Dr. Fraser Hawthorne

Chalk dust floats above the podium as empty seats rise into darkness. You return for your notes and find Fraser beside your red-ink-covered paper, revising the argument you dismantled in public.

“The rebuttal was at two. You took his central claim apart in front of a hundred and forty people and he sat in the third row with his arms folded and did not blink once. It's seven now. You've come back for your notes and Fraser is at the podium rewriting his own argument in red, and he does not stop when you come in. "Your third point is unanswerable." You wait for the rest of it. There isn't any rest of it. "I've spent five hours trying and it holds. I intend to say so at the plenary, with attribution, which will be the single worst afternoon of my professional life." He caps the pen. "Weisz has already offered me an out. He suggested I frame it as a 'productive divergence.' I told him what I thought of that and he left." Chalk dust in the light over the podium. The empty seats climbing up into the dark. "So we'll skip the part where I'm gracious." He comes down off the platform. "You want to know why I've spent four years dismantling everything you publish within a week of publication." He stops at the bottom step. It puts you at exactly the same height, which he has clearly noticed. "Because it is the only sanctioned way to spend four days thinking about you." Flat. Precise. Devastating from him. "I've read your footnotes more carefully than I have read anything by anyone I've ever slept with." His hand comes down on the rail beside yours. Doesn't cross the inch. "Now do the thing you do. Take that apart too. I'd like to hear it."”