It’s not about the bike it’s about the seat

I guess the first question is why it’s not about the bike but about the seat?

Easy answer. Have you been on a bicycle seat lately? I mean, were they always so small and have they always had spikes? Is it natural for a 52 year old woman to get on a bike with a seat that narrow? Don’t even get me started about the outfits. I was thinking about all of this on my first ride to work. I was also thinking: did I hit my head? I mean, I had done this before, but that was, let me think, eleven years ago. YIKES!

I knew it was going to be hard when I took that first ride on my boys’ bike, the same one I rode in 99. First, I disturbed the sleeping bats by taking it off its hooks in the barn. I took it down the driveway for its first bath in eleven years. Free of guano and mice poop and dust bunnies, I filled the tires. Gleaming in the sun I placed my left foot on the left pedal—one always mounts a horse from the left—then pushing off on the right, I swung that leg over the seat in a balletic kick, and there in lies my first foible: I am now lacking lift in what once was an easy arabesque kick. Let’s just say I didn’t make my mount but instead chose to ride the bicycle around in little circles like I was riding a big scooter. It is a very fast bike, after all, with razor thin tires. When I recalled that there were breaks on the handle bars I garnered enough sense to stop. I quickly looked around to see if anyone saw me. They did. They had all pulled up lawn chairs for my launch, and were sitting their laughing. Wife, small daughter, neighbors, and the dog who turned her head out of pure embarrassment for me. Tick tick tick, went the bike as I pushed it back to the high point of the driveway for a remount. Equestrian rule number 1: always get back up on a horse that throws you. My bike and I just needed to re-bond. Okay, I said to myself, nervous about my fan base, who were watching. Twenty years ago when I lived year round in Provincetown I was one with my bicycle—bikes were part of our everyday lives. One never forgets to ride, right? I tried my mount again, pushed off from the high point of the driveway, swung that leg over and went sailing down the driveway into the street. I was off on my first ride. I started slow that day—I didn’t want to overdo it. I took a lap around the block and finished up training for the day.

I Am Not the Best Sister

When you grow up in a large family the responsibilities that come with each age are very specific. Rule number one: you always watch out for the ones younger than you. If my 2 younger brothers got into something on my watch, it was pretty much my fault. There once was a time that we rolled my younger brother Rob down a hill while packed inside a 50 gallon drum. To this day I can still hear my mother’s voice when she discovered he was a little bit unconscious after his ride: “You should have been watching more closely!” (I was the one who pushed it) Then there was the time we tickled him until he stopped breathing. I thought for sure we were bound to be goners if she found out we ended his life by tickling, but my mother just gave me a good tongue lashing: “You lead by example! If you do it your brothers are going to want to do it.”

If he was to follow my example my younger brother would have loved women, but it didn’t work out that way. The children in my family turned out 2 for 7. That is 2 GLBT children and 5 "Straight" children. Where were our role models?

When Robert came out I wasn’t paying attention. He didn’t come out to me or to his best friend or to the rest of his family. He turned to men, looking for answers he had no one else to ask. It was the 1970s, and, in those days any gay social life came from the bar scene—hence the reason I know that disco is the music of my people. Imagine if bars and clubs were your only social circle. Is it any wonder, then, that gay people of my generation have a history of substance abuse and risky behavior?

My brother was found to be HIV positive in 1999, the year of my first PMC.
I still hear my mother’s voice telling me to look out for him. In my memory I hear her at the end of her life, calling from the nursing home demanding that I fix the impossible. I can fix your door or change your locks or hang shutters but I still cannot divert a hurricane.

In my mother’s last days we discovered among other things, that she had lymphoma. Cancer had metastasized to all her major organs. She was 75, an age that somehow no longer seems old to me. She wasn’t a sick a day in her life, nor did she ever see the point in yearly check ups. Not if she was well. She didn’t want to be a “burden on society” a tax on the system that she had contributed to her entire life through children and labor. And here in lies the rub. Had she had regular check ups, had she had a primary care doctor who advised her to have the most basic of cancer screenings we might have intercepted and reversed the cancers that killed her.

I am not a very good sister. Nor am I very good daughter for that matter. How could it be that I work in one of the top three cancer hospitals in the world and yet my own mother escapes basic screenings? When I walk by the Blum van I could kick myself. Such a basic and elemental thing, the DFCI Blum van. Going into underserved communities and giving basic screenings—or at least raising awareness that it is a good idea to have check ups.

As my mother was dying the last thing she said to me was that she loved my house. If you had said to me in 1975 that I would grow up someday, have a job where it is less of an issue to be out, have a house and a wife, and even a child, I would have thought you were crazy. Yet here it all is. A sequence of little miracles spanning the years.

My brother has zero T cells this month and I still cannot help him. I cannot ride like Lance Armstrong. Nor can I ride like Greg LeMond whose name is emblazoned on my shiny red bike. You can’t make me want to go to France, though my wife would be gone in a flash if (and when) given the opportunity. What I can do is work here. Fix the doors, make sure they close and open. I can participate in the ride knowing that maybe, just maybe the little that I can do adds to the greater of the whole. Research and clinical trials will continue. The Blum van will pull out of 44 Binney Street. We all might live longer and be healthy and happy while we are at it.

Chicken! Airplane! Soldier!

It is 32 days until the big ride and so far I am not looking too good in my role as the mighty peddler of my own bike. I regret this. However, I ask you all: is it possible to implode from heat? I mean, as a woman of Scottish descent, going up the stairs rapidly can make my face red. So imagine me in spandex riding a bike in 90 degree weather. I start to look like a tomato within two blocks from home. (Feel free to thank your lucky stars that I choose not to wear red spandex on my little jaunts around the neighborhood.)

For instance, today with the least of effort my face is so red it feels as if all the temperature in my body is in my head. If I only had a valve that I could open up just to let the steam come out, you know, sort of like a pressure cooker. I would be all set, even better, if I could also add a cool-water valve. (Do people still use pressure cookers? Does anyone under the age of 30 know what a pressure cooker is?) And I know all of you over the age of 50 know a bit about our internal heat waves.

I must confess, the idea of donning my riding ensemble and putting on my special shoes and filling my water bottles did not at all appeal to me over the weekend. As I contemplated 4 more days of the same at 6 this morning while walking a reluctant dog, I began to hear an inner voice—

“Ciiiiiindddyyyy,” it said.

“What, who me?” I answered, looking into the lush wilds of my back yard.
“CCCCiiiiinnnnndddddyyyyy, don’t be a foooool. Come hydrate over heeeerrrreeee. Do EMTs everywhere a service. Stay Hooooooome.”

My gosh, it was the voice of the swimming pool in the neighbor’s back yard. AGAIN!

My four year old daughter is teaching me how to swim. She has been taking lessons over at school across the street and everyday if I am lucky I get a recap. Lesson number one: position of the arms: Chicken! Airplane! Soldier! Try it now…yes… Chicken! Airplane! Soldier! 2 times gets you across the pool. Just the thought of floating on my back, pressure-cooker-hot-head cooling, is reason enough to postpone my riding agony and angst.

I know, I know, believe me, the bike is whinnying in the barn. My trusty steed waits dutifully. Thank goodness she is not a horse or she would be dead from neglect. I had so much passion for my bike when I purchased her 11 years ago. I drove my wife crazy for a good three months with all-day excursions to various bicycle shops. The test drives, the hiss of tires, the smell of rubber, all that shiny new paint on impossibly light frames made me dizzy with anticipation.

Pre child, pre child in pre school, the bike was a huge and outrageous expense. (2 Months of all day pre school!) But nevertheless, bringing her home that day in 1999, and pushing off the driveway and sailing into the street, she rode like a dream. She was graceful and sleek, and she was strong enough to carry this load!

Remembering those days, I have decided I should give her a name. And some new tires. I’ll even spring for new break pads. I have busted out the lavender and yellow official PMC bicycle jersey top from 1999. When the heat breaks I will be donning the green, aerodynamic helmet. I have brown biking shoes. She is a very red bike. My wife has suggested that I name her Rhonda—as in “Help me, Rhonda” but I am not sure it’s a good fit, nor do I care for self deprecating humor. Does anyone have any suggestions?

CHUBBY

I don’t know if any of you have noticed—I don’t know if you are just a little too polite to say anything—but I’m a tad bit chubby. How could I miss this fact? I mean, I do have a full sized mirror. So what if it has been hung horizontally above the sofa for the last decade. I can still see plenty of myself so long as I stand on the third stair going upstairs and lean slightly to the left. So what if what is reflected is mostly from the shoulders up?

I re hung the mirror the other day to see how I was looking in that Pan Mass Jersey from 1999. Ah, my jersey, my pride and joy. One does not just toss on a Pan Mass Jersey. One cannot buy one at the mall. One earns their jersey. One aspires to the jersey. But purple and yellow? Purple and yellow. My my my. (What was the designer thinking? Easter Bunnies rule?) What ever happened to basic black or a sensible navy? A tad bit chubby, indeed. OK, let’s leave the tad out of the equation.

I am chubby. There, I said it. Well it wasn’t actually me that said it, it was the dang bike. Last Thursday started out good with a fine ride into Boston. The Emerald Necklace along the Jamaica Way is simply glorious—especially going down the long steep hill. But then the ride back up in the rain was just plain beastly. Why aren’t there tow ropes? Where are the chair lifts? I quit my inner whining, ponied up and started my ascent towards Pond Street. I was on a mission: to get ready for the hills of Sturbridge.

Pretty much I haven’t noticed the cumulative effects of Ben & Jerry because I always come to work in denim out fits. I don’t rely on mirrors so much because I’m pretty sure about how I’m looking as I walk out the door each day. Besides, everyone knows that no one has looked all that good in denim since John Wayne or the Marlboro man. When at a loss for what to wear I can always say—I think I’ll wear the blue. Or if I really want to mix it up I choose the darker jeans and a lighter top all delicately branded with the DFCI logo.

Nevertheless, even though I find myself chubby I have had a training plan: here goes: all I need to do is get on a bike and my muscle memory takes over, right? I mean, what were all those years sailing through the dunes of Provincetown on a bike all about? But just like everything else that happens in ageing—right along there with my forgetful menopausal mind are my forgetful well-meaning muscles.

BLINK BLINKING BLINK

Today was a good biking day in spite of impending rain. I left the girls behind in the wilds of Jamaica Plain and went off on my morning quest to make it to the Institute in good time and in one piece. Success! I am here although a bit weary about saying it out loud. But not too shabby, my friends.

Now for a bit of my ponderings....Front tire a bit low and not a pump in site. I knew there was one in the bike cage when I got to work, so the bumpy ride home will be a bit better. You get this body bouncing and you are just not sure what can happen.

I have a criticism to make... I am pretty sure it is a requirement in Massachusetts that in order to pass inspection and be able to legally drive your car, all automobiles must have functioning turn signals! So I can only imagine that the dysfunction is due to driver error, driver dink-dom, driver laziness, or as many drivers from out of state have commented: Massachusetts drivers do not want to commit to where they are going because maybe someone behind them won’t let them go.
That being said, as a bike rider, it’s a good idea to know where the cars around you are going. It’s a basic courtesy, actually. Why, I ask myself, isn’t everyone on a blue tooth instead of a hand held cell phone? I mean come on, share the road, use your ding dang DIRECTIONAL! Please!

As a driver I myself have said “why did that biker cut in front of me!” and then I berate myself because I am one of those drivers as well as one of those pesky bicyclists. I guess it takes all kinds and I really hope we can all get along.
So all that being said today, 192 miles is looking more and more like a piece of cake! Bring it on!

Cindy Mackenzie’s Dana Farber Bike Blog

August 6th, 2010
1 More Sleep Until Your race Mama!

That is what my daughter said this morning. Everyday she has been counting down:
“4 more sleeps till your big race, Mama.”

“3 more sleeps!”

“2 sleeps, Mama, until you win your race, Mama! And you won’t give up, right? You’ll ride and stop for drinks of water, right? Are you going to have a sleep-over on a boat? Can I come? You are going to win! Riiiigggghhhtt? Mama, are you listening to me? OK Mama, listen to my WORDS! You’re gonna win, riiiigggghhhhttt?”

I’ll settle for finishing.

PINK BOOTS an Ashram Story

It was unusually hot in the city made of golden stone, and the black polyester robe Elyse wore while meeting with her tutor held the heat. Yet Elyse didn’t shed the garment—called a sub fusque—because she knew that it hid the wet rings that stained the magenta silk around her arms. Sweat trickled down her spine, as she occasionally glanced at an empty hook—a hook that had held sub fusques since 1651, when the small priory was expanded into a college out side the medieval city walls. Beyond the hooks were maroon velvet drapes, pulled back with a cord. Peonies stood in a Chinese vase on the mantle in front of the uneven window panes that distorted the striped lawns outside. A sprinkler kicked on, spitting a carefully measured dose of water on a specific quadrant of the lawn. The glow of lavender hedges coming into bloom paused her focus on the tutorial of the moment.

