One Plus Two Minus One

by Tess Mackenzie

He looked up at her.

  She had no idea how to say it. She had no idea, because she’d never cared about someone who wasn’t as good as her before. Not someone in maths, where she could compare. He’d be worrying too, thinking she’d lose interest in him if he couldn’t hold his own, and didn’t know how to say that wasn’t how she felt any more.

  She took his hand. She held both of his in hers, and he looked worried.

  “Thank you for trying,” she said. “But drop out.”

  “I can do this.”

  “No, you can’t. Drop out. If you do now, it won’t go on your permanent record.”

  “No,” he said.

  “You can’t do this. You can’t keep up.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll manage. And if I don’t, seeing you is worth it.”

  She looked at him, and couldn’t make up her mind.

  “It is,” he said.

  She thought. She thought hard. What she was about to do was terrible, but actually it wasn’t. The point of a university was to do research, and train new researchers. Despite all the students as customers bullshit that was taking over, undergraduate courses didn’t matter. Undergrads didn’t matter. There was nothing she did in the classes with Ethan counted for anything, except to select the new research candidates coming through.

  It was a terrible thing to think about doing, but it actually wasn’t. Not to anyone who understood why she was really here.

  “I’ll give you an A,” she said. “You have an A right now. So don’t spent more time on this than you can afford.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You’re going to struggle, and it’s going to take up time you don’t have. And no-one will ever know. So make sure no-one else in the class sees your work, and hand in what you have, and I’ll give you an A.”

  “What if you get caught?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Beth, you can’t do this.”

  “One guy in your class is going on to something else important, and I already know who he is. He’s competing with half a dozen others in the department, and their marks really matter, and I won’t fuck with those. There rest of you are just…”

  “Future high school teachers?”

  “Not you. You aren’t one of those, but you aren’t going to be a star either. You’re in the middle somewhere, so your mark doesn’t really matter.”

  He didn’t answer. He was thinking.

  “I’m taking something from the high-school teachers, and giving it to you,” she said. “It’s a little unfair to them, but I’m not going to cost you your future. I’m just not.”

  He opened his mouth.

  “I’m doing this,” she said. “You can’t stop me. All that matters is whether you waste time studying for a mark you’ve already got.”

  He opened his mouth again.

  “So don’t fucking argue,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said, after a while. “Thank you.”

  “This is my fault. So I’ll fix it.”

  *

  Over time, Beth found herself becoming more and more obsessed with sex. Where to have it, and when, and how to meet. She was being fingered in empty lecture theatres, and in odd corners of the campus around behind the maintenance buildings, she was getting head in her office, and giving it empty tutorial rooms, and masturbating in the shower most mornings which made her too happy to work properly for the next few hours. She was filling her day trying to work out how to have sex with Ethan, and not with Robert, and it was getting far too complicated.

  She was getting mopey too. She was organizing her day to see Ethan in a lift, or a stairwell, somewhere she could touch him for a moment, and that was costing her research time.

  She was supposed to be a rational person. This kind of horny shit wasn’t meant to take over her life, but it was.

  “You’re going to have to come to my place,” she said in the end. “I can’t think of any other way.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you deal with knowing Robert’s there?”

  “I think so.”

  “And we’ll have to be careful. Fucking careful.”

  He nodded.

  “All right,” she said, and kissed him for a minute, until she couldn’t breathe. “Soon.”

  She went home and told Robert she was going to start tutoring one of her students there, that she’d do it when he wasn’t around. Then she sat down with Robert’s timetable, and hers, and Ethan’s, and worked out four hour-long slots a week when she and Ethan were free and Robert wasn’t.

  She started dashing home in those four hours, meeting Ethan, fucking him frantically for forty minutes, then rushing back to college before anyone caught her. At her place, often in her bed, since Ethan didn’t seem to care if he fucked her where Robert slept.

  They met in her office at the weekend, or in the evenings, when she couldn’t stand to not see him for a whole extra day. When Robert asked, she said she needed the mainframes in the department for her work. Like everyone else, she wasted time big-prime hunting as a hobby, and she needed the department’s mainframes for that. Not as much as the analysis people did, but sometimes.

  Robert was too proudly technophobic to point out she could have logged in from home.

  She saw Ethan, and breathed and moaned and panted into his mouth, and felt his skin against hers, and tasted him in her mouth, and they still hadn’t talked about what they actually were, what this thing between them should be, but it didn’t seem to matter any more. It just was. They both understood that, and needed it, and she kept going, with a kind of madness, needing to see Ethan.

  *

  Amanda met Robert, at Beth’s, by accident one afternoon. Robert came home early, and Beth didn’t chase Amanda out because she didn’t want Robert to wonder what the problem was. Beth told her to be careful, and watch what she said, and Amanda said she would.

  Amanda talked politely for a few minutes, and then left, and outside, getting into her car, she whispered to Beth, “I like the other one better.”

