Back at the dean’s office, Kaiyo asked, “Max, what on earth happened? Your pants…they look like they belong to …”

“Jeff Stanley? As a matter of fact, they do. I was in the Daily Grind and ran into an old colleague and she spilled her coffee on me. I couldn’t go to the student session with a spot here,” he pointed to his crotch, “so he rescued me. Sort of.”

Kaiyo laughed, “The tie with the wrinkled shirttails is a nice look!”

“Yeah, right. Anyway, it seems that Nora Walsh invited this novelist to campus. Sally Mansfield. I am sure you’ve never heard of her. She was junior faculty at Columbia when I was there, but didn’t get tenure. Her work was derivative and really nothing special.”

“You know Sally? She is doing a reading of her work tonight at Willard Hall. I encouraged my students to go; the early reviews of her new novel are outstanding, and I am hoping she’ll give us a preview.”

“Your students? Physics students?”

“Yes, Physics students. We do know how to read, you know. And as an added bonus, we can do math.”

“Funny. That isn’t what I meant, but what interest would they have in Sally Mansfield’s work?”

“Her newest novel explores human existence, death and behavior in probabilistic terms, drawing on parallels to modern physics and cosmology. She tells deeply human stories, with the underlying premise is that humans are essentially sub-atomic particles in a vast unknowable universe, subject to a set of complex, but defined rules.”

“So, now she is writing science fiction?” Max chortled derisively. “By the way, did I know she was coming?

Kaiyo checked her watch. “I assumed you knew. Anyway, it is time for me to gather the troops. The Physics and English faculty are taking her to dinner tonight. And yes, you are paying. But seriously, you should come to her presentation. She’s amazing. I’ll even give you extra credit,” Kaiyo teased. “Just like I give my students, although you’ll have to write a one-page summary of her presentation.”

“Gee thanks,” Max replied. “Does it have to be on graph paper?”

Max retreated to his office. He pulled up his calendar and saw that there were three events that evening. A donor appreciation reception at 6:00, a senior voice recital at 7:30 and Sally Mansfield’s talk at 8:00. How did he miss that? He called Pam to tell her that he wouldn’t be home for dinner.

“What else is new?” she said. “Really, you need to find some way to share your calendar with me. Anyplace I need to be?”

“Well, there is a donor reception at the Alumni house at 6, and an English department visiting scholar at 8. Also a voice recital, but I don’t think I can get to that. I should at least stop by the other two, but I will probably slip out the back of the visiting scholar talk once it starts.” He paused, then added, “I am always happy when you are here, but it is really up to you. I know you get tired of all the evening events.”

“Yeah, sometimes I do.” Pam agreed. “But tonight, Maria is out at a basketball game, so it’s just me and your cat.”

“My cat?” Max asked.

“Yes, YOUR cat. She hacked up three hairballs on the new carpet and hid a dead mouse under my yoga mat. So yeah, YOUR cat.”

Pam considered her options—a lonely evening in the empty house with an evil cat or smiling at potential donors. “I’ll come. I’ll be fashionably late. 6:30 ok?”

Max smiled, glad she was joining him. “Can you make it 6:15? And ummm, speaking of fashion. Can you bring me a pair of clean pants? I’ll explain when you get here. Meet me in my office ok?”

Max tried to review departmental budgets, but his thoughts kept returning to Sally Mansfield and her three novels. THREE!?! He googled her name and found not just the three novels but a slew of essays and short stories, including one that appeared in the New Yorker a year ago. Kaiyo was right. Her reviews were outstanding. Her first novel was heralded as “a brilliant debut by a soon-to-be important voice in American literature.” “Mansfield depicts the grittiness of human relationships with candor, humor and compassion.” And her second novel, “with this new novel, Mansfield proves that she is not a one-hit wonder. With words as her scalpel, she explores social class with surgical precision, cleanly exposing the wounds, but still leaving us hope that these wounds can heal.”

Sighing, Max pulls his lit textbook off the shelf. Published twelve years ago. Written fifteen years ago. He flips through the pages, woefully out of date. His thoughts returned to the reviews of Sally’s novels. “Brilliant debut? “soon-to-be important voice?” Well, she must have had one hell of an editor—the draft he read was neither brilliant nor were there any hints of an important voice. About his own book, still in his hands, well, next week, maybe he’d outline the sequel. Hmmm.. canon blaster should be followed by something even more powerful… nuclear meltdown? Rocket fire? Or maybe more laser focused. He’d have to look up something about lasers. Kaiyo can help. He knew there was SOME reason he hired a physicist to be his assistant dean.

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