I had grown self-confident. I rubbed coconut oil into my legs, sprinkled cinnamon in my arms pits, kept a vanilla bean in my bra and a prune stone in my underwear. That, I was certain, had something to do with it.

Dr. Timberland avoided my eyes, glanced at the door desperately. Four other girls from our class approached him. His eyes shifted nervously left and right, exposing the whites before he left the auditorium. He hurried down the hall without acknowledging our presence. His introverted mannerisms made me feel like we were attacking him, and tempted me, or some impulse deep inside of me, to do so.

“So, what is it?” Dr. Timberland asked me as he entered his office backwards.

“Go ahead, please,” I offered the other girls; my generosity was only in appearance; inside, I was worried about my own share.

When they solicited the date of the midterm examination, the maximum days of absence allowed before failing, and where assignments could be left should they ever miss class, one cannot imagine my relief. Dr. Timberland’s answers were, the eighth, three, and a nod at the flap in his door.

With prolonged gazes from one to the other, they confirmed their mutual opinion of him and took their leave. I could not help but smile, squeeze my breasts together with the sides of my arms until they kissed and stir my hips around idly.

“And you?” He purposely avoided looking at my body, directing his fugitive eyes to his office walls which were covered with landscape wallpaper. A forest, lush, shiny and green, opened up around us, and a gentle waterfall remained suspended in time.

Without a word, I left my vanilla bean on his desk and walked slowly, silently away. It is better to be mysterious than awkward in such situations. Appetites are as much to be enjoyed as cooking and cleaning.

CHAPTER 18

Dr. Timberland lived in Manatee Haven, the largest mobile home park in the area. From the college, you could get there in fifteen minutes by foot as they advertised, but you’d have to sweat. He did as he stamped down his feet one after the other in his buckled shoes along the sidewalks, brief-case swinging high, its weight pulling him along an extra few inches every other step; only an occasional lizard hindered his otherwise regular footfalls and made him release a pent-up sigh; his suit betrayed his gauntness, flapping in the breeze as if it weren’t on a body but hanging on its own on a clothes-line.

Manatee Haven was flat as a board, tidy, green, with white mobile homes; each one had their storybook tree, a driveway with their number written on it, 1481, 1482, 1483, a square of grass, a fake grass doormat with a plastic daisy, a peep-hole. It looked like something you would have played with for hours when you were a child.

Dr. Timberland had a black and white cat named Chess who waited behind the kitchen window for Dr. Timberland to come home without moving, like a ceramic ornament. When Dr. Timberland called him, he forced his head and front paws out of the window, and pulled the rest of himself out with difficulty; the window was open just enough so he could manage doing so without skinning his back. Dr. Timberland picked the cat up by the hind legs and walked him around like a wheelbarrow. They did this every night, and every night when the cat got tired of it, he attacked one of Dr. Timberland’s gaunt ankles. It was just a game, after which Dr. Timberland read the newspaper and the cat cuddled up on the discarded pages and was covered with the leisure section.