It sounded like her place of work, though it was kind of late. I’d assumed her gig was more nine-to-five. Her manner went from the playfulness of earlier to the gravity I expected she needed to project in her role as a serious academic. I heard snatches—something about a form that needed to be signed, a scheduled video call with someone, an article she was writing. I strained my ear for details, wanting to know more about her. My brother Sean had the goods from years of friendship, and I was playing catch up. All I knew was that she wanted a baby.
She clicked off and gave me a tentative smile. “Work.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yes, just some questions about an article I’m co-authoring with a colleague in Edinburgh, and which journal we should submit to. My preference is for an open access publication, which means the department or I am on the hook for submission fees.”
“You have to pay to publish?”
“Not always. Most traditional journals will take a submission and, after a rigorous peer-review process, will publish if they think it meets their standards and the needs of their readership. Then researchers, but more often, university libraries pay massive subscription fees for the privilege of reading the article they or their own faculty wrote.”
That sounded screwy. I tried to wrap my head around it. “So, you do the research and provide the product, then the journal doesn’t pay you a dime but instead makes you or your university pay to read it when it’s published?”
“Exactly!” I had evidently hit a nerve. “And often the research is federally funded, so your tax dollars paid for the research and private companies, aka academic publishers, reap the profit so I can say I’m published in a peer-reviewed journal.”
“Hmm. I’m guessing the publishers tell you they’re providing a valuable service.”
“You know it. Which is why they hate open access journals. Those journals make the work available to everyone—no subscriptions required—but someone has to pay to keep the lights on. Lakeshore University funds some open access publishing submissions, but the chair of my department has to sign off on it. He and I have history?—”
“What kind of history?”
She rubbed a cloth over her glasses. “We slept together a couple of years ago while he was working at another college.”
My pulse spiked. “Now he’s your boss.”
“Correct.”
“Was he on your list?”
“He was. But I wasn’t sure he would make a good candidate. He would want to be in a relationship. He didn’t like it when I told him we weren’t compatible.” She caught my eye. “Sexually.”
This was more like it. “Earth didn’t move, huh?”
“You could say that. It’s made things a little awkward since he became my department head. Also, I applied for the same job, so there’s a weird dynamic. Having to go cap in hand to ask him to fund the publication of my article is annoying. He’s rather pompous about it and annoyingly officious in his new role.”
Never good to shit where you eat. “So tell me about your research.”
“Oh, that would bore you.”
Maybe she assumed I wouldn’t understand. “Try me.”
She paused a moment, probably thinking of how to explain it to a dummy like me. “My current research is on the mating habits of gastropods, particularly pulmonate land snails and slugs. I’m studying how often self-fertilization occurs.”
I already knew mating was involved somewhere, and I had a ton of questions. “You mean snail sex?”
“Correct. Many species of gastropod—that’s the class name we give to snails and slugs—are hermaphrodites. They have both male and female sexual organs that are simultaneously functional. Basically they can impregnate themselves, if necessary.”
“And they do that?”
“Not always. That’s what’s interesting. Why don’t they? Why do they go through mating rituals and seek out the company of others in their species to procreate? We assume it’s because there’s a biological imperative to keep the genetic line varied and less susceptible to inbreeding. Yet we don’t know for sure. If humans didn’t need a partner to procreate, and there were no biological risks to self-fertilization, would they dispense with the necessity of the mating ritual?”
“Isn’t that what sperm banks are for?”
She shrugged. “But it would have been so much easier if I could produce my own sperm.”
I chuckled. “One woman shop, no need to even leave the house. But I have to say the way we went about it tonight was a whole lot more fun.”
She blushed and hot damn, I liked that. “That’s probably why slugs and snails go to the trouble. Fun.”
