…A Dangerous Thing Read Online Free PDF Page A

said.

Chapter Three
     
    T he Counseling Office at Hartley Gorman College was located on the first floor of Main (Hartley Gorman I in the old system that Burns was trying to forget, obviously without too much success so far).   It shared quarters with the Records Office, and both of them were crammed in among the offices of the Education Department and the Print Shop.
    The counselors had a difficult job.   They had to advise students about which courses to take, explain which courses would transfer to other schools and which courses HGC accepted in transfer, deal with students who had learning difficulties, handle disciplinary violations of the student behavior code, help students with their degree plans, and interpret the arcane secrets of the HGC catalog for students who could not figure them out for themselves.   They also handled admissions testing and were responsible for placing students in the correct courses after their enrollment.
    Or those were some of the things they were supposed to do.   Burns was not sure just how many of them were actually accomplished, or accomplished with any degree of efficiency.
    One reason for his doubts was that he received calls semester after semester asking the same question:   "Can students take British literature before American literature, or does it make any difference?"
    It wasn't the question itself that bothered him.   What bothered him was that the same counselor called him to ask it over and over.   Maybe even that wouldn't have been so bad if the answer to the question were not printed in the catalog for anyone to see and read.   The counselors were supposed to be the college's experts on the catalog, weren't they?   Burns could not avoid the nagging worry that if they were, then the college was in big trouble.
    When he entered the office, he was greeted by Dawn Melling , the very one who could never seem to get the course sequences straight.   She was a statuesque young woman with a large bust, a small waist, and long red fingernails.   She had a huge beehive of dark black hair that Burns was certain was a wig, though why anyone would choose such a wig he wasn't quite sure.   She looked a little like Elvira, except that her dress wasn't as revealing as those usually chosen by the Mistress of the Dark.
    "Why Dr. Burns," she said.   "What brings you here?"   She was from Georgia and had a pronounced Southern drawl, though she had not lived in Georgia since she had come to HGC as a student ten years previously.
    "I, uh, want to look at some catalogs," Burns said.  
    Being around Dawn always disturbed him.   Her overtly sexy appearance had something to do with it, but she was by all accounts happily married to Walt Melling , the school's chief recruiter, and Burns was sure she would never dream of straying.   What disturbed him was a certain vagueness in her character, a certain je ne sais quois that kept Burns off balance in every conversation they ever had.
    In other words, he was never quite sure what she was talking about.   Once he had seen her in the parking lot, getting out of a brand new Ford Taurus, and he asked her how she liked the new car.
    She reached into the car and retrieved her briefcase, then turned to Burns.   "Drives like a glove," she said.
    Burns never had figured out just what she meant, though it wasn't for want of trying.   Sometimes he would wake up from a deep sleep and think, "Drives like a glove?"
    "Which catalogs are you looking for?" she asked now.
    "College catalogs," Burns said, so she wouldn't give him the latest from J. C. Penney.   "From other colleges," he added, so that she wouldn't give him a handful of HGC catalogs and shoo him out.
    "Of course you do," she said.   "Right this way."  
    She turned and led him into a small cubbyhole beside the main office.   On one wall there was a shelf filled with paperbound catalogs of all shapes and sizes.
    "Were you looking for anything in particular?" Dawn asked. She sounded