Special Collections Section Ch. 02

"Fuck!"

I slammed my fist on the desk, rattling my computer screen. My half-empty coffee mug jerked dangerously close to the edge. The Lego man on the shelf above the desk toppled face-first on his perch. I stared angrily at the screen, at the word doc that lay open at the latest chapter of my master's thesis. It had been blank for the past hour. If one counted the days since I had named and numbered the chapter however, it had been sitting blank for at least a week. I was stuck.

I am not the most organised person when it comes to conducting academic research, but I usually have a broad structure in place for my theses. I do go down rabbit holes of literature often, but eventually my thoughts converge and the final week before a submission deadline is a frenzy of inspired, focused writing. For this paper, it was the final week the week before. I had managed to secure an extension of the deadline from my unit coordinator but I wasn't going to get another grace period. Today was Thursday, or at least it would for the next half hour before the clock ticked over to Friday. I needed to hand in my manuscript by Sunday. So far, I only had written two chapters out of the proposed four. I needed help. Professional help.

I didn't get much sleep that night. I'd keep waking up every hour, dreaming of something chasing me. When daylight streamed through my windows I got up, brushed my teeth, packed my laptop and notepad in my bag and set off for the university library. I got there at ten minutes past opening time. The bleary-eyed receptionist regarded me with a mix of amusement and boredom as I explained my need to consult with a research advisor. No, I hadn't made any bookings. No, I couldn't wait till next week. Yes, I'd like to be added to the waiting list to see if a booking becomes available.

I camped out in front of the reception desk, plugging my computer into the wall outlet and absent-mindedly sifting through my notes. The hours ticked by. Other students trickled into the building and soon the library's common area was filled with a low din of whispers and clacking keyboards. 9 AM became 10, 10 rolled over to 11. As we approached noon, my anxiety rose to a fever pitch. I'd glance every five minutes at the receptionist, hearing his phantom voice calling my name. But he hadn't. His face looked as bored as ever as he worked on god knows what on his terminal. I gave up. I wasn't getting any work done here. Might as well head to the student lounge to see if I could find any classmates. Classmates who had already handed in their theses and would now be chilling, going out, going home.

I swore under my breath as I packed my things into my bag for the second time that morning. I rose and headed towards the glass sliding doors, glancing at the receptionist. He had been looking at me. I shrugged at him. His eyes turned to his screen. I sighed and kept walking. Just as I stepped through the threshold, the receptionist called me up. Eyebrows perked, I walked over. He began by apologising and telling me that no slots had become free and they didn't look like they would. He continued by saying that while research advisors associated with my department weren't available, he could set up an appointment that afternoon with a general advisor. He cautioned me that general research advisors couldn't help with specifics of subject matters, rather assisting with the overall structure and cohesiveness of the thesis.

I pondered it over. While I would've preferred someone who'd actually understand what I was talking about, maybe an outsider's perspective would really be best. If I couldn't communicate the topics of my thesis to someone not versed in the subject, then I probably didn't have the best grasp on the topics myself. Perhaps that's where the problem lay. Also, something was better than nothing.

I nodded and accepted the appointment. The receptionist made the booking for 2 PM and told me which meeting room I'd be seeing the advisor in. I thanked him and headed out. I checked my watch. I still had an hour to go before the appointment. My stomach chose that very moment to remind me rather loudly that I hadn't had a bite to eat since last night. I grabbed a vegetable smoothie from the juice store on campus and found a quiet corner to sit and go through my notes. The scheduling of the appointment hadn't exactly lowered my stress levels, and I found I couldn't concentrate. My writing seemed alien to me. The points I'd jotted down over the past weeks seemed disorderly and some initial conclusions felt like a bit of a reach. In less than half an hour I was sipping the dregs of my smoothie and doubting my whole thesis methodology. I wasn't sitting in the sun, yet I was sweating. I realised I wasn't getting anything done, and that perhaps being back in the library would do me good.

