Work Text:
“Finally,” Blanche huffs at the sight of a blonde woman hunched over her laptop hiding out in the corner of the meditation room. “Another sane person.”
The woman blinks owlishly back up at her. The harsh blue light of the screen illuminates every curve and sharp angle of her face in the darkened room. The effect should be ghoulish. Somehow it isn’t. “Sorry, did you want to meditate? I can go somewhere else.”
The fact that she doesn’t sound very sorry at all is the only reason Blanche deigns to answer a question with such an obvious answer. “No. I most certainly am not here to meditate.” She pulls her luxurious bathrobe a little tighter around herself.
The woman’s lips twitch ever so slightly. “Blanche, right?”
Blanche lifts an imperious eyebrow. “Yes.”
Pushing herself off the ground, the woman reaches out the hand not clutching her laptop. “Judith.”
“I know.” (Blanche did not know. She had no reason to pay attention during introductions, least of all when Dr. McCallum—a title he most certainly did not deserve—had insisted they should introduce themselves with little more than their first name and the “intention” they had set for their time away at the sleep retreat. He did not appreciate Blanche’s stated intention of putting an end to those insipid HR complaints, but at least Blanche had been more honest than the others. As if anyone really thought a long weekend in New England was going to fix a marriage. And if they actually believed it, all the worse.)
Judith’s lips twitch again like she’s all too aware Blanche is lying but is, for reasons unknown, delighted by it. Curious woman, this one.
“If not meditating, what brings you down here at”—Judith’s eyes dart to the corner of her computer screen—“two in the morning?”
“Work. Same as you, I presume.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Guilt,” Blanche scoffs. “Leave that for Jewish mothers and Catholic priests.”
Judith’s laugh cuts through the utter silence of the night. Silence and darkness. That had been the “promise” of this little retreat after all. None of the brochures had mentioned the highly effective signal blockers blanketing the bedrooms. Something about sleep hygiene. Bullshit. How was Blanche supposed to sleep if she couldn’t finish her to-do list? And who needed that much sleep anyway?
“Does the internet work down here?” Blanche asks, nodding her head toward Judith’s computer.
“It’s…spotty. But better than upstairs.”
Spotty will have to do. Blanche pulls up her email, watching as dozens upon dozens of new messages come flooding in with a forced refresh of her inbox. Her index finger swipes and taps furiously against the glass of her screen.
“By all means, tell me to go to hell, but isn’t HR going to notice you sending replies in the middle of the night?”
“It’s barely after one in central. That hardly counts as late.”
“Jeez, what do you do for work? Finance?”
Blanche shoots Judith a withering look. “Are you on that little laptop trading stocks through the night?”
There’s none of the sheepishness Blanche has grown accustomed to seeing from her chastised employees in Judith’s gaze. “Oh absolutely,” she shoots back with a grin—brazen and ever so slightly mocking. “Out here making and breaking the future of the Dow Jones in a Word doc.”
“A pity. Here I was. Almost starting to like you.”
Judith’s laugh is loud and bright. Were it not for the way the sound thrilled her, Blanche would tell Judith to sit down and be quiet before they get caught breaking their sleep contracts. As it is, she basks in it, lets a little tendril of pleasure wind its way up her spine.
“It’s my tenure file if you must know,” Judith finally admits, her gazing falling back to the laptop screen.
Blanche’s eyebrows shoot up. “And you’re here? At a sleep retreat? Before turning it in?” She couldn’t have hidden the judgment from her voice if she tried. (And she decidedly was not trying.)
“I know,” Judith breathes out, putting her laptop down to rub at her temples. “I…my husband was trying to be helpful.”
“They’re always helpful until they have to listen to what you actually said instead of what they wanted to hear.”
“No! No, he’s not like that. Evan’s…sweet.”
“Was he sweet when you told him it was a bad time to drop everything and go meditate for a weekend?”
“He thought it would help. You know they say you’re much more efficient when you’re well rested.” She sounds more like she’s parroting this Evan creature than saying something she believes, and Blanche hates her a little for it.
“And I say you can sleep when you retire.”
“That what got you in trouble with HR?” Judith shoots back.
With a scowl, Blanche turns back to her email. She’s wasted enough time on this woman already.
