On Friday morning, Estelle invites me to Georgetown to attend Oop's guest lecture which is that evening. I think that is a terrible time for a guest lecture since all students will want to be anywhere but still in a classroom, but I do not bother her with that question. I'm sure it's something that Estelle has considered herself. Besides, neither Estelle nor I have had the opportunity to run a proper guest lecture. She's been invited into the classrooms of her professors to do a brief presentation on her research for students in master's programmes, and I do research that goes into lectures for the professors I aid, but neither of us has gotten a separate slot, a full hour and twenty minutes, dedicated to a topic of our choosing. It's a big deal.

Knowing that, I head straight to Georgetown when work is done. I manage to sneak out fifteen minutes early just to try to get there in time. The lecture begins at half past five, and I only barely make it into the hall on time. The wind is so violent that it utterly destroyed my hair. I try to discreetly comb it while Oop Drukker speaks. He's a scholar on the politics of displacement. The topic isn't one that I'm very familiar with, but I listen. He talks a lot about the feminization, disempowerment, and depoliticization of refugees. A lot of the work goes over my head, and his slides flick through photos of women and children, which he analyzes. He does credit Estelle for some research she acquired on displacement in post-genocide Rwanda.

At the hour mark, Oop begins a question-and-answer period. Since I am not going to have anything to contribute, I discreetly sneak out of the hall. I make my way to a vending machine in the hallway, trying desperately to get a snack. It is time for dinner and I imagine that Estelle is going to try to grab food on campus, to my absolute dismay. I'd rather have a protein bar that's oddly sticky than try to stomach the food from the on-campus pub. Estelle doesn't like it either, but she is always too hungry after these things to make it home.

I turn to go back into the lecture hall, and I see Dr. Reid standing outside it. I find myself stopping abruptly.

"Oh," he says, looking at me. He offers a timid wave. "You must... are you here for my guest lecture?"

"Oop," I say.

He leans back, furrowing his brow, "sorry?"

"Huub," I correct, my cheeks flushing. "Hubert Drukker. He's Estelle's colleague from the Netherlands."

"Ah," Dr. Reid closes his mouth quickly. He checks his watch, tapping his foot. "There are still fifteen minutes left in his session. Both you and Estelle are welcome to sit in on my guest lecture, if you are interested. I'm not a very good public speaker, but Georgetown invites me once a semester for a talk. This time, it's on how best to communicate the statistical methodologies of CAP models to laymen to prevent confusion on criminal taxonomies. I had some help with JJ on this one, but she is visiting family in Pennsylvania this weekend. Hubert Drukker is welcome to come."

"We're planning to celebrate, actually," I say, shrugging. "It's his first guest lecture. He's a doctoral candidate at a Dutch university."

"Fascinating," Dr. Reid offers. "I wish I had time to go to his lecture. Let them know that they are welcome to stay. Also, I encourage Estelle to continue grilling me on questions. She's very good at challenging me, and that's what all of research is about, right? Questioning things we already believe, I mean."

I swallow. I can feel my own heartbeat.

Then, I shake my head, looking away from him.

"I'll let them know," I press my lips together, trying to force them to smile.

I cannot imagine either Estelle or Oop wishing to sit in on Dr. Reid's guest lecture. Still, I pass by Dr. Reid and make my way into the front row next to Estelle. The guest lecture ends shortly after, and we all clap for Oop. A few professors hang about to ask him questions while the others file out. I pull out my phone to read an email from the faculty member I work for. He needs me to send him something new by tomorrow afternoon.

"Is that Dr. Reid?" Estelle asks after she is finally done gushing over her inclusion in the lecture.

I look and sure enough, Dr. Reid is inside, setting up his next lecture.

"He invited us to stay, but I told him we have plans with Oop," I shrug. I turn to leave, but Estelle drags me back.

"He invited you to stay, or us?" she asks. "Did he mention me?"

I shrug. Already, I can tell that Estelle is far too invested in this, "he mentioned he enjoyed your criticism."

Estelle begins to grin mischievously. Then, she sits back down in the front row and leans backwards in the crappy seats, a smile on her face. Now, I know there is no turning back from this.

So, Estelle, Oop, and I sit through Dr. Reid's guest lecture. He gets the same attendance as Oop, but I imagine if he wasn't scheduled to present at seven on a Friday evening, more people would come. Oop mostly types on his computer from his spot next to Estelle in the front row. I don't blame him, since I'm sure he doesn't understand Dr. Reid's jargon, and Dr. Reid was correct about his inability to do public speaking. Estelle is on the edge of her seat, her hand twitching on her lap desk as if she's ready to send it into the air to pester him at the first possible opportunity.

Even if he seems nervous, people are listening to him. Even I am. Dr. Reid talks about the FBI's relationships with local law enforcement, and how to ease tensions while respecting different forms of expertise. It occurs to me halfway through the presentation that he doesn't think he's smarter than most police officers by virtue of working as a profiler. They know local areas, from the people and the land to the political climate and the culture.

It hadn't occurred to me that he didn't think he was smarter than everyone else.

Soon enough though, Dr. Reid's lecture is over. A few students come up to him after the lecture. While Oop is packing up his bag, Estelle turns to me.

"Go invite him out for drinks," she says.

I glare at her, no words necessary to convey my displeasure at the idea. Not only do I not want to get drinks, but I do not want to get drinks with Dr. Spencer Reid of all people.

