The lecture hall smelled like industrial cleaner and ambition. Stanley set his worn leather briefcase on the desk — the one with the broken clasp he kept meaning to fix — and pulled out a stack of syllabi thick enough to constitute a blunt weapon. Ethics 301: Contemporary Moral Dilemmas. His favorite course. His only course, technically, since the department cuts.
Students trickled in with the usual first-day energy — some eager, most hungover, a few clearly in the wrong room and too proud to leave. A kid in the third row was already asleep. Impressive commitment. Stanley uncapped a dry-erase marker, sniffed it out of habit, and wrote PROF. TULMAN on the whiteboard in letters that only slightly sloped downhill. The clock above the door ticked to 9:58. Two minutes to showtime. The hall was maybe half full, chairs still clattering, when the door at the top of the lecture hall banged open and a woman walked in — not a student, clearly, given that she was carrying a banker's box overflowing with file folders and wearing a blazer that actually fit. She scanned the room, locked eyes with Stanley, and started down the steps with the determined stride of someone who had bad news and a schedule to keep.
"Stanley Tulman?" she called out, not waiting to reach the bottom. "I'm Meg Cooney. New hire, Philosophy of Law. They didn't tell you we're sharing this room, did they."
It wasn't a question.
"They did not," Stanley laughed. "But welcome just the same. There's... hmmm... we can work out the desk situation after class, maybe."
Meg dropped the banker's box on the corner of his desk with a thud that made his syllabi jump. "Appreciate the grace, Professor. I was told Room 214. This is Room 214. Beyond that, I know nothing and I blame everyone." She flashed a quick grin — the kind that suggested she was funny on purpose and knew it — then turned to survey the students, hands on her hips. "Don't mind me, kids. Turf war in progress."
A ripple of laughter moved through the hall. The sleeping kid in row three didn't stir.
Stanley launched into the syllabus rundown — grading rubric, office hours, the usual speech about how plagiarism was both unethical and ironic in an ethics course. He had the rhythm down after eleven years. But Meg had parked herself in an empty seat in the front row, reading through her own files, and every time he paced to the left side of the room he caught a whiff of something — coffee and something warm, maybe vanilla — that kept derailing his train of thought mid-sentence. He said "categorical imperative" twice in a context where it made no sense.
"Office hours are Thursday, two to four," he finished, pulling it together. "And yes, the textbook is required. No, the campus bookstore doesn't have it. Welcome to the American university system." A decent laugh from the crowd. He clicked his marker cap back on and glanced at Meg, who was watching him now with an expression he couldn't quite read — somewhere between amused and appraising. She slow-clapped exactly twice. "Solid dismount," she said quietly.
"I've got a lot of practice. The real fun starts next class, when they'll actually be talking back," he chuckled. "So... philosophy of law and ethics getting shoved into the same space. That feels purposeful. Is Amanda fucking with you, or me?" He laughed. "Or just MORE budget nonsense, maybe..."
Meg snorted. "Oh, it's definitely budget nonsense, but Amanda hand-delivered the room assignment with this little smile — you know the one — so I'm not ruling out psychological warfare." She started stacking her files back into the box. "Apparently our courses have 'significant overlap' and the dean thinks we should 'explore synergies.'" She put air quotes around both phrases with visible contempt. "I've been here four days and I already need a drink."
"Synergies. Right. Law and Ethics. Bit of an overlap, I suppose," he chuckled. "A drink is a great idea. Four days though — new to the area, or just the school?"
"Both." Meg hauled the banker's box onto her hip like a woman who'd moved her own furniture plenty of times. "Drove up from Baltimore. My apartment still looks like a storage unit had a nervous breakdown. I've eaten takeout every meal since Thursday and I'm this close to developing a emotional relationship with the Pad Thai guy on Grover Street." She headed up the steps toward the door, then glanced back over her shoulder. "So if that drink offer was real, Stanley, I'm cashing it in. Tonight. Before I start naming my moving boxes."
"Oh absolutely, there's a nice little spot just a few blocks away. Say... eightish?"
"Eight works. Text me the address." She fished a card out of her blazer pocket and flicked it onto his desk without breaking stride. "Don't be late, Tulman. I'm from Baltimore. We judge." The door swung shut behind her, and Stanley picked up the card. Dr. Margaret Cooney, J.D., Ph.D. Two doctorates. He looked at the empty doorway, then back at the card, then at the sleeping kid in row three who was finally stirring. "Class ended five minutes ago, bud." The kid blinked. Stanley pocketed the card.
Stanley's apartment was the kind of place that said tenured but not thriving — mismatched bookshelves, a coffee table buried under journals, one good lamp. He spent an hour on tomorrow's lecture notes, retained almost none of it, and caught himself googling "Margaret Cooney Baltimore law" before snapping the laptop shut like a man with dignity. He showered. Changed twice. Settled on the blue button-down, untucked — casual enough to say just colleagues while still saying I own an iron. He texted Meg the address with a note: Go into the bookstore. Past the shelf marked "Romance." Yes, really.
Her reply came fast: If this is an elaborate murder, at least it's thematic.
Stanley was already halfway through an old fashioned when the bookcase swung open and Meg stepped through, looking genuinely delighted. She'd swapped the blazer for a leather jacket over a black top, hair down now instead of the practical twist from earlier. She spotted him at the bar and slid onto the next stool. "Okay, a speakeasy behind a romance shelf. You're either the most interesting man in this faculty or a serial killer, and honestly either way I'm staying." She flagged the bartender. "Bourbon. Neat. Whatever he's afraid to pour."
