PART I
The Shooting Star and the Old Goat were at each other’s throats again. Dahlia could hear the angry voices far down the hall. She tried to tune them out. There was nothing in their arguments that everybody in the Psychology Department hadn’t heard too many times before.
The Shooting Star was Professor Sabrina Flowers, behavioural psychologist and physiologist. Barely 33, she was the first woman, and the youngest person of either sex, to become chair of the psychology department at this Ivy League university. The Old Goat was Dr. Marcus Strumm, age undetermined, Professor Emeritus in the same department. Dr. Strumm was a giant in his field, quite possibly the last living Freudian, and a thorn in the side of the rest of the department.
Dahlia stood outside Dr. Flowers’s office for a moment, cringing at the raised voices. It was no secret that the Shooting Star and the Old Goat despised each other, personally and professionally. Dahlia decided to come back later. She was set to tiptoe away when the conversation inside took an unexpected turn.
“Professor Strumm,” Dr. Flowers said, her voice icy and formal, “with all respect for your contributions to the science of psychology, we feel that your psychoanalytical approach is outdated and not consistent with the mandate of this department.” Dahlia’s ears perked up. That had a rehearsed sound to it.
“What are you talking about?” Strumm rejoined. “Psychoanalysis is a valid and constantly developing field. I have new research—”
“I’m sure you do. But we are desperately short of space. You are well past retirement age, and we feel your laboratory could be put to more effective use in the hands of some of our younger faculty.”
“You are not going to kick me out!” Strumm’s voice thundered. “I have Emeritus rights to my laboratory! I am in the middle of the most important research of my life. I will not be shouldered aside to let some fuzzy-cheeked kid play with mice.”
“You have no choice, Professor,” Flowers shot back. “I have already cleared this with the Dean. You do not fit in this department. Professor Sloane is already scheduled to occupy your laboratory. You have one month to clear out your things.”
“Impossible! You have no right to force me to retire while I am funded and you know it. This is an outrage!”
“Now listen, here, Professor—”
“No, you listen, you juvenile, self-important fool. I have devoted my life to the study of human behaviour; I was turning out research papers while you were still a handful of cells in your mother’s belly. I have spent forty years in this department and I will not be kicked around by a bunch of children!”
Dahlia covered her mouth with one hand, shocked. She heard a floor-shaking thump of Strumm’s cane. A moment later the man came storming out of Flower’s office, his lined face a thundercloud. He scowled at Dahlia as he went by. Still, his gaze dropped for a moment to study her pert breasts, beneath her bulky sweatshirt. Dr. Strumm’s wandering eyes were nearly as famous as his research.
Dahlia let out her breath and knocked on Dr. Flowers’s door. “Is this a bad time?” she asked.
Her graduate supervisor looked weary. “No, it’s all right, Dahlia, come in.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. That old man is so *stubborn*.
Dahlia made no comment. Dr. Flowers was not known for being particularly easy-going either. Her doctoral thesis on the way society was structured to reward dominant behaviour in males was so groundbreaking it had earned her a teaching appointment before she was twenty-seven years old. Ever since then she had simply bowled over anyone who got in her way.
Dahlia said, “Uhm, Sabrina, I need your authorization on these expense forms. For the conference next week.”
“Yes, of course. I nearly forgot.” She signed the papers briskly. “Will you be gone all week?
“Until next Tuesday. I had trouble getting an earlier flight.”
“Very well then. Make sure you have someone look after your tutorials.”
A few hours later Dahlia was on her way to the airport. She had already forgotten the latest argument between the Shooting Star and the Old Goat.
“So, you’re back,” said Dahlia’s office-mate, some days later. “About time. I’ve had just about enough of doing your tutorials for you.”
“I’m glad to see you too, Krystal,” Dahlia responded. See tossed her satchel on the desk in their tiny office. “Did anything happen while I was gone?”
“How would I know? I never got out of the lab. You were the one jetting about to distant lands at the Department’s expense. How was the conference?”
Dahlia sat down at her desk and switched on the computer. “It was good. Lots of neat papers. My presentation went well. I made some good contacts too.” She brought up her e-mail and started sorting through accumulated messages.
Krystal seemed interested. “Yeah? Did you meet any cute guys?”
“Krystal!” Dahlia looked at her quizzically. Her office-mate was usually so dour. “This was a conference. Progress in Learning and Development. I didn’t go to meet men.” She studied her fellow graduate student for a moment. Krystal was wearing a white blouse and a navy skirt beneath her ever-present lab coat. She had fixed her dark-blonde hair with more care than usual. “Say, do you have an interview or something today?”
