Jane Air

briefly steams her glasses.
“No. I got in and out pretty easily.”
“Was the owner there?” She takes a sip and my mouth waters at the way her lower lip catches on the rim of the cup, her mouth opening slightly, eyes on mine.
Damn.
“Uh,” I cough and adjust my seat, “I’m not sure. There was a big guy in the back, but I couldn’t see him. There was only one person behind the counter. A small blonde.”
She grins now, a full, open mouth smile and her eyes light up. Her whole face lights up in fact and I swear I feel the temperature outside heat up by at least five degrees.
“That’s Dory. She’s the owner. She’s a friend of mine.”
“Oh,” my eyebrows go up. “She’s nice. Very unaffected.”
Another grin. This time, with a shake of the head. A strand of hair escapes the bun low on her neck and I watch it slide loose to hang in a soft curl behind her ear, just barely caressing her neck.
God.
“Unaffected.” She smiles again, repeating my words. “Yeah. I guess she is.” She looks up at me. “She’s very cool. And the cafe is a great place to hang out. You should try their pie.”
I nod. “Well. I got coffee. Let’s take it a step at a time.”
A laugh. A full-throated, head back, open-mouthed laugh.
And I do stare. This time. I stare at her eyes, closed. I stare at her cheeks, soft and round. I stare at her lips, open and pink.
I’ve met women like Jane before. They hide in plain sight. They dress like nuns or teenage boys. Minimal make up. Serious expressions and stern voices.
It’s easy to believe all that. To believe the image they put out in the world. But every once in a while, if you’re very lucky, there’s a crack, a tiny sliver between the pieces of their carefully curated facade, and the light shines through. The bounce of breasts, the fit of the jeans, the glimmer in their eyes.
I don’t know why some women try to hide their beauty. I’ve never understood it. It’s certainly not the Hollywood way, where everyone shows everything from every angle all the time. But I’ve noticed it outside of the movie industry. Women who seem to veil themselves. And it has nothing to do with what they wear, to be honest. It’s how they hold themselves. Stiff, straight. It’s how they talk. Unyielding. Firm. Direct.
I can’t help but wonder, looking at her, the smile still playing on her lips, the shine of the sun against her hand where it rests on the book cover, the tap of her fingers against the side of the cup, why she holds back like she does.
Perhaps it has to do with me. I am blackmailing her after all. So, it’s no surprise she doesn’t want to relax around me. Doesn’t want to let me see her. And I did come across her naked in my pond, and accuse her of trespassing (which, technically, she was doing). I guess it’s natural her defenses would be up.
But perhaps it’s something else. Perhaps she’s been wearing her defenses for so long she doesn’t even realize they’re there.
Then again. The woman has a PhD. I bet she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“How long have you been a professor?” I ask, sipping from my coffee.
“Three years.”
My eyebrows go up. “That’s not long.”
“Well,” that laugh again. Softer this time, eyes glancing at the cup in her hand. “PhDs take a long time. And then there was the Visiting Assistant Professorship. Three of them actually.”
“What is that?”
“Uh,” she shakes her head and rolls her eyes, “basically, you get a one year contract somewhere. And you teach and spend the whole year applying for another one year contract somewhere. And if you’re lucky, you get one, so you pack up your whole life and move to wherever the next one is.”
“Sounds like acting.”
“I guess,” she smiles. Broadly this time. I watch her shoulders loosen, arms resting closer to her sides as she relaxes into her chair. “I guess it is. Do you move around a lot for work?”
I nod. It’s hard to explain. Because it sounds so glamourous. Go to bed in LA. Wake up in Tokyo. Go to bed in Copenhagen. Wake up in Delhi. And it is glamourous. For a few years.
After that, it’s hell.
“It’s a hard way to live,” she says, seeming to speak more to herself than to me. “You can’t really make plans, because you don’t know where you’ll end up.”
“And you can’t commit to anything, because you don’t know if you’ll be around,” I add.
“And you spend all your time lining up your next position, so even though you spend a year in a place, you don’t really spend any time in that place.”
I nod. “You can’t enjoy it. You work all day, and then prepare for the next job all night.”
She nods. “On my third one, I was in the middle of nowhere, a tiny school in North Dakota. It was really tough. The winter, man.” She shakes her head. “We have winters here, but over there? They need an entirely different word for whatever that is.”
I smile. “I filmed a few weeks in Vancouver in winter. We had to stop the shoot because the cameras kept freezing.”
She laughs at that, the sound sparkling between us.
“The school was tough,” she continues, “and there was no budget for conferences, and I made nothing because they didn’t even give me a full rota of classes. And I remember saying to myself, you know Jane, this is it. You do one more round of applications. One more attempt at a tenure-track, secure position. And if it doesn’t come through…”
“What were you going to do?”
She shrugs. “I was ready to walk away. After eight years in a PhD. Three years living out of a suitcase. Thousands of hours of reading.”
“That’s a lot to throw away.”
“You’re telling me!” She laughs again. “And remember, I have no practical skills apart from writing articles about