Chapter 1

Jack Cabot was an asshole.

People throw that word around a lot, but rarely is it so aptly bestowed. The stereotype too, gets circulated by lazy undergrads and faculty alike. The interesting thing was that Jack did very little to dissuade anyone of their perceptions of him. Quite the contrary, he seemed very often to encourage such notions concerning the elusive quality of his character. Some would argue he had to be an asshole, that his disposition was, at least in part, forced on him by external stimuli. He was the youngest doctored professor on staff at 33. The majority of his colleagues were altogether skeptical of his rights to be counted as a peer of theirs among the tightening circles of the painfully academic. A woeful outsider in a profession he thought he could never hate, he found too soon he was wrong.

Jack Cabot was an asshole.

He was suitably regarded among the students, generally finding more favor with those of the female persuasion. The male students seemed to find his assholish tendencies less endearing. Jack happened to be endowed with large warm dark eyes, and had adopted a hairstyle that bordered on the trendily disheveled. Mostly a result of his continual aggravation over the uncooperative nature of his mop, he had conceded defeat and moved on to more important matters. He had grown a beard too, part of an overhaul he had used as an attempt to force entry into the ranks of his would- be peers. It was a stubbly thing whose success had been about as effective as his struggles to convince his fellow professors that he was as smart as his resume attested.

Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, it read like a prestigious Who’s Who of Ivy League institutions. One could marvel that he wasn’t more of an asshole really. He certainly had probable enough cause to be. He had a world of opportunity and ended up instead at a stifling institution on the west coast.

When he had met her too, he had known, almost from the instant she walked into the view of his dry erase pen, that things were destined to become infinitely more complicated. She looked more like she could belong at Berkley or Reed, instead, she stood out starkly here against parades of popped collars and prep school grads. Her resume, while not as lengthy as our asshole Jack’s, was still rather remarkable.

A few steps of corduroy Birkenstocks later, she was situated dead center. Flinty and unrelenting; expectant. Minutes dragged on the heels of frayed jeans as an assortment of bleary eyed co-eds found desks around her. “Are we really reading this?” she had pulled the book out of her hempy courier sack. “I suppose you have a better idea?” he was in no mood.

Jack Cabot was an asshole.

So, it turned out, rather conveniently, was she. “I read better stuff in grade school.” The book found a dull echoing place on the desk in front of her. “By all means then, don’t feel obligated to pay 20 grand for some crap you read before puberty.” By this time, the other students were fidgeting. The discomfort, it seemed, could support a small family of Eskimos. Another few chronologically challenged students wandered in and it was not long before they too were weighing their add-drop options.

She looked like she might be almost Portugese. Light hair left him wondering weather or not it was artificially induced, but both its normalcy and the state of her apparent granola tendencies told him it was as real as his. “Look,” he addressed the class, “The only reason you should be here is if you want to be,” his eyes fell on the girl in the center of the pool of desks. “If that’s not the case, you’re wasting your time, but, more importantly, mine.” The last word lingered with significant finality and was obviously directed towards a specific member of the audience. Her eyes glinted back and defiant fingers released the pages from the cover.

Thumbing through his class roster, he wondered which benign seeming entry would belong to the surfer-haired freedom fighter in the center of his classroom. She was far too hygienic, even on initial observations, to be considered your standard hippie, he concluded. No, she instead appeared to be an anachronistic amalgam of many genres.

He passed out syllabi to students who were relieved the dynamic had returned to that customary of the first day of the term. The fiery eyed militant was restraining herself. He placed a large bet it would not last long. He could have cashed out his chips for a small fortune. No student should ever have cause enough to ask so many preliminary questions about the syllabus.

It’s two pages! he thought for chrisssake! Apparently she needed clarification. The inquiries were not unfounded, however bellicose, though he never would have admitted it. The hour was a long one.

Class finally dismissed found Jack sipping on tepid coffee left over from breakfast, contemplating an expedition in search of lunch outside the confines of his cramped, book distressed office. He was awfully young to be as advanced an asshole as he was, but some people have a special talent for those kinds of things.

It was a rather belligerent email he had just sent to the department head, but it was not like he could be expecting any kind of tenure. A tenuous arrangement from the outset, he was looking forward to a new job, and perhaps even more, a chance to get out of the incessant rain. His hunger was becoming less easy to dismiss. Fuck it, he thought on the email.