Or.
Perhaps Briana betrayed me to her moneyed parents on a weekend home away from campus. I picture a dining room ablaze with golden light. Briana sitting in a gilded chair with clawed armrests, hair gleaming under the chandelier, complaining while stabbing idly at a gold-rimmed plate of poached salmon and braised asparagus. She cast me as a poor unlearned virgin! Her parents nodding sympathetically as they sip large-lipped glasses of amber wine. Her mother placing the call to her dear friend, the vice president, the stem of glass number two between her manicured fingers. About the insane drama teacher. Her stupid insistence upon a play she and her daughter have never even heard of before. All’s Well That Ends Well? Is it even a Shakespeare play? Can’t something be done? Surely something can be done.
“Some of the students,” Ellie begins, looking over her shoulder yet again, “are upset about the choice of play this year. And they’re going to complain. Formally. I overheard.”
I feel my face go red. I look up at Ellie.
Ellie won’t look at me now. Her gaze is for her black pants, her thick thighs alone. Because she is so tender-souled, she’s allowing me a private moment to process all of this, to gather myself. And yet clearly she burns with rage on my behalf.
“When did you hear this?” My voice is calm. Only curious. Not at all wavering.
“After rehearsal. On my way out.”
I can’t cry in front of Ellie. I will myself not to. Don’t, don’t.
“Thank you, Ellie. Thank you for letting me know.” My voice is definitely wavering now. She needs to go.
“Professor Fitch?”
“Yes, Ellie.”
“I just want you to know that I wasn’t part of the discussion at all. I would never do that.”
“Of course not.”
“I just felt you should know.”
“Of course you did. Thank you for telling me.”
“Professor?”
I try to will Ellie away. So I can weep openly. Drop back down behind the desk. Take more pills before my Playing Shakespeare class.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know if you would be up for this.…” She clears her throat, and I half expect her to pull out her Lady of Shalott journal and begin reading one of her depression sonnets to me aloud.
I look at Ellie now, gazing at me so fixedly.
“I make these baths, Professor,” she says. “I’d love to make one for you.”
“Baths?”
“It’s just dried herbs and essential oils and salt,” she says quickly. “Anyway, they’re very healing. Relaxing in a way. They might help with your pain. They’re supposed to have restorative properties.” She blushes, the pentacle pendant around her neck glimmering against her bloodless skin.
“I make them for people,” she says. “For myself too sometimes.”
“Do you?”
I picture Ellie lying in a bathtub filled with stagnant water, her necklace glowing in the dark. Wet hair slicked back. Wan face floating above the steam, lit weakly by a tealight. Her eyes are closed with palpable intensity.
“Would you be interested in a bath?” she asks me.
I try to smile. “Ellie. I’m sure you have better things to do than make me a bath.”
She doesn’t smile back. Just stares at me, dead serious. “I’d like to,” she says. “It’s easy for me.”
“Well, I’m a bit beyond baths, I’m afraid. But thank you. Thank you for thinking of me.”
My office phone begins to ring. The dean? Possibly. Ellie and I both look at the phone.
“Maybe I’ll make you one anyway,” she says, getting up. She slings her canvas bag over her shoulder. Smiles at me with something like love in her eyes.
“See you later in rehearsal, Professor Fitch.”
* * *
Class is a black hole. Playing Shakespeare, what a joke. I gaze at my students. Already so unemployable. Already doomed. You’re doomed, I want to tell them. Instead I say, “Good afternoon.” I attempt to lean back against the desk, but my sitting time with Ellie has made even this posture unbearable. Grunts inadvertently escape my lips. My face, I know, looks pale and cracked down the middle. My lips hiss with dryness no matter how much I lick them. The good thing is Playing Shakespeare can pretty much teach itself. Get them to read whatever play aloud in class. A play, after all, is meant to be performed. Get them to perform a scene. Two scenes, why not? Get them to discuss the staging of said scenes in groups. Get them to discuss at length. Get them to present their findings to one another. Appear to take note of all this from where you lean against a wall, trying not to die. If you have time left over, play a video clip. Play the whole fucking video. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen when they were young and beautiful and talking about scansion. A Lifetime network version of a contemporary and utterly implausible Othello. A shakily shot YouTube video of Dream being staged in a Utah field. It’s all instructive. Ignore the ringing of your cell phone. Which is the dean calling again, surely. He’s in his office. Likely standing at his window observing the quaint campus green, the dollhouse residence halls and white church-like buildings that make up this toy college. Cell phone to his ear, stupid smile on his face. Perhaps Fauve is in the office with him, bearing witness to my humiliation. She’ll often pay him visits, ingratiating herself. Bringing him coffees, baked treats, new animal ties.