Hidden in Dreams Read Free Page B

Gary will be able to start the conference without me.”
    “I feel silly taking your time at all.”
    “You strike me as someone who does nothing on a whim.” He started from the office.
    Francine lingered long enough to ask Elena, “Are you sure you won’t take anything?”
    “A coffee would be great, thank you. Milk, no sugar.”
    “Just a moment.”
    Elena looked around the office. She had never had reason to enter the president’s office before. Few teachers at a university ever did, with three exceptions: when they were up for a national award, when they were the head of a department undergoing budget battles, and when they were in serious trouble. Elena thanked the secretary for the coffee and wished she had not come. The trouble was, she had nowhere else to turn. She had tried to phone both Lawrence and Antonio, her two friends from the last time events had risen up to strike at her. But both men were unreachable. Ditto for Lawrence’s wife. Then the idea had come to her: speak with Reed.
    The idea had merit. Reed Thompson had made his name in political economics. Other ACU faculty had told her how Reed had been short-listed for a Nobel Prize. He had served on the Council of Economic Advisers to the first President Bush. Afterwardhe had turned down several lucrative offers in order to become ACU’s president.
    The president’s office was frigid. She had heard about this, of course. It was a joke among the faculty that anyone visiting the president needed a fur coat. Elena was not surprised. Reed Thompson operated at one speed: full burn. She sipped her coffee and recalled the first time they had met. She had been speaking at Emory University. The event had come at the end of a grueling twelve-week American tour. Elena had arrived drained in body and mind, only to discover that the university had changed the format. Instead of delivering the speech that had become tattooed to her brain, she was to take part in a debate.
    Elena wished she could take back that night entirely. She knew now that she should have refused point-blank. But her opponent was Jacob Rawlings, her most ardent critic. The temptation to take him on publicly had been too great.
    Jacob Rawlings was extremely handsome and very magnetic. He was every female grad student’s dream professor. Which only made it easier to hate him.
    Jacob had trained as a behaviorist, which meant he tried to break down the human psyche into rigidly defined components that could be studied and measured and quantified. He loved statistics. He hated what he called the messes of his academic discipline, by which he meant everything that did not fit into a laboratory box. He ridiculed Freud and Jung. Just as, that night, he had mocked Elena.
    Jacob had addressed her as professor. His tone was polite enough. But his comments had been devastating. He had not merely won the evening’s debate; he had obliterated her.
    Elena had emerged from the auditorium’s stage doors gasping for breath. There she had collided with Reed Thompson, who proceeded to thank her for an astonishing performance.
    Elena had been too wounded to give anything other than what was foremost on her mind: “He ate me for lunch.”
    Reed shrugged easily. “You engaged with him. On his terms. Too many of my colleagues fear the world’s ridicule and avoid all such contacts.”
    “Lucky for them.”
    “On the contrary. Too often the community of believers engages only with itself, Dr. Burroughs.” He offered her a card. “I’m up visiting an old friend who teaches here. He’s read your book. I haven’t yet, but I will now, I assure you. In the meanwhile, I want you to consider becoming a member of my faculty.”
    Elena had not been certain she had heard him correctly. “Excuse me?”
    “Pray on it. That’s all I ask. All anyone can ask.” He had offered a brilliant smile, swift as a camera flash. “You would be very good for us, Dr. Burroughs. The question is, would we be good for