“Of course not. Why?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a skirt before.”
Krystal shrugged. “All my jeans are in the wash.”
Dahlia returned her attention to deleting unread e-mail messages. They were mostly circulars from the administration. There were several broadcast messages from Dr. Strumm.
“What’s this?” she said out loud.
Krystal looked over her shoulder. “Oh, that. Strumm is starting some new behaviour study or something. I tried to read the attachment but it doesn’t work on my machine.”
Dahlia lifted an eyebrow. It was odd that a professor who was being forced into retirement would be starting a new project. She deleted the messages.
Krystal looked at her watch. “Well, I gotta go. A roomful of undergrads are depending on me to show them the road to the truth. Oh, one more thing.” She plunked a stack of papers down on Dahlia’s desk. “Last week’s Intro Psych quizzes. I saved them for you.” Grinning, she breezed out of the room, leaving a lingering waft of perfume behind.
Dahlia looked at the stack of test papers without enthusiasm. There was one more message from Dr. Strumm on her computer. The title read: “Developmental Behaviour Project: Subjects Needed.” Curious now, she opened the message. “Please see attachment” was all it said. Dahlia clicked the link.
The screen changed to some fancy graphics program in bright colours. Blurry, swirling lines began to slide across the screen. They looked like lines of text, but so badly out of focus that she couldn’t make them out. She watched the screen for a moment until it was obvious that nothing else was going to happen, then deleted the message. Obviously Dr. Strumm was having software troubles.
Dahlia glanced at the clock on the wall. It was a little later than she thought. Reluctantly, she turned to the stack of quiz papers and began grading.
“Some of you slipped quite a bit on this quiz,” Dahlia said, as she handed back papers to her Tuesday afternoon tutorial class. “Did you think you could stop working just because I was away?” She smiled at that and the students smiled back, a few of them anyway. They didn’t seem particularly upset about the lower grades.
She watched for a reaction from several of the students that had failed the quiz. A pretty blonde in the back was daintily running a finger along her lower lip while she scanned her paper. She was wearing an expensive leather jacket along with a stretchy black miniskirt and side-zip suede boots.
That sort of flamboyance was unusual. Many of the students in Dahlia’s class were well to do, but they tended to favour either exceedingly proper, almost prissy outfits that announced their snobby heritage, or a studiously casual look of torn jeans and sweatshirts. Dahlia looked around and discovered several other girls in the tight-mini-and-boots look. She wondered briefly if she was missing a fashion trend. She did spend a lot of time in the lab.
Dahlia herself was dressed very functionally, in a sweater and blue jeans under her omnipresent lab coat. She had her dark hair pulled back in a scrunchy. She felt a little self-conscious, dressed so casually when the students in her class were making an effort to look nice. A girl in the back had a question about her quiz. Her abbreviated sweater flashed her midriff when she raised her hand.
“Hey, have you heard the latest gossip?” Krystal chortled, prancing into their shared office.
Dahlia looked up from her computer. “Uh... Huh? What’s that?” She shook her head. There was another message from Dr. Strumm on her monitor, as unreadable as the first one. She deleted it, irritated.
Krystal closed the door conspiratorially, then leaned back against it. “Dr. Strumm is leaving. I guess he’s being forced into retirement. I hear Flowers really gave him a piece of her mind. She just up and told him to clear out. Isn’t that wild!” She giggled with mischief.
“Yes, I... I had heard that,” Dahlia responded. She had her shoes off and her glasses on. Another stack of unmarked papers teetered on her desk. She glanced at her watch, cocked an eyebrow, then looked at it more closely. “Krystal, what time do you have?”
“It’s a little after two,” the other woman responded. Instead of sitting down at her desk she hopped up on top of it. She swung her legs back and forth idly. “I just think that is so cool,” she went on, “here is the great Strumm, god’s gift to psychology and full time male chauvinist pig, being given the heave-ho by a woman half his age.” She grinned as if she had just told a clever joke.
Dahlia looked at her. Krystal wasn’t wearing her lab coat. She sported a dark blue sweater with stripes across the chest, a blue-denim miniskirt and pure white sneakers without socks. Her legs must have proved a major distraction for the male half of her tutorials.
“Hey Krys, what are you on?” Dahlia ventured. “You’ve been bouncing around like a cheerleader all day.”