Much to her surprise, that morning Elyse discovered she’d aced several exams on economics. There on the step of the exam school, tacked to the door, was her name with the fact that she had scored a First rather than a perfectly honorable Second. The news was followed by luncheon where the woman who sat to her right was pale faced over the news that she had scored a Third. There was no use in pride in that moment for Elyse felt no glee. Gloating over her success in the face of someone who had so obviously failed was nauseating, so she turned the conversation to dinosaurs, the bird-boned creatures found in Wyoming, simply to pass the time—to steal the poison of the hour.

Elyse had acquired her will to study only five years before. On the first day at the university it came over her like a spell—a force so strong she’d held herself captive for years with no idea that she would one day find herself on the other side of the Atlantic, inside a gilded college gate looking out, rather than as a tourist looking in. She studied for studies’ sake, filling all the hours of the day until she often found herself stupid with knowledge by bed time. But knowledge for what? She wondered where the spell would leave her when it lifted. The greasy state university back home—with its cracking infrastructure and perennial budget cuts—had been replaced by trimmed gardens framed by gothic courtyards. Door knobs were pleasant to touch in this place—there was no turning of knobs while holding a paper towel for fear of catching the latest virus. The doors so pleasant to open were five hundred years old and stood fifteen feet tall. Turn them, touch them and they will open, majestic on ancient hinges. The kegerator binge parties of home were replaced by well-mannered trips to pubs. When she came up for air from the library stacks, or from the Xeroxed papers and notes in shorthand from lectures—when she actually drew breath acknowledging the day and where she found herself, she knew that she had unwittingly joined the aristocracy of the plucky, despite the fact that her tutor, Professor Max, was calling her bluff, scaring her out of her own ideas. Her glasses slid down her nose as Tutor Max clipped on in his well-trained English.

"Yes, but what about Degas’ dancers?" he said, obviously detesting the paintings. "Why do you see them as commentary on the economic contributions of women? How could you possibly shape a thesis on that proposal? Frankly, I find your ideas a little fluffy."

"Fluffy?" she said. She cleared her throat. "Fluffy is big business. The paintings are about work," said Elyse. "They’re not decorative at all. Look at the exhaustion," she said tapping a museum catalog from the Louvre. "Look at how the girls sleep as they await their auditions, or call backs, or what have you. Look at the anxiety on their mother’s faces as they knit to pass the time."

"All affectation, in my opinion. They’re trite—a visual cliche, really."

"They seem that way, now. But Degas was recording the economic anxiety of their time. These dancers are working girls. Daughters of butchers and lorry men, not trust-fund cases. A place in the corps of the Paris Opera put money in the family pot—so these auditions were crucial—the future hinged on the outcome."

Professor Max raised an eyebrow, whipped off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose as though he were in pain. "I still don’t know that you can stretch this topic for a D Phil."
She paused. She was finishing an MA—a lesser degree. They were highly selective about whom they chose to stay on.

"D Phil?" she said. "This is an extra topic for the MA."

"That I’d like to have fit the D Phil. You really need to narrow down your topic as soon as possible. Carry on."

Elyse continued. "If dancers in Belle Epoch didn’t move on to find a place teaching or costuming after they were no longer useful for the stage, they often became prostitutes."

"What proof do you have?"

"It says so here."

"And what proof does Professor, yes, Professor Shackleton have?"

Elyse had trained herself not to shrug. Instead her eyes widened for a moment.

"See? I caught you up," he said smugly.

"Obviously these aren’t the daughters of today" said Elyse. None of them came from rich families, nor were they trained and coached like Olympic athletes. These are emotionally exhausted women."

"Girls," he corrected.

"Whatever, my point is, where do you think Mimi in La Bohem worked before she stayed up in her garret stitching flowers?"

Professor Max poured himself a glass of port.

"She was a flower, herself," said Elyse. "And then she was relegated to the margins."

"This is all hearsay," he said. "How do you make the assumption that art—over exposed art, at that—is going to reflect empirical statistics?"

She sighed. "You yourself said that our man Ruskin said we study a culture by the three things left behind: it’s literature, art and architecture."

"What about public record?"

"I’ll have to go to the Biblioteque National and start digging."

"Well, outline it, then" he said. "Make your point and back it up. I suppose we could send you abroad between terms. In the mean time, read Shackleton’s notes, check his sources and see if they sort out. Then draw your own conclusions." He downed his port then checked the clock.

"The devil is in the details," he said. Then he leaned forward as if he were a co-conspirator. "This time, spell check and proof the outline you bring back." he said, "You ought to have the basic understandings of the English language by the time you’re a D Phil candidate. In fact we almost let you go over the issue."

"Yes, I’m sure you are right," she said.

He nodded and she was dismissed.

The bells of Magdalen Tower had been ringing for over an hour by the time the tutorial ended. The official topic was the economic contributions of women during the Industrial Revolution. After decades of exhaustive statistics that focussed on the male condition, under the guise of the "human condition", women professors began to put a price tag on the work of women. Elyse picked up on the thread, choosing to focus on conditions in the Victorian age.
The ringing, the statistics, filled her head and reverberated like chanting. It had been an exhausting day. She swore that if she blinked she might find herself transported to Massachusetts where she’d find last year’s beater car parked somewhere in a darkened lot. On the side of the car, a vandal had spray painted the words: "Shake well before using." If she blinked she might be getting in, slamming a door filled with Bondo anti-rust compound, and driving home. But she didn’t blink, she walked on a gravel path with her Professor Max, barely able to keep his pace despite his seventy years. When she saw him ride off on his bicycle, Elyse wandered across High Street and then along mediaeval back streets to a meadow full of wandering cows. The river Isis was beyond, hidden from plain sight by rushes. When she climbed the arch of a bridge that led to the college boathouses she paused to look down at the river. It wound around the town like a giant, but docile, mud-black snake. Moving on she counted six boathouses until she found the house that wore her college crest like a crown. Two griffins sitting back to back, a ticket, really, that told her come on in, you belong—you tricked them into keeping you despite the fact that you can’t spell.

The boathouse, of all places, reminded her of her unexpected entitlement. In that house, clear of worldly clutter, Elyse was given the choice of any boat that she would like to row. She stashed her books and robe in an ancient shell then chose a single crew and walked it out to the dock. She plopped it in the water returned for two oars and then was stopped by a light breeze. A chill rose up her back where the sweat had streamed down her spine. The empty punts lined up along the dock looked like giant slippers.

"My Guru’s shoes," she muttered.



All the boats for her college were red. Red like the Guru’s robes and shoes. Elyse got in her boat and pushed away from the dock. Somewhere down the stream where the river grows narrow and loops back upon its self, Elyse heard the pluck and then drone of a sitar. It came from beyond the rushes where she could not see, and blended with the pealing of the ringing bells. She stopped paddling and let the stillness of the river push the crew. Who played the sitar, she wondered. Another student? Someone teaching an Eastern music seminar? A tourist or gypsy passing through? The collision of sound was magnificent.

Entitlement. Professor Max had an anticlimactic way to tell her that she would be moving on to a Doctorate. Yet a state of entitlement was where she found herself. The boat was so new in the water-carved riverbanks. Her clothing, altered, her mind transformed by inhaling the thoughts of others and corrupting them into something different but uniquely her own. If she blinked she could almost see herself walking barefoot on lawns that were meant only for Fellows. Sometimes she dreamt herself there—barefoot and transparent. Of all the subtle hierarchies, strangers walking on certain college lawns disturbed her the most because they were fertilized with the ashes of dead scholars—to find herself in forbidden territory made her wake with a start. To be a scholar was something that seemed out of reach. What she was doing, actually, was playing. There was nothing scholarly about any of it. It all was a form of yoga; the intense focus eventually setting her free. Yet how strange it was—she was on to a Doctorate even though she had dropped out of high school—skipping college in her formative years. She blinked at that moment sitting in her crew drifting on the river. The bells rang, the sitar was struck, and the memory of living in an Indian Ashram flooded her thoughts, sweeping her back in time.

Part Two
What came to mind first was the incense. It was not an ordinary incense but a concoction mixed by the great Swami—the Master—or the Guru, because it was said that She and God lived in the same body as One. Elyse didn’t know if she could believe all the talk. What she did know was that she trembled when the Guru was nearby.

Like all objects the Master touched, the incense was heavenly. When burned it blew out the Ashram gates and drifted all over the world. Ashram means "without the fatigue of worldliness," and Elyse had fled there when she thought her life was ending. The gates of the Ashram opened up like arms, and the incense made her feel as though she’d come home. She’d close her eyes to the thin smoke wafting around her, feeling as though the Guru were personally holding her in her silk-wrapped arms.

Another pluck and drone of the sitar and Elyse completely forgot about the oars in her hands. She forgot about her books and robe. Firsts and Seconds dissolved, and the memory of Degas disappeared along with everything Max had said to her only an hour before. Instead, she set her eyes on the turquoise dome reflected in the water, and shuddered with delight as incense from somewhere else came wafting up the river.

Unburned, the incense, called dhoop, was a sticky resin that held together grains of rice, sacred grass, seeds, floral essences, tree bark, dried apricots, cow dung, gold leaf, mud of the Ganges, the dust from the Guru’s shoes, a certain granola from France, ashes from sacred fires, and other unknown ingredients. Once looking in a bin full of incense Elyse discovered a small tin clown—a Cracker Jack prize covered in the amber resin. Why a toy? A cheap toy? She wondered. Why not?

Where was the plucked instrument? How in the devil could the entirely unique scent of dhoop make its way past Folly Bridge? Elyse remembered how the smell made her a bit crazy. Where did it come from? Was it in last year’s fallen leaves, still holding to the rushes, the mud from the Isis, or in the particular smell of English mold, or maybe its cure—a chemical bought from a grocery store mixed with water and used to swab down the stone walkways of the college. As she pierced the surface of the water with an oar, a gust blew about her, returning her to the Ashram.

*****

Elyse was young—she did not look twenty-five—but she was obviously too old to pass as a teen. This secretly infuriated her because she never thought that she would age. Dancers were supposed to be young, and Elyse who was the least talented of the very best, worked inordinately hard to appear fleet of foot and ageless. Her days were spent in the scrutiny of her own form in mirrored walls. But as she watched her feet spring through intricate allegros she failed to notice how something had set in her face. She'd grown hard while girls around her shone with a supple innocence she could no longer fake.

Elyse had always been mistaken for someone younger. The years of training had sculpted her body to appear as though she was at the beginning of adolescence. One night after she had gone to the Ashram to stay, the Guru called all the young girls forward. Elyse naturally followed and felt at ease as the collective sigh and hush of the crowd rose around her. The Guru had a present for them. After each girl bowed at the feet of the Master she was given a japa mala—a string of beads delicately linked with golden wires. The mala was used to still the chatter of the mind by counting the infinite names of Shiva. Elyse waited in anticipation. One girl got pearls, another a delicate string of tiger’s eye, yet another a string of rudraksha beads—beads that were called "the tears of Shiva" and grew on a rare tree in Nepal. All were so exquisite and Elyse glanced at her naked arms—hoping the Guru would clasp a mala of coral and pearls around her wrist. Yes. Coral and pearls, that’s the one she saw sitting next to the Guru, and that’s the one she decided she wanted.

She was the last of the young girls to bow, and when she sat up from her Guru’s feet in patient expectation, the Guru had nothing for her. All Elyse could do was get up and walk away hoping no one would catch the tears that were starting to spill down her face.

The next night when all the girls were called forward Elyse went first. She bowed and sat up. The Guru loomed before her, her legs tucked under a tent of red silk, her eyes great saucers, and her cheeks dimpled by an all-knowing grin. In the Guru’s hand was a wand of peacock feathers that she used to stroke Elyse in the face. For that eternal moment Elyse forgot why she was there—forgot all things she could possibly want. The Guru gave her a swat, a gentle reminder to move along. When she took her seat along the sidelines she noticed that all the younger girls who came after her were given saris in silk and brocade. The next day the girls were to be dressed up like dolls to participate in an elaborate puja. The puja was a ritual involving chanting and offerings to invoke the blessings of celestial and earthly deities.Instead, the next day Elyse sat on the temple floor with the older women. As the parade of young beauties offered camphor, dhoop, ghee, and flowers to the temple deity, it dawned on Elyse that she had become invisible. Her beauty had disappeared in the wake of fairer girls. Elyse closed her eyes and burned as if she’d swallowed a wasp’s nest. As it had become in the corps of the ballet, so it was in God’s house.

Though she wasn’t getting attention outwardly, in meditation she went places. She saw temples in her mind, and once saw the Goddess Laxshmi open up her hands and rain down pearls on the temple floor. The falling pearls spanked the white marble and ricocheted playfully before coming to rest by piling softly in her lap. Her head, she was certain, had been filled with gems. Opened right up from the top and filled like a well-placed rain barrel. Unstruck sounds reverberated through her head with melodies tapped out by the smooth cool of pink coral.
It was odd to see Laxshmi—for Laxshmi was the bestower of boons and wealth. Odd because whenever Elyse opened her eyes on the world, all she ever saw were the things she didn’t have. Closing her eyes was her only way to escape the absence.

