"So how are you feeling?" said Professor Troup lightly, flicking a new page open on a legal pad and leaning his desk chair back.
"Good," Naomi said, leaning back into the soft office sofa and letting her eyes droop shut. "Better than good. Honestly, Professor, I slept probably better than I have in weeks last night."
"Please, isn't it time you started calling me Gerard?"
She shrugged. He scratched something on his pad. The elderly stereo next to the potted plant blatted avant-garde jazz, which as usual was playing at an almost anti-social volume. It had driven Naomi crazy when she first started working with him, but she supposed she must be getting used to it.
"Better sleep," he rewound, grinning. "As in, you found it easier to fall asleep?"
"That's right. I'd had kind of a fight with my partner, too. Normally after something like that I'd have been spending all night in my head, re-examining everything I said, just spiraling for hours. But when I put on the collar afterwards, I found I was able to shut that out and...boom."
Absently, she reached for the prototype haptic collar at her throat, adjusting it with her fingers. It seemed to respond with a comforting pitter-patter of feedback against the nape of her neck.
It had originally been a plain leather collar that she'd ordered for him on Etsy. She'd been reluctant to wear the thing, because she'd never been quite sure if it was supposed to be some sort of bondage equipment. But it was for science. The paper-thin electronic strip she'd helped him stitch into the leather attested to that.
"Hmm," said the professor. "On the one hand, that seems promising. On the other hand, I do worry that it could be too much of a good thing. Stress and anxiety have a protective function, after all. I'd hate to find out that someone became unable to leave a toxic relationship because of the calming effect of my device."
"That's true," Naomi pondered. "Like how my grandpa couldn't feel pain in his feet, and he would have festering cuts down there that didn't heal right, because he didn't notice or take care of them."
Professor Troup -- Gerard -- grinned at her, acknowledging the aptness of the analogy with a tap of his pencil to his long nose.
"Indeed. What was the fight about, if you don't mind me asking?"
Naomi didn't really want to spill all her romantic woes to her professor, even if she had agreed to be his first guinea pig. She'd had enough older dudes try to chat her up about her love life for the subject to make her wary.
Gerard hadn't said anything obviously creepy during her time with him, but she had noticed him checking her out a little bit. Not that there was anything really long with looking, she supposed, as long as it didn't cross the line.
Naomi had heard whispers about undergrads who were said to have slept with their gross, predatory professors, and she'd sworn never to let something like that happen to her.
She shrugged, preparing to brush him off with something vague, but what tumbled out turned into a full-blown rant about her partner's messiness, their freeloading off their family and friends, their inability to do their own laundry...
"Sounds like a mismatch in maturity," Gerard said at last, tapping his pencil against his chin. "You might need to get out of there and find someone more on your level."
He handed her a sheaf of xeroxed printouts. Each one was headed,
Haptic Collar Stress Journal
, followed by a black space for a date.
"I want you to jot down notes throughout the day, so we can track the effect of the device. It's not a controlled study, of course, but perhaps we can think of it as more of an exploratory evaluation."
"No problem," she said, shoving the wad of papers into her backback.
The jibe about a 'mismatch in maturity' stuck in Naomi's mind as she left his office. She couldn't believe her professor had counseled her to break up with her partner. Ridiculous.
But...
She did need to find someone more mature -- more on her level -- didn't she?
* * *
"I broke up with Dani," Naomi announced as she dropped her stress diary on the professor's desk and sank into the gray office sofa.
Gerard's eyebrows shot up.
"I didn't... I mean..."
"No, you were right."
"And," he hesitated, sitting back thoughtfully. "Your anxiety level?"
"Better than ever," she sighed, slumping. She allowed herself to slip sideways until her head lay against the armrest. "No more inner monologue of self-recrimination. I'm sleeping like a baby, my neck pain is gone. I managed to actually study for my test last night at a reasonable hour, instead of procrastinating all evening and then cramming at 2 am."
"Amazing," he breathed, his eyes lighting up. "I'd dreamed of something like this, but I have to say I didn't expect so much, so quickly."
"Is there going to be a clinical trial soon?"
"I hope so," he said, scratching on his legal pad. "But I want to continue our little informal
stress test
for a few more weeks."
"Well, I don't mind," said Naomi, putting her feet up on the other armrest and folding her hands over her stomach.
Pitter-patter, went the haptic collar, seeming to spread relaxation shivering up and down her spine.
* * *
She texted back and forth with him all week, performing various small tests at his direction, many of which she didn't quite understand the point of.
On Tuesday, he had her dress all in blue, which didn't seem to have much to do with the stress-relieving effects of the collar, unless this thing was far more woo-woo than she'd suspected.
Nonetheless, she dutifully went to her classes in a blue shirt and jeans and a Brooklyn Dodgers cap, and recorded her notes and her self-assessed stress levels throughout the day as usual.
That night, he instructed Naomi to wear all red the following day, including her underwear, which was really kind of weird. Besides, she didn't even own red panties.
Specifying her underwear color? Was he getting off on this?
Lying in bed, wondering if her professor was some kind of weirdo after all, she resolved to blow off his stupid test. But very soon, her thoughts sank away into a deep and restful slumber.
In the morning, she carefully dressed herself in her reddest bra, shirt and skirt. Not a great match, but it would have to do. It wasn't the longest skirt, and Naomi really didn't want to be going commando in it, but she managed a fast and stealthy waddle to the discount store down the block, where she bought a new pair of red panties to wriggle into in the bathroom before class.
She stopped by his office later that day, cracking the door and peeking inside. He looked up at her from some papers, and smiled.
"Fully red?" he said.
"Of course."
"Come in -- let me see."
She slipped inside and did a little twirl to show off her outfit.