I went back into the low, whisper-quiet din of the general seating area in the library. The meeting rooms were on the third floor. Looking up at the glass-walled corner room -- the one booked for my appointment -- I saw that it was unoccupied. I looked at my watch. Fifteen minutes till the meeting. I decided to head in and make myself comfortable. Maybe I'd be able to make sense of my notes as well. I went up the stairs and used the tablet outside the room to check in. That unlocked the door. I went in and set up my things on the table. Being a corner room, it was bound on three sides by glass walls, which sported a wide horizontal frosted section in the middle to afford the occupants of the room some privacy. Leaving the door slightly ajar, I seated myself in a swivel chair facing away from the door and pored over my notes again.

Forced myself to go through them, actually. Just looking at my own scribbles filled me with dread about the upcoming submission. Even if the advisor was somehow miraculously able to point me in the right direction, I still had at least five thousand words to write in the final two chapters. Anything less and I wouldn't be doing justice to the whole last year I had spent collecting, summarising and making inferences from the data. There wasn't nearly enough time to do that though, not if I wanted to edit, caption and insert appendices. My head started to swim with all the work I'd in front of me. As I sat hunched over my laptop, a pair of hands slid across my back and came to rest at the base of my skull. I jerked upright in my chair.

"You look like you need to ease up."

I turned around to see Dini leaning over me, a coy smile playing across her face. I exhaled audibly. Dini was the Sri Lankan library assistant I had hooked up with a couple of months ago. What had started out as an intrusion on my study time had turned into a hot and heavy evening in the Special Collections section of the library. And after unintentionally locking ourselves in, it had turned into a rather restless night. Since then we hadn't seen each other a lot. I'd gotten busy with classes and boxing training, and she had taken to working more hours at the library. Occasionally I'd see her manning the helpdesk in the lobby, and we'd smile and wave at each other as I passed by.

"Jeez Dini, you scared the shit out of me."

"Oh I'm sorry." She replied, her hands stroking the back of my neck. "I thought I was gentle."

"No, no... you were gentle. I'm just too strung up right now."

"I can see that." Dini moved her hands lower, rubbing my upper back. Her fingers worked outwards from the spine to scapulae, up to the backs and tops of my shoulders, before coming in over the back of my neck to the trapezoids. "Just relax, and breathe easy."

I nodded and took a couple of deep breaths. Dini had skilful hands, and over the next couple of minutes she slowly massaged some of my immediate anxieties away. I relaxed and leaned back. Neither of us spoke a word. The air was punctuated by just the sound of our breaths and that of her hands sliding across my skin and the back of my shirt. I hadn't forgotten about the time, however. I kept glancing at my wristwatch. I also made sure she knew how much I appreciated this.

"Thanks Dini, I needed this." I whispered to her.

"Mmm, my pleasure."

Now it was less than five minutes from my appointment. From the corner of my eye I saw that she had closed the door to the meeting room behind her. I rose from my chair and walked up to it, opening it again.

"Sorry Dini, I have an appointment in a few. I really appreciate the massage, but I need the meeting room."

"I know you have an appointment, silly." She replied, grinning ear to ear. "It's with me!"

Dini laughed at the look of confusion on my face.

"You're the general research advisor?"

"One of them, yes. I only started last month."

"I see..." I looked away from her, pondering it over.

"Don't believe me?"

"No no, it's not that." I blurted out. "I just... I guess it' nice to see a familiar face." I smiled at her. She beamed back.

"Good! Shall we begin?"

I nodded and sat back down in my chair. Dini dragged a swivel chair from the other end of the table to sit right next to me. I doubt she'd do that with any other student. RA's usually sat across or adjacent to you, but Dini cozied right up. Over the next ten minutes I stuttered my way through my research topic, doing my best to dumb it down. Dini kept nodding and making notes, never interjecting. When I was done, she sucked the base of her pen for about half a minute. My apprehension resurfaced. I knew had been a bad idea. I would've probably better spent my time at home, working on the thesis. I was never gonna be able to-

"What was the p-value of that hypothesis test again?" Dini broke my reverie.

"Uhh..." I fumbled, darting through my notes. I found it and answered her.

"Okay but you said you also performed a correlation analysis with these other metrics?"

I told her I did.

"Did you maybe ever think that those metrics tell a better story than the one you were basing your discussion around?"