“C’mon. If you can be rude about my husband, at least tell me what landed you here when you obviously don’t want to be.”
“Apparently some employees feel a 3am email suggests a level of urgency out of proportion to the message.” She rolls her eyes. “As if they can’t simply set their phones to silent if it’s such an inconvenience.”
“You know you can just…set your emails to send in the morning, right?”
Blanche blinks over at Judith.
“The little drop-down arrow next to send. Schedule send.” She gestures vaguely at Blanche’s phone. “Hell of a lot less time-consuming than a sleep retreat in the middle of the Berkshires.”
Blanche pokes around the app until the promised menu pops up. Their suggested 8am send time feels much too late, but a customized 6:30 could do… When she looks back up, Judith is tucked away in her corner, typing away again.
Blanche settles in on one of the cushions, achieving her own zen-like tranquility as she zips through email after email.
---
“Knew they’d try to sell us stuff at some point,” Judith murmurs, sidling up beside Blanche during some expo on the “latest in sleep technology.” If they weren’t supposed to have left their phones back in their rooms during the day, Blanche would be using this time to see if anyone responded to her latest batch of appropriately scheduled emails. Instead, she’s stuck circling the vendors like a hawk, not even bothering to feign interest in aromatherapy machines, overpriced eye masks, and temperature-controlled comforters.
“What’s the use in bringing together a few dozen people with too much money if you’re not going to try to sell them some inane contraption for a fake problem,” Blanche says, sneering as she runs her fingers along boxes of specialized ear plugs. “Did you finish your dossier?”
“No.” Judith cards her fingers through her hair, leaving it ever so slightly rumpled. Blanche is struck with an inexplicable urge to reach out and fix it. Perhaps not fully inexplicable. The woman is too young, too married, too unsettled, but she’s alluring all the same. The past two nights have been restorative if only for the breaks in work they’ve spent talking to one another in a room meant for nothing but silence. “It’s just…daunting,” Judith finally lands on. “Trying to fit everything I’ve spent my adult life doing into half a dozen formulaic letters.”
“You’ve written and published a book, yes? With a reputable academic press?” Blanche shudders at the realization that this woman might be in one of those awful article disciplines, but before she can amend her questions, Judith is nodding.
“All of them, yes.”
“All?” Blanche is rarely impressed, but Judith can’t be that far along in her career, can’t be more than 40 at most. Unless a bit of sleep really does work miracles.
Judith gives an easy smile and a shrug of her shoulders, but there’s none of the grating sheepishness to it that Blanche occasionally notes in some of the promising young female faculty traipsing through the administrative wing. “Only one scholarly monograph. The others are all translations.”
Something to look into later. “Well received by the field?” Blanche fires back.
Judith hums.
“And you’ve done your teaching? No major complaints? Adequate service work?”
“Yes, none, and yes.” She glances off to the side, pretending to care about some scented candles and CBD oils. “It’s not clear whether the department feels it a good fit. That’s all.”
Blanche’s gaze narrows. “Your chair.”
The vaguely queasy smile that meets her question is all the answer Blanche needs. “Ah, yes, well. Personality clashes happen.” God knows she’s weathered her fair share. “But no one wants a scandal these days.”
“I suppose. But does anyone really want tenure because their department wanted to stay out of the news?”
“You get tenure to leave. Go somewhere better. Higher pay, less teaching, whatever you want.”
“Blanche!”
“Please, don’t pretend at naïveté. It’s unattractive.”
Judith’s cheeks blush a very attractive light pink color. “I just…I thought we’d settle down there. Evan’s family is in the area, and it seemed—”
“It doesn’t matter what it seemed like if the fit is wrong for you.” Blanche shakes her head. “Trust your gut. Not your husband’s.”
And with that, Blanche is striding away, stomach roiling uncomfortably at memories of following Alfred out of New York City into the godforsaken Midwest. As if Chicago was city enough to make up for the keening loss. (Sure, she’d made a life there, clawed her way through the ranks out of a department that saw her as little more than Alfred’s spousal hire and into upper admin—a world of her own making. But that first slight never left her.)