“Have I? Sorry. My moods are all over the place lately.” She crossed her knees and her nylons glinted smoothly. “But I know what will settle me down.” She fished around in her purse as she spoke. At last she came up with a bright red lollipop. She tore off the wrapper and popped the candy into her mouth.
This time it was Dahlia’s turn to laugh. “A sucker? That’s your cure for mood swings?”
“Mm trng tqut smkung,” Krystal replied.
“Come again?”
The fetching blonde slipped the sucker out of her mouth. “I’ve quit smoking,” she explained. “This helps me get over the cravings.” She gave the red candy a couple of licks.
Dahlia said: “You know, I remember Freud suggesting that smoking was a manifestation of an oral fixation. If that’s true, then substituting another oral fix won’t make it go away—it just transfers the fixation.”
Krystal leaned back on her hands. “Dr. Freud died a long time ago, Dahlia,” she said. She popped the sucker back in her mouth and worked her cheeks defiantly.
“Or maybe,” Dahlia continued, “you’re subconsciously responding to the imagery, you know the shape. Maybe it suggests a... well, you know... a penis.”
Krystal pulled the lollipop out of her mouth and pointed with it. “You have got Freud on the brain, honey.” She put on her best European accent: “Sometimes a sucker is just a sucker.”
They both laughed at that one.
A few days later, Dahlia was making her way down the hallway toward the animal labs. She was in a cheerful mood. She was wearing a new outfit she had picked up on the weekend. The sweater was brown and form-fitting; the fashion jeans were attractively snug around the hips, but flared out into gold-embroidered bells around her ankles.
Dahlia liked the shoes best. They were trendy loafer things, black stretch material on top, thick foam soles below. The shoes were cushy-soft, good for walking in spite of the two-inch platforms and wedge heels. Dahlia had never worn that style before. She got the idea from some of the girls in her tutorial classes. The new shoes looked as neat as they felt.
She passed the open door of a large lecture theatre. A young professor was pacing back and forth in front of at least 100 students. That would be Professor Edmonds, teaching Psych 101.
“...about the performance of this class on the mid-term,” Edmonds was saying. “This course is typical of university-level work. If you can’t master this material, you won’t succeed in other subjects either. Many of you plan to continue as psychology majors; for you this course is required. You must do better than this...”
The students didn’t appear to be taking the rant too seriously. Dahlia noticed one pretty young thing sitting at the back of the hall, looking sharp in a tight white top and hip-riding stretch pants. She was leaning on one hand, chewing gum while she listened indifferently to Dr. Edmonds’s speech. While Dahlia watched, she blew a huge pink bubble, then casually drew it back in.
Dahlia grinned as she walked away. These kids were the leaders of tomorrow? She considered getting herself a nice pair of pants like hers.
Dahlia was wearing her nice new pants at the next tutorial class, along with a matching sweater set that highlighted her sleek young figure. The lavender pants were long and lean, flaring out wide at the bottom to cover her new platform ankleboots. She had bought the whole outfit impulsively while out shopping on the weekend. She guessed that she spent more on that trip than she had in the previous year.
She felt a little overdressed at first. She generally lived in jeans. Krystal said the outfit looked hot, and the reaction she was getting from the students in her tutorial class confirmed her opinion. Dahlia found herself warming to the appreciative looks of the young men. She had even removed her lab coat, under the pretext that it was too warm. Secretly, she was hoping to give the guys a better look at her protruding ass. The silky material of the stretch pants was very flattering.
She handed back the weekly quizzes as usual, before beginning the lesson review. Some of the students were not doing very well. There had been a sharp drop in the class average. The top student in the class, one of those polite, bespectacled girls that always got straight A’s, had barely managed a C. Dahlia noticed that she had joined the growing trend of dressing up for class, in a ruffle-edged mini and open-toed, wedge-heeled slides. Her little orange baby-T showcased a rather generous pair of breasts.
The girl spent most of the lesson flirting with the happily surprised young man sitting beside her. There was a lot of that going on today. So many of the girls were wearing miniskirts and tank tops, it was easy to see how the guys would be distracted. Dahlia had to call the class’s attention back to her several times. Bending over to retrieve dropped chalk seemed to have the same effect.
“Have you noticed anything strange in the department lately?” Dahlia asked. She was seated at her computer, entering grades from class quizzes. It wasn’t a teaching day, so she was dressed casually in a silk blouse and shiny black tights. One of her newest pair of platform slides dangled from her toes. The outfit was more evidence of her latest shopping expedition.
