Page 57 of Solo

“Good morning. I’m a professor in the music department,” I explain, holding out my university identification card. “May I use this dining hall?”

She nods. “Sure, but it’s à la carte for you. Just stop by the cashier on the far end and he’ll ring you up.”

“Thanks.” I nod and make my way over to the huge coffee dispensers on the other side of the vast cafeteria. I use the spigot to fill a cup and take a quick stop at the cream and sugar station before I approach the register. I do a surreptitious sweep of the room, but still no sign of Katherine.

“Good morning, Dr. Markham. That’s a dollar thirty-five, please,” says a young man I recognize from my freshman Music Theory class. Maybe I can get him to tell me where she is.

“Good morning, Liam,” I say with a smile and hand him a couple of dollars. “I didn’t realize you work over here.”

He nods. “Yup.”

Stunning conversationalist, this one.

“Does anyone else from the music department work here with you?” I fish.

He scratches his head under the university baseball cap and appears to think hard.

“Uh, yeah, Javier Moncayo. The violinist? He’s a line cook for the lunch shift.”

“Okay…”

“Oh, and that girl. The graduate student? She’s over there,” he says, thrusting his chin toward the dining area.

I thank him and turn around, spotting her at last. Her back is to me as she busily wipes down one of the empty tables. Feeling a little conspicuous among all these students, I take my coffee and move across the room to a spot against the wall, where I can hide in the shadow of a soft serve ice-cream machine. Not likely anyone will be looking for a swirly cone before lunchtime, and from here I can wait for a good opportunity to slip the phone to Katherine.

She moves quickly, silently, from table to table, picking up trays and trash that other diners haven’t bothered to dispose of. She disappears into the back for a minute, returning with a broad broom so she can sweep the floor. To most of the students around her, she’s invisible. They shuffle around her, oblivious as they walk through a pile she’s just gathered from under the tables. But she isn’t invisible to everyone.

At one table, several young men are snickering and pointing at her. One of them makes a lewd gesture simulating oral sex. She just goes about her job as if she can’t hear them. I feel my face reddening with the urge to kick their scrawny little undergrad asses. But my attention shifts as I notice six students from my eight o’clock Orchestration class at another table. The same class Katherine will be attending in less than an hour. She’s clearly trying to avoid them, but they’re making it difficult, “accidentally” dropping things on the floor and then cackling wildly. I watch in horror as flutist Joanie Dolan holds up her container of orange juice and empties it onto the tabletop.

“Oh, Kate!” she calls out across the cafeteria. “Kate? Please come and clean this up.”

To my utter amazement, Katherine simply picks up a roll of paper towels and a sponge then makes her way over to the table. She’s silent as she mops up the mess. Unfortunately, they are not.

“You missed a spot,” teases Ken Logan, a tenor in the opera program.

“Yeah, Kate, you missed a spot,” echoes his girlfriend.

Still, Katherine cleans the mess, her head down, without comment. She’s about to walk away when Joanie pushes her coffee cup over, splashing it across Katherine’s apron and sweater in the process.

“Oops!” she says, either unable or unwilling to hide the grin that spreads across her face.

My hands are balling into fists and my breath is coming in angry puffs through my nostrils as I watch from my spot in the corner.

“Oh no, Kate!” Joanie exclaims with false dismay. “You’re all covered in coffee! You’d better change before class!”

“Don’t be late for Markham, Kate. You know he’ll fail you if you’re late,” teases the girl. “He wasn’t happy when you were late last week, was he? Oh, but it wasn’t my fault that bowl of cereal spilled right before your shift was over…”

I’m done. If I stand here another second, I don’t know what I might do to those little shits. I slip out the door before I can be spotted and make my way quickly back across the parking lot, shaking my head and muttering obscenities the whole way. Not just at them, but at myself.

Once I get to my office, I shut the door and lock it behind me before sitting heavily behind my desk. I look at the clock. Graduate Orchestration starts in a half hour. There’s no way she can finish cleaning that mess, change her clothing, and run all the way to the Music building in time. She’ll be at least five minutes late and, thanks to my frequent public shaming of her, there’s no way I can ignore it without causing suspicion.

Is this what’s been going on all this time? She mentioned she might be late if “something spilled” at the end of her shift. She neglected to tell me that there were people helping her to be late. Why the hell didn’t she just say something? I know for a fact that woman is not a doormat. That’s when it occurs to me, she doesn’t comment, because she can’t comment. Fighting back isn’t an option Katherine has most of the time. Not if she wants to keep herself out of the news.

Luckily, I don’t have any such concerns.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Kate