Claiming a headache, she slips away from the expo and winds her way through the hallways until she’s free from the sleep retreat and its oppressive stillness. The outside isn’t much better, but there’s proof of life here. Landscapers milling about, guests from the main hotel visible in the distance. She takes a deep breath and fishes her cell phone out from the bottom of her bag.
Her emails can only distract her for so long before she’s online searching out any Judiths who are also professors in translation studies on the East Coast.
Judith Jones is easy enough to find. Blanche even knows of her work.
Not that Blanche would have thought for a moment that Judith Jones’ tenure would be anything less than a full guarantee—a thought that sends her back to the department’s home page, into the faculty listings, clicking through to the chair’s profile and reading it closely enough to guess at exactly how and where it’s lacking.
She has a half a dozen texts sent off to friends and former colleagues before she hears someone calling her name from the distance. Tucking her phone away, Blanche strides imperiously back across the lawn, muttering all too audibly about the retreat feeling more like a prison than a vacation.
---
“Dr. Jones,” Blanche greets Judith, finding her in the meditation room after everyone else has dutifully gone to sleep for their final evening.
“Dean Knopf,” Judith shoots back, sounding peevish but unsurprised. “You’re not the only one who can use Google. Some of us are just polite enough not to at first.”
“Niceties are like guilt. Useless.”
The muscles of Judith’s jaw fight against the pull of a smile. “What do you want, Blanche?”
“You.”
Judith’s laptop clatters from the cushion to the floor.
“Get tenure, then come to Chicago.”
“I…Blanche, there are a million and one—”
“I don’t care,” Blanche says simply. And she really doesn’t. “There will always be a million reasons not to take a risk. But you’re good. Better than some miniscule college in the middle of nowhere—especially one that doesn’t respect you enough to deserve you.”
“It’s one of the preeminent colleges for foreign language instruction.”
“And? Why waste your time teaching 20-year-olds to speak mediocre French and translate The Little Prince for the thousandth time when we could give you an R1 budget and matching teaching load to boot?”
“I happen to like teaching.”
Blanche rolls her eyes. “Then come for a department chair who will respect your research.”
“Oh yeah, U Chicago is really famous for its collegiality,” Judith shoots back.
“Your colleagues don’t have to be your friends. Hell, they don’t have to like you for it to work. But they damn well better recognize talent when they see it.”
Judith blinks back at Blanche. “You know that sounds dystopian, right? Like…plucked out of Machiavelli.”
“Do I seem like I have time to care about how the faculty feel?”
“You might at least pretend if you’re trying to recruit a new one!”
Blanche steps a little closer, puts on the charming smile she uses with donors. “I can woo you if that’s what it’ll take.” She drops her voice into a raspy murmur that forces Judith to lean into her space to hear clearly, the world narrowing to little more than the words spoken between them. “But I thought I saw a little something of myself in you. The kind of woman who cares enough about the work to know that having the right home for it matters.”
“I…”
“But if that’s not enough, well…” Blanche can see the rapid rise and fall of Judith’s chest beneath the thin silk of her sleeveless blouse. “We can talk salary. Benefits. Sabbatical schedules.”
It pulls a huff of laughter from Judith. “I was wrong. You do know how to pretend to care.”
“Who says I’m pretending?” Blanche is deadly earnest now. “You’ve plucked some of the most important writers of our time out of the shadows and brought them to print, nurtured talent that could have languished in obscurity forever. So much of this ambitious work as a graduate student and a postdoc.” She holds Judith’s gaze. “Do you know how many works you’ve translated and published since starting your current job?”
“That’s not fair. Things would have changed no matter where I went.”
“Not like this. Not this drastically.”
Judith’s breath shudders out of her, and Blanche can see her wilting, drooping under the weight of unmet hopes. “It’s not like I’ve stopped trying.”
“No. But trying isn’t enough. And I don’t want women like you trapped somewhere where the best they can do is try.” Her gaze shifts across the planes of Judith’s face. “I’d hate for you to turn out a disappointment after all.”
Judith’s eyes flash. There’s anger there, but something more, too. Some sign of life fighting back through the crush of loss. It makes Blanche’s heart beat a little faster. Judith’s fingers curl into her palms at her side as her chin juts forward, eyes locking on Blanche’s. “Some people might call you a disappointment, too.”