“Whz tht?” Krystal replied. She pulled out her sucker for a moment. This one was red, which meant it was cherry or strawberry. Dahlia preferred lemon-lime. “Strange how?”
“Well, look at these class grades. The average has fallen by almost twenty per cent over the past few weeks.”
Her office-mate shrugged. “That’s intro psych, it always gets tougher after the midterm.” She slid her sucker in and out of her mouth contentedly.
“I didn’t see a drop like this last year. And look, it’s not distributed evenly. Some of the best students have fallen the furthest. These two girls here, they were both cracker-jack students, now they’re barely passing. One of them defined “IQ” on her last quiz as a rap singer!”
“Oh yeah, I know him, he has this really cool CD just out—”
“Krys, come on, pay attention.” Sometimes Dahlia wished Krystal would start smoking again—she was acting so spacy lately. “I’m having a really tough time in my tutorials. Most of the students haven’t done any of the readings. They can’t seem to remember anything they heard in lecture. They all act like they’re on their way to a party.”
“Mm-hmmm,” Krystal agreed absently, still drawing her sucker in and out. She noticed Dahlia watching the glistening candy. She held it up. “You want one?”
“What? No, not right now. I’m trying to tell you, something doesn’t feel right. It’s like, I don’t know, the mood of the whole department has changed in the past few weeks. Everyone seems so—carefree.”
Krystal bounced to her feet. “Honey, I have no idea what you are talking about. Have some lunch, it’ll make you feel better.”
Dahlia demurred. “No, that’s OK, you go ahead. I want to finish this grading.” She heard the “new message” signal chime on her computer.
“Suit yourself, honey,” Krystal replied. “By the way, I like your hair. I’ll see you later.” She popped her sucker back into her mouth and skipped out of the room.
Dahlia watched her go. Krystal was wearing a foreshortened blue jersey and a pleated miniskirt that swished back and forth as she walked. The skirt didn’t quite flash anything. It sure showed lots of leg though, all of it encased in smooth, dusky hose as well as cute white ankle socks above her spotlessly white sneakers. She watched an undergraduate swivel his head around like an owl to ogle Krystal as she waltzed by. It seemed to Dahlia that Krystal was deliberately exaggerating the sway of her walk for his benefit.
Dahlia wasn’t sure what to think of Krystal’s new style. The sneakers looked kind of girlish. Herself, she preferred heels, especially the funky, chunky, platforms so popular in her tutorial classes. She looked down to admire the bold pair on her feet: they were cranberry red, to match her frilly blouse.
She reached over to Krystal’s desk and opened the top drawer. She fished around in the bag of lollipops until she found one that was lemon-lime. Tossing the wrapper in the direction of the waste basket, she slipped the candy into her mouth. Krys, you are a bad influence, she thought wryly.
Dahlia checked her in-box and discovered the message was from Dr. Strumm, still recruiting for his latest research project. The message had an attachment, as usual. When she activated the link, there was nothing but coloured lines. She sucked quietly on her lollipop while she tried to read the almost-legible script.
The shapely brunette frowned for a moment. Strumm’s messages never seemed to work. Somebody should let him know he was wasting his time. She popped the sucker out of her mouth and was surprised to discover there was nothing left. Well, time flies. She tossed the stick in the trash.
A few days later Dahlia was walking down the hallway toward her supervisor’s office when she bumped into Professor Tyler. Dahlia had her head down, scowling at some data that weren’t working out. She sucked daintily on her little finger. The two women nearly collided when Professor Tyler came charging out of her office. Dahlia almost fell off her high heels.
Both women apologized at once, laughing. “It’s my fault,” Dahlia insisted, “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“And I should have seen you coming,” Tyler replied. “Especially when you are looking so sharp. If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get those lovely slacks?” She was referring to Dahlia’s new hip-huggers, paper-thin, ass-clinging things that appeared to be held up only by the magic of lycra. The pants had long flares on the bottom decorated with big yellow daisies. She wore them with a matching red crop top. There were more daisies on the jacket that she had left in her office.
The two women chatted amiably for a few moments, discussing fashion and footwear. Professor Tyler was a new addition to the faculty, one of Flowers’s recruits, so she was not too much older than Dahlia. When she finally continued on her way, Dahlia watched her go, smiling.