  Beth looked at her. “Shut up.”

  “Just saying.”

  “Shut the fuck up. Just don’t.”

  Amanda looked at her face, and saw something there.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Beth said. “But don’t. Be careful, okay?”

  Amanda nodded.

  “Please,” Beth said. “I mean it.”

  Amanda hugged her quickly and said, “I will, no shit, okay?”

  “Thank you.”

  Beth went back inside and listened to Robert and wanted to strangle him.

  She was finding him annoying, so annoying she couldn’t stand him, and she knew it was only because she wanted him gone so she could fuck Ethan, and that wasn’t fair.

  Being unfair to Robert made her feel guilty, and guilt made her annoyed, and that made her even more of a bitch. She wasn’t sure where it would end.

  *

  There had been a man with a drill outside Beth’s office for an hour, and she couldn’t think with him there. The tempo was just erratic enough she’d decide it had stopped, and then it would start again. She was trying to be patient, because she knew she was in a bad mood all the time, and didn’t want to take it out on bystanders.

  Then he got a phone call, and stood right outside her door, talking about his weekend to a friend.

  She opened it, and said, “Go somewhere else.”

  “Hold on,” he said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Go away,” she said. “Please.”

  He looked at her but kept talking.

  She closed the door, furious, then decided that actually, she was going to make a fuss after all. She opened it again.

  “Hold on, love,” he said.

  “Go the fuck away,” she said. “Right fucking now.”

  He looked at her for a moment. “You don’t need to talk like that.”

  “Hang up. Pack up. Fuck off.”

  He hesitated, t
hen started packing up his tools.

  “And if you call a woman in this university “love” again, I’ll have your fucking job,” Beth said.

  “I’m going,” he said.

  Beth looked up, and realized Ethan was down the corridor, watching. “Yeah, and fuck you too,” she said to him. “What do you want?”

  He looked at the maintenance guy. “I needed some help with my assignment.”

  “So ask a fucking tutor.” Beth stood there a minute, and then said, “Come in.”

  The maintenance guy seemed about to leave. “Sorry,” Beth said. “But just have some sense about where you are and who you’re talking to.”

  He ignored her, offended, and walked off.

  “Or be a fucking dick,” Beth said after him.

  “You’re an angry woman,” Ethan said.

  “So fucking what?”

  “It’s hot.”

  “Oh,” Beth said, and grinned and calmed down right away.

  She was having mood swings. Maybe Ethan had given her early menopause.

  Ethan was looking at the note she had taped on her door. Do not clean this office. Do not maintain this office. Do not empty the bin or open the window. Do not touch my papers. Do not ever touch my fucking whiteboard.

  “What?” she said. “The whiteboard? Someone did once.”

  He nodded.

  “And once I threw something away and I realized I needed it a week later, so I don’t want the bin emptied.”

  “Right. Don’t people mind the swearing?”

  “They don’t have to look at my fucking door if they don’t fucking want to.”

  Ethan grinned. “And that guy just then?”

  “He’d been making noise for an hour. He could work around my lectures.”

  “Do they?”

  “Nope,” she said. “And that’s the fucking problem with this place.”

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “Yep,” she said. “Now.” She closed the door and kissed him. Kissed him for a long time.

  “Was there something?” she said. “Or just to see me?”

  “Just see you.”

  She kissed him a little longer. “That’s fucking cool,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I was trying to do something,” she said.

  “I’ll go.”

  She hesitated, still kissing, not sure if he would be offended. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  He opened the door, kissed her again, said, “Bye.”

  She watched him go and grinned to herself and wondered what was wrong with her.

  Three hours later she got an email from the head of maintenance about her abusing one of his staff. It had been copied to her head of school. She deleted it without bothering to reply.

  *

  Robert was getting more involved with his political friends. There was going to be an election, or a law change, or something. Beth didn’t really care. Robert talked about it a lot, about his new friends who cared as much as he did.

  “It’s nice you have a hobby,” Beth said, and that shut him up for a few days.

  Not forever.

  “I wondered,” he said a week later, “If it would be okay to have a meeting here.”

  Beth looked at him, surprised. “Ah, no.”

  “It’s close to the campus.”

  “And still no.”

  “Why not?”

  “What did I say about having a bunch of hippies in my lounge?”

  “They’re my colleagues.”

  “Like that’s better.”

  He looked at her for a moment and seemed annoyed. “Shit, Beth…”

  “What?”

  “Do you have to be like that all the fucking time?”

  “Like what?”

  “Yes, Beth, they’re political scientists, and what you do is far more important, but you don’t have to be such an utter bitch about the people in my department. They’re my friends.”

  She thought about that. She probably took it too far sometimes, but then again, she didn’t want him here, and he didn’t have to talk to her like that even if she was being rude.

