My research paid off in a bad way. I learned that California was running out of water, that there were too many people compressed into too little space too far from natural water sources. Even in Kansas, I’d been complicit: the production of a single California walnut required five gallons of water, and I liked to eat my walnuts by the handful. I learned that the college town had played host to a series of freak tragedies: stranglings, decapitations, body parts Saran Wrapped and left in Dumpsters. Even nature seemed bent on retaliation. More than four people had died after driving into the same eighty-year-old magnolia tree. Further research suggested the tap water might cause organ cancer and that rabid bats roamed the treetops after sundown.

Where had Alec brought me? Better question: Why had I let him?

The first week, Alec came home before dinnertime, tired and grumpy. His office was hot, and the students were stupid.

“I thought this was supposed to be a world-class public university,” I said.

He brought a tub of mint chip ice cream from the freezer and hacked at it with a fork. He was on a medicine that made him crave sugar—on more than one occasion I’d caught him in bed at dawn, a salad bowl of Lucky Charms in his lap. “They’re just rich kids who want to stay rich,” he said. “All they really want to do is design drugs or build robots. They just need my class for the language credit.”

“You’re saying not one of them actually cares about learning a new language?”

Something flickered in his eyes, a premonition of danger. “There’s one girl—her father’s a diplomat. She already knows Italian and Spanish. It’s like teaching a fish to drink water.”

“A girl?”

He shoveled more ice cream into his mouth. “Don’t worry, she’s probably gay. They’re all gay here. Or Marxist.”

I grabbed the tub of ice cream, brought it to my face, and licked the surface.

“Gross,” Alec said, yanking the tub from me. “What’s the matter with you?”

“It’s mine,” I said, pointing to the ice cream. “Everything I touch is mine.”

He winced. Sometimes this happened: I played baby, he played dad. “Have you thought about looking for a job?” he said. “They’re hiring at the cafeteria.”

“I have a degree in linguistics.”

“And my barista has a PhD in philosophy. Get over yourself.” He stood and took the ice cream to the living room, which meant he relocated it about a yard east of the kitchen table.

“I want to take a class,” I called to him. “I’m wasting my potential here.”

He did not look at me but instead turned on the television. “It’s your life. Do what you want.”

I decided that academia was stupid, and so I signed up for a woodworking class I planned to pay for with the rent money I would withhold from Alec. I’d recently read an article in the New Yorker about a novelist who claimed to have learned everything she needed to know about writing from her years laying brick in Indiana. Surely woodworking would open up some dusty cellar door in my soul, revealing a room of glittering treasure.