“What? No, I—”
“Oh, good.” He let out a nervous laugh. “I’m really sorry.”
Maybe he was right. I was making a big deal out of nothing. And the storm had been intense—I’d been soaked by the time I’d gotten to my car.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay,” he said, and smiled. “Oh, I wanted to ask—did you have fun at the match?”
I felt my whole body jump, a quick kick from within.
“What?”
“Last night. I think I saw you in the stands. Did you enjoy watching?”
My face went flush, cheeks burning.
And just then Constantine arrived—“Hello, professor.” I’d never been so happy to see him.
“We should get in there,” I said, and then hurried in and down to the front of the room.
I stumbled through class, watching the clock the entire time, willing it to be over. I ended early, announcing I had a meeting to get to, and then hurried from the room. I couldn’t bear another moment of my humiliation.
Stephen and I had rescheduled our date for that evening. There was something easy about spending time with him. Undemanding. He always seemed happy just to be with me—I didn’t quite get it, but I was trying not to question it. And a movie was feeling very appealing—I wanted to shut off my brain and disappear into the dark for a few hours.
I was getting ready when my phone rang. I thought it would be Stephen, saying he was downstairs, “but no rush.” (He, unlike me, was never late.) But it was my mother. I panicked a little whenevershe called—my parents were getting old enough that I worried bad news might be coming.
“Mom? What’s going on?” I could hear some background noise. She was speaking to someone in the distance. And then I heard my father’s voice and relaxed. “Mom? Are you there?”
She laughed. “Sorry, Marky. I’m here. Your father got this new thing for the television and he’s convinced he shouldn’t have to spend a hundred dollars to have the guy set it up. But now there’s nothing. No channels, just some blue screen.”
“Is that why you called?”
“No, it’s just—he’s driving me crazy. I needed a distraction.” She laughed again. “I don’t know why I called.” She asked about the semester, my new classes, the students. I told her everything was going fine, busy. I got dressed while we chatted, going through the same rotation of shirts from the night before—I needed some new clothes. She asked how Safie was doing. She always asked about Safie—I think she loved that I’d found a friend. And then she wanted to know if I’d been thinking more about Thanksgiving. I’d made an offhand remark that I might come down, and now she brought it up every time we talked. “Don’t wait too long. The tickets aren’t going to get any cheaper.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.” My phone vibrated with another call—I glanced at the screen. “Listen, Stephen’s here. I’ll call again soon.” She also liked when I talked about him—any sign that I wasn’t “all alone out there,” as she put it.
“Maybe he wants to come down with you. Get out of that cold for a few days.”
“He probably has plans. But I’ll ask him, okay? I have to go.”
When I got outside, Stephen stood beside his car and waved, gregarious sweeps across the air, looking like a commercial for something healthy. We had met in the spring. The president of the college was hosting a reception—a new grant, a step up in rankings, I don’t remember what. Safie took me. “I really don’t want to,” I whined when she stopped by my office to walk over. I made some excuse about grading and Safie shook her head and said I could do better.
We walked to the president’s house, a wide rambling structure of slate and shingle on the other side of campus. The house sat deep behind an iron gate, hugged on all sides by a carpet of flush May grass, just mowed. It was warm inside and the oily funk of cheese platters and nervous sweat soaked the air. Safie left me next to a fern and wandered in search of drinks. I couldn’t tell if the fern was real or fake; I wanted to touch it but also didn’t want to know. Around me, attendees stood in awkward groupings, plastic cups of thick purple wine clutched in damp palms. The gathering brought to mind a very brief stint in my local synagogue’s youth group during ninth grade. “We’re not really that kind of Jew,” my mother said when I expressed interest in going. When I asked what she meant, she said something like “the kind who joins in.” And I understood; we were the kind who feels left out, apart from things. But those years I grabbed at any way to pull myself from beneath the heavy shroud of silence blanketing our family home. There was so much we were pretending wasn’t happening, it felt like we had agreed to mostly avoid each other—rushed, quiet dinners, weekends spent hidden away in separate corners of the house. If I had arrived at the synagogue seeking out some room to breathe, I quickly discovered the suffocating feeling of spending time with people who had no business being together, except they had nowhere else to go.
Safie came back balancing two quite full cups in one hand. With the other, she pulled along some man by the sleeve of his dark sports coat.
“Drink this,” she said, nudging a cup at me. She released her charge and introduced him. “This is Stephen, from Math.” Someone waved at Safie from across the room. “I’ll be right back,” she said, though of course she wouldn’t be—Safie was always in demand at social events.
“Come here often?” Stephen smiled at his own bad joke. His face was wide, plain but not unhandsome. His jacket fit well, rare among male academics, who usually looked like they were wearing a larger brother’s hand-me-downs. I glanced at my own jeans and wondered if I was underdressed, or Stephen over.
“How did you end up here?” I asked.
“I met Safie last week. At the meeting for the new safety commission,” he said. “She told me to come.”
“Ah. Safie loves to give instructions. And she does it in this way that makes you feel like, of course—it was obvious all along—this is what I should do.”
Stephen laughed. “She does have a persuasive personality. But she didn’t mention this?” I shook my head. “Sorry, but I think you’ve been set up.”