I hadn't. The metrics Dini was referencing were part of my analysis -- at the advice of my supervisor -- but they were almost filler material. B-sides. The reason I was struggling to write my discussion was because the metric I had chosen to spotlight didn't have a significant enough effect on business decisions. It was something I had based my entire initial hypothesis on, and I was more than a little disappointed to see it not work out the way I wanted it to.

But Dini was right. The B-side metrics told their own story. And it might just be worth reworking my discussion section, but there was a bunch of confirmatory statistical analysis I needed to do first. I told her as much. She leaned in conspiratorially -- making me catch a whiff of her perfume -- and whispered in my ear.

"I never told you, but I aced all my stats exams at university."

"I can't believe it didn't come up when I was eating you out." I retorted. That earned me a punch in the shoulder.

"I'm not really supposed to do this," Dini continued, "but I can code an Excel worksheet for you in about half an hour to do the calculations you need."

"No kidding?" I was incredulous.

"No kidding. I just need you to help me understand what your data contains, and once I have the broad framework in mind I can code in the VBA. You're gonna need to do the analysis yourself, but it won't take too long. By tonight you can start reworking your discussion section..."

"... and by Sunday morning I'd be able to finish it..."

"... leaving enough time for edits."

"You're an absolute lifesaver Dini." I rose from my chair, bent down and grabbed her in a bear hug. She giggled and patted my back.

"Okay okay, let's get started now." She whispered.

Over the next half hour we pored over my raw datasets as Dini did parallel VBA coding on her own computer. The minutes flew by, and just as our slated appointment time was to come to a close, she finished validating her program on one set of data. The result was congruent with what we had expected.

"It's not perfect, but refinements shouldn't take too long." Dini said, as she copied the coded worksheet onto a thumb drive. "If something looks strange, remember you have my email." She pulled the drive off her laptop and held it out to me. I reached out for it, grabbing it between my thumb and index finger, but Dini didn't let go. She gave me a look. I understood what she was indicating. Still holding on to the drive, I leaned in for a kiss.

"Nuh uh." Dini pulled her face back. The confusion on my face must've been evident for the second time that hour because she almost burst out laughing.

"I want something better. But not now. Let me know when you're done with your submission." She relinquished her hold on the drive and rose up. She packed her things in her bag and stepped right next to me.

"All the best" she whispered in my ear before nibbling gently on my earlobe. She left the room with her perfume still hanging in the air, and the sound of her flats gently fading away down the corridor.

That evening it didn't take too long for me to figure out the logic behind her programming, and soon I was getting a whole bunch of new analyses done. By the next afternoon, I had a draft thesis ready to go. On Sunday, I uploaded the full and final submission, with plenty of hours to spare. My thesis was complete.

The elation lasted for maybe fifteen minutes. Then, I went to sleep.

***

Monday rolled over and I took the morning off. Lazing around in my house, I played videogames till the noon. I remembered Dini had asked me to inform her when I'd submitted my thesis, so I sent her a quick text thanking her for all the help. After showering and lunch, I was about to settle on the couch for round 2 of gaming when I received an email from the library, informing me of an... appointment? It was with a research advisor. I figured they'd made an erroneous booking -- the receptionist's face flashed in my mind -- and I tried to cancel it online. The online helpdesk told me that I couldn't cancel bookings online less than 2 hours before the slated time. I phoned the library reception, and the familiar voice of the receptionist told me that he could cancel the booking for me but there'd be a fifty-dollar cancellation fee. That pissed me off. Remonstrating quite heatedly that I hadn't booked any appointments, I refused to pay the fee. Then, a question popped in my head.

"Who's the appointment with, again?"

The receptionist put me on hold for 30 seconds and came back with the name. Dini.

I should've guessed.

"It's fine. I'm going." I told the receptionist.

"Oh... okay. Because just a minute ago you said-"

"-I changed my mind. Sorry about that. Thanks for letting me know." I hung up.

