“I assume your accuser is a woman. At least you can tell me that.” Start with the basics.
“Yes, a female student in my beginning Physics class.”
Our waitress came and served the main course, halibut for me, a beef dish for Mark. We both took the fried apples, which were very good here; they smelled and tasted of cinnamon. I let Mark take a few bites of his food. He needed the nourishment. A disaster like this could end his teaching career almost before it started. But it wasn’t going to happen without a fight. Mark wasn’t a quitter, and besides, I wouldn’t let him give up. But first I had to find out what had happened between him and this…ungrandmotherly epithets came to me.
I picked at my food, not eating much. Finally, I said, “Tell me as much as you can about this girl.”
Mark finished chewing his mouthful. “She’s a sophomore. I believe she’s twenty. I think she’s bright, but she’s cut class a couple of times. The lecture is at eight o’clock and not all the students are early risers. At least once I noticed her sleeping in class.”
“What does she look like?”
“Like our waitress, only lighter.”
He had noticed her. He wasn’t dead yet. “Lighter in weight or in color?”
“She’s white.”
“Rate the looks of this white girl on a scale from one to ten.”
“That’s politically incorrect.”
“Don’t make jokes, Mark. This is serious.”
“She’s an eight, easily. She might be a nine, dressed up, especially later in the day.”
That wasn’t good. The story of a beautiful girl was more likely to be believed than that of Raggedy Ann. Or was it? Perhaps the plain girls got more sympathy. “Tell me what happened between you two.”
“Up until last week I had just answered questions for her in the lab. Of course I do that for everybody. But last week she came to my office.”
“Lil, you didn’t tell us you were going to have dinner with Mark.” I looked up at Tess and Wesley, who had just come into the dining room together. Tess had an eye for younger men. I didn’t blame her; I do too. Since they both knew Mark, handshaking and air-kissing went on for several seconds.