Plus One

8: Lesson one

8: Lesson one

Adrian Tennant managed to endure twenty of my hurried apologies before he finally insisted—with forced, tried patience—that he had no intention of holding my friend’s inappropriate suggestions against me. I only half believed him, taking note of the fact that his bold personality had resorted to a bit of caution.

The first thing I noticed upon stepping inside Arian’s office was the smell of books. Now, these pads of paper may not have a particular scent in small doses, but when a full sized bookshelf and another thousand miscellaneous encyclopedias and novels are crammed into a miniscule, 15’ by 15’ square, you may reconsider my insanity. The smell of books is an odd set of contradictions: musty and clean, old and fresh, unappealing and delicious. It is the only scent I’ve known that is truly subjective: an intellectual such as Adrian may willingly wear it as cologne; those of the opposite sort may run the other way plugging their unintelligent noses.

In short, all of the books and binders and pencils and sheets of ripped-out notebook pages left room in the college professor’s office for little more than a chair and a small desk, with a silver laptop peaking out from under an avalanche of off-white. Welcome back to school?

As Adrian went to work searching for his inconveniently misplaced planner, I meandered towards his desk. The papers on it were all tattooed by the same, slanted scrawl. The words were all but illegible, but there was a sort of chaotic elegance to the wild grace of each letter. I thought of my own handwriting: straight, neat little bubble letters, as devoid of personality as the Times New Roman font on a computer. I scowled, and turned over a piece of paper.

“Wait! Don’t touch that!” In his haste to reprimand me, Adrian had misjudged the distance between us and nearly slammed me against the bookshelf. “Everything in here has its place, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t move anything,” he continued, more quietly.

“Excuse me,” I muttered, stepping back from him and the desk. “I think my first act as your assistant will be to diagnose you with OCD.”

“I do not suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder,” he said sharply.

“Denial is the weakness of an immature mind, incapable of learning and coping with reality,” I recalled, pulling sources from a lecture I may or may not have remembered from two years ago.

Adrian smiled, leaning against the wall in a pose that—at certain angles—could be interpreted as ‘sexy.’ “Denial is the mind’s defense against external realities that threaten the wellbeing of the ego. And claiming that you, dear Cassie, deny nothing would be the greatest denial of all. But, all things aside, I do not have OCD.”

I frowned and looked at my feet. Lesson one: never use psychology as support for an argument when you’re arguing with a psychology professor.

“Moving on,” Adrian continued, his exuberant confidence now fully restored by his recent victory. “What shall we talk about for this first lecture?”

I laughed and let myself fall backwards into the office chair. For a moment Adrian looked as if he’d protest the fact that I’d scooted the piece of furniture backwards an inch, but he held his peace. “Let me get this straight,” I clarified. “You have no idea what you’re going to discuss on the very first day?”

“Not a clue. I like improvisation. If you can’t think quickly, why think at all? Now hurry, what’s the best part of psychology?”

“There isn’t a best part,” I scoffed. “That’s a matter of opinion—it’s what you find the most interesting.”

He beamed at me and bounded forward, attaching his hands on each of my shoulders. I bit back a laugh stemmed from the realization that his face was even more enthusiastic at so miniscule a distance. “Yes! Brilliant! Cassie, I love you,” he shouted before springing backwards. What had I said? His body couldn’t seem to keep up with his mind as he darted from corner to corner, gathering notebooks and books until only slivers of his face were visible between the piles of paper.