It might be cutting if there was any heart to it. “You’ll have to do much worse than that if you want a reaction, dear.”
Rubbing at her face, Judith takes a step back. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Promise me you’ll think about it,” Blanche calls over her shoulder, dropping a business card in Judith’s bag as she heads back up to her room.
---
In the eight or so months since the sleep retreat, Blanche hasn’t slept any more than she used to, but she has made excellent use of the schedule send function, firing off missives at all hours of the night as she rereads translated works of fiction and philosophy from a special pile she keeps in her personal library.
Blanche has no idea if Judith Jones has slept any better or more this year. What she does know is that, as of three weeks ago, she has been promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor following what, word on the street had it, was a rather rocky road to tenure.
She also knows that Judith received an email at 6:30am this morning inviting her to give a talk through the University of Chicago’s Translation Studies program later this spring.
She assumes Judith will know what this means. She’d be a fool not to.
And Judith hardly seemed a fool.
---
A month later, Blanche is sitting across from Judith for the first time in nearly a year. There are drinks at dinner this time with no sleep health doctors prattling on about the dysregulating effects of alcohol and caffeine on the body’s natural circadian rhythms. Blanche watches Judith as she eats, watches the gleam of satisfaction in Judith’s eyes as she talks about her work with the chair of Comparative Literature. She looks like a woman drawn back from a slow, plodding death to irrelevance, resurrected by the simple fact of a colleague’s caring about what she has to say.
“I’ll drive you back to your hotel,” Blanche tells Judith after dinner once the other faculty have taken their leave.
“You don’t have to.”
“No, I don’t. But I will.” She hands her slip to the valet and waits impatiently for him to pull around with her car.
She suffers the indignity of slipping on a pair of glasses for the drive through the city streets at night, then veers out into traffic, pulling a startled gasp from Judith.
“You did well today.”
“Thank you.”
“And you got your tenure.”
“Yes.”
Blanche glances over at Judith. “You don’t sound happy.”
The streetlights flicker along Judith’s face, revealing flashes of emotion before she’s plunged into darkness anew. “I’m…relieved.”
“It’s a moment for celebration, not relief, my dear.”
“It can be both,” Judith grumbles.
“You didn’t say both.”
With a huff of an exhale, Judith turns slightly in her seat. “Are you going to be honest about what this visit was?”
“When have I been anything less than transparent? I told you this summer: I want you here.”
“Blanche,” Judith breathes out. “You can’t just… You make it sound simple.”
“It is. It can be with someone with enough power backing the choice.”
“I meant for me.”
The car swerves slightly into the left lane, and a chorus of blaring horns fill the air around them. “What do you mean? Your chair doesn’t value you. Your department’s too small for that woman’s uninformed opinions not to overwhelm it.” Blanche’s voice has shifted into something like a growl, and she fights to rein it back in with a haughty sniff. “Besides, you have none of the resources you’d have with us.”
“It’s not a poor school, Blanche.”
“They won’t fund your research like we will.”
“I have a life there. A house. A husband.”
“You’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s…quaint. Some people like quaint.”
“You’ve spent your life moving from one city to another. In and out of the States.” Blanche has studied her CV, sought out traces of her life in dustjacket biographies and interviews in local French newspapers. You’re telling me it was all leading you there? To the backwoods of Vermont?”
Judith folds her arms over her chest. “It’s not the backwoods.”
“When’s the last time you went to a gallery opening? A Broadway show? The symphony? A book release party with people who mattered?”
“I’m closer to New York than I would be in Chicago,” Judith shoots back.
“And how often do you make it down there, hmm?”
Judith falls silent.
“I thought so.” There’s little satisfaction in having it confirmed, though. “The job can be overwhelming. You may as well do it somewhere that makes it easier to keep hold of the rest of it.”
The silence stretches on for what feels like a small eternity before Judith finally sighs. “Evan doesn’t want to leave. His parents are getting older. We have a nice house in a nice neighborhood.”
Something like disgust—hot and shameful— curdles deep in Blanche’s stomach, making her regret the salad. “And what do you want, Judith?” Blanche asks, practically spitting out her name. “Or do you even factor into decisions about your own life these days?”