The next evening in meditation she noticed that within her mind she was sitting on the surface of an ocean. Her legs were crossed, heels hooked on top of each knee, and for some reason this posture kept her from sinking. Strangely enough, her right knee did not ache, nor was there fire in the scar from the two-hundred stitches that zagged over the knee from surgery three years before. The sea where she floated was made of churned milk and was topped with cut diamonds. As Elyse drew breath the gems shushed beneath her as though cooled by the tide. In this place in her head, she saw herself scooping the diamonds beside her as though they were a gritty sand. Within the handfuls were pearls that melted into the milk when they were flung away again. Elyse knew that if she could fill her pockets from this place, she could catch a bus down to New York. Somewhere around Mid-town and Sixth she could sell them. If she only had the where-with-all to fill her pockets. Somehow, though, the grit of New York disappeared as small white caps broke around her. It wasn’t money that she wanted, not when she had landed in this place, into the ocean of Laxshmi’s milk.

The temple bell sounded. She awoke dazed and wandered out onto the moon-lit lawn. For the first time since she had arrived she was distracted from the chatter of beautiful girls with their variations of japa malas dangling from their hands. Elyse wandered away to find the Master sitting perfectly still in a courtyard, clad in a robe the color of a poppy. The moment Elyse approached, the Master’s gaze pierced something within her causing her to drop on her knees and bow. For what seemed like an evening, people came and went around her, until at last, common sense told Elyse to move off her bad knee. When she sat up she overheard the Master saying "There will be boons—misfortune always hides a boon."

*****

Everyday Elyse wanted to escape into the sea of milk within her mind and stay there, but what she needed to do was try to make sense of her life. What was Laxshmi doing in her head when her contract was up and career over? She was ashamed. The ballet company had let her go. Fifteen years of training, fifteen years of anticipation and longing, and all she had to show for it was two seasons in the corps, and an injury fatal to her career.

Elyse’s last performance was with the company corps on a stage floating on an Ashram lake. It was a mystery who booked the performance. It might have seemed like another stop, just another gig amongst many. But Elyse chose to stay behind to separate herself from the other dancers. Retirement for Elyse meant going solo without ever dancing solo. Thankfully, her last performance was an adagio with nothing quick to jar her knees or refracture her feet. She sighed. She felt pretty good, but not good enough to leap.

The dance company used up jumpers and turned them out broken. For that final time on stage she stepped into the turn sequence and spun dervish like—one quick flourish that gathered applause—five revolutions in a pique turn before sticking it in time to the orchestral big-bang ending. Her super turn was as close to a solo as she ever got. Applause erupted from the thousands of devotees sitting on the lakeside hill. The clapping became a thunder, then rhythm that turned into spontaneous chanting. Tears rolled down Elyse’s face. There were no curtains to close that would hide them, just the wide open sky full of stars above.

Elyse could no longer bear the auditions, the competitive classes that turned into contests. She was obsolete at twenty five and unable to out jump the upstarts that flooded the city every summer. After that last performance she knew that she’d cry all night, so she arranged to stay behind while everyone else got back on the bus for New York City. What stung the most was that while her contract was left un-renewed, three of her peers had been plucked from the corps to become soloists in the next season. There was no way that she could get on the bus with her merry peers. The rehearsal director took pleasure in these moments when the corps was divided into the chosen and the rejected. How could she possibly ride on the bus, her throat in her mouth? Shake well before using, she thought.

Arranging a stay in the Ashram was a bit like checking into a hotel. She got in line with a bus-load of devotees who had just arrived from Israel. She paid for a two-day stay and then watched as her former peers got on the bus—those with the resources to have been coached like Olympic athletes—those who had been surgically altered to enhance their beauty. Melinda with her size three micro waist and pelvis like a spoon, promoted to soloist for her loveliness alone. Behind the outrageously happy came the six other corps members who had been let go. Quietly they brought up the rear and filed to the back of the bus. Watching the clipped and groomed—those born with the biological lottery of the right bone structure and weight—Elyse realized that it had been a no-contest all along.

"Goodbye my life," she said as the bus drove away.
Rather than going to the dormitory where all the single women slept in what was formerly a ballroom, she stayed up all night, sitting quietly in a flower garden. When the sky lightened and birds began their racket, she heard the drums and bells of the temple, calling early risers to prayer. She followed the sound, forgetting the night before, and before she knew it she had walked into the vigorous Ashram schedule without a second thought.

Two days passed and she was back in line at the accommodation desk arranging to stay for a week. And two days after that she was wondering how she could stay longer. She calculated her money: She had six hundred and twenty dollars, and a sublet apartment in New York that she could give up. She shared the "loft" with its brown carpets and three front windows looking over Sixth Avenue with four other people. It was called a loft because it had once been an open floor that had been sub divided by sheet-rock, two-by-fours, and office dividers that had been pulled from a dumpster on a Madison Avenue loading dock. The loft now consisted of four living cubicles. Between the two sets of cubes was a very dark living room, a kitchenette, and a cubicle bathroom. At the front of the loft was one window, where parked a manic roommate who was always pounding on a Smith Corona typewriter.

It wasn’t like she actually lived in the loft, it was more like she camped there between gigs. In February she came home from the road to find someone’s cousin’s drunken friend in her bed. He was passed out and snoring away at two in the afternoon. A plugged-in amplifier and two Fender guitars took up most of the floor. She camped on the sofa and left again long before the guest roused and rejoined the living. In April she came home to a silver Great Dane stretched out on her side of the bed and a rather dirty Jack Russell terrier curled up on the pillow. In its mouth was a green tennis ball, wet with spit. It growled when she set down her suitcase. By the moans coming from the cubicle that looked over Sixth Avenue—the only room to actually have a door—Elyse guessed that the dogs belonged to a mysterious non-roommate. She woke the Dane and pushed him so that his legs flipped over the side of the bed leaving him in an upright position. Ushering them out of her space, she knew full well that her room, bed, pillow and curtain used for a door, was rented with the agreement that an occasional squatter would be welcome so long as she was on the road. She smugly got into a bed that smelled of wet dog and closed her eyes. But the dogs were not easily evicted—as she drifted off to sleep they quietly parted the curtains and crept back up on the bed. When she awoke the next morning she rolled over to find the terrier sharing her pillow, the ball still clamped in its mouth.

Why call that cubicle home, she asked herself. Why go back at all when she was bound to find someone in her bed. And why return if going there would remind her that she had no company dance class to attend? Oh, she could go up town and take an open class at the New York City Ballet, but she would be out fifteen dollars, every time. She’d also be out with her pride—company class was always mandatory. How could she pay for something she had formerly been paid to do? Why go anywhere at all when she could stay in the Ashram and chase after the Guru who was able to bestow the gift of forgetfulness?

Elyse sublet her sublet over the phone, filed for unemployment, wrote out her rent check to stay in the Ashram, and commenced to try and forget the last ten years.

But she couldn’t really. Something had changed and she was beginning to stew. In this enchanted place of clipped gardens and iridescent tiles her beauty quit working. It used to be that she’d walk into a room and all attention would shift her way. Though she took what she thought of as her rightful place among the fresh and unscathed, along side those with new breasts and barely the curves of widening hips, she always found herself separated or left behind the group. Then came the night she was given a seva assignment. Seva means "selfless service" and anyone who stayed would be given a job that would take up a full work-day. Once again, Elyse stood in line with all the other young girls. One girl with thick dark curls became the Guru’s assistant; another with a blond braid like a rope down her back would take away all the gifts the devotees brought to the Guru. A girl from India with thick eyelashes would iron saris and linens, and shine the silver like a house girl. And still another would type the Guru’s letters, while her twin sister would go to the temple to polish the marble steps in front of the statue of the Guru’s Guru’s Guru. Elyse stood in anticipation wondering where she would be sent.

"So!’ said the Guru. "Do you like animals?"

"I love them!" Elyse blurted. She didn’t know why she’d said it, except she remembered pulling a fat green tick off of the terrier back in April.

"Do you like horses?"

"I used to ride," she said, recalling the fall of seventh grade when she went riding every Sunday afternoon for a month.

"Then you shall be perfect to work in the cow shed." The Guru swatted her with the wand of peacock feathers in the direction of a new supervisor.

What was I thinking? she asked herself. Why did I ever admit that I had once rode a horse and was capable of holding a rake? Her first morning in the small barn was spent shoveling manure into wheel barrels that were then taken away. No sooner had one been filled when another would appear. After a week of shoveling cow flops by day, and dressing up like a Hindu goddess at night, Elyse began to burn with jealousy. All around her were young girls and women who were so beautiful and vibrant. It was as though the Guru held them in her hands, shined them up and let them out into the world where they did well no matter where they landed. They were so unabashedly gay. Though Elyse got gussied up every night, she seemed to be ignored. Once she committed to stay, her power to enchant lost all potency. Without a mirror in the cowshed to remind her of who she was, she felt like the sun was malingering behind a cloud.

Every fresh face she saw reminded Elyse of her mother’s nagging voice. "Have a back up plan, don’t drop out of school, what? Did you hit your head? Why don’t you become a beautician, a medical x-ray technician, an assistant mortician. But Elyse would have none of it. She was to be what she willed for as long as she willed it. Yet there she was—suddenly just past being young—only to discover that without her beauty to distinguish her, she had nothing.

She burned as she admitted it to herself that her mother might have been right. She had no safety net and she had fallen. She saw the last stop on the train of her life coming, and all that awaited her was a job in her mother’s gift shop, HAFTA HAVIT. With each cow flop she shoveled she saw herself living south of Boston, in her formally rural town that had been re-zoned into a series of strip malls. From such a shop she’d soon be selling collectibles. Regular cutie pies with big eyes, Lladro figurines from Spain—Cinderellas scrubbing away but with necks so long they were destined to get the guy, or become a soloist, or a model with a Carte Blanche credit card to Barney’s in New York. Elyse winced as she imagined herself forced to sell the Cadillac of all figures—Hummel! She wouldn’t be selling them, really, but helping the indecisive and gainfully unemployed as they auditioned them for their collections. The job also came with the role of facilitator for the Hummel Club, a monthly meeting for serious collectors who came from as far away as Utica, NY, and Naperville, Illinois; a job that also required a careful scrutiny of inventory before and after the meeting because someone in the club—her mother hated to admit—had sticky fingers. Dastardly! For who could possibly dare to steal the Accordion Boy? For lunch Elyse would soon be eating humble pie, and at closing time she’d count the take from the perpetually bored who confessed they’d wanted to be dancers, just like her, or poets, or florists, or movie stars.

Last stop, Elyse. Yet there she was in the Shangra La of the Ashram surrounded by girls who would go on to good schools and excellent careers. Girls who would eclipse her just as the girls in the corps de ballet eclipsed her. She never thought her dancing days would be over; how could they? how dare they when she worked so hard, she asked with the repetitions of the mantra.

*****

Training had been easy. Her legs stretched and she could touch her shins to her ears. She had a back that allowed her to fold in half. Before her injury she could jump as though she were meant to dance in the sky. Turning was easy. Music? She mistook herself for sound. Elyse was so proud she’d dance and show off for anyone who would watch. She’d injured herself when she was trying to catch the attention of the artistic director outside the studio. A constantly perturbed man with a beautiful vision, he couldn’t even remember her name, and he didn’t care when she slipped on spilled water, fell, tore her ACL and shattered her kneecap.

"Where now?" she asked the sacrificial fire outside the temple. She lit a candle. She watched the people around her. They looked as though they had their heart’s desire, as though everything came as a bonus. Cars, homes, jobs that didn’t feel like slavery. They had husbands and wives and kids in the best schools, they went on cruises through paradise on spring break and still they arrived every June to bow at the Guru’s feet.

She sighed and looked down at the hem of her skirt. Fashion dictated all women should wear eyelet that summer, and she felt lucky to have scored a white petit coat on a 7th Avenue sidewalk jumble sale for only a dollar. A dollar! When she stood up straight—holding her shoulders just so—so her collarbones made a perfect top of a T to her frame—she resembled Giselle—the statue of Degas’ Giselle—the heroine of her favorite ballet. At that moment an ash landed above the hemline of eyelet. She jumped up to brush it away, but it was too late—an unmendable hole was burned. Elyse then noticed that her singed eyelet was actually dingy with wear. The piece of cloth had turned a slight shade of grey. In fact, everything was mud and shit and grey. The Guru must have noticed. Shortly after her internship in the cowshed began, Elyse was mysteriously reassigned to the schoolhouse, where she was asked to sit amongst all the ten-year-olds living in the Ashram.

*****

It wasn’t long before Elyse realized the children were as lost as she was. Fifteen years of training out of a twenty-five year life had robbed Elyse of growing up. She’d never really played hopscotch; she worked out jump patterns. Technically she was an assistant, but really she was there as a pupil in disguise. Together, Elyse and the children were subject to the will of Delphine Fussencouch—a Ph.D. candidate not exactly thrilled to be teaching ten-year-olds. Not this summer when so much would be at stake come fall when her dissertation was due for review. Elyse had to be careful not to misbehave because Miss Fussencouch—Dr. Fussencouch to be—was full of Ivy League expectations, and took herself very seriously.

