Chapter 88 WHAT I’M DOING
Alex
He knocked on Professor Harrison’s door at ten past nine on a Monday morning and did not rehearse what he was going to say on the way in.
He had tried rehearsing on the train. Had opened his notebook and written three different opening sentences and crossed all three out because they sounded like an apology and he was not here to apologise. He was here to say a true thing to someone who deserved to hear it directly. That was all. He closed the notebook and watched the city move past the window and breathed.
He knocked.
“Come in.”
Professor Harrison’s office was the kind of office that had accumulated over decades. Books in no particular order. A plant that had outgrown its pot and been repotted and outgrown that one too. Stacks of student work in various stages of being returned. A window overlooking a courtyard where a single bench sat empty in the November cold.
Professor Harrison looked up from his desk. He was somewhere in his sixties. Patient in the way of someone who had supervised enough students to know that the ones who knocked on Monday mornings with that particular expression were either in trouble or about to do something significant.
He gestured to the chair.
Alex sat. Put his bag on the floor. His hands were not entirely steady and he put them flat on his thighs the way he had learned to when he needed them to behave.
“What can I do for you, Alex?” P. Harrison asked.
“I want to talk to you about my dissertation,” Alex said. “And about the program.”
He waited.
“I’ve been working with Dr. Reyes at the other university,” Alex said. “Informally. Meeting to discuss the direction of the research. She reviewed my third chapter and gave me notes that changed how I understood what the argument was doing.” He paused. “She’s offered me a place in her program. I want to transfer.”
The room was quiet.
Professor Harrison looked at him for a moment. Not with surprise exactly. More with the expression of someone receiving information they are placing carefully in context.
“When did this begin?” he asked. “The work with Dr. Reyes.”
“Two months ago. She reached out after my spring publication. Said she had thoughts about the structure.” Alex kept his voice steady. “I should have told you sooner. I wanted to understand what the conversations were before I said anything.”
“And now you understand.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what you understand.”
Alex looked at the window. At the empty bench in the courtyard. Then back at Harrison.
“I’ve been making my argument smaller than it is,” he said. “For a year. Writing around the bold version of it because the bold version felt like overclaiming. Dr. Reyes identified that immediately. She told me the direct version was the argument and everything else was scaffolding.” He paused. “She was right. I knew she was right the moment she said it.”
He picked up his pen. Did not write anything with it. Just held it.
“You’ve been in my program for two years,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Your work has been strong.”
“I know. I’m grateful for that.” Alex held his gaze. “But I’ve been careful in a way that has cost the work something. I don’t think this program asked me to be careful. I think I brought that with me.” He stopped. “Dr. Reyes asks me to be bolder. She pushes toward the real version of the argument instead of the safe one. I think I need that.”
Professor Harrison was quiet for a moment.
He set down the pen.
“I’ve read Dr. Reyes’s work,” he said. “She’s exceptional.”
“I know.”
“Her program is smaller. More demanding in certain ways.”
“I know that too.”
“You’ve thought about this properly.”
“Yes.”
Professor Harrison looked at him. The patient looked like someone who was deciding something and taking the time to decide it correctly.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Of course.”
“Is this about the work or is this about the year you’ve had?”
Alex understood what he meant. The book. The film. The scholarship email. The publicity and the scrutiny and the question of compatibility with institutional values. Harrison had been professional and fair throughout all of it and had never once made Alex feel that his public life was a problem in this office. But the question was fair and it deserved a fair answer.
“Both,” Alex said honestly. “The year made some things clearer. Made me understand what kind of environment I need.” He paused. “But the work conversation with Dr. Reyes would have happened eventually regardless. The research was already pointing toward her.”
Harrison nodded slowly. Once.
“Then I think you should go,” he said.
Alex blinked. “That’s—”
“I’m your supervisor, not your keeper.” The corner of Harrison’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile. Almost. “My job is to serve the work. If the work is better served elsewhere then that’s where you should be.” He opened his desk drawer. Pulled out a form Alex recognised. Transfer paperwork. “I’ll need two weeks to process my end. You’ll need to formally apply to Dr. Reyes’s program even though the offer has already been made. There will be bureaucracy.”
“I know.”
“Your funding transfers with you. That’s already guaranteed by the terms of your scholarship.” He looked up. “You did read the terms of your scholarship.”
“After the email from the institution about my public profile I read every word of every document I’d ever signed.”
Harrison looked at him for a moment. Then he made a sound that was definitely a laugh, brief and dry. “Good. That’s the right response to that kind of email.”
He slid the transfer form across the desk.
Alex picked it up, looked at it. His hands were steadier now. The shaking had moved through him and passed the way it always did when the hard thing had been said and the world had not ended.
“Professor Harrison,” he said.
“Mm.”
“Thank you. For two years. For the work we did here.”
Harrison waved a hand. The gesture of a man who found gratitude mildly uncomfortable. “Thank you, Dr. Reyes when she pushes you somewhere you didn’t expect. That’s where the real work happens.”
Alex stood. Picked up his bag. The transfer form in his hand.
At the door, he stopped.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“You can try.”
“Did you know? That this wasn’t quite the right fit?”
Harrison considered this with the seriousness it deserved. He looked at the window. At the empty bench in the courtyard. Then back at Alex.
“I knew you were capable of more than you were giving,” he said carefully. “I didn’t know if that was the program or something you needed to find yourself.” He picked up his pen again. “It appears it was both.”
Alex nodded.
He went out into the corridor and stood there for a moment. The transfer form in his hand. The smell of old books and floor wax that all academic buildings shared regardless of their age or ambition.
He took out his phone.
He called Elias before he had even reached the stairs.
One ring.
“How did it go?” Elias answered.
Alex looked at the form in his hand. At his own name printed at the top. At the blank lines waiting to be filled in, the bureaucratic machinery of a life-changing direction.
“He said I should go,” Alex said. “He pulled the transfer form out of his desk drawer before I finished explaining.”
A pause. The specific silence of someone receiving good news and feeling it land.
“He had it ready,” Elias said.
“He had it ready.”
“Alex.” The warmth in that single word. His name in his husband’s voice.
“I know.” He started walking toward the stairs. “I’ll be home by noon. Don’t make lunch. I want to cook.”
“You want to cook.”
“I want to do something with my hands.”
“Then come home,” Elias said simply. “I’ll be here.”
Alex went down the stairs and out through the door into the cold November morning. The courtyard. The empty bench. The bare trees.
He looked at the transfer form one more time.
Then he folded it carefully and put it in his bag and walked home.