“You know what, Blanche?” Judith’s voice rises into something sharp and accusatory. “I want to know why you think you can talk when it took you 25 years to divorce Alfred.”
Blanche nearly crashes the car. It’s bold. Beyond bold. She hasn’t been spoken to this way in years. She hates Judith with every fiber of her being. Her blood is singing, her nerves alight, her skin buzzing. She’d never dignify something like that with an answer, but with Judith, she finds her mouth falling open anyway. “Because I’m exactly the person to know how much you’ll hate yourself for staying for some inconsequential little man.”
“If you hate it so much at Chicago, why are you still there? Why are you trying to drag me there?”
“I don’t hate it. Not now,” Blanche amends. “I carved a place for myself out of blood and sweat and tears. But I could only do it because there was enough room here for both of us. He has his world. I have mine.”
“I don’t hate Evan,” Judith says, her voice quieting, losing the edge that had set Blanche on fire. “Not like you hate Alfred. Not even at all. Not really.”
“Congratulations,” Blanche bites out, the word hot and bitter on her tongue.
“But he’s not enough,” Judith admits in an even quieter whisper.
There’s a note of deep melancholy to the words—a sadness and a grief that Blanche barely remembers. Maybe she’d felt it way back when. After the first secretary or grad student—whomever it had been when word finally made it back to her. But she’d had anger, too. And she’d let that fuel her, push her, drive her far beyond wherever the loss may have left her stranded.
“He doesn’t get why it isn’t enough.”
“That’s not your problem.”
“That’s not fair, Blanche.”
“The world isn’t fair. If you don’t pick yourself, no one will. Not even I can do that for you.”
They’re still sitting in silence when Blanche turns into the hotel’s driveway.
“At least think about it,” Blanche says. But she dares to hope.
---
Late the next morning, Blanche’s email chimes.
Subject: Travel Delays
Message:
Dear Blanche,
With apologies for the extra email in your inbox, I seem to be running into some issues with travel logistics. If you happen to be free for coffee or even lunch, I will still be in town and would be happy for the chance to talk with you about the opportunities I discussed with several of the Comp Lit faculty over breakfast this morning.
Sincerely,
Judith Jones
Blanche’s brow furrows. She glances out her office door, confirming that her assistant is still at her desk with her phone on the hook and email open.
“Diane!” Blanche’s voice rings out over the quiet clicking of her keys.
“Yes, Blanche?” Diane pokes her head around the door.
“Have you heard anything from Judith Jones?”
“No. Well, she sent me a note bright and early this morning thanking for my help with logistics, but nothing since then. She’s really very sweet, isn’t she?”
“That’ll be all,” Blanche says, dismissing Diane with a wave of her hand. She scowls back down at her email before grabbing her phone and striding out of her office. “Last minute meeting,” she calls over her shoulder. “Jot down any messages, and only call for emergencies.”
She’s out the door and into the hallway before Diane can respond.
Blanche waits until she’s outside to dial the cell phone number that had been listed on Judith’s CV.
It rings once, twice, half of a third time.
Then, “Hello?”
“Judith, it’s Blanche.”
“I hoped I might catch you.”
“What’s this about your flight? You’re aware we have assistants to handle these sort of problems, no?”
“Right. Of course. It’s more that I went to the airport and rescheduled my flight for Sunday. Someone kept mentioning things about gallery openings and symphonies, and I figured it would be a real loss to come to Chicago just for one dinner and a talk.”
Blanche’s mouth twitches into something approaching a smile. “You know the university won’t comp your hotel for those extra nights.”
“I wouldn’t dare ask it of you. But I figure I better use what little research funds I have before I leave my job in the middle of nowhere, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re leaving?” There’s a breathless anticipation to it that Blanche wishes she could wrench back now that it’s hanging in the ether between them.
But Judith sounds nearly punch-drunk when she confirms: “I am.”
---
That afternoon, Blanche sends Judith a list of options for their evening. There are a few decent shows playing in different theaters around town, nicer restaurants Blanche could throw a bit of weight and money around to get them into last minute, even a private showing for some up-and-coming artist Blanche has no interest in meeting.
As she’s rifling through her closet trying to find an outfit that says, “congratulations and perhaps I’m a little sorry about you learning to choose work over a husband who may or may be coming with you,” Blanche hears her phone buzzing.
