that one day,” I said.

“Oh, right,” Sullivan said, realization brightening her face. “That wasn’t a social lunch. Did you know that Dean Spitzer is retiring at the end of this year?”

“No,” I said, surprised. “I hadn’t heard that.”

“Well, he is, and I’m on the search committee to find a new dean. Professor Hoffman asked me to lunch that day so that he could tell me, informally, that he would like to be considered for the position.”

It took a minute for this to sink in.

“Hoffman…as dean of the law school?” I whispered. The idea was horrific. I pictured a totalitarian administration, complete with library police and random locker searches. “But he’s
evil
.” The words slid from my lips before I could stop them.

A smile twitched at Sullivan’s mouth. “When I was in law school, I thought my Contracts professor was out to get me. He once called on me every single day for two weeks straight,” she said.

“What happened?”

“I ended up doing really well in his class. All of that extra studying I did to be prepared for class, I guess. Years later I ran into him at a conference, and we ended up having a drink together and laughing about it,” Teresa Sullivan said breezily.

“Well, I can tell you right now, Hoffman and I will never, ever end up laughing together over a drink,” I said darkly.

“No, perhaps not,” Sullivan said. “But in any event, you don’t have to worry about my ability to handle this inquiry with impartiality.” She scribbled down a few final notes on the paper, and when she finished, she looked up at me. “Is there anything else you can remember?”

I shook my head. “No. What happens now?”

“Now we look into the allegations you’ve reported,” Teresa Sullivan said.

“But…you’re not going to leave me in his class…are you? Or my friends?” I blurted out.

“For the time being, yes. If you have any further problems, please let me know,” Teresa Sullivan said, in a tone that clearly indicated that our meeting was over.

I sighed, puffing out my cheeks, even though I wasn’t surprised. This may not have been a wise move, I thought. If Hoffman found out about the investigation—as he surely would—he’d hate me that much more. And now that I knew he was going after the deanship, there was even more at stake.