‘I would have noticed by now if Sadie had a husband.’
‘The detail doesn’t matter.’ Elias pointed at me again. ‘This is not the time to get soft or nostalgic or anywhere within shouting distance of sentimental. Give a Julia an inch and she’ll take a mile – and then she’ll win and you’ll lose. Focus on yourself, Jonah.’
The memory of that night in the kitchen drifted across my mind. The feeling of Sadie’s fingers, cool against mine. The sound of her voice when she’d called our final truce.
But I couldn’t think about Sadie. I had to think about Fiona.
I dug my knuckles into my thigh and forced myself to imagine what it would feel like, telling Fiona that I was sorry, but I didn’t get the job. How much she would cry. Howaloneshe would feel, having the promise of support ripped out from under her – even more alone than before.
How much it would be my fault.
‘Focus on myself,’ I repeated. ‘I can do that.’
The university was flying us both to Hobart to interview. Sadie and I agreed, in the longest conversation we’d had in over a month,21to share an Uber to the airport.
My headphones were on their last legs, but I’d brought them with me anyway, to provide a symbolic buffer between us.
I needn’t have bothered. Sadie put in her earbuds the second we got in the car and didn’t take them out again until we got to the airport.
We were silent as we went through security. Her laptop was covered in stickers. I’d seen them from a distance many times before – in seminars, in lectures, in meetings – but the security line was moving slow, so I had a chance to catalogue them whenshe put it in the tray to go through the scanner. Broadly, they fit into three genres: bookish (smart girls read romance,read one); pop-feminist (smash the demon lizard patriarchywas surrounded by three different colouredend period povertystickers); and union. I only had two stickers on my laptop, but she had the exact same two, prominent despite all the sparkly distractions:casual academics are always the first casualtiesandonly 1 in 4 university workers have secure jobs.
I saw her notice when I put my laptop in the tray behind hers. Her gaze flickered to mine briefly, and she gave me a look that might have been approval.
But then our trays disappeared into the scanner, she blinked, and it was gone. ‘Our flight’s not for an hour,’ she said, when we got to the other side. ‘I’m going to grab a drink at the bar.’
I could murder a glass of wine.
‘I’m going to buy a new pair of headphones,’ I said, and fled.Focus on yourself, I told myself, staring blankly at a wall of electronics.
I did not buy a new pair of headphones. Everything was blurring together. I might need a new prescription for my glasses. Or possibly to re-learn how to read.
I did, however, get that glass of wine a little while later, when we were on the plane. It was cheap,22but I didn’t care. I would have necked the entire bottle if they’d put it front of me.
I had an aisle seat. Sadie was two rows in front of me on the opposite side of the aisle. She had her laptop out and was working on a PowerPoint presentation.
She must be polishing her job talk. That was one of the components of the interview process: we had to present a thirty-minute overview of our research and teaching philosophy to the department before we did the interview itself with a smaller selection panel.
I’d put the finishing touches on mine last night after a practice Zoom with Elias. He’d advised me to describe our combative battle-lecturing at Bass as ‘an innovative and successful example of team teaching, resulting in extraordinary levels of student engagement’. I wondered how Sadie was framing the fact that we stood in front of a hundred and fifty students every week and tried to destroy each other.
As if she could hear my thoughts, she turned around and looked at me.
Fuck.
I could completely understand how Elias had let Julia take his legs out from under him the night before their job interview. I had a doctorate in literary studies, but I did not have the words to explain what it felt like to be looked at – to beperceived– by Sadie Shaw.
I drank the last of my wine, instinctively licking my lips to get the last precious drops of cheap nectar.
She turned around and, pointedly, angled her laptop away from me.
The lenses in my glasses are about eight feet thick, Sadie, I wanted to say.Do you really think I could copy your homework from this distance?
She would respond. That old, familiar argumentative carousel would start spinning. I might even enjoy it.
But I couldn’t let myself get distracted. Everything was riding on this.
I had to focus on myself.
I woke up early the next morning to sun streaming through the thin hotel curtains and a message from Elias on my phone.Big day. How are you feeling?
