Chapter Fourteen: The Luncheon
On January third, I had a meeting scheduled with Dr. Jacobs about establishing my own department. I wore my basic black maternity skirt with a white, oversized sweater belted around my shrinking waist. I was ready for the meeting, ready to lobby for my online program, but I was pleasantly surprised to find Joel was more than happy to give me a free rein. He assigned me a suite of offices in the liberal arts building. They were vacant and cluttered with unused furniture; it would take some work to turn them into a welcoming place. Joel promised to have a part-time secretary assigned by the beginning of spring semester, as well as a teaching assistant to help me with the grunt work. When the meeting ended I was on an adrenaline high. Joel insisted on dragging me to a catered luncheon sponsored by the alumni association, so I complied. Now that I was mobile and no longer confined to a bed, I welcomed the opportunity to meet more of my colleagues.
The luncheon occupied the dining hall of the student union. Long tables were covered with black cloths and centerpieces of orange and white mums. I distanced myself from Terri and Joel Jacobs as well as Dr. David Mebane. I found a seat and concentrated on the agenda ("Why We Love Princeton"). I noticed a perfectly manicured hand beside me reaching for a water glass and turned to look squarely into the eyes of Succubus. I nearly spit out my chewing gum. She smiled a perfectly sweet smile and held out her hand. I waited half a minute too long to shake it.
"I'm Stacy . . ."
"Warner. Yes, I know."
"I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name," she said in a perfectly polite voice.
"Audra Jeffrey."
Her perfect head nodded. "Aren't you living with Greg?"
"Greg who?"
Her perfect smile slipped. "Dr. Greg House?"
"Oh, yes. I call him Blue Eyes. My pet name. Didn't you used to live with him?" I asked as sweetly as my saccharine southern accent would let me.
"That was many years ago." Her perfect eyes darted around nervously.
"Oh, yes, I think Blue Eyes told me something about that. You married someone else, I think. After you mutilated his leg." I took a long, leisurely sip of my water.
"I didn't mutilate his leg," she said in a less-than-perfect screech. Her right eye had developed a tic.
"Of course you didn't," I said in a perfectly patronizing tone.
A waiter gave us each a plate of plastic-looking chicken with over cooked broccoli and carrots.
"Did Greg say I was responsible . . ."
"I'm sure I misunderstood. But you are married – I mean, I did get that correct?" I concentrated on sawing into the chicken.
"I'm currently separated," she said with perfectly tight-lipped precision.
"Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Wait, weren't you briefly dating Blue Eyes in the fall – surely you weren't still married then?"
Her perfect face acquired a greenish cast. "We were going out while I was separated."
"That's right – I met your husband at the university meet-and-greet. He seemed like such a lovely man. I take it you're working things out?" I chattered as I buttered a petrified roll.
"As I said, we're separated," she said with perfectly clenched teeth.
"Wait, didn't you come by the apartment on New Year's Eve?" I busied myself cutting the broccoli into shreds.
"I stopped by, yes."
"Do you often take walks so late at night?" I was now massacring the carrots.
"No, I . . ."
"It can be so dangerous, a lone woman out at night." I laughed gaily. "I would be the one to know."
She stared at me with a perfectly shocked look on her face.
"Blue Eyes did tell you of my unfortunate incident," I whispered. "Of course, he's just been a doll comforting me. Such an aid to my self-esteem." I tried to scoop some of the broccoli onto my fork with little success.
Succubus had yet to address any of her meal. "Greg's been comforting?"
"Just wonderful. And an excellent father to the baby." I made myself stuff a piece of the rubberized chicken in my mouth after I said that.
"Father? Baby?" She looked perfectly apoplectic.
I chewed fiercely and nodded.
"You already had the baby?"
I swallowed the chicken. "She was terribly early. Blue Eyes hardly leaves her side. But she's getting stronger every day." I smiled a sickening smile at her. "He never told me why you two didn't have any children. I had the impression it was a painful subject." I gave her my most empathetic look.
"I can't have children," she said in a perfectly pitiful voice.
I began to feel sick at my stomach. I really was a horrible person.
"But he always maintained he didn't want any," she continued.
I took a deep breath. "Strange how circumstances can change a man," I said bravely. "Oh dear," I moaned as I looked at my watch, "I forgot I have to meet with the carpenter in my new office suite. I had better run. It was so nice to see you again."
I ran away from her with the guilt of the devil dogging my trail.
Fate repaid me for my unkindness. I spent the afternoon traipsing from apartment to apartment searching for a suitable abode for Zelda and myself. Anything bright and roomy had a bright and roomy price tag, while those reasonably priced apartments were dark and dank and depressing. I ended the afternoon discouraged and fatigued. I peered through the window of the NICU to see Blue Eyes cradling Zelda. I hesitated, considering leaving, but my breasts were heavy with milk and my heart ached to hold my darling daughter. As I watched him humming to her with a peaceful and contented demeanor, Jim came up behind me.
