Patricia Gaffney by Mad Dash

Tim pushed back on his chair’s hind legs and burped leisurely, drumming his hands on the soft mound of his belly. “No, thanks. I fly low, low, low under the radar. I like things just the way they are.”
    So did Andrew. Was he as sedentary and complacent as Tim, though, who never published, never presented a paper or went to a conference? At least Andrew still felt alive in the classroom—Tim didn’t even have that anymore. At fifty-six, he was just counting the years until retirement.
    “Besides,” he went on, wiping a chocolate smear from the corner of his mustache. “They didn’t offer me the job.”
    “Maybe they will. The only criterion seems to be a pulse.” Andrew laughed quickly, to show that was a joke. “I mean, if they asked me —”
    “No, the criterion is somebody who doesn’t threaten anybody. A uniter instead of a divider. You’re not on anybody’s team, never have been. Nobody hates you—that’s your big advantage.”
    Andrew patted his heart with his fist. “I’m…touched.”
    “The more I think about it, the more I can see where Richard’s coming from. People trust you. You’re not going to walk over ’em, stab ’em in the back, you’re not so ambitious that they’re afraid of you. You don’t intimidate anybody.”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said a low female voice from behind Andrew’s shoulder. He knew better, but Tim started to get up before he caught himself. “At ease,” Elizabeth O’Neal said with a twist of her villainess lips, sliding into the chair next to Andrew’s. Elizabeth never hid her disdain for the quaint, old-fashioned courtesies men of Andrew and Tim’s generation hadn’t had beaten out of them. “What are you talking about?” She opened her paper napkin with a violent flap, slammed her straw on the table to pop the wrapping.
    “Nothing interesting,” Andrew said before Tim could answer. Moving his tray out of her way, angling his chair toward her, he wondered if Elizabeth was one of the colleagues Richard had talked to about who should be the new chair, and if so, if she’d supported Andrew. She was an up-and-comer, one of the young, hungry ones, so—probably not. But he couldn’t be sure. About anything where Elizabeth was concerned.
    “ This …is inedible.” She speared a hefty triangle of gravy-covered meat on her fork and devoured it in one bite. “Who can eat this crap?” She finished off the meat and started on a gluey pool of mashed potatoes. “What do the vegetarians do? If we have any. Probably not, this place is forty years behind the times. Nutrition being the least of it.”
    No one dared to challenge Elizabeth when she got on one of her Mason-Dixon bashings, not even Richard, the college’s peppiest champion. She was too intimidating and contemptuous. She taught Middle Eastern history, the currently hot specialty, and that gave her some leverage in the department. But her preferred method of getting her way was by scaring people.
    She scared Tim, who took the first opportunity to excuse himself. “’Bye, kids, gotta run. Places to go, people to see.” He scooped up his tray, snagged his jacket from the back of his chair. The buttons of his shirt strained across his middle, his tie stopped shy of his belt. The last time they’d played one-on-one in the gym, Andrew had barely worked up a sweat before Tim had his hands on his knees, shaking his shaggy head, panting, “Man, man, I gotta get in shape.” Behind Elizabeth’s back, he made a face of comical terror before shambling off.
    “ So …Andrew.”
    “ So …Elizabeth.” He shook himself. Mimicking her choppy speech patterns was a habit he’d caught from Dash.
    She ate like a man, fast, businesslike. “I heard something about you,” she said, scooping up yellowish pudding in her spoon.
    So she had talked to Richard. He waited, curious about her reaction. Politically, Elizabeth was a bit of a dark horse. If Andrew didn’t scare people because they trusted