He wasn’t too old for her. Eleven years? Nah, it was like the prairie. She was the oldest daughter of a planter; he was the handsome twenty-eight-year-old man who had taken up the next homestead. It was fine. Good.
He strode around the classroom now with a natural ease, as if his knees bent and his shoulders squared on their own. He was a tall, thin rectangle. He was speaking a string of words in a low, smooth voice, punctuating it with pauses and smiles at the right moments. And long, cool hand gestures as if he were leading a choir.
He says something funny. Everyone laughs, but she hides her smile behind her hand. Her cheeks are hurting.
He moves toward the door with and elegant sort of twirl. The abrasive language of the corridor is seeping into his lecture. She knows he doesn’t like that. As he snaps the door shut, she takes a moment to admire his shiny Wingtips. But when he turns around, she quickly fixes her gaze on the world map, straining to make out the dot that is Bogota, Colombia.
He swept across the room again, touching his glasses, teasing Eric Browning, pointing vaguely at something with an extended knuckle. He retraced his steps, stopping to lean against his desk, answering a question, posing one. In one fluid motion he crossed his ankles, uncrossed them, crossed them again. She set her eyes on him, admiring the creases in his Dockers, his cuff links, the iridescent sheen of his necktie. She coughed immediately to veil her smile and glanced at Eric Browning across the room.
She looks down at her notes to find today’s date staring up at her from the blank white page. The desk next to hers is littered with leaves of paper, and the kid is scribbling at top speed.
She lifts her head just as he is folding his arms over his chest and sweeping his gaze over the students. Their eyes lock for several seconds, during which the words drip ever out of his mouth and the pencil lays motionless on her desk.
His eyes move along. He looks at a student in the corner; he looks at Eric Browning. Then he strides to the window and leans lazily on the sill, driving a point home with legato arcs of the hand.
SHE LETS IMAGES FLASH ACROSS HER MIND. He is waltzing with a faceless woman that she knows must be her, the tails of his tuxedo fluttering graciously with each turn. He is mowing the lawn in a filthy work shirt with snaps on the sleeves that are still shiny. He stands eight feet tall, wide and sweating, the paradigm of male perfection.
He is lying on a couch, napping. A light flicks on and she walks in to wake him, and –
He is squinting. His eyes are red and watery, weak. They are mush. She could spoon them out and all that would be left is two bone-dry bowls, sockets. His nose is scrunched up and his mouth contorted. He is groping for his glasses, his fingers cramped into claws, his body convulsing. He is blind.
She looked at him and retched, hiding it behind her hand. And he breezed about the room, as if he didn’t need the floor below him.
She is picking up her pencil and beginning to take notes. She will be glad when the bell rings.
The only thing I can find here is the tenses thing Poppy Mare mentioned.
Oh, now I see. It was interupting his lecture. But using the word seeping makes me think it is part of his lecture. Please, find another word to describe that than seeping...like, for example, use the word though instead of into, it would give the reader a more concrete idea that he wasn't using abrasive language but that students in the hall were... sorry...
