Do something, Gnat! She squared her shoulder pads to show that she deserved her job, despite all evidence to the contrary, and said, "Well, then, class, you leave me no alternative."
The students gulped collectively. McConnell half smiled and folded his arms.
"Mr. Carling?" Nat pointed to him. "Please come up here and bring your book."
"Uh, okay." Carling rose, slid his paperback from his desktop, and climbed the steps to the stage with a too-cool-for-school smile.
"Come here, please," Nat said, motioning him over to where she was standing.
Carling crossed the stage, scanning the high-tech lectern, with its touch-screen controls and multicolored display.
"This is sick up here."
When Carling was beside her, Nat reached up and took the wool hat from his head.
"May I borrow this?"
"Sure." Carling refluffed the layers of his sandy hair, looking at the class from the stage. "I could get used to this, yo."
"Now stay there, please." Nat scanned the lecture hall. "Mr. Wykoff?" She pointed to Charles Wykoff IV, an all-Ivy lineman from a Main Line family, via Dartmouth. Wykoff had a big baby face, a fringe of crayon-yellow bangs, and guileless blue eyes that telegraphed Legacy Admission. "Please come up and bring your book. And Ms. Anderson, please come with him."
"Sure." Anderson happily made her way to the steps. Wykoff followed her, mystified.
"Hurry up, guys." Nat hustled over as the students made their way to her. She positioned Wykoff by his shoulders, solid as bowling balls under a faded Patagonia fleece. "Good. Now, Mr. Wykoff, you be Bassanio."
"Ba-what-io?"
"Bassanio. He's the hunky boyfriend in the play you didn't read. Open your book. You've got lines." Nat turned to Anderson. "Lady, you're Shylock."
"Terrific!" Anderson grinned.
"Whoa, we're putting on a skit, in law school?" Carling asked in disbelief.
"Not a skit, a play," Nat answered. "It's William Shakespeare, not David Letterman."
"Pssh. What's next? Milk and cookies? Nap time?"
Wykoff guffawed. "Damn, I left my protractor at home."
"Guys, would you rather I lowered your grades?" Nat didn't wait for an answer. "You'll read this play, one way or another. By the way, Carling, you're Antonio."
"But he's gay!"
"So what?" Nat turned on her heel. "And how do you know that, if you didn't read the play?"
"I saw the movie. Jeremy Irons borrows the money from Al Pacino because he's in love with a dude!'
"Way to miss the point, Mr. Carling. Don't discriminate in the class about discrimination."
The students laughed, and Nat startled at the unaccustomed sound. They'd never laughed at any of her jokes before. In fact, all nine of them were paying attention for the first time ever. Behind them, McConnell leaned back in his seat, but she couldn't stop now. She took her place downstage.
"Everybody," Nat said, "please turn to act one, scene two, the big courtroom scene. I'm playing Portia, one of Shakespeare's best female characters, except that she fell for the wrong guy. She's about to save the day, and in this scene, she disguises herself as a man, like this." She shoved Carling's wool hat on her head and hurried to the lectern for her purse.
"You look hot, Professor Greco!" Elizabeth Warren hollered, and the class laughed.
"You ain't seen nothin' yet." Nat rummaged through her makeup bag, found her eye pencil, and drew a crude mustache on her face with two quick strokes, courtesy of Clinique.
"Awesome, professor!" San Gupta shouted, making a megaphone of his hands. The class broke into applause that echoed in the cavernous hall. Somebody in the back of the room wolf-whistled, and Nat looked toward the sound. It was Angus Holt, whose blond beard and ponytail qualified him as Faculty Freak. Angus taught in this room after Nat's class, but she didn't know him except to say hello and goodbye. She smiled, then caught sight of McConnell in the foreground, which gave her an idea.
"We need a judge." Nat rubbed her hands together.
"I'll do it!" Max Bischoff volunteered, forgetting he had typhus.
"Pick me! It should be a woman judge!" Marilyn Krug shouted, and Adele McIlhargey chimed in, in an unprecedented traffic jam of class participation.
"Wait a minute, gang." Nat waved them off. "Vice Dean McConnell, would you please be our judge this morning?"
The students turned around, surprised to see McConnell sitting in the back. The vice dean frowned at the sudden attention, cupping his earlobe as if he hadn't heard, but Nat wasn't buying.
"Vice Dean McConnell, we'd love for you to play the Duke of Venice. Right, class?"
"Yes!" Everybody shouted, smiling, and Nat started a cheer.
"McConnell! McConnell! McConnell!"
The students joined her, and as if on cue, Angus Holt lumbered down the sloped aisle of the lecture hall. He scooped up McConnell on the way and escorted him to the stage, amid laughter and clapping.
"Special delivery, Professor Greco!" Angus handed over a slightly winded vice dean.
"If it pleases, Your Grace." Nat extended her arm to McConnell with an Elizabethan flourish.
Gotcha.
Chapter 2
After class was over, Nat said goodbye to McConnell, who had rendered judgment on Shylock and presumably on her, too. She grabbed her stuff to leave, but by then Angus Holt's class was entering the hall, pouring down the center aisle, laughing and joking like they were at a party. They kept coming and coming, and soon she found herself swimming upstream against a student tsunami of water bottles and Coach purses. She watched, astounded, as one by one they filled every seat in the lecture hall. Nat had never seen so many students in one place, except at graduation.
She started up the aisle, where Angus stood surrounded by a circle of clinic students, identifiable by their unruly hair, so collectively curly it hovered above them like a cloud. She didn't know much about the clinic, except that it taught students to work as lawyers for the public good, while avoiding the abstract legal issues that bored everyone but her. Whatever Angus was doing, it was working. Faculty Freak trumped Faculty Comic Relief.
"Natalie!" he called out, waving to her. His student circle broke up and went to their seats, and Angus strode down the aisle in jeans and Frye boots.
What do you teach?" Nat asked, looking up at him. He towered over her by a full foot and wore his blond hair parted messily down the middle. His thick, uncombed ponytail trailed over his shoulders and the knitted cables of his fisherman's sweater.
"Issues in Constitutional Law. Why?" Angus's eyes flashed a bright, amused blue. His nose was straight and his grin omnipresent, even if buried inside a mellow-yellow beard, and he smelled vaguely of patchouli, or marijuana.
"Because… this room, it's full. It must be a great course. You must be a great teacher."
Angus smiled modestly. "Not at all, and by the way, I love your mustache. Most women shy away from facial hair, but I say, go for it."
Nat had forgotten. Her hand flew to her face and she almost dropped her purse and papers. She spit on her fingertips and wiped her upper lip.
"You're just smearing it around." Angus laughed, his teeth white and even. "Forget it, it doesn't matter. That was a cool move with McConnell."
"Thanks." Nat gave up on the mustache. "Did he say anything when he left? I thought I saw him speak to you on the way out."
"Don't worry about it. You love your course, and it shows."
It's my passion, which I suck at. Rather, at which I suck. "Did McConnell say that? Am I fired?"
"All he said was that he found the class 'unusual.'" Angus made quote marks in the air. "Don't sweat it. Of course you're not fired."
"Easy for you to say. You have tenure. I have nine students."
"How do you do in your other classes?"
"I fill the room when the courses are mandatory. And they're 1Ls, so they're too terrified not to listen."
"You know what your problem is? You're not getting to the right students. You need marketing."