There’s a text from Judith: “Would you be opposed to doing just dinner? Full transparency: I haven’t slept in two days.”
Blanche has also barely slept in two days, but she suspects that’s not the norm for Judith. She picks up her phone and simply calls Judith back.
“Do you even want to have dinner tonight?” Blanche asks when Judith answers, not bothering with pleasantries. “We can wait for tomorrow.”
“I think I’ll collapse even harder without food,” Judith answers, sounding halfway there already.
“I’ll send you an address. It’ll be closer than the others.”
---
Judith looks and sounds slightly more like herself by the time they have food in front of them, and, after confirming twice that they are talking as two alumnae of the Mastering Sleep retreat, not as a future professor and dean at the same university, she tells Blanche about a first sleepless night spent pacing a Vermont house, practicing her lecture and guessing at the questions she might get from the audience, then a second night spent pacing a Chicago hotel room, having it out over the phone with a nice man in a nice house in a nice town who couldn’t and wouldn’t be nice enough to see that all that niceness was suffocating his wife. His wife who was, finally, not nice in return. Who let herself be selfish enough to choose herself, even when that meant choosing to lose something, too.
Blanche tries not to look pleased.
The fact that Evan’s loss is her own victory shouldn’t be the focus. Not tonight.
Instead, Blanche pushes the dessert menu toward Judith, then invites Judith back to her home for a nightcap.
Standing outside of Blanche’s front door, the cool evening breeze off Lake Michigan ruffling her hair, Judith looks up at Blanche. “What do you mean by a nightcap?”
Blanche hopes her face is as inscrutable as ever. “A drink.”
“A drink,” Judith parrots back at her.
“Unless you’ve decided to stop drinking between dinner and now.”
“Very funny.” Judith’s expression grows sober. “Is this…is this a bad idea? I mean, we’re going to work together. You’ll sort of be my boss. Should there be drinks? Alone? At night? In your house?”
In Judith’s mouth, the very word “drinks” turns into liquid heat, and Blanche tries not to notice the warmth sweeping through her. She clears her throat and forces herself to look unaffected. “Careful, Judith. You’re beginning to sound downright provincial.” It earns her a half-amused scowl. “After all, we gave a spousal hire to a former graduate student who was sleeping with his professor while she was still married to another professor in the same department.”
Judith’s jaw drops ever so slightly.
“I believe they all lived together for quite some time. Even gave an interview about it to The New Yorker. Which made for quite a month over in alumni relations, I’ll tell you that.”
“Oh my god, that was all true?”
“Philosophers,” Blanche says with a shrug, like she hadn’t run around putting out fires for months and months about it. “Now are you coming in?”
“I guess compared to that it’s hardly scandalous to have a drink with a woman I met while not sleeping at a sleep retreat.”
“Barely a blip on the radar, all things considered.”
One drink turns into two, and two drinks turns into the hot press of Judith’s mouth against Blanche’s, which turns into a keening gasp as Blanche’s hand slips under Judith’s blouse, which turns into nothing at all as Judith yawns loudly into Blanche’s neck.
“I’ll call you a car,” Blanche murmurs over Judith’s blushing apologies, extracting herself from the couch.
As her stockinged feet pad quietly across the hardwood, she hears some vague mumbling about phone apps, but waves it off. It’s only when Blanche is already on the phone with the car service she uses that she realizes she had no idea where Judith is staying now. “Give me a moment,” she says into the receiver, muting herself before calling out to Judith and traipsing back across the first floor. Only to find Judith curled up on the couch, sound asleep. Unmuting herself, Blanche quietly cancels the car order before hanging up. “Judith,” Blanche whispers, curing a hand around Judith’s shoulder.
A sleepy hum greets her.
“Just stay here for the night.”
“Okay.” Judith rolls over as if to get comfortable on the couch.
“Judith,” Blanche huffs with a roll of her eyes that goes unseen. “I have a whole house. There is a perfectly serviceable guest bedroom upstairs.”
“Oh.” Judith slowly blinks herself back to bleary awareness. “Upstairs?”
“Upstairs.”
And for the first time in nearly a year, Blanche can say with certainty that Judith did, in fact, sleep quite well.