“The Master,” he said approvingly, handing her a mug of herbal-smelling liquid and sitting across from her. “That’s a worthy subject for someone as bright as you.”

He scooted his chair in and placed his elbows on the table.

“Do you know what T.S. Eliot said about James?” Aaron said, sipping his tea. “He said that he had a ‘mind so fine no idea could disturb it.’ So it’s up to us lesser lights to put the ideas back in.”

He recited the famous quote ponderously and slowly. Coming out of his mouth, it occurred to Lara for the first time that it was a ridiculous thing to say about a novelist. She could use that, maybe.

“You know this counts as part of your hour, right?” she said.

“Of course,” he said. “But it would be sort of artificial to just get right down to it. I thought that we could spend this session just getting to know each other. I’ll still pay you.”

“I guess you’re right,” Lara said. She tried to disguise her relief.

“Which novels are you writing about?” he said.

Lara had an elevator pitch ready by this point. “Um, Portrait and