"Sit down!" said Miss Fussencouch. "I said SIT DOWN right now!" Yet all the little boys—now spring loaded from sitting all morning, listening to the drone of the stories of the Maha Barata—continued to run in circles, wielding plastic swords.

"Who’s a good sitter?" Elyse finally said. For some reason the pack of wild boys liked her, so they all swirled like leaves in a tempest, that, finally losing their fury, came to rest around her, holding their feet so their soles touched, and their knees bobbed like butterflies.

"Oh squacketty do, squacketty do," said a sullen and dreamy girl. Her hair was limp and hung as long as her chin. When washed—she looked like her name: Belle, a pretty Belle who Elyse thought should be photographed because at any moment she would change completely and forever. Going to school some morning with a rough and tumble persona only to re-emerge as a beauty in the late afternoon. It happened all the time. When Elyse mentioned this to Belle’s father—a nature photographer by trade—he replied that it would be egotistical to focus on Belle as she looked. Belle, like everyone else was not her body, but a spirit living inside the suit of her soul.

Suit of her soul? What a load of crap, Elyse thought. But actually, Elyse felt like she had been boxed in the nose. What was the point of this Belle having a picture of herself to remember these days? The girl wasn’t particularly happy. In fact, Elyse discovered that she and Belle had something in common. Neither of them liked Miss Fussencouch very much. It started when Miss Fussencouch insisted that she be called Miss Fussencouch at all times. She pointed this out to Elyse in front of the class. Miss Fussencouch was practicing to be a professor someday, not an educator. A professor was light years ahead of an educator in social rank, which meant she was NEVER to be addressed as Delphine, her first true name.

"Pssst." said Belle, as they sat on the floor in close proximity while watching a slide show on the Hindu goddess, Durga.

"What?" said Elyse, risking expulsion for quietly responding out of turn.

"Durga, the goddess of motherhood and protection, rides a magnificent tiger," said Miss Fussencouch, shining a laser-beam pointer at the projection screen.

"Should we address the Goddess as Mrs. Durga?" Belle whispered. "Do you think there’s a Mr. Durga?"

"Would Belle like to share with the class?"

Put on the spot, Belle was speechless and embarrassed for a moment. Then she piped up "Whoa to the moron who messes with Durga’s children," she said.

"Correct," said Miss Fussencouch who turned away from the class to resume her collegiate lecture.

"Miss Fussencouch is a pricklepuss," Belle whispered.

All over the Ashram was a public announcement system that broadcast chanting from the temple. In quieter moments, the chanting wafted its way into the schoolhouse windows. Whenever a set of visiting Brahman priests set up a puja in the temple, a rather fat and unmanageable boy would go to the center of the schoolhouse classroom, stand on his head and chant: "Oh what a goose I am, oh what a goose I am." He had uncanny rhythm and balance, as though he practiced yoga well and often despite his bulging belly. Elyse had no idea what his real name was. He had a Norse name that was garbled into the word "Grub"—a nickname that didn’t seem to bother him in the least. When he stood on his head, which was as often as possible, Grub’s belly popped out over the elastic of his shorts. His favorite top—now a size too small—rode up over his middle. On the tee shirt was a large drawing of a mosquito with the slogan "Minnesota State Bird". His socks were no longer white, but grey, well seasoned after the third day of wear.

As the summer ripened, Grub and Belle came to prefer collecting salamanders in the woods to sitting in the classroom. Soon their bond became a business venture, for it was Grub who would lead Belle’s father to the gems in nature that surrounded the Ashram. Elyse occasionally saw the three of them—the two children bolting ahead while the wild haired photographer, equipment in tow, trailed several paces behind. And Grub, ever the lover of the great out doors, had to be watched at all times during thunderstorms. On one particular morning, Grub dashed outside with the first roll of thunder, and stood under the trees looking up at the sky.

"YOU! You get inside here this instant!" cried Miss Fussencouch.

"I prefer to be with nature," Grub said.

"Go get him," Miss Fussencouch ordered. Just then, lightening struck the tree above Grub, encasing the world in a flash of diamond green.

"I think not," said Elyse. She looked outside, it started to pour.

"Must you always be insubordinate?"

"Are you serious?" said Elyse.

"I have a lesson to complete." Miss Fussencouch bristled, enjoying the social hierarchy that enabled her to demand someone else to do something dangerous or dirty. "Listen, if this were a true school situation, I would have you written up for insubordination."

"Must you always talk like you shit dictionaries?" said Elyse, terrified of lightening and not sure what the insubordination meant.

"OH!" said Delphine. "We have got to talk! I don’t care if the Guru said to let him go, he’s always so disruptive when he returns, I’d rather he not come back at all. If this were a real university, he would not be tolerated."

Yet Grub always tried so hard with his re entry, Elyse noted. He had something to show for his time away. Snails or frogs. Grub darted into the woods singing "shoulda-coulda-woulda shoulda-coulda-woulda, as thunder rumbled and the rain spanked the leaves. He’d dashed away so many times, the Guru advised the teachers in the schoolhouse to let the boy go. Yes, they let him go off into the wilderness, and being as nature made him a good eater, he always came back in time for lunch. On the morning of the storm he returned just as everyone had settled for the ten minutes of meditation required of all preteens before they were dismissed.

"Hey everyone," he said. His voice was like flipping on a light switch. "I have raided a nest full of salamanders. There’s one or two for everyone. Hurry, my pockets are full of them and they are tickling me."

Meditation and class was over. The children found the salamanders sublime—orange with pink spots—tiny writhing lizards by the handful, a perfect subject for Belle’s father when he came to get her.

Then came the day when he arrived late for a talk about the Lord Shiva. It was a particularly hot afternoon, one in which there were rumors floating around that the Guru was going to pay a visit to the school to listen to one of Delphine Fussencouch’s lectures. Grub moved gently and came in the back door as a slide projector flashed different images of Shiva—Shiva dancing—the Nataraj—Shiva in meditation, snakes draped around his neck. Shiva with Uma on his left—trident in hand, snakes coiled up on his head as a turban. Shiva with the river Ganges sprouting out of his head. What everyone failed to notice was that dangling around Grub’s neck was a giant bull snake that hung limply like a jump rope. It was so still that it could have been mistaken for a pretend snake one buys at a hardware store in order to scare mice in a barn. As Delphine Fussencouch continued her lesson, oblivious to Grub’s guest, the boy stretched out his arm in wonder, allowing the reptile to gradually waken and slide off and onto the floor. It was a beautiful creature—dull black and dry and warm on its back where the sun had touched it. So quiet except for the occasional flicking of the tongue, and the place where its sides flexed with its breathing. The snake had been sleeping in the midday sun across the hood of a pick up truck. It had been lulled into a hot meditative silence. When Elyse put her hand down, she brushed against it. She thought it was the arm of a child. But then it wrapped around her wrist. Elyse screamed. An arm does not become a circle and then jolt forward five feet long. Everyone else screamed and stared in disbelief as the snake suddenly slipped through a gap in the floorboards and disappeared.

All except Belle who cried, "Oh you caught her! Good job, Grub!"

"OUT" cried Miss Fussencouch as though it were Elyse who brought in the snake.

"What did I do?" said Elyse.

"OUT! How can I teach when you are the cause of constant interruption?"

"Me? I should think you’d be happy to have me here as your warden."

"Warden? The Guru brought me here to practice teaching."

"Well," said Elyse, trying not to insult Delphine Fussencouch’s sensibilities. "Somehow I think your material might not match the needs of fourth graders."

"You constantly undermine me."

"Me? How?"

"You think I don’t see that smirk on your face? Don’t you know Ashram children are special? They’re gifted and talented." Delphine Fussencouch peered through the crack in the floor where the snake exited. The schoolhouse, slated for demolition, had no basement and actually sat up off the ground on low stilts. Elyse was relieved to see sunlight through the floorboards.

"How will I ever get tenure?" Muttered Miss Fussencouch. "It’s unfair that the Guru sends me here and then gives me you as an assistant."

"Life’s usually unfair," said Elyse, parroting a line she’d often heard her mother say.

"OUT" Miss Fussencouch repeated. "And take your two troublemakers with you." She pointed to Belle and Grub who suddenly looked very small. "You are fired!"

Elyse felt her chin wiggle, a symptom of impending tears. "You can’t fire me. Only the Guru can fire me, or the Seva department.

"OUT" she said pointing to the picnic table in the middle of the yard. She shoved a book in Elyse’s hands. "Take this and read it and make them memorize a stanza."

"A stanza?"

Miss Fussencouch rolled her eyes which sufficed to say—you idiot didn’t you learn anything in school? "A stanza is a four line paragraph."

Elyse looked at the Bhagavad Gita, and then the treeless yard. "In the direct sun? But it’s blazing."

"I don’t care. These kids—AND YOU—have to learn how to endure your karma."

"Fine" said Elyse. "FINE! But let me offer you some advice before I go, Delphine: I’m sure a McDonalds somewhere would be glad to hire you. They are always looking for managers. People with people skills." Elyse turned on her heal then and fled before Delphine Fussencouch could think of something to say.

"Well said!" said Grub when they were out of earshot. "You sure told her off."

A tear ran down Elyse’s face, which she brushed away quickly so the children did not see it.

"You know what I think?" said Belle sitting on a picnic table in the unforgivable brightness. "I think Miss Fussencouch is a fucker."

Elyse sat down, put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, and looked at the two ostracized children. For a moment they were quiet. The children sat glumly as though they expected Elyse to scold them like everyone else.

"Yes," agreed Grub. "A fucker."*"It’s hot," said Belle. "A FUCKity fuck fuck fucker."

"Enough, you guys, you shouldn’t swear," said Elyse.*"Even if she is?" said Belle.

"A Fucker?" said Grub. He scratched his side with a finger that had been God-knows-where. "Bummer," he said. "I have been trying to catch that old girl for a week now. She sleeps under the bungalow where we’re staying. And there old Miss Fussencouch had to go scare her half to death. Now I’ll never get her back, and how will she get back home to her nest of babies?"

"A snake, Grub, you brought a snake into the classroom. What were you thinking?"

"Don’t you ever listen?" said Grub. "I was trying to imagine what it would be like to be Shiva. Not only is the guy blue, but he always has a snake for a necklace."

"Or a hat," said Belle.

" I just wanted to see if Miss Fussencouch could tell I take her seriously."

"But you didn’t have to bring a snake in the school!" said Elyse.

"Well it’s not like it was a loaded gun."

"True."

"I would never bring a loaded gun. Besides I am pretty sure it’s not a poisonous snake."

"You scared the crap out of me," said Elyse.

"Me too," said Belle. "I thought it was rubber."

Elyse shaded her eyes and looked at her two charges. "Just what am I doing being punished for something I didn’t do?"

Belle and Grub shrugged up and down, embarrassed.

"Off we go," said Elyse, pointing to where swings hung in the distant shade, several paces from the cowshed where she first worked when she arrived. "Quickly, before we are found out." Quietly they crept past the front window of the schoolhouse, in plain sight of Miss Fussencouch who was absorbed in her lesson, or who was scolding someone else, they really couldn’t tell.

"I’m hungry," said Belle when they made it to the swings. A cicada above them began to rub its legs together noisily harmonizing with the chanting Brahman priests.

"Or-eee-o, Or-EEE-o!" the boy sang in unison.

"Or-eee-o, Or-EEE-o!" Elyse chimed in.

"Or-eee-o, Or-EEE-o!" They chanted for better part of an hour, rising and falling on the swings, pretending to be the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.

It became dizzying, like endless poems that made little sense. The heat rising off the grass made Elyse long to nap, to dream, to imagine a life washed clean.

They forgot themselves and sang so loud that the Guru who, unbeknownst to them, was visiting in the cow shed came out. She gazed at them, then passed swiftly. Elyse, high on her swing felt a dizzying wave of surprise when she saw the Guru’s red robe flash in her sight. Then she noticed that the Guru carried an old boot under her arm. One of the very same boots Elyse had worn while mucking out the cowshed. Elyse wondered what happened to the other boot. She felt a pang of longing. If only she could wear the boots now, maybe her feet would take her in the right direction.

Elyse, Belle and Grub dug their heels in the gravel and came to a stop. They were suddenly quiet, as were the cicadas.

"Play on," said the Guru, "play on."

But Elyse couldn’t because much to her astonishment the Guru headed to the schoolhouse door and knocked. Out came the perturbable Miss Fussencouch, who immediately changed her demeanor. The Guru silently handed Delphine Fussencouch the boot, and left as quickly as she came, and Delphine Fussencouch, who stood in the door bewildered, held the boot and watched the Guru go.

The children, sitting in their swings, stayed silent for some time until at last, Belle began to fidget.

"My problem," announced Belle, once the cicadas resumed their song, "is I don’t like reading. It is such a bore."

