"Can I help you?" I asked.
She looked at me with red and tear-filled eyes. Even so I found myself wondering again if I had never seen as beautiful a woman in my life.
"I hope to God you can," she said between sniffles. "I only took the class because I thought it would be fun, now it's gonna drag down my GPA to the point that I loose my scholarship." At the word 'scholarship' her voice cracked and the tears began to flow.
"Whoa now," I said. Take it easy. I got up from behind my desk and came around to the front where she stood. I pulled a chair up for her and I sat on the desk. I have always felt more comfortable with my students when the desk wasn't between us. I struggled briefly for her name, than remembered it. "Megan, your not doing that badly - and a strong midterm could really turn things around for you."
She looked at me as if I had just said something insane. "I really don't that's going to happen. I'm just not getting this. It's so much harder than I thought it would be." She took a tissue out of her small hand bag and wiped the tears from her cheeks. "And without that scholarship... I'm... I'm... through here."
"It's not going to come to that," I assured her, lying a hand on her shoulder. Touching a student is always an iffy thing. But it's has always been my style especially with the student in or near tears, and anyway you can always tell when the gesture isn't appreciated. More times than not I find it's welcomed. As I discovered now.
"Thank you." She said, looking at my hand. "But what am I going to do?" She asked looking at me with such hopelessness that I almost felt like welling up myself.
I checked my watch. 8:55 AM. "Megan I know just were you are coming from, because believe it or not - I was just like you. I never got this stuff the first time I heard it myself. And it's hard when you're in a class of twenty-five and you don't want to sound like the only one who's not getting it? Am I right?"
She nodded wordlessly. Thunder rumbled outside.
"So all you need is a little bit of help. Do you have a study partner that can bring you up to speed?"
"I tried that, all it did was make it worse. Confused me all the more."
I inwardly sighed knowing the novel that I had been trying work on over my lunch breaks - over the past four years - would have to wait for me again. "Megan, helping you is very important to me. I have a meeting at 9:00 AM that I can't miss, but I have an hour free at lunch. Can you meet me back here at noon, and I'll go over it all with you again?"
She shook her head, slowly and with great regret. "No, I work at the student cafeteria from 11 till 1, and if I miss one more day there I'll loose that too." Then she seemed to be considering something. She bit her lower lip. Adorable. I already had the feeling that what ever she wanted, I was probably going to wind up being more than accommodating. "But once ever thing is set up, after about noon," she said, "all I do is sit around. If we could meet there, instead - it would be perfect."
I weighed it in my mind. The student cafeteria - 'blah' - but she was still gnawing at her lower lip and I was smitten. "Perfect!" I said lying. "We can trash it out over lunch." Then letting my sense of humor get the best of me I added; "Do they still have that world famous meatloaf?"
Megan threw her arms around me before I even saw it coming. "Oh, thank you - thank you so very much." I felt her breasts pressing against my chest and I briefly caught the whiff-of-heaven scent of her hair. I felt a heated flush rushing to my face.
"Why think nothing of it," I said. "Rescuing damsels in distress is my sideline." I don't know why, but the dumbest things always come out of my mouth when I am flustered.
"I'll see you at noon then." She said rushing out of the class room. I didn't have time to even raise my hand in return.
I put my materials away in my bag and pulled out my umbrella. The East Coast was being lashed by the remnants of the latest hurricane to thrash its way up the country. We had been spared the brunt of the storm, but there were still three inches of standing water in the streets. Fortunately the 9:00 was in the building just next door. Even so I was nearly drowned in the storm. I couldn't remember ever seeing a rain as hard. As far as protection went, my little umbrella turned out to be woefully inadequate.
I was late, as is my trademark, but I made it to the cafeteria by twelve-ten. The smell that assailed me was exactly the same one stored magically and somehow electronically into the memory cells of my mind, for the past twenty years. It had not changed at all. Not since I was a student on campus at this college. Revolting.
Upon seeing me the relieve on Megan's face was plain. "I thought you had forgotten about me." She said.
The smile that spread across my face was both immediate and sincere. "Hardly." I said.
