Now that your meeting with Hayden is over, the mid-day stretches before you. You don't teach class on Tuesdays, so the rest of the day is yours.
Except for all of the things you're supposed to be working on, of course.
Since you and Kayla are faculty peers, you agreed to meet today. You didn't make a good impression on her the first time you met, but maybe you'll do better today. Since the math department's in Gilman Hall next door to Carter, it's not even out of your way to stop by.
Where your office makes you look like a transient camping out in a sold house the day before the movers arrive, Kayla's small office makes her look like a less-disorganized Marie Kondo. Her books stand straight on the bookshelves like recruits before a drill sergeant, her computer is exactly parallel to the short side of her L-shaped desk, and her papers are neatly arranged on the long side of the desk. Only her whiteboard shows any disorder. Curving surfaces like arrow-filled sheets fight for space against equations that contain symbols that aren't in the English or Greek alphabet. You wonder if she made them up.
Kayla stands up from her desk, pushing her round glasses up on her nose. She's traded the blazer-and-skirt combo she wore the day you met her for a casual jacket over a white shirt with a pair of dark jeans. "Bomomsay Clestenrogo."