"I am going to learn when I am ten," said Grub. "My mom’s a child psychologist and she says making kids learn before they are in Former Operational Thought puts pressure on them." He said this as though the statement were a pre-recorded voice over. "I’d like to wait until I am twenty. Of course it’s a real problem when your friends insist on discussing The Hobbit and all you can do is say you saw the movie which is nothing like the book from what I am told; I mean how could it? The book is as fat as a brick."

"My brother was a Hobbit Head," Elyse said. He read that book three times the summer after sixth grade. God he was smart. And me? I'm barely able to read street signs."

"Not true," said Grub. I see how you pay attention to Miss Fussencouch. You must be doing good in college."

"College?" said Elyse, who was surprised. "I dropped out of high school at sixteen in order to dance professionally."

"So?" said Grub.

"So I have two more years of high school left before I could even consider college."

"You do? You could have fooled me," said Grub "Well I mean if you were in college you’d be a brainstorm being as you are certainly in Former Operational Thought and can think about abstract things with ease."

"Oh shut up," said Belle.

"As you can tell, Belle is a child."

Belle punched him. "You know there are more interesting things to do."

"To tell the truth," said Grub, "as soon as I learn to read I’m going to renounce it because my job when I grow up will have little to do with books."

"Oh really," said Elyse, "What are you going to be?"

"An entomologist. A bug expert," said Grub. "I’m going to keep bees, and I am going to perform autopsies on decomposed bodies."

"Gross," said Belle.

"I will know how long a person’s been dead by how fat the bugs eating him are. None of that involves much reading. Seems to me it involves measuring and looking things up."

"And writing things down," said Belle.

"Piece of cake," said Grub.

"If it makes you happy," said Elyse.

"You know what I like about you?" said Belle, who turned to look Elyse over from top to bottom. "You’re not trying to make us something we’re not."

"Yeah, that’s it," said Grub. "I knew there was something about you I liked. I like bugs and that’s okay with you. Too bad we can’t get married some day."

"Why’s that?" said Elyse.

"My mother would never approve of someone much older than me."

Elyse nodded. "That sounds sensible, but why would you want to marry me?"

"Everyone jokes that no one will want me so I anticipate it will be a problem," said Grub. "I think I’ll marry the first person who does not mind my interests. You don’t seem to care so I think you’d be a good choice," he said. "Will you keep me in mind someday when you are shopping around for a husband?"

"I will indeed, Grub," said Elyse. "You’re the first person who has ever proposed to me."

*****

Delphine Fussencouch got the foot. Not a stranger to the idea that symbols often say more than words, when she received the Guru’s boot, caked with dried mud she took it as a sure sign that it was time to leave. She had remained in the stasis of "All But Done" or "All but Dissertation" for over a year, wavering on the brink of being dropped as a doctoral candidate. What she needed most was to quit shouting at ten-year-olds, and just go write her ideas down.

But booted right out with barely a peep or hint that it was coming! Life in the Ashram was like that. Life was like that. One day you’re going to your seva and the next thing you know you are dismissed. Lessons over. Time to go. Pack it up and plan to leave in a week or four days. The same is true with jobs or careers or dancers or fruit. They have shelf life and are programmed to end whether one can accept it or not.

Elyse found Delphine Fussencouch crying silently in the schoolroom when she went back after dark to retrieve a sweatshirt she had left behind when she had been expelled. Delphine Fussencouch had expected to be alone when Elyse caught her.

"Are you all right?" said Elyse.

"Not this very second. Please go. No stay. What should I do next?"

Elyse was surprised that Delphine would ask her for advice considering their mutual contempt.

"I guess get on with my life," said Elyse.

"But that’s the thing, I’ve been stalling. I was hoping to not write a dissertation."

"Don’t you have some moldy university to go back to?"

"My time there is up, too. They wouldn’t renew my teacher’s assistance until I wrote something that put me on the track to graduation."

"So what’s your problem?" said Elyse.

"I don’t know," sniffed Delphine. "What I do have is a father who is eager to have me take over the family mortuary."

Elyse suppressed a smile. "Would you rather have my job? I’ll be selling figurines in my mother’s store in Massachusetts."

"Of course not!" snapped Delphine. "I thought you were going back to the ballet. Some place extraordinary"

Elyse wondered what to say. "I’ve retired."

"I wish I could say I was retired from something."

"You wouldn’t if you were," said Elyse, who didn’t want to talk about it.

"All this time I thought you were some sort of dance goddess, marking time before dashing off to your next fantastic season."

"Would I really still be here if I had that in front of me?"

"Why wouldn’t you be?" said Delphine.

Elyse looked at Delphine and wondered if she would ever become less acidic. It was painful to be near her, for she instinctively knew what small thing to say in order for the other person to close up and turn away. Yet this astringency didn’t prevent Elyse from talking—from reaching out.

"To tell the truth, I don’t know where I am headed, either. I wish I had a dissertation to finish—anything that put me on the road to somewhere."

Delphine nodded. "What would you do if you could do anything?"

Elyse sat back and smelled the distant sea in the air. "I guess I’d get to be the person who carried the knowledge for a little while."

"Then you should ask the Guru to make you wise."

"It’s a long way to go," said Elyse, pondering the fact that in complete exhaustion from over training, she had dropped out high school to prevent them from failing her in all her classes. All those incompletes and red Fs now required explaining, though at the time she had good enough cause, having been cast in Sheherazad.

"So maybe you’re a fallow field waiting to be turned over," said Delphine.

"Maybe I’ll just ask for a slice of the moon," said Elyse.

"You might consider being less sarcastic when someone compliments you," said Delphine. "I mean, how can you be open to receiving anything when you act like a jerk all the time?"

Me a jerk? Elyse wondered if Delphine was projecting and decided to say nothing.

"I mean, you get this vacant look on your face, are you so out of it that you don’t know what the Guru does? Don’t look dumb, now, it doesn’t become you. She’s the boatman."

"Okay?" said Elyse.

The Guru’s shoes, the very dust itself is the boat in which we ride."

Delphine picked up the pink boot. A clod of dirt broke off. "Fool," she said. "The thing is we don’t always see it that way, do we?" She handed Elyse the dirt. "Here, a treasure."

"How would I ever begin, though?" said Elsye.

"By putting one foot ahead of the other and seeing where you go," said Delphine.

******

Elyse forgot about the Guru’s other boot. Forgot everything about wishes and dreams as she wrapped up in an emerald sari that kept her dancers’ legs closed. All was forgotten as she made her way towards the guru in a long line that was five-people wide—all of whom bore gifts and money for unfulfilled wishes. Her heart pounded wildly, and the perfumed oil she wore released its scent with the heat that rose off her chest. It was all rather delicious. She closed her eyes as she bowed before the Guru letting the wand of peacock feathers stroke her back. When she finally sat up, opening her eyes the world looked to be a shade of watery blue. In the Guru’s lap sat the other pink boot. Ancient, its patent leather—once so gloriously shiny that it drew eyes in the streets of London—was now cracking. The pink boot was caked with dried mud. The Guru said nothing as she handed it to Elyse.

"You’re giving me the other boot?" she said in astonishment. "Does that mean it’s time for me to leave?"

"In a few days," said the Guru who swatted her face as if to wipe it clean.

For some reason, Elyse got up half-ecstatic and half-sad, because sad, after all, was what she knew how to be most.

*****

Elyse and Delphine’s last day on the Ashram coincided. That afternoon Elyse was given the task of herding the children to the out-door pavilion to see their Guru. She was supposed to take them there and leave, not to go in and sit with the Guru, which is what she really wanted. There would be no opportunity to express all the things Elyse longed to say. The children baa-baa-ed in electric excitement as Elyse coaxed them to sit at the feet of the Guru, who as usual, looked like a poppy.

Elyse couldn’t help herself. She gawked. The Guru was dressed in shades so vibrant—her hair was so jet black—that it seemed like she was plugged in. Or that she had got hold of and kept lightening bolts in her pocket. The children lit up in front of her. As she watched them transform, Elyse spied a box of toys beside the Guru. She was suddenly filled with envy. She wanted an action figure with a space pistol, a purse full of make up, a stuffed animal—maybe the cute little badger—no—the unicorn—so beautiful pure and white. Elyse bit her lip. She wanted a toy—she wanted a bracelet—some token to remind her of the willies she got whenever the Guru passed by. Anything to remind her that sometime a boon was to follow her disaster.

The last of the bleating children passed by her, but she was so absorbed looking at the toys she hardly noticed Delphine Fussencouch.

"You have to go now," said Professor Delphine Fussencouch to be. "This is really only for the children." Delphine’s form filled the door, blocking Elyse’s view of the Guru. Elyse’s heart broke as Delphine, the almost friend, became Miss Fussencouch, a woman with a brilliant future. Miss Fussencouch closed the gate to shut Elyse out and turned away taking her place amongst the children, a haughty smile on her face. Though shoed off, Elyse quietly came back and peered through the lattice that framed the door, just in time to see the children collect their toys.

The toys were regular—having cost only about five dollars each. They were equal all except for one extraordinary doll. The doll was huge and obviously very expensive. It wore an embroidered apron, and under it poked eyelet so fresh it puffed out like a carnation. The doll had a tiny back-pack full of even tinier books, and green eyes that closed when she was laid down. Over its shoulders was a magenta cloak trimmed in white fur, and on its feet were silver skates. The more Elyse looked at the doll, the more it seemed to grow in detail. That morning, the doll had been brought to the Ashram and given to the Guru by a famous movie star, and now all the girls gawked in fascination as they walked by it. They lingered, paying more attention to the object than to the Guru. None of them dare touch it, it was so fancy.

Except for Belle who sat on her heels, halfway back in the room. Her mouth hung slack as she watched. She didn’t rush up to collect her toy. She seemed bored. After awhile her foot started jiggling, and she began looking around, wondering when it would be time to leave.The Guru stopped time. She motioned Belle forward. Belle crawled up on her hands and knees. Elyse couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she saw the Guru’s eyes loom wide as they talked. Belle was shruggy of shoulder, dispassionate, but then became attentive. Elyse watched as the sullen girl began to shine before the master. Seeing this erased Elyse’s doubts about the Guru. Some kind of alchemy was going on, the Guru shining people when they weren’t looking. Maybe, thought Elyse. Maybe someday when I least expect it I’ll shine.

The Guru was holding both the magnificent doll and Belle at the same time. Even so, Belle started to slip away. She began to bow, but the master set her up right and plopped the doll into the girl’s arms. Belle’s face lit up seeing its perfection, then she offered it back. The Guru leaned forward in her chair and then pressed the doll into Belle’s arms for keeps. Belle’s eyes were full of astonishment. She then bowed and got up to walk away, her mouth an O of surprise.

The other girls clicked their tongues jealously. Elyse could hear them muttering to each other how they deserved the doll more than Belle. But where did the Guru place the doll but in the arms of what seemed like the least worthy girl.

Belle turned to look back. The master shone, and Belle dropped down on her knees hugging her doll. Her slim body seemed to fold around the doll as the girl touched her forehead to the floor, for the first time placing her heart over her head.

*****

Elyse wasn’t sure when the bells of Magdalen Tower stopped ringing. Maybe it was when another crew passed by, its oars piercing the reflection on the surface of the water. The blue dome shimmered and danced as the other boat slid by. There were ripples of blue and ripples of green and somewhere above in space the Guru was conducting the Universe, thought Elyse. Her spell had been broken. How glad she was she’d not been mistaken for a child. How odd it was that her scholar’s hood, trimmed in ermine, resembled the cape on that doll she saw briefly once long ago. Dreaming spires, thought Elyse. She began to paddle again, her hands stiff around the oars. In that town of colleges was the slice of moon. On that very day, Elyse wanted to drop down on her knees as if she’d been the one given the doll. Drop down on her knees in surprise as she skillfully rowed back to the dock.

"There will be boons" Elyse remembered the Guru saying. "Misfortune always hides a boon."

Swimming At Bath

The timed lighting ran out the moment that Professor Esme Dane placed her hand on a mis-shelved volume of Keats. The lights clicked off on the ninth floor of the library. As she groped the shelf for the book, five others tumbled from the other side of the stack, leaving a keyhole of daylight. Esme peered through and saw the red sky through the slate glass. The water in the Boston harbor below was choppy. Her eye caught a buoy, and as she leaned through the keyhole made of books, she saw one of her students lying on the floor on the other side of the stack. Two more books fell, echoing through the ninth floor.

Was she dead? The girl didn't move. Esme wondered what the girl was doing there. It was seven in the morning and the library wasn't open to students yet. The harbor wind whistled over the building. Esme swallowed. Were they alone? Had the girl been strangled? She had dirt on her neck. Streaks of dirt, maybe someone's handprint. Esme forgot that she was searching for the Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. She looked through the mesh of the metal flooring to the book stacks below and thought she saw a passing shadow. No, all she could see were the tops of the books. She took a Quarter from her pocket and aimed it dead center in the gap between the stacks and the mesh flooring.

