“No!” it always began. Dr. Mayer could be heard admonishing Dr. Haupt each day around three.
“Take OFF your whore’s clothing and get back to the orbital calculations, Haupt!”
Dr. Mayer ran the world renown astrophysics program at the University. She’d known Planck. Rumor had it they'd been lovers, their sex had been hot and very much "behind closed doors." Began wearing the nun’s habit after he died. Told the faculty it reflected her devotion to physics.
She also didn’t bathe.
“Old school,” they whispered.
She kept Dr. Haupt, her theoretician, locked in the computational lab. Had a cot brought down; maintenance installed a mini-fridge.
“It’s my grant money on the line, not hers,” Mayer would say.
Each day, right after lunch, Haupt changed into her Berliner lingerie and paraded about the observatory creating quite a stir. She was a brilliant astrophysicist, invaluable to the program but clearly off in other ways.
She continued the behavior and was disciplined by Dr. Mayer..Every afternoon, the other physicists paused in their work, wiping their spectacles while listening to Dr. Mayer’s loud grunt followed by the crack of her cane across the bare thighs of Dr. Haupt. Dr. Haupt never made a sound.
They’d bring her salve afterward, slip it under the door along with german chocolate. Dr. Haupt was quite fond of chocolate.