"He's developed quite a technique for calming her."
"Yes. She appears so comfortable in his arms," I admitted.
"He cares for her."
I cut my eyes at Jim. "Yes, he appears to."
"Audra, are the two of you having a tiff?"
"No, Jim, we're having an impasse."
He shook his head. "You two are unbelievably stubborn."
"I'll make you a deal, Jim. I'll relax my rigidity if you can assure me he has no romantic feelings for Allison."
"What would make you think he has feelings for Allison?" Jim asked with a face that appeared genuinely surprised.
"Just talk to him, Jim. If you can assure me he is not interested in her at all, I'll take your word for it. I promise."
Jim turned to stare at Blue Eyes again. "I don't know why, Audra, but I have the strangest feeling you're setting me up for an armageddon."
"Surely you don't think Blue Eyes has that much power?"
He narrowed his eyes while studying Blue Eyes. "I don't think I should ever bet against you, Audra."
"But you can't bet against your best friend, now can you?"
Blue Eyes, naturally, chose that moment to turn and catch Jim and me talking. He furrowed his brow in an annoyed expression before returning Zelda to her crib. I started to sneak away, but Jim caught my wrist and said, "If you leave after he's seen you here, talking with me, you'll have given him plenty to speculate about."
I glanced back and forth between Jim's rational brown gaze and Blue Eyes' agitated movements as he stripped off his protective gown. "You don't mind facing whatever fiction he might concoct?" I asked uncertainly.
His hand around my wrist tightened. "Audra, I've known House a long time. I think I can weather whatever he can manufacture."
Blue Eyes exited the NICU, looked scathingly at Jim, and then turned to me with a disgusted expression. "So, Tiger, you're finally scratching the oncologist itch. That usually implies a fatal illness."
"House," Jim cautioned in a quiet but serious voice, "you don't know what you're talking about."
Blue Eyes swaggered between us, causing Jim to release my wrist. "I think I understand quite a bit, Wilson. Tiger only has a room at the Radisson until Saturday. That gives her just two days to find a new benefactor." He turned his startling gaze on Jim. "That must mean she's chosen you to be her savior. But take a word of advice, friend. Don't eat her grits."
I used my freed hand to slap him squarely across his cheek. His face recoiled with the force of the blow, his hand instinctively covering the site. Jim tried to step between us, but I moved closer to Blue Eyes so there was no room.
"You know I need no savior, no benefactor. And you know that was never the reason I moved in with you. If you choose to insult me that way again, be prepared to be slapped again," I said with the very same threatening tone my gambler grandfather would have used to successful effect in an earlier time.
Blue Eyes glared at me with irises the color of sapphires. "Don't think because Wilson is too polite to slap you back that I won't," he barely uttered.
"If you feel you need to slap me to establish your alpha male status, then slap me," I whispered as I stepped closer to him. I paused for a second before mouthing, "Blue Eyes." Our lips were inches apart.
Without breaking our gaze, Blue Eyes said, "Wilson, you want to leave us."
"Audra," Jim started.
"It's okay," I answered. "Go ahead, Jim."
We continued looking into each other's eyes as we heard Jim slowly, reluctantly, shuffle down the corridor.
"You have an uncanny knack for pissing people off," Blue Eyes muttered in a voice that all but caressed my face.
"I need to nurse my daughter."
His eyes traveled to my straining breasts, and then back to my eyes. "I know where we can take care of your need."
We drove to his apartment in his car, although the drive itself was conducted with the two of us in some form of intense foreplay the entire trip. We barely made it inside the door before we slammed against the wall, his mouth suckling my breasts, my milk spurting down his throat, running down his chin, and covering the two of us in sticky sweetness. The erotic agony of his teeth pulling on my nipples ripped groans of frustration from my throat as I struggled out of my sweater and bra. I pawed at his shirt and jeans as he pulled down my skirt and panties. Braced against a chair, he jerked me on top of him, and he slid inside me just as I began to shutter and shiver with a long awaited orgasm. I arched my back and clenched around him to prolong the spasms, holding my breath, but his hands squeezed my breasts, and I could feel the milk squirting with a satisfying relief I had never experienced before. He raised his head to take as much of the liquid as he could, moving inside me with a fevered passion, groaning and calling, "Tiger," in a hoarse, pleading cry. We stayed that way, me on top of him, both of us panting, and I felt him drip between my legs, and I felt my sticky milk between our chests. He pulled my head onto his shoulder and held it there while we both regained our normal breathing. Before long his thigh began to throb, so we hobbled to his bed and, still sticky and short of breath, crawled beneath the sheet and fell into a dreamless sleep.