Her drink arrived and she took a sip that was more like a dare. "Honestly? The department's a mess, my office has no window, and I'm pretty sure my neighbor's cat has claimed my welcome mat as a toilet." She set the glass down. "But this bourbon is excellent, this bar is ridiculous, and you're the first person who hasn't asked me if I 'really' have two doctorates in the first five minutes. So — settling in better now." Her knee bumped his under the bar. She didn't move it.
"Oh, the departments are ALL a mess these days. I really don't understand what's going on with Amanda and the rest of them. Slowly tearing the place apart bit by bit, it seems, but for now, we make due." He took a long sip of the scotch — smokey and smooth, the good stuff Danny kept behind the top shelf for regulars.
Meg swirled her bourbon. "I heard things. Before I took the job. People warned me — said the administration was in some kind of slow-motion civil war. But the offer was good and Baltimore was..." She trailed off, stared into her glass for a beat. "Baltimore was done." Something flickered across her face — quick, private — and then it was gone, replaced by that sharp grin. "So here I am. Sharing a lecture hall with a man who hides his favorite bar behind a bookcase like a Prohibition-era frat boy."
"It's called taste, Cooney."
"It's called a red flag, Tulman." She laughed — a real one, the kind that crinkled the corners of her eyes — and signaled for another round. Her knee was still warm against his.
"Okay, it MIGHT also be because it's the only bar in a ten-mile radius that's never full of college kids." He laughed.
"God, that's the dream, isn't it?" Meg leaned back on her stool, glancing around the dimly lit room — the exposed brick, the jazz playing low enough to talk over, the bartender who looked like he'd been pouring drinks since before either of them were born. "Four days in and I've already had a student try to follow me on Instagram. Instagram, Stanley. I teach jurisprudence." She took a slow pull of bourbon. "So yeah. Secret bar behind a bookcase. I get it now. This is survival."
The second round arrived. The conversation loosened — department gossip, teaching horror stories, a spirited argument about whether Kant would have been insufferable at parties (unanimous yes). Meg talked with her hands when she got going, nearly knocked over her glass twice, and at some point her shoulder had settled against his in a way that felt less accidental than it probably should have between two people who'd met seven hours ago.
"Survival is the correct word," he laughed. "Gotta stick together in the war against... upper management, I suppose. What a depressing war." He laughed again.
"The most depressing war," Meg agreed, raising her glass. "To the trenches." They clinked. She held eye contact a beat longer than a toast required, then looked away first — which surprised him, because nothing about Meg Cooney so far suggested she looked away from anything first. "So what's your story, Tulman? Eleven years in this department, secret whiskey bars, ethics professor — you've got the whole mysterious-loner-academic thing down. Very brooding. Very tweed."
"I don't own tweed."
"You radiate tweed, Stanley. It's spiritual."
"Fair enough. Hard to escape that vibe in this career, but my story is mostly dull. Nerdy kid grows up to be slightly insufferable teacher of ethics to the next generation of nerdy kids." He sighed. "Well... adults... but... my brain still files them as kids most of the time."
"That's because they are kids." Meg turned on her stool to face him more fully, one elbow on the bar. "I had a twenty-two-year-old in Baltimore argue — passionately, with citations — that jaywalking laws were a form of tyranny. Citations, Stanley." She shook her head. "And you're selling yourself short with the 'mostly dull' routine. Dull men don't have speakeasy memberships." She studied him with that same appraising look from the lecture hall, but warmer now, bourbon-softened. "No wife? Girlfriend? Deeply committed houseplant?"
"All laws are a form of tyranny," he laughed — loudly, enough that the bartender glanced over. "But MAYBE we save that for next time... I can't afford the hangover from the amount of whisky that conversation would take with a professor of law." He grinned, teasing.
Meg's eyebrows went up. "Next time. Bold of you, Tulman." But she was smiling — really smiling — and she didn't correct him. She finished her bourbon and set the glass down with a decisive little tap. "You dodged my question, by the way. Wife, girlfriend, houseplant. I noticed." She held up a hand before he could respond. "You don't have to answer. I'm just noting, for the record, that an ethics professor dodged a direct question. Professionally ironic."
"Oh, you're right, I did. No girlfriend or plants, had a wife but... that got messy a few years back and we parted ways. What about you? I picture... cats. Maybe a bird. You a bird person, Meg?" He smiled.
"A bird person." She repeated it like she was tasting something strange. "Stanley, nobody is a bird person. People who say they're bird people are just lonely people with feathers in their kitchen." She laughed, then softened. "No birds. No cats. Had a guy in Baltimore — hence Baltimore being done." She said it lightly, but there was weight under it, the same quick flicker he'd seen earlier. She let it sit for exactly one second, then killed it. "So we're both post-wreckage. Fantastic. Very on-brand for academia." She grabbed her jacket off the back of the stool. "Walk me out before I order a third and start telling you about my dissertation."
"See you... in class, I guess." He smiled.
Meg turned, walking backward for a few steps with her hands in her jacket pockets. "Bring coffee. I take mine black." She pointed at him. "And Tulman — if you use the word synergies even once, I'm filing a grievance." She spun back around and headed down the street, her laugh carrying in the cool night air.
Stanley watched her go for a moment longer than was strictly necessary, then started the walk home. The night was clear, the kind of early-September cool that reminded you summer was packing its bags. He felt lighter than he had in a while — loose, almost. Like something had unstuck. His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from an unsaved number: The romance shelf. Honestly, Tulman. He was still grinning when he unlocked his front door.