After a moment her smile faded. Professor Tyler was wearing a tailored, powder-blue suit with white pumps. It looked thoroughly business-like, except that the hemline of the skirt rested at least halfway up her thighs. Her long, nyloned legs looked very sexy. Those heels had to be uncomfortable.
This was the same Professor Tyler who gave rants in her lectures about beauty myths and male control of woman’s bodies? Tyler’s hard opinions were as well known as her perpetual scowl. Yet the woman hadn’t stopped smiling all through their conversation. Her lipstick matched her nail polish.
Dahlia wondered again about the change of mood in the department. It didn’t seem quite natural. She took her little finger out of her mouth when she realized she was sucking on it again.
When she arrived at Dr. Flowers’s office, she was surprised to see that Dr. Strumm was there again. The door was open, but this time there were no raised voices. Did Sabrina really say “I’ll get right on it?”
Dahlia waited patiently until Strumm left the office. He looked rather pleased with himself. He noticed Dahlia standing there. As usual, he scanned her up and down appreciatively. Dahlia was amazed by the man’s brazen sexism. She found herself blushing under his stare.
“You’re Dahlia, is that right?” Strumm asked gruffly.
“Uhm, yes. Yes... sir,” Dahlia replied. She felt unaccountably nervous. The Old Goat was still a world-famous scientist.
He was still looking her over. “How are you feeling?” he demanded.
“Fine, just fine, sir,” Dahlia replied. What a peculiar question.
He came up closer, looking into her eyes like a doctor studying a patient. “You were away for a week or so last month, is that right?”
Again the question caught her off guard. “No, I... oh, yeah, I mean, yes I was. I went to the Learning and Development Conference in—”
Strumm gave a little “harrumph” sound and abruptly walked away. The clicking of his cane receded down the corridor.
Dahlia watched him go, perplexed. Curiouser and curiouser. He was looking me over as if I were a centrefold, she reflected. Well, she did look sensational in this clingy outfit. She had decided it looked better without underwear. She pulled down the abbreviated sweater and admired the swell of her chest through the fabric. She could hardly blame the man for staring.
After a moment Dahlia returned to the matter at hand. She popped her head into Flowers’s office. “Sabrina, can you give me a hand with these statistics? They’re driving me crazy.”
Her supervisor waved her in. “Sure Dahlia, let’s take a look.”
Dahlia entered the cluttered office. She felt somehow relieved that the Shooting Star appeared to be as cool and efficient as ever. Her supervisor glanced briefly at Dahlia’s new outfit but said nothing.
“Wasn’t that Dr. Strumm who just left?” Dahlia ventured. “I thought he was retiring.”
“I decided to give him another month or so. Until the end of the semester. He’s at a critical point in his research.”
“Oh. What about Dr. Sloane?”
A shrug. “Dr. Sloane can wait a while.”
When she left Dr. Flower’s office a short time later, Dahlia stopped by the departmental office to pick up her mail. She was a trifle surprised to see a big basket of suckers sitting on the front counter.
“Are these for anybody?” she asked.
Tanya, the youngest of the three secretaries, looked up from her word processor. “Certainly, help yourself,” she replied cheerfully. “We bought, like, a whole bunch. Hey, I like the flowers on your pants.”
Dahlia searched through the suckers until she found one that was lemon-lime. She dropped the wrapper on the floor and slipped the candy into her mouth. Only then did she notice that Tanya was dressed in a tight miniskirt and black stretch boots. For that matter, so was Bella, who was typing away happily at her own computer, looking like a model from a fashion catalogue. Her miniskirt, already brief, had a sexy slit up the right leg.
Dahlia looked around. The third secretary, Judy, was a full-figured woman in her early forties. She was standing at the photocopier, wearing a flowing grey dress that ended at her ankles. The gores up each side, however, ended high up on her thighs. She was wearing strappy black sandals with platform heels as high as anything Dahlia’s increasingly bold students were wearing to class. There were narrow black stripes up the side of her hose. She was sucking on a lollipop while she worked.
Dahlia backed out of the office. She must have completely missed a fashion trend here. The office girls all looked, frankly, really hot. But there was something strange, almost surreal about the way everyone was dressed. Dahlia had never seen Tanya in anything beyond khaki pants or jeans. Bella was wearing gigantic pink hoop earrings. Someone had brought in a portable CD player. The secretaries were all humming along to the latest release from some teenage pop star.
Strangest of all was the big, fuzzy, teddy bear perched on top of Tanya’s computer.
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