She let it go and it dropped four floors before hitting concrete with a "ping."

Maybe in the GH section, across the floor, a book slammed from a shelf. There was a fluttering of pages as if several books opened and poured to the floor. Maybe a footstep. Then came a clanking as a draft rose through the floor. The heat ducts! Esme reminded herself. Heat ducts!

The girl hadn’t moved, so Esme turned to look for the closest exit. There was a spiral staircase somewhere in the darkness at the end of the stack that led to the floor below, but she couldn’t see it. The dim corridor beyond the staircase lead to the impossibly slow elevator. But she knew she shouldn't leave the girl. Or should she? If she could get to the stairwell, she could walk down the nine floors and trip the alarm on the fire exit. Security would amble over in no time.

She turned to the daylight cutting through the keyhole left by the books. Her student's name was Julia, and she always sat in the front row of Esme’s Jane Austen seminar. She never raised her hand; she blurted out whatever thought crossed her mind. Though she always appeared to have absorbed what she read, Julia had somehow missed every multiple-choice question on the midterm. Esme had thought of Julia as mannerless until the week before. When Esme couldn’t climb the ladder from the pool, Julia had hopped out of the water to offer Esme her hand. Most people looked away when Esme fumbled. Yet, Julia interrupted her swim then dove back into her lane as if it were all part of a routine. Esme had watched Julia’s red suit rippling under the water as she darted away. In that moment Esme thought Julia had the manners of a champion. Esme—a member of the 1968 Olympic Swim Team—had stumbled to the locker room, thankful that Julia had the manners not to ask what was wrong with her.

The wind rose, there was a rumble of a low-flying jet. Esme was startled. When she looked at the mesh of the floor she thought she saw a shadow move. Perhaps a wharf cat had gotten into the library, it had happened before. But maybe not, maybe Julia was dead. There had been a stalker on campus. Some homeless crazy who randomly showed up to sit through lectures, and then followed women to their cars. Or sat in unlocked cars. Or sat in stairwells. Waiting. And then said nothing, just moved on when he was caught. Maybe Esme was now being watched. She stuck her firsts into the depths of her pockets, unable to speak.

Julia moved. She wasn’t dead, at all. She curled up on her side, sucked her thumb for a moment, and then stopped. She was asleep on her coat. Her frizzy blond hair seemed alive in a shaft of light, with corkscrew curls that framed her square jaw. Esme sighed in relief. Then she thought she saw trails and stared at the girl to get a better look at the corners of her vision. She wondered if the flecks of light would reappear and obscure her focus—if her retina would detach.
Though her prognosis was good, Esme was in the habit of searching her sight for the onset of symptoms that might leave her blind. Her sight was clear, however, and Esme caught herself thinking Botticelli could not have painted a more beautiful sight than Julia asleep among the books. Esme’s eyes swept over her student, possessing her, and traveled to several piles of books about eighteenth-century literature.

Then she remembered why she had come from her office. An anonymous note had been left in her mail box saying that all the books marked “Austen 330 ENG” had been re-shelved in “Astrophysics 330 ENGIN.” All the books for her courses had been missing from the library since the beginning of the semester. Then Esme saw the book she was looking for. Hugged to the girl’s chest was the Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen.

Esme was surprised by the quantity of books. Had Julia hidden them from the other students? She was thinking of shaking her, but as Esme gazed at Julia’s face, striped by the sun, she couldn’t move. The fierce crease that usually marked Julia’s forehead was erased by sleep.

Minutes passed, and still Julia slept soundly.

Esme cleared her throat. Nothing. She wanted the book back. Esme pushed a book about engine viscosity until it fell from its shelf. Nothing. She walked into the darkness of the stack, flicked on the light and came around the to the other side to kneel over the girl. Nothing. She was tempted to fondle a ringlet of blond hair.

As Esme turned away she heard the girl stir and wake up.

“How did you get in here?” said Esme. “The library isn’t open yet.”

Julia sat up. “Professor Dane,” she said. “What a surprise!”

“Were you here all night?” said Esme.

“A little bit.”

“Either you were or you weren’t,” said Esme.

The girl rubbed her eye with the ball of her fist.

Esme sniffed. The girl’s clothes were filthy beyond the grunge look popular with undergraduates.

“Professor Dane,” said Julia, her eyes brightening. “I like your suit,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for stolen books,” Esme said.

“So am I,” Julia said. “All the good stuff on Austen was missing, but the librarian said it was still in the library.”

“Julia, that’s your name isn’t it? You know it’s not fair to the other students that you have hidden all the books.”

Julia looked stunned. “It’s not me, ma’am. I combed through all the stacks until I found them.”

“Did you spend the night looking for them?”

“Days,” said Julia. “I knew they were here somewhere. All the stuff from the Romantic period has been raided. So I started on the sixth floor.”

Julia got up and limped stiffly. “Ow, my neck,” she muttered. “The floor’s kind of hard.”

“And you searched stack to stack?” said Esme.

Julia nodded. “Three floors up. Did you get the note I left in your mail box?”

Esme looked away. “You startled me,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”

“I must have dosed off,” said Julia. She hobbled around for a moment. “My leg is numb, sorry.”

* * *

Professor Esme Dane had to smoke. After teaching English 101 to a class of undergraduates who hadn’t read the assignment, she needed a cigarette. There was a tremor in her right hand. Her entire forearm was numb. She wondered if she would be able to swim her ten laps later in the day. The last time she’d lost the sensation in her arm she ran her hand into the aqua-tiled wall of the pool, breaking three fingernails. She didn’t feel the pain until she stopped swimming, stood up in her lane and saw blood running around her cuticles.

Smoke, she thought. If I smoke I will be fine.

Esme got in the elevator and rode down to the lower-level parking garage. Several times a day she made a pilgrimage to a stairwell where a litter of kittens was nesting in a hole in the wall. A winter storm was predicted, and Esme wanted to make sure the kittens had enough food. She had had her eye on a gray kitten for some time. One day in September, as she backed her Volvo into the handicapped zone, she noticed him. He was blue gray. Though he was a short hair, his fur was thick and stood on end. She wondered if he were part Persian. He was aloof and groomed himself as people scrambled to and from the elevators. If she could catch him, Esme thought, she would take him home. But the gray kitten wanted nothing to do with her. Whenever she reached for him, he bolted and found a new place to preen.

Esme lit up and looked through the hole. There was a calico—flecked in patches of four colors--a black kitty, and the gray kitty she desired, grooming his back leg.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” came a voice from below. Then a cough. Esme looked down where the cement stairs ended in dim light. She took a puff.

“This is my spot,” said Esme.

A cough. “You still shouldn’t smoke.”

Esme took another drag. “Who’s there?”

“Nobody.” A sniff.

Esme thought she recognized the voice and walked down the half flight to see who was there. In the shadows under the stairs, Esme saw Julia sitting on a sofa. She was reading the dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice Esme had left on the free book table two weeks before.

“Is that sofa from the third floor lounge?” Esme put her hand in the pocket of her wool trousers.

“Probably,” said Julia. “Hey, Professor Dane, I have a question for you.”

“You’ve got yourself a regular living room here.”

“So long as the lights don’t go out,” said Julia. “So this is my question: why is the opening line of Pride and Prejudice supposedly famous? I don’t get it.”

Esme puffed and eyed Julia. “It’s ironic. In Jane Austen’s day a women’s primary objective was to marry well.”

“I know,” said Julia. “But it seems to me, and call me funny if I am, that a single man in possession of a fortune does not want to get married, he wants to fuck around for as long as possible.”

“From whose point of view was that first line written?” said Esme.

Julia thought for a moment. “The busybody mother,” she said.

“The busybody mother who has five daughters to marry off,” said Esme. “Maybe you should write your next paper on that idea.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Julia.

Esme puffed, but worried that the smoke might bother Julia. The girl sounded as if she had bronchitis or something stuck in her lungs.

“I had this idea,” said Julia. “I was wondering what you think. Could I interview Jane Austen instead of writing a paper and ask her?”

“Jane Austen is dead, Julia.”

“I know that,” said Julia.

But from the look on Julia’s face, Esme wondered if the girl had a clue that Jane Austen had died in 1818.

“I wanted to write the interview and ask Jane Austen everything,” said Julia. “A total fabrication. I want to see if I can answer my own questions.”

“You can,” said Esme.

“That’s fucking great,” said Julia. “Fucking great.”

“Why are you here?” said Esme.

“I’m trying to get into the fifteenth chapter of volume one for your class at four.”

“You’re behind,” said Esme.

“I know,” said Julia. “I’m a little bit slow. It takes me a while.”

“We’re in volume three, chapter twenty,” said Esme. “How are you going to catch up?”

“As best I can,” said Julia, who discretely dabbed her nose with her shirt cuff. “I guess I should have kept my mouth shut.”

Esme puffed. “I don’t know why you bothered to come in today. There’s going to be a storm. The university might shut down early.”

Julia shrugged. “Professor Dane, what’s the Circus? You know in Persuasion? I didn’t get it. Is it a place or is it an event?”

“You read Persuasion? It’s not on the syllabus until April.”

“I was distracted, I could relate to Anne Eliot and Mrs. Smith.”

“The Circus is a ring of Georgian buildings in Bath,” said Esme. “Jane Austen lived around the corner at 25 Gay Street.”

The gray kitty poked its head out from the hole in the wall. From where Esme stood they were at eye level. The cat stared at her. He puffed himself out and started to purr. Esme stifled her impulse to reach for him.

“Hey, Hamlet,” said Julia. “I’ve named him the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father.”

“I’d like to take him home, but I can’t catch him.” said Esme. “I hate to see them left wild. Someone should care for them.”

“They know when to come in,” said Julia. She made a kiss kiss noise, and the kitten streaked by Esme and leapt into Julia’s lap.

“Hey!” said Esme. “How’d you do that?”

“He’s my boy,” said Julia. “Right, Hamlet?” Julia held the kitten’s head and made him nod.

“Still,” said Esme, “still!” she stuttered, surprised that the gray kitten could belong to someone else. She dropped her cigarette and stubbed it out with the heel of her boot. “Well. I have office hours now, I suppose I should go up.”

“But you don’t want to,” said Julia.

“How do you know?”

“Why would you want to listen to a bunch of whiners when you could stay and see Hamlet playing the role of Yoda?” Julia pushed down Hamlet’s ears. “There. When the student is ready the master appears,” she said, imitating Yoda. “He should have been in StarWars. Don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” said Esme. She buttoned her wool blazer and wrapped her scarf around her neck. “The temperature is dropping. Don’t stay down here too long.”

* * *

Esme was tired of excuses. The latest was from a kid who broke his arm in a mosh pit at a concert and claimed he could no longer type. Then there was Missy Strand, the princess. Though she had scored 1350 on her SATs and was offered a place at Harvard, she took a full scholarship from the state university because she didn’t want to be saddled with a giant loan. Yet Missy Strand seemed to be coasting. She recycled two of her papers from the required 200-level Brit Lit Survey for the 400-level Austen seminar. Esme knew the papers because she had graded them the year before. Missy wanted a recommendation letter from Professor Dane. The university offered a scholarship for one student to study at the University of Bath, in England, for a semester. Esme didn’t want to recommend Missy because she thought the girl lazy. Whoever won the scholarship was expected to return from England with nothing less than an A-. Professor Esme Dane wanted to see a fresh paper, a thoughtful paper exploring the changes in British class structure after the French Revolution. But when pressed, Missy Strand teared up and fled.

After an hour, Esme wished someone would call in a bomb threat, anything so she could leave for the day. At three o’clock she got her wish. The storm blew in off the Boston Harbor, enveloping the campus in a nor’easter. By three-thirty everyone was told to go home. On her way to her car, Esme looked for the kittens. She started out the door when she thought to look under the stairs. The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father spat past her. Another step down and Esme saw the tips of Julia’s rubber-toed sneakers, and then Julia herself, still sitting on the sofa with her arms crossed and her backpack zipped shut.

“You again,” said Esme. “We’re supposed to leave. There’s a blizzard blowing in.”

“You go ahead,” said Julia. “I’ll leave in a little bit.”

“No, Julia. The university is closed.”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“I don’t believe you. The campus is empty. Do you need a ride somewhere?”

“I—not really.”

“Then come with me.”

“You really don’t want me.”

“Why is that?”

“Trust me.”

A siren began in the building above. “They’re going to lose power. Come on,” said Esme.

Julia wouldn’t budge.

“Look,” said Esme. “We have to leave. You can come to my house if you like.”

“I have head lice,” said Julia.

“Head lice?”

Julia avoided Esme’s eyes.

“Come on, we’ll stop at a drug store.”

* * *

Esme lived in the South End of Boston on the second floor of a townhouse built before the Civil War. Every wall in the apartment was lined with books. The shelves continued into the huge bathroom, where there were rows of moldering paperback mysteries. In the middle of the room was a giant bathtub with clawed feet. Esme filled it and added green bath oil, which made the tub look like a small pool in a large box of octagon tiles. Esme set fresh clothes for Julia on the armchair she kept in the bathroom. When Julia emerged, Professor Esme Dane sat her student on a stool in the middle of her kitchen and carefully began to comb the nits out of her hair.