I made it to the meeting room -- coincidentally the same one from Friday -- ten minutes before the scheduled time and checked in. I had brought my laptop and notes along so people passing by the room wouldn't think that I was just lounging around in the space, especially since meeting rooms were so hard to come by during the exam period. Looking around, I noticed signs that this room had been used since we were last here. There was writing on the whiteboard and also the glass walls. There were markers, dusters and pens scattered about on the table. The overhead LEDs laid a sheen of contrast on the smooth mica of the table, and I could make out the odd word or phrase someone had etched permanently on the wood.

Dini somehow slipped noiselessly into the room and I was surprised to find two hands slipping across my eyes from behind. Her perfume -- woody, with hints of vetiver -- gave her away. I smiled, pulled her hands gently off my face and turned around. Her eyes glinted with mischief as she came over to the side of my chair. Her hair was done up in a thick ponytail that sat high up on her head. She wasn't wearing any of her usual makeup, save for a shiny lip balm. She was wrapped in a cream trench coat.

"Hey" I said, holding her wrists in my hands still.

"Hey, you" she replied in a low, velvety voice.

"You love dropping in on people unannounced, don't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Dini said in a playful tone, a hint of a smile playing briefly on the corner of her lips.

I motioned for her to sit, but she shook her head.

"I want that one." She said, pointing to the one I was sitting on.

I obliged by letting go of her wrists and standing up. Dini turned away from me and started unbuttoning her coat. She pulled the lapels half apart and, turning the side of her face towards me, cleared her throat. I caught her drift and grabbed the trench coat as she slid it down her shoulders and arms. What was underneath knocked the sense out of me for a second.

Dini had on a white off-shoulder long-sleeved crop top that hugged her torso. Underneath that she had a red pleated tartan skirt. Its high waistline hung just over her navel. The item that she had on underneath the skirt was what made my gut lurch. Dini was wearing fishnet pantyhose. Wide-meshed, with its waistband nested high, a couple of inches past her skirt. Completing the ensemble was a choker and lace-up ankle boots.

Dini sat down on my chair and crossed her legs. I must've had my jaw on the floor because she reached out and pushed it shut.

"What? It's my day off." She said wryly.

"I... okay." I stammered. It was really hard to form words. "It's just that, you don't usually see your research advisor in a grunge skater girl outfit. Even on days off."

"You'd be surprised what your average research advisor gets up to on their day off." Her eyes drifted off to the side for a bit, the slight smile never leaving her face. Then she turned back to me.

"How did your thesis go?"

"Very well actually. You'd be proud."

"I am!" She beamed at me. "But I still expect to be compensated." Her tone changed to being more business-like.

I pulled out my pockets and made a face.

"I don't have any money, but I'm great with my hands."

"And your tongue, if I remember correctly."

"And I remember what you taste like." I replied, smirking.

"Then shut up and eat my pussy already." Dini snapped.

She uncrossed her legs and spread them till the sides of her thighs were touching the armrests. She slid her butt to the edge of the chair seat and grabbed the hem of her skirt with her fingers, lifting it up a few tantalising inches. The fishnets wrapped around her luscious legs looked like gift-wrap. I wanted to tear them off her like her other pair, the last time we had ended up together. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled to the chair. I placed my palms on her knees and rubbed them. I kissed the inside of one knee as my hands moved to the sides and made their way up her thighs. My mouth followed suit, kissing inside each diamond-shaped nylon section of her fishnets on its way up. My fingers disappeared under the hem of her tartan skirt, and I raised my mouth off her leg for a second to kiss her lips as she bent over.

"Mmm..." Dini moaned and giggled on my lips. Her hands grabbed the sides of my face and, through my hands on her thighs, I felt a shiver pass through her body. I sucked her bottom lip for a moment before pulling back, leaving a thin trail of saliva connecting our mouths. My hands had meanwhile reached all the way up under her skirt. My fingers hooked on to the mesh of her hose. I buried my face between her thighs. With the bridge of my nose pushing the hem of her skirt up, kissed the rest of the way up to her mound. Which, as it turned out, was uncovered. Also, the fishnets were crotchless.

"Uh huh!" I raised my eyebrows.

"You ruined my nylons the last time."

"Did I?" I feigned innocence.

"Yes you did. And wearing panties under crotchless hose doesn't make sense."