Over lunch (I passed on the meatloaf) I slowly and thoroughly went over the concepts that had been escaping Meagan over the first half semester. She was by no means stupid, quite far from it. Her grasp of things once defined to her, was as fine as any I had ever seen. She reminded me a lot of when I was a student. A lot. It neared one O'clock and I was just about to make my final point and wrap it all up for her in one dramatic flare of inspired teaching, when the roof fell in.
By that I don't mean that my teaching failed to make impact, but quite literally the roof fell in. It seems that the three inches of water lying in the streets was also lying atop the flat roof of the cafeteria. The current thunder burst was more than the old roof could take. A huge section of the ceiling fell in just over the kitchen area. A ton of water hit the blackened grill in a flash of steam and sudden noise. A scream went up from several of the female students, some of the guys shouted in surprise. Fortunately no one was hurt, but my inspired instruction came to an unexpected end. Or so I believed.
I helped the kitchen staff herd the student body toward the two exits. Some of the younger girls were screaming hysterically, you would have thought that they had been killed. I have never understood post teen-age hysterics and I was impressed when I saw Megan standing impassively at the door waiting for me. She watched the screaming girls run by and rolled her eyes dramatically. "Freshmen!" She said.
I stifled a laugh into my hand. Just outside lightning flashed and set off another round of screams from several points across the campus lawn. I looked at Megan who was wearing a thin pink tee-shirt that didn't quite cover her belly-button and low riding cutoff jeans. "Your going to get soaked," I said. "I would offer you a ride, but I walked over from my office."
"That's OK," Megan said. "My dorm is only three blocks up." Then she bit her lip again. It was like a fast ball pitcher giving away his best weapon, but a look that I found myself growing quite fond of. "Listen," she said with some hesitation, "I really feel like I was just on the verge of getting this. If you have nothing else to do - could we finish this in my dorm?"
I considered. There were no hard and fast rules about instructors being in the dorm rooms, nothing written in stone. But doing so could be seen as an impropriety, and even a fully vested professor such as myself, could find himself looking for work if someone took exception to my being there. As I let the debate wage the war in my mind for a moment, I saw Megan do something that I had only once see directed at myself once before in my life. She ran her tongue around her lips. It happened so quickly that I almost missed it. Then just as quickly I convinced myself that I could not have seen... - it was just insane. At forty, I was twice this girls age. No, I was sure - I had to have been mistaken. And that quickly before doubt could set in again, Megan was dashing out the door and into the heavy downpour.
Just an hour past high noon and it looked like twilight outside. Thick black clouds covered the sky from horizon to horizon. Lightning frequently jumped from cloud to cloud and from cloud to the ground. I stepped outside and felt suddenly old as I paused to open my conservative black umbrella. There was a time that I too would have just run pell-mell into the rain. I struggled to catch up.
Once I caught her I managed to match Megan's gait stride for stride, but I thanked the gods that we only had a block left to go. She was burying me. The girl was all leg. At one point she even turned around and walked backward to hear what I was saying. She didn't seem to loose a bit of speed. Just then, with Megan walking backward and myself mid-sentence about something which I have long since forgotten, a lightning bolt issued from the sky and tore my field of vision in two. The sound was tremendous. I about jumped out of my skin. I froze in my tracks, almost involuntarily. Megan however - even though the lightening had struck behind her - didn't even flinch. She just kept up her long pace backwards. I pressed to catch up again. Over a second clap of the thunder, which rolled across the campus like a thing of great weight, I asked her; "Doesn't anything frighten you?"
"Yes," she said through an impish grin, her hair down across her face and water running in her eyes, "the idea that you still believe that we are going to my room to just study."
This stopped me in my tracks a record setting second time. I even lowered my umbrella to my side in surprise. "We're not?" I asked. I couldn't keep the incredulousness out of my voice.
"I don't think so." She said and turned forward to run. "Although I still hope to learn something," she yelled over her shoulder as she again put half a block between us.
I caught up to her just as she entered the dorm building. No word was spoken between us then. I stood in the lobby and shaking the excess water from my umbrella, and trying to decide what to do. I decided to play along for a while and followed her into the elevator. She hit the 15th floor and I suppressed a grin. "What?" She asked.
"Nothing." I said, but when she threw me a comical pout I volunteered more. "I used to live on 15," I said, "when I went here."
"You were a student here?" She asked, sounding more surprised that I would have liked.
