Assuming that Kozak’s last remark was a slight, Fallner was about to respond when the buzzer signaled the end of the hour. As one the class began shoving books and binders into bags and backpacks, preventing Professor Fallner from responding to Kozak’s impertinent oratory. Pleased that she had managed to get the last word in, Nancy looked directly at Fallner and smiled. The professor merely stood at his lectern, thinking all sorts of horrible and unkind thoughts that did not conform to the liberal image that he was so careful to cultivate.

Once in the crowded corridor Helen Swanson caught up with Kozak. “As always,” Helen shouted in an effort to make herself heard over the noise of hundreds of disjointed conversations and the shuffling of feet, “you got to old Foulner again!”

Nancy laughed, as much at the mutilation of the man’s name as at her minor triumph. “I just can’t help it,” she explained as they followed the flow of students toward the stairwell. “He throws out ludicrous statements and all but dares me to respond.”

Helen laughed. A mother of three, she was returning to graduate school after an absence of many years. “Sometimes he reminds me of my former husband. Not only was he always right, the mere idea that someone, especially a woman, disagreed with him was unthinkable.”

“Well,” Nancy replied jokingly, “thank God I’ve never known anyone like that.” This comment caused both women to laugh.

While still battling their way through a mass of students, Helen ventured a word of advice. “As much as it can be entertaining to play with him in class, it doesn’t pay to piss off the professor. In the end he’s the final arbiter of who goes on and who fails. I was a teacher far too long not to be tempted to abuse the power that the grade book gave me.”

Having already considered this, Nancy shrugged off Helen’s warning. “He’s too smart to fail me,” she explained. “His course is a prerequisite for Professor Turnbull’s. If Foulner fails me he faces the agony of spending another semester with me in his class. No,” Kozak reasoned as she paused to watch her step as she began to descend the stairs. “He’ll pass me. And he’ll do so with a good grade just to be rid of me. The man’s little more than a jellyfish, capable of inflicting an annoying sting every now and then but with absolutely no backbone.”

This caused Helen to let out a loud and unladylike guffaw. “Nancy,” she called out as they rounded the turn at the landing and started down the next flight of stairs amid a herd of fellow students, “you’re too much. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Kozak smiled. She too didn’t know what she would have done without Helen. They had begun the fall semester feeling totally out of place in an environment foreign to them both. Helen, in the process of divorcing her first husband, had latched onto Nancy for both support and comfort. Nancy responded by befriending the thirty something woman and accepting her warm invitations to join her small family whenever she could. This helped ease Nancy’s transition from an aborted military career into civilian life. During quiet, reflective moments, when Helen’s children were in bed and the two women were alone in a cluttered living room that reeked of family and togetherness, Nancy would often turn to Helen and tell her how in debt she was to her for the kindness and understanding that she had shown her during a most difficult period. Helen, giving Nancy the same patient smile she had used when speaking to her own children, downplayed her role. “I’ve done nothing special,” she explained, “except provide a sympathetic ear and a warm hand to hang onto when you asked.”