“How did you learn to do this?” said Julia.

“My baby sister had a case or two growing up. Most kids on a farm do.” Esme looked at the instructions on the box. “Use special comb to remove dead lice.”

“The chemicals stink.” Julia sniffed.

“Do you have a cold?”

“I have asthma. The dust at school has been getting to me.”

A patch of dead lice clung tenaciously to Julia’s head, their eggs had adhered to shafts of hair a half inch from her scalp. Esme was pleased that she could see them so clearly, even though she knew it meant that Julia must have had the infestation for quite some time.

“This is embarrassing,” said Julia.

Esme chuckled. “My students accuse me of liking to nitpick. Here I am.”

Julia smiled, leaned forward so her curls hid her eyes. Then Esme noticed a tear fall off the girl’s face as she saturated the patch of lice with a cotton-ball full of Linden.

“It’s not that bad,” said Esme. “Where did you get them?”

“The last time I stayed in the shelter.”

“So you have been living on campus.”

Julia shrugged. “It beats the shelter, all those women who’ve fucked over their lives with men and kids.”

“The campus is dangerous at night,” said Esme. “There was a rape last year.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’ve learned how to stay low.”

They were silent.

"You gave me quite a fright this morning," said Esme.

“What’s the story with your briefcase?” Julia said, pointing to the ancient, somewhat shapeless leather bag Esme always carried. “It looks like it’s ready to belch papers.”

Esme smiled. “I bought it in Bath when I lived there. Every few years I get it re-sewn.”
“Why don’t you get a new bag? That one’s pretty beat.”

“You know, the leather from that bag was sealed in a cargo hold of a ship that sank in 1812.” Esme kept talking to distract herself. She enjoyed taking charge of Julia, of having an excuse to examine her hair closely, of soaking the roots of her hair with chemicals, then scruffing through her curls which held their shape, even when wet. “The leather sat at the bottom of the ocean for 150 years, until the harness maker in Bath got a hold of it.”

“So, you’ve just broken it in, is what you’re saying.”

“Pretty much,” said Esme. “There, now we let you sit for five minutes.”

Julia stretched. “Tell me about the Circus,” she said.

“The Circus?”

“In Persuasion,” said Julia. “In Bath.”

“I lived there, once,” said Esme.

“No!” said Julia. “How did you manage that?”

“I was writing my master’s thesis at Oxford.”

“Oxford. The Oxford?”

“The Oxford.”

“How did you do that?”

“I had a Fulbright.”

“What’s a Fulbright?”

“A scholarship.”

“So you lived in the Circus?”

“It was a sublet, and it was a grand summer. I stayed in Bath after Oxford.”

“Do you have pictures?”

“I do,” said Esme.

“Well, out with them,” said Julia.

Esme fetched a framed photo of herself taken thirty years before when she had long hair and no clue what she would do with her life.

“Look, it says Gay Street just like in Persuasion. You really lived there.”

“It’s time for phase two,” said Esme. She walked Julia to the kitchen sink and poured the second set of chemicals through the girl’s hair, then rinsed it with the small hand-held hose.

“It burns,” said Julia.

Esme held a facecloth to Julia’s forehead. “How’s that?” she said.

“I used to dye my hair when I danced downtown. Oh shit, this hurts.”

“Sorry,” said Esme. “Danced, were you with the ballet?”

“I wish,” said Julia. “I was an exotic dancer.”

“Really?”

“Does that bother you?”

“Not at all, why did you quit?”

“I had a little incident.”

“Oh?”

“No biggie, really. I've been banished to the university by a state agency. Yes, I'm thinking of changing my name to Doolittle.”

“Really?” said Esme.

“I shouldn’t have told you. Shit, me and my big mouth.”

“It’s not a problem,” said Esme. “I’ve heard worse.”

Esme had heard of convicts in state law school, or in the College of Public Service; of veterans finally straight enough to enroll for a BA thirty years after they came home from Vietnam. But never had she met a rehab case obsessed with literature.

Esme ran her fingers over her student’s scalp. “I think I got them all. I’ll give you fresh pajamas later. While I wash your clothes.”

“You mean I can stay the night?”

“The night,” said Esme.

* * *

It was time. High noon. Esme looked at the clock again. All the schools, including the university were closed. When the radio announced that the T was flooded and had shut down, Esme told Julia to stay.

But Esme wondered what to do. Julia was sitting on the sofa flipping the pages of a large book on Michelangelo. The girl seemed preoccupied. At five past the hour, Esme locked herself in the bathroom. Like staring at Julia the morning before—to see if her vision was clear—Esme touched a syringe kit, determined to feel it through numb fingers. She mixed the medication cocktail as the visiting nurse had showed her the week before. Then she sat in the armchair, and stuck herself in the thigh. Her right hand fumbled, unable to push down the plunger. She torqued the needle that pierced her flesh.

“Ow!” cried Esme, unable to move for a moment. She burst into tears. A minute passed.

“Professor Dane?” said Julia, through the door.

“Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

Esme wouldn’t answer. She attempted the injection again.

“Professor Dane are you all right?”

“No,” she said. “Go away.”

“Open the door.”

“No,” she said, barely audibly. A moment later Esme was surprised to hear the mechanisms of the lock scratching. Then she heard the lock turn. The door swung open.

“How did you do that?” said Esme.

“I picked the lock.”

Esme withdrew the needle from her thigh. “You’d think I could give an injection myself,” said Esme.

“Let me,” said Julia.

“My hand is numb. I can’t feel what I touch,” said Esme. “It makes me so damn mad!”

“Sit still,” said Julia.

“It’s not heroin,” said Esme.

“I know,” said Julia.

“It’s Interferon. Every week I get a shot in the opposite leg.”

“There. Done.” Julia withdrew the needle. Esme was stunned.

“Done. Done?” said Esme, pressing the puncture on her thigh.

“Easy pie,” said Julia.

“I’m not good with self injections,” said Esme, who touched the corner of her eye. “I have to get this down.”

Julia touched Esme’s hair. For a moment Esme leaned her head against Julia’s side.

“I could come back next week,” said Julia. “If you want.”

Esme nodded. The color began to leach from her face. She cleared her throat. “It’s working,” she said. “I have to lie down.” Esme lurched for the door and stumbled down the hall.

“It will be like I have the flu for the next ten hours,” said Esme. “I’ll probably sleep it off.”

“I should go,” said Julia.

“Stay,” said Esme. “Would you do me a favor? I’ll pay you? There’s fifty dollars on the kitchen table. Keep twenty and buy a few groceries with the other thirty.”


* * *

Esme slept soundly, with the vague feeling that she had a fever. When she awoke, the room was dark. Sleet ticked at the windows. She noticed that the apartment smelled of cooking and burning cedar. Esme was pleased. After previous injections she had woken up alone to a cold house. Julia must have thought to light a fire. As Esme sat up, she thought she smelled dope. She kicked off the covers, and sweat trickled down her spine. She wandered into the bathroom, and then down the hall to the living room.

Julia sat at Esme’s desk, tapping her foot. Around her neck was a short scarf, which accentuated her bare skin and cleavage. Julia was wearing Esme’s clothes, and Esme was stunned at how lovely the girl looked. When Esme wore the same low cut shirt, she had no idea that her exposed cleavage could be seen as sexy. On Julia, the plain old shirt was sexy, which somehow made Esme feel sexy—a feeling she hadn’t had in a while. Her eyes followed the satin trim of the neckline, which drew to a point between Julia’s breasts. Esme blinked. Her eyesight was so clear she blushed. Julia looked intelligent. She pouted as she read, and puffed on a joint. The joint became a roach in Julia’s next inhalation and bobbed on the end of the Randy wire that had been rolled in the cigarette paper.

Rather brazen, Esme thought. Julia had raided her stash. Esme admired and loathed the girl in the same instant. Then Esme noticed what Julia was reading. Fanned across the desk and spilling onto the floor were the blue exam books from the Austen midterm she had given the week before. Julia was holding a pencil with her other hand. She looked to be writing while she read from Esme’s grade book. Julia was sizing up the marks of every person Esme had taught in the previous two years. Perhaps Julia was even changing grades. Esme always entered them in pencil.

Julia looked up.

“What are you doing?” said Esme.

Julia giggled as she struggled for something to say.

“That’s privileged information,” said Esme. “I could have you expelled for that.”

“I was curious to see how I was doing,” said Julia.

“I’m going to get dressed,” said Esme. “In about two minutes I’ll be back. The blue books will be put away, and you’ll be doing something else.”

“I’ve made supper,” Julia said, hopefully. “Miss Dane?”

“Goddamn, my knee,” said Esme. “I’m falling apart. Just a minute.”

Five minutes later Esme limped to the table and sat down. Her grandmother’s linens covered the table. Her good silver had been set out and her wine glasses were dusted. “How kind of you to cook,” she said. “I didn’t expect it. I was thinking some cans of chicken soup would be enough.”

“Sodium broth is not food,” said Julia.

“It is in a pinch.”

“I’m sorry about—”

Professor Dane raised her hand.

“I mean—”

“Hush, Julia. Oh, how lovely. An entire turkey.”

“And I’ve made garlic bread.”

“And asparagus,” said Esme, serving herself.

“I can explain,” said Julia.

“Let me ask you,” said Esme. “How would you feel if you knew a classmate had read your and everyone else’s exam? If some classmate was fiddling with the teacher’s grade book. Would you think it was fair?”

“I just wanted to know where I stand,” said Julia. “I want to take the exam over. Besides, I was doodling.”

“Doodling?”

“I have this habit of making little art galleries with Post-it notes. Go look at your desk, I’ve hung a show for you. They’re all pencil abstracts. I’m in my graphite period.”

Esme went to her desk. Doodled Post-its were neatly stuck on all the drawers. Esme ran her fingers through her hair. “If you want help you should ask.”

“I am,” said Julia.

“You should visit me during office hours.” Esme sat down and took a bite of turkey. It was moist and should have been delicious, but her stomach was slightly sour. “And what were you doing smoking marijuana? My marijuana?”

“Sorry,” said Julia. “I liked sitting at your desk and looking out the window. It seemed like a natural thing to do.”

“To peek in all my drawers?”

“They were so cute, I couldn’t resist. Sorry.” Julia leaned back in her chair, averted her eyes, and sniffed.

“You look good in white,” said Esme. “I don’t care if you wear my clothes. But I do care if you smoke my dope.”

“I’ll pay you back,” said Julia.

“It’s not the money. It’s—oh hell—I smoke the stuff when I’m nauseous, which has been often, lately.”

“There’s still a roach, you want to smoke it?”

“Yes I do, thank you.”

Julia jumped to her feet, fetched the ashtray with the roach and sparked it for Esme. Esme took a long drag, keeping her eyes on Julia. The fire cracked in the fireplace.

“Pot is embarrassing for me to get,” said Esme.

Julia was clueless.

“The Marijuana. It’s illegal. I have to visit someone in a housing project to get it.” She took another drag and held her breath. “God forbid the people who need it most should be able to buy it with dignity. But no, there I am making connections in Southie. It irks me.” She took another hit and let the roach go out.

“I could score some for you,” said Julia.

“That’s one transgression too many,” said Esme.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re the student and I am the teacher. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I know, but.”

“Listen, do you have any idea how awkward it might be for me to see you around school, knowing that I want drugs from you?”

“It’s not like you’re a junkie. You want it for medicinal purposes.”

“It’s still a drug and it’s still illegal. You’re my student. A literature student—a very bright one—and I refuse to contribute any more complications to your life.”

Julia licked her lips. “There’s all sorts of things I could do for you if you’d let me.”
Esme wasn’t listening. The room seemed dark, and her eyes rested on the white of Julia’s t-shirt. She blinked and noticed Julia’s nipples erect through the fabric. Esme recognized her jeans as Julia parted her legs slightly. She admired how loose they appeared on the girl, how Julia's curves gave the familiar denim a new shape.

Julia leaned over and took Esme’s face in her hands. “I’d like to kiss you.”

Esme was caught off guard. She took a deep breath, stifling her impulse to kiss Julia.

“I can’t,” said Esme.

Julia pulled Esme’s face toward her, but Esme turned her cheek and hugged her instead. “I’m your teacher, darling. I’m flattered, but it wouldn’t be right.”

Julia leaned back, then kissed her anyway.

Esme gave in for a moment then pushed away. “I said no.”

“I like it when you stare at my breasts.”

Esme was suddenly enraged. “The word is no. I don’t need or want you!”

“Excuse me.” Julia got up abruptly and went down the hall to the bathroom.

Esme had seen tears in Julia’s eyes. She cleared her throat and waited for Julia to compose herself and return. She hadn’t seen fresh linen on her table in over a year. She uncorked the wine and filled the glasses she hadn’t used since she’d been diagnosed with MS. The candles flickered in the draft, as the building was buffeted by wind. It was lovely of Julia to prepare a meal. Esme decided that she liked having her around, but that she needed to re-establish a boundary. She was the teacher, Julia was the student. She would apologize for staring and tell Julia about her problems with vision.

