[Fiction]

[a/k/a]

An Excerpt from Chapter One of a/k/a

By Ruthann Robson

The name on the door, etched on a flaking gold-colored plate, is PROFESSOR GERTRUDE YARNES. Two women hover in the hallway; neither of them Professor Gertrude Yarnes; both of them glancing at the nameplate on the door as if to summon the professor to her ten o'clock appointment.

There are other names etched on other plates on the doors of the other offices in the hallway. Each woman walks a little one way and then the other, reading other nameplates on other office doors, pacing the narrow hallway that continues for an equally moderate distance in both directions until it right-angles into stairwells that only go down. Each woman guesses that the other is also waiting for the same professor, hoping that it is not true. Schedules are tight. And each woman is already wincing at the eventual arrival of the professor with the attendant jockeying. To be first is certainly preferred, but both women are awkward with the graciousness demanded of the position of preference. To be postponed is presumably insulting, and both women are weary of the trivial indignities of the city.

Each woman wishes she had brought something she could read. In fact, each woman has something she could be -- should be -- reading in the leather bag she carries.

In the black leather knapsack, purchased from a vendor on 14th Street, there is Casebook and Materials on Criminal Procedure, 5th Edition. It is a thick brown book, marked with yellow highlighters and annotated with black ink until about page seventy-five.

In the red leather bucket bag, purchased at Leather Loft in an upstate factory outlet mall, there is Episode #7839. It is a stapled sheaf of ordinary copy paper, with green stars on the top of about one-third of the pages, marking her parts in the script.

Neither woman judges her reading suitable. Too unwieldy, too revealing. So each is relegated to glancing again and again at the names on the doors, at the outdated announcements on the walls, and at each other.

One woman watches the other hoist the black knapsack from shoulder to shoulder, shifting its weight on her average frame. It is not only her frame that is average. Medium height and weight, with medium brown hair of a medium length. White skin, but neither fair nor olive. Difficult to see the eyes from this distance, but probably some shade of hazel. Nothing striking about her, nothing at all. She could play any role, except the most singular. And yet, attractive. Especially that tentative smile. Yes, attractive after a few glimpses. Or perhaps it is only the absence of obvious defects, a condition often mistaken for attractiveness.

The woman with the black knapsack feels the glances, the assessment, interspersing her own between polite pauses. The woman with the red leather bucket bag looks vaguely familiar, or perhaps she just has that familiar look about her. There is always the chance that they have met before, of course, but it is not only the size of the city that is responsible for the instant suppression of this possibility. There is also a distinctive brightness about her, unusual in the capital of fashionable black. The red bucket bag is tastefully, if inexactly, matched by bright red suede shoes, accessorizing a silkish jumpsuit of a red print. An expensive haircut, but not executive. A bit of natural-look makeup, heavy on the mascara. Well off and conventional. And yet, beguiling. The way she throws the red bag over her shoulder. Yes, beguiling even after a half hour of staring past her silhouette. Or, perhaps it is only the absence of explicit and polite interaction, a situation that enhances interest.

At ten-thirty, in the fluorescent corridor, one woman looks at her silver watch and announces the time, looking at the other woman for confirmation. The other woman nods ever so slightly, as if in agreement.

In another part of the building, Professor Gertrude Yarnes also looks at her watch, attempting discretion, wish she could deftly excuse herself from this meeting with the administrative dean and vice-chancellor concerning the new budget. While the professor may believe her ten o'clock appointments, inadvertently scheduled for the same time, are more important than this discussion, she knows that the administrative dean and vice-chancellor would not concur. In her more bureaucratic moments, she agrees with the administrative dean and vice-chancellor, even as she positions herself against them, advocating the preservations of certain "expensive" portions of the academic program. So she resigns herself to apologies and rescheduling, refusing both guilt and self-pity.

The professor allows herself to think that perhaps the two waiting women will simply assume she has been detained and invite each other for coffee in the downstairs lounge, amusing themselves with witty conversation which would gradually--or at least by the second cup--evolve into a more substantive exchange. They would be perfect for each other, Gertrude Yarnes muses, although she does not know either the law student or the soap opera actress particularly well, does not even know anything for certain about their sexual preferences. Still, she thinks, they both seem so lesbian, as well as serious and smart, albeit in very different ways. In the Criminal Procedure class that Gertrude teaches, she has observed the law student take notes with an attentiveness that even the student's studied casualness cannot disguise. On the soap opera for which Gertrude is a consultant, she has noticed the actress interpret a crucial legal scene with a subtlety that even an actress's professional training cannot explain. Yes, Gertrude thinks, both women so extraordinary in ways difficult to articulate. And both so deserving of the kind of love that makes life worth living, that makes life more than scrutinizing the numbers floating on the piece of paper that the vice-chancellor slides towards her, that makes life more than the hope she will find some carefully crafted deception masquerading as a mistake. Gertrude Yarnes suppresses her imagination of the two women sipping coffee and concentrates on the calculations.

It does not occur to either woman in the hallway to introduce herself and obligate the other to respond with a name. Each woman avoids such interactions, especially in unstructured situations. For each woman has more than one name and changes names more often than she changes her leather bag.

It does occur to each woman to suggest coffee -- or something -- to prolong their contact. Some temporary insulation from the complicated life that awaits beyond this hallway. Some possibility of simplicity that is not superficial.

But neither woman speaks.

And if asked at this moment whether she believes in love at first sight, each would laugh the light tinkle of denial. And if asked at this moment whether she believes in love at all, each would laugh again, only with much shorter and shallower sounds, echoing as the two women shadow each other down the stairs and out to the street, fading into the city, beyond each other's horizon.

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