  “It’s not that they’re political scientists,” she said. “It’s that they’re hippies. Like I said. You fucking dick.”

  “We’re going to have a fight about this?” he said. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”

  He looked at her.

  “This is my fucking house,” she said. “You’re a guest and you don’t get to try and bully me into having your dodgy friends over.”

  “I’m a guest?”

  “Yeah, you fucking are. I’m paying the rent and I’m paying for the food and since you haven’t once offered to help, you’re a fucking guest.”

  He looked in his pocket, took out two twenties. Threw them on the floor. “That’s all I have on me.”

  “Thanks,” Beth said. “Big spender. That fucking helps.”

  “I’ll get as much as you want. And I’ll go right now if you want me to.”

  She looked at him for a long, long moment and almost said yes, he should go. She wanted to, quite desperately. She could have him out of here in an hour and Ethan inside her in two.

  Because she wanted to so much, she didn’t.

  “That’s not the point,” she said.

  “I’ll pay rent.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “Because then you’ll lose this power you think you have.”

  “No, Robert, because I’m fucking sick of all this political bullshit, and I used to put up with it because I was stupid and I loved you and it had always been like that, but I’ve got a life here now and I don’t want that shit to be part of it.”

  He looked at her for a moment. “That’s really what the problem is? My political activism?”

  No, she thought. Not at all. “Yes,” she said.

  “There’s an election on, Beth. It matters. Maybe for the first time in a decade.”

  “I don’t care, Robert. You’re not going to change anything, so why bother?”

  He looked at her like he didn’t know her at all, and part of her welcomed that. Part of her wanted him to get so confused by this woman he didn’t know he just went away.

  “I’ve told you over and over,” she said, and this part was true. “I’ve told you I don’t care. I’ve told you I don’t want to be part of all that, and you never fucking listen. So listen to this. No hippies in my house. No fucking activists, no political agitators, fucking no-one. You understand me?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah, Beth, I understand.”

  He looked around for his jacket, picked it up.

  “Fuck off then,” she said. “Run away.”

  “Yeah, Beth.”

  “Coward.”

  He got his shoes, and started putting them on. Ignoring her.

  “Are you fucking listening?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well, fucking listen to me.”

  He sat there, and waited.

  “I don’t want any of that shit in my house. No posters, no paint, no fucking signs. Nothing, okay?”

  “Okay, Beth, I got it.”

  “I’ve had it with all that student radical bullshit. I just want a normal life in a nice house for a while.”

  He nodded, and went to the door. “You’ve changed,” he said.

  “I know. About fucking time I did.”

  He looked at her for a moment, and left. He closed the door gently behind him.

  She would have slammed it, and she thought Ethan would have slammed it, and she wasn’t sure why Robert’s calmness annoyed her so much.

  *

  Robert came back that night, while Beth was sitting on the couch watching TV. Robert didn’t approve of TV, so Beth had been watching it more lately. He sat down beside her and handed her an envelope.

  She looked inside. Money. A lot of money.

  “How much is that?”

  “Two
thousand. Enough for rent for a while.”

  “On this place, that’s enough for rent for about three weeks.”

  She tried to hand it back, but he wouldn’t take it. She held it out for a moment, then got sick of him being childish and threw it towards him. Then got up, and got his two twenties from that morning off the bench, and dropped them in his lap too.

  “Don’t be so controlling,” he said. “Just take it.”

  “Your whole fucking problem,” she said. “Is you never listen to me. You always think you know what I want when you don’t.”

  He looked at her.

  “My life,” she said. “My house. My rules. No hippies, and you’re not paying fucking rent. You’re a guest.”

  “I thought I was your partner? That we were a couple?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Aren’t I?”

  “Fuck knows.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She looked back at the TV and ignored him.

  “Beth…”

  “I’m watching this.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then stood up and went towards the stairs.

  “Hey,” she said, and threw the envelope towards him.

  He stayed where he was, didn’t pick it up.

  “I’m fucking controlling,” she said. “You won’t even take your money back.”

  He went up the stairs.

  “Hey, Robert?” Beth called.

  He stopped.

  “Sex with you bores the fuck out of me and I hate anal. I just want normal sex.”

  “You said.”

  “I’m saying again. So you get it.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and was finally starting to sound impatient. “You could have just told me ages ago. You don’t have to go so completely fucking mad about it.”

  She picked up a book from the coffee table and threw it towards the stairs. One if his books, that he’d left lying around. Then another.

  “Fuck you,” she shouted, and, “Welcome to the new fucking me.”

  He just stood there and looked at her. The books hadn’t gone anywhere near him. After a moment he went upstairs.

  Beth felt satisfied. She actually felt quite calm, like that was something she’d needed to do for years and it had just got done. She liked shouting at him, she realized. She liked being angry and acting all aggrieved. It made her feel alive, it was almost addictive. She was starting to understand what he and all his political friends saw in being angry about shit.