“Julia?” called Esme after a few minutes. “Dinner is getting cold.”

No answer.

“Julia, come out now,” said Esme. “We’ll talk it over.”

Esme got up and went down the hall. The bathroom door was open. Five steps beyond, Esme saw that the door to the apartment was left ajar. Esme closed the door and went to the front of the building. The streets of the South End were empty. She looked out the window to the north and saw a figure walking towards Massachusetts Avenue. The figure was enveloped by snow, then disappeared. Esme’s face burned with a slight fever. She slumped at the beautifully set table. When the food had cooled, she ate alone.

* * *

The Austen seminar became dull. Without Julia blurting opinions out of turn, the class was rudderless. Missy Strand sat through class pretending to take notes. Esme noticed that she drew horses when she was bored. Professor Esme Dane’s office hours came and went, and for all her visits to the stairwell, Esme had seen neither Julia nor the gray kitten all week. What had she done? She asked herself. Julia’s clothes, as well as her coat, were all still in the wash when she walked out. Whenever Esme thought of the figure disappearing in the snow she felt a terrible guilt. Where did she go? Was she warm enough?

* * *

It was Tuesday midmorning, and it was time. Esme let out a sigh and mixed her cocktail. Though she touched the syringe, though she held a drinking glass, her grip was clumsy. Small flecks filled the periphery of her vision. Esme dropped the glass and it shattered on the tiled floor. She sat in the armchair and looked at the broken pieces.

The doorbell rang.

“Who is it?” Esme said curtly into the intercom.

“Let me up,” said the voice.

Esme walked to the front of the building and threw open the window. “Who’s there?”

Julia stepped out from the doorway wearing a plaid coat Esme hadn’t worn in years. The coat had belonged to her lover and they had bought it at the flea market in Oxford thirty years before. Esme hadn’t even noticed that the coat was missing. When she fled the week before, Julia must have taken it from the coat rack by the door. She wore the coat belted and it suited her. Esme Dane needed to smoke. In Julia’s arms was the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father. Esme noticed that the kitten was now a full-grown cat, with splayed toes that he flexed from under Julia’s arm.

“Hamlet’s eyes are fucked up,” called Julia. “I think he needs a doctor.”

Esme buzzed Julia in, lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke out the window.

“I believe he has a cold,” said Esme. “He needs to be warm.”

“How do you know?” said Julia.

“I grew up on a farm,” she said. “Put him down, let him wander.”

Hamlet shook his ears and sneezed. He crouched, looked about but didn’t move. Esme longed to smooth his fur. She turned to Julia and stifled her impulse to hug her, to straighten her collar and touch her cheek to see if she was wearing rouge, or if her skin was chapped.

“Where have you been?” Esme finally said.

“Thinking,” said Julia. “I’m sorry about last week.”

“Me too,” said Esme. “Look, this isn’t a good time for me. I have to—”

“I promised I’d come back,” said Julia. “I’ll do it.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I felt bad. I’m not a cheat, Professor Dane. And I’m not a dope fiend or thief, either.”

“I didn’t think that you were.”

“I was trying to help you,” said Julia. “Because—the truth is I need help. I wanted you to like me, that’s all.”

“I do like you,” said Esme. “All right—I could use an extra hand that’s steady. My thumbs have a mind of their own. While I’m sleeping, will you shop and cook again? I’ll pay you. Then we’ll talk. Only this time don’t go running away.”

Julia gave the injection and they both lay down on Esme’s bed to watch the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father, who had made himself at home on the middle of the feather duvet. Esme dozed off watching Hamlet preen his splayed toes.

* * *

After the shopping, after Julia had set out Little Friskies and litter for Hamlet, after the meal and the candles, Esme and Julia sat before the fireplace.

“I’m going to ask you questions and I want you to promise not to bolt,” said Esme. “I worried terribly about you this week.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because I see far too many people float into the university and out again because no one pushes them. Tell me,” Esme said. “You got an A on the essay section of the midterm. Why did you go on and get every single multiple-choice question wrong?”

“I have a little problem with numbers.”

“Did you study?”

“Of course I studied,” said Julia. “Ask me any one of those questions and I’ll tell you the answer.”

“Why are you angry?” said Esme.

“Because—the truth is—I have to have an A,” said Julia.

“And why is that?”

“Because I owe it,” said Julia.

“That’s news to me,” said Esme. “I didn’t know students owed A’s. To whom do you owe an A?”

Julia shrugged.

“I thought you had to get a C or better to stay in the university. After all, it is a state school,” said Esme.

“And what good would that do me?” said Julia. “You think people who get C’s get to have a desk like that?” she pointed to Esme’s desk.

Esme smiled. “I found that on the street, darling.”

“You did?” said Julia.

“In the trash. Total rubish”

“Look at that, you still have the gallery.”

Esme looked at the art show made of Post-Its. “I like your drawings very much,” she said.

Julia sighed. “Don’t you think I owe an A to every person who took a chance on me? The truth is I’ve spent so many years working the nookie clubs I had no idea I had room in my head for words. I had no idea I could love books as much as I do.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve wasted years. Look at me, I’m getting so old.

Esme stifled her impulse to laugh. Julia old? She looked like she was in her late twenties.

“It used to be so easy” said Julia. “I’d dance at the club. Everyone wanted you, the younger the better. It’s crazy, Professor Dane, guys want to have sex with people who look like little girls. The more innocent and vapid looking, the better.”

“Tell me why?” said Esme.

“Because they can control them,” said Julia. “You know what happened? I was a Foster child. I ran away when I was seventeen. I hitchhiked to Boston from Fitchburg, got a fake ID, the whole bit. But then comes the day when you no longer pass as young, and a whole slew of little girls usurp your place, and then you’re lucky to walk away with a hundred dollars at the end of the night.”

Esme nodded.

“I shouldn’t be telling you all this.”

“Go on,” said Esme. “Get it out.”

“And do you know the worst of it? My future was decided by how I filled in those fucking ovals in tenth grade.”

“What ovals?” said Esme.

“Duh, Professor Dane, the ovals on a Stanford-9 form. Those god-awful tests; those same forms you gave us two weeks ago for the midterm. I always mismatched things, or read the wrong book at the wrong time. Those tests always came back saying ‘WRONG! You’re fucking wrong and an idiot!’ So I started playing dot-to-dot with the exams to pass the time and no one stopped me.”

Sleet tapped the window pane.

“I need to try again, Professor Dane. I need A’s and I’m not going to cheat to get them. I don’t care if I’m sleeping somewhere on campus. I’m a million miles from working a strip joint and every time I see an A I can almost imagine a different life. A future with a desk like that and clothes like yours.”

“Where have you been this week? Where did you go?”

“I have my places,” said Julia.

“Were you on campus?”

“I was.”

“Well?”

Julia shrugged. “I hide.”

“Why?”

“I was embarrassed.”

“Where?”

Julia averted her gaze. “My favorite place is in the library. Before the place is locked down, I go up into the ceiling tiles and into the ducts.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, why would I?”

Esme sighed. “It must get terribly cold.”

“Or hot, depending on the time of year. But I have several places.”

“Can I help you find a real place to live?”

“Actually, yes,” said Julia. She bit her lip and didn’t say anything for a moment. “I was hoping you’d help me get that scholarship to study at the University of Bath.”

“Oh, you were, were you?”

“Yes. I’ve decided I’d like to live in Bath, which is one of the reasons I need the aces.”

Esme laughed.

“I’m serious,” said Julia. “If I keep getting A’s I’m eligible. You need a 3.75 to even apply and I have a 3.86.”

“Do you?”

“Are you surprised?”

“No,” said Esme. “But let me ask you. Did you make a pass at me last week thinking I would change your grade?”

“It crossed my mind. But the truth is—the truth is—I kind of have a thing for you and I can’t help it. In fact, I get crushes on my teachers. I know that sounds dumb—I’ll leave now if you want me to.” Julia stood up.

“Sit down. No, I don’t want you to leave,” said Esme. “Do you make passes at all your teachers?”

“Of course not,” said Julia. “You think I could stand feeling like this twenty times over? It’s you that I like.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re cool. You could make me love anything. You could teach an entire seminar on bear shit and it would be great. I think that’s sexy, Professor Dane. And look at your clothes. No sissy shit. Look at your hair.”

“It’s gray.”

“White, Miss Dane. White. Who has hair so blond it’s white? That’s cool. Sometimes I can’t stop looking at you. Okay, I feel like an idiot.” Julia kicked the leg of her armchair and looked at the fire.

“I think you have a crush on learning, not me,” said Esme.

“I beg to differ.”

Silence filled the room. “You want to live in Bath? That’s daring.”

Julia rummaged through the front of Esme’s old jacket. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Everyone should smoke,” said Esme. She lit a cigarette and shook out the match.

Julia fished a small pipe out of her pocket, loaded the bowl, sparked it, and took a deep puff.
“Maui Wowie,” said Julia. “Would you like some?” She offered the pipe to Esme, then took it back. “Oh, never mind. You said you didn’t want me to score dope for you. Sorry. No offense.”
Esme watched as Julia took another hit.

“Girl, you do have nerve.” Esme held out her hand for the pipe and snapped her fingers.

“Oh, Professor Dane, I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.”

Esme snapped her fingers, “don’t be a brat, now,” she said. “It doesn’t become you.”

Julia handed over the pipe.

“Why do you need to go to Bath?” said Esme.

“I want to see the Circus—I want to see Jane Austen’s house—and stand where you stood in that picture—I want—I want to read.”

“Reading is good,” said Esme. “You don’t win the Bath Scholarship and then retire to the pastoral Cotswolds, you have to work when you get there.”

“I know that,” said Julia. “You caught me off guard. Bath is all I think about. Bath, and you. I’d take any class offered.”

“That’s more like it,” said Esme.

“I want to see the baths,” said Julia. “I want to touch the water and imagine it washing me clean.”

Esme cleared her throat. “I used to swim in the King’s Bath.”

Julia sat up straight. “No one is allowed to do that,” said Julia. “I don’t believe you.”

“It was the sixties,” said Esme. “When I spent the winter there.”

“No one has used the baths since 1923.”

“That’s what history books will tell you,” said Esme. “My lover was the grounds keeper. After the Pump House was closed and personnel had gone home, we’d swim. Sometimes we’d have to wait until 3 A.M. And we only did it in winter when the Cathedral was locked down and no one could spy on us.”

Julia was stunned. “You bathed at Bath?”

“I did.”

“What was it like?”

“Warm,” said Esme. “Even in the winter the water is 120 degrees. I’d dive in the water and come up somewhere in the middle with the snow falling all around.”

“Was the water as green as in the pictures?” said Julia.

“It was, but we swam at night.”

“Were you afraid?”

“I was in love.”

“Could you touch bottom?”

“If I dove,” said Esme. “But the water is full of minerals, so you float. We used to make love in the water, up against the diving stone.”

“You did?” said Julia. “You, Miss Dane? Wasn’t that illegal?”

“Don’t be a tease. I was wonderfully young. And foolish. My skin and hair used to be so soft. The waters supposedly have healing properties.”

“Tell me,” said Julia. “Didn’t you used to be a competitive swimmer?”

“I was,” said Esme. “That’s how I paid my way as an undergraduate.”

“Then how come you swim in the slow lane and flail around like you do?”

“The MS is betraying my body,” said Esme. “You have no idea what it’s like to have been a champion and then one day discover you can’t even get out of the pool.”

“Do you think the water at Bath would heal you? Would you swim there again?”

“If I had the chance.”

Julia was quiet for a moment. “I have to go to Bath. I have to have that scholarship, Miss Dane, that’s all there is to it. Can I take the exam over?” Julia started to cry.
Esme sighed. “Sit down at my desk,” she said. “I’ll ask you the same questions.” She got out a list from a file and took notes after each answer.

* * *

“You missed two,” said Esme. “Missing four or fewer is an A.”

Esme sorted through the blue books, found Julia’s and tore up the exam sheet. She replaced it with the notes she had taken, turned to the last page and changed the grade.

“The Dean prefers for the Bath scholarship to go to a student on the honors track,” said Esme. “So you behave. When, by the way, were you planning on asking for a recommendation letter?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know you needed one.”

“You’ll need three, I can only write one. Make sure your letter writers are willing to write dissertations.”

“What do you mean?”

“Get people to write three pages of sheer praise. And another thing. No one in my class ever gets an A with more than two absences. You’ve had your two.”

“Oh thank you,” said Julia. She sprang into Esme’s lap, kissed her on the lips and hugged her.

“Behave, now.”

“I am as best I can,” said Julia.

Hamlet, having explored the apartment jumped up on a hassock in front of the fire and stretched. He circled once before curling up. Esme’s hand slipped beneath Julia’s shirt. Her hand pulled Julia closer long before she could feel the warmth of Julia’s skin.

Julia sighed and relaxed, touching Esme’s hair. “I am as best I can.”