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.He wanted to failthese kids.The study of mathematics, to him,was the be all and end all of existence.Divorced four times, he was apparentlyimpossible to live with.He was alsoimpossible to TA for.I knew if I tried todevelop a homework assignment thatfifty or sixty percent of the class couldfinish, Robertson would throw it out.Inlecture he seemed like an easygoing guy,but in reality, he was a fucking fascist.If Alex had gotten any of the otherprofessors in the math department, shemight have passed her second term ofCalculus.But after what she had told me,I started thinking it might be better if sheflunked now.It might shake her up a bit,fuck with her GPA but in the long runit was probably better for her if she tookher life back from her mother andeveryone else who had told her whatthey thought she should do.On Sunday, I spent the entire morningon the computer, but my mind waselsewhere.I picked up the tennis ball Ihad been throwing to Finn earlier andbounced it savagely off the wall. Fuck.Why the fuck couldn t I get this girlout of my head? I wasn t her freshmanadvisor.I was her fucking Calculus TA who had very nearly violated her.Mythroat tightened.The sick part was thatshe was goddamned lucky it had beenme.Because I had stopped.The stalkerfrom the library? Just thinking aboutwhat might have happened if I hadn tcaught up with him when I had made myjaw clench.I had lost him on the secondfloor, and by the time I had made it to thethird floor and seen him with his handson her & My knuckles cracked.Reaching for my phone, I hit thenumber for a girl I knew in the bursar soffice.She happened to be gettingmarried to Jess, a guy a year behind mein the program.Poor girl had no ideawhat she was getting into by marrying amathematics doctoral candidate. Brenda? Yeah, hey.How s itgoing?I listened for five minutes as sherelated the latest in their nuptialplanning. Is Jess around? I asked during apause. Already on campus & on aSunday.I laughed, secretly relieved. Can I ask a favor? Sure.Name it.I gritted my teeth. Do you have remote access to theundergrad database?I could hear Brenda breathing. This isn t something that s going toget me fired, is it? I just need a guy s school address,not his social.I could hear her typing. All right.But if anyone ever asksme, you re a hacker and I don t knowyou. I ll owe you, I smile. Yeah you will.I gave her as many details as I could.Monday undergrad Creative Writingworkshop.Professor Salinas.Justin &no last name.Then I tapped out a rhythmon the table, hoping there wasn t morethan one Justin in that class.But usuallythe workshops in the School of Letters &Science, or LNS as people call it, weresmall. Here it is.Justin Garibaldi.Localaddress is 312 Park Place, Apartment 4-D. That s all I need.And if you wantme to, I ll stage an intervention if Jesstalks theorems past seven o clock.She laughed, and I hung up.Then Istared down at the name and number andtried to talk some sense into myself.Noluck.Justin Garibaldi was about to getbitch-slapped.I got up and opened thebackdoor for Finn before grabbing myjacket, backpack, and the aluminum batbefore walking out to the bike.Thedickhead s apartment was on UndergradLane, which was just a row of shoddybuildings that hadn t been updated intwo decades.I passed by Alex Reed s dormbuilding on the way over there.In theback of my mind, I realized that I wasbeing a complete psychopath, but Icouldn t fucking help myself.Thethought of this jackass fucking with heragain was more than I could stand.Parking the bike at the back of thecomplex, I walked around until I found4-D.The door was cracked open, but therewere no lights on inside.I toed open thedoor and listened to the steady thump ofa bass.The smell in the apartment was acombination of cat piss, vomit, stalebeer, and weed.Flicking on the lightswitch, I started moving toward the backof the apartment [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]