Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall. Suzette Mayr

out of the water with the breast stroke, his swimming trunks obscenely red and tiny. She thinks it’s Angus Fella, her colleague, but she’s not 100 percent sure. A woman in black with the body of a 1940s pinup girl shoots past like a penguin. Pimple-like protuberances nestle in the mint-coloured concrete of the pool floor. An acned landscape for the floating scraps of Band-Aids, an errant pair of swim goggles. Dark jellyfish made of hair.

      Edith makes time. She bakes metaphorical matrimonial squares. She wraps them in metaphorical gold-and-silver paper and sends them as a metaphorical Just Because gift to her parents, to Vivianne, to Beulah.

      She lurches her face through the water. Seven-thirteen a.m. Her goggles starting to fog.

      She has no time for swimming. The semester starts in one week, September 4. She has course outlines and syllabi to prepare, essay questions and lecture notes to write and insert into PPT slides, monographs to decipher, a graduate student’s thesis chapter to red-pen, articles to cobble together, a conference presentation 6,000 words too long to jury-rig as best she can, a forty-three-page agenda and appendix about the CASC strategy to absorb for the next faculty meeting. Her next book to start drafting. Her AAO to fill out so she can prove her relevance for the next two years and avoid that awful circumstance of being refreshed by the dean.

      When the jolly previous dean, with his waxed moustache and cowboy hat, awarded her tenure two years and seventy-five days ago, she believed that finally every day at her job would be Christmas Day, with spontaneously carolling students and her professor colleagues smiling at her and bestowing upon her bouquets of red and white flowers and pearly-bowed presents for no reason at all as she sailed down the halls, her healthy new self-possession shining a crystal-ball light. She wouldn’t have to worry about job security anymore, she could intellectually and even literally wear pyjamas to work every day and no one would care: she would be free! But post-tenure Elysium was a rabbit on a greyhound racetrack. This new dean, Dr. Phillip Vermeulen, with his extraordinarily hairy fingers and origami-crisp silk ties, brought in one and a half years ago, is part of the new EnhanceUs university plan. He was brought in to refresh the Faculty of Liberal Arts. He wanted to refresh Edith the moment he met with her for the first time and opened her file on his desk. Refresh the heck out of her, just like he refreshed Coral and the tinier departments, the same way he refreshed sections of Crawley Hall’s operational budget. He is white South African, which makes her nervous. What if he hates her because, well, because she’s a brown woman with prematurely drooping body and face parts? Although her roommate in graduate school was a white South African girl, and they regularly guzzled too many zombie cocktails together, holding each other’s hair back when they puked three times a weekend, every weekend. Misty sure could hold her booze. Really, the dean with his small, catlike head and fancy clothes just reminds Edith a bit too much of her father. Whom she loves, of course. You can’t not love your dad.

      – I see here, Edith, Dean Vermeulen had said in their first meeting, his hairy fingers slithering through her file, his elbows on his desk and his cuffs rucked up so she could see his thick hairy wrists too, – that for two cycles in a row you’ve received only four Value Increments on your AAO.

      She nodded. Her right eyelid spasmed. She pretended to scratch her eyebrow but really gave her twitching eyelid a poke. Edith had thought his accent was English the first time she heard him; he did not immediately correct people who mistook him for British.

      – One more AAO cycle with a four VI would confirm your eligibility for the EnhanceUs Refreshment Strategy, said the dean, his index fingers parked in the middle of a page.

      His back was to the window. The sun bleated from behind a knot of clouds, and the leather of the punching bag planted in the corner of his office glistened.

      – I’ve been writing my book, she said, jamming her finger into her eyelid. – I’ve been trying to complete my book, and that’s why my publication record has appeared to slow down the past few years …

      – You’re going to have to write that book and future books a lot harder, I’m afraid. This university is on track to be in the top 1 percent in the country in terms of excellence and globalization, but to do that we’re going to have to shed those who diverge from the EnhanceUs strategic plan. You understand, eh, Edith?

      He cocked his head.

      She spilled out of his office, her head a tumbleweed, her eyelid dancing a tarantella no matter how insistently she pressed it with the palm of her hand. How could she explain to him, explain properly, that her book, her tribute, her temple erected to Beulah Crump-Withers, had to be flawless? No one could rush this book. Not even her. Tears dribbled out from under her palm.

      On her way out of the dean’s office she whammed her shoulder into Angus Fella, with his vodka-and-Vegemite breath. His hat jumped off his head and rolled partway down the hall. Combed-over strands of grey hair flopped in the wrong direction. She chased after his hat while he smoothed his hair. He resettled his fedora on his head.

      – I’m sorry, she blubbered, her fingers over her nose, trying to stem the tears.

      – Looks like you need a tissue, he said, and began patting the pockets of his blazer. – Aha! Found one!

      He brandished a mangled shred of Kleenex. – I only blew my nose in it once, he said. – In this corner. You can use any of the other three corners. Go ahead. Looks like you need it.

      She dabbed her eyes and wiped her nose. Handed the tissue back. She took a deep breath.

      – I don’t want to hear about your problems, he said. – Sorry, but I must be frank.

      He scuttled away through the door leading to the stairs.

      Edith claws through the chlorinated water in the university’s Olympic-sized swimming pool. She squints though her goggles. Seven-thirty-five a.m. Soon it will be 8 a.m. and her day basically gone. Wasted!

      Because her book will come out just in time to list it on this year’s AAO, a published book the holy grail for a high VI, at least ten VI, or maybe even eleven VI, and Dean Vermeulen and his punching bag will not refresh her. Her book will unfresh her.

      She pushes silver bubbles out of her nose. Her hands droop toward the pool floor.

      She wishes she could drunk dial and weep and rave on the phone to Coral like she used to. But that would be dysfunctional. And Vivianne says no. And Coral’s been away.

      Coral’s coming back. Coral might already be back. Coral is a passionate person. Edith worries that Coral’s returning passion might affect Edith’s AAO score. The dean grades on a curve.

      That murky, bumping sound of water spilling into Edith’s ears.

      She should be catching up on her critical theory, not frolicking in pools in the middle of the day. Like she’s a Lady Who Lunches. A Lady Who Laps.

      She pulls herself up the metal stairs from the water up onto the pool deck, water streaming from her ears, her goggled eyes foggy.

      She raises her arms like she’s just won a race. She exercised!