"What?" she shrugs, "I have a ton of questions. Oop has been looking up stuff on criminal profiling as public policy. We;ll get to embarrass him for believing in criminal psychology. Come on, it'll be fun."

"We have very different ideas of fun," I sigh, but I make my way to the back of the line.

After the final person is done chatting with Dr. Reid, I walk up next to him. He begins to pack his things while I hover, unable to actually force my mouth to speak.

"How was it?" he manages, not looking at me. "I wasn't sure if it was good material for the crowd."

"Estelle wants to grill you over drinks," I say because it's better than complimenting him on the content of the presentation. "We're supposed to go to a pub a couple of blocks over."

Dr. Reid looks up at me. I try to force displeasure on my face, and I try to convince myself it's about being with Dr. Reid rather than listening to Estelle argue with him over the course of the evening. He hasn't done anything obtrusively mean as of late, but I don't want to give him the chance to mess up tonight. Regardless, if he sees that I don't want him there, I doubt he would come.

He scrunches his nose and then looks past me. I follow his gaze, and Estelle waves at him.

His cheeks flush.

"She's interested in Huubert," I tell him, even though she did say that their relationship is purely platonic. The idea of him sleeping with my roommate, and sharing dinners with us in our small flat, and him being around not just at work, but before it and after, necessitates the lie.

"Oh, I wasn't... Estelle isn't my kind of... I want to hear what she has to say about my lecture," he says.

Before I can pause, Estelle comes over along with Oop. While Oop goes to shake Dr. Reid's hand, Dr. Reid instead waves. Oop doesn't seem put off.

"So, you're coming, right?" Estelle smiles, her eyes bright and her grin slightly crooked. I cannot tell if she is trying to get under my skin for her own satisfaction or for what she perceives to be my benefit. "Drinks are on Cole and me, to celebrate."

Dr. Reid's eyes dart over to me once more. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, but I don't focus on him. Rather, I stare at Estelle. She doesn't falter.

"All right," Dr. Reid pulls on his coat and begins to sling his bag over his shoulder.

From there, the four of us head out. We aren't even out of the lecture hall before Estelle is grilling Dr. Reid on all sorts of things. Some Irish study from a couple of years ago found that experienced criminal profilers developed less accurate profiles than the average college student, and so Estelle argues that consequently, the FBI has little if any expertise to provide local law enforcement.

Dr. Reid says she's mischaracterizing the study. It's not expertise that is the issue, but the investigative experience. Also, it doesn't fit into the larger body of research, and while they bicker, I talk to Huub about his lecture. He thinks it was a hit, but I don't know enough about his topic to really probe him.

He's patient in explaining the politics of refugees at an international level, so I suppose that if he wants to become a professor one day, he would make a good one. The argument of his lecture, more simply, is that since the Rwandan genocide, refugees have now been characterized as victims without agency. Photos of male refugees are hard to come by. Women and children aren't seen as fighters, but as helpless people. Huub concludes that all of this turns humanitarian crises into sites of aid, ignoring the situations which made them refugees and therefore removing solutions that could see refugees return to their homelands safely.

"That's fascinating," Dr. Reid says.

I hadn't realized he and Estelle had stopped talking to listen in.

"I mean, without Estelle, I wouldn't have recovered a lot of the pamphlets about international aid and refugees," he points out. "Her photos have been extremely helpful. You should really see how people talked about refugees during the Soviet Union. Those were always men fighting against the corrupt government. Now, they're victims."

If I had understood the lecture, maybe I would understand him more. In this line of work, it isn't common to see women as perpetrators, or as strong people. More often than not, profilers investigate men, who have often killed women. Although, the BAU stats on investigation don't match general UCR data. We investigate stranger cases more frequently than any other, and those are not very common actually. Numbers tell a better part of the truth than the stuff we see every day. If mapping trends teaches you everything, lots of things are outliers.

I try to think of things abstractly. I tell myself I'm not good at picturing things. Because, I'm not. Really.

Dr. Reid, Oop, and Estelle talk about dissertation things, and the process of defending one's thesis, and I mostly listen in. I'm not a doctoral candidate, and I'm not looking at applying to any programs right now. Still, it's fun to see how their eyes all light up. Even if you can't participate in a topic, it's so fun to listen and learn. That's something I miss about academia. When a bunch of nerds get huddled in a room and listen to each other talk about things the others don't know much about. Our subject areas are more niche.

We chat for hours before we call it a night. Dr. Reid leaves. Estelle, Oop and I head back to the apartment.

"Your boyfriend is nice," Oop says.

"Not her boyfriend," Estelle laughs, an arm over my shoulder. "Maybe he would be if Cole wasn't so stubborn."

I furrow my brow, shaking my head. Then, I shrug my coat over my shoulders, "I'm not going to dignify that comment."

"Oh, come on," Estelle says. "I'm brave enough to admit that his knowledge of criminology is passable. He's handsome, and he clearly likes you. You're just too picky. Which is a good thing, mind you, because it means you're incredibly selective and yet you've decided I'm good enough."

I can feel myselfblush. I shrug deeper into my coat. She's half-right. Maybe I am too stubbornand too picky, and maybe Dr. Reid does know a few things about criminology. However,he doesn't like me. And my single status is much deeper than selectivity.

~~~~~

The study I referenced here (the Irish one) is Kocsis et al. (2002). I surprisingly actually care about this kind of stuff (I'm in no way a criminologist or a statistician) but I wanted you to know where the studies I mention come from!

Also, what do we think of these new developments? Any thoughts or insights or predictions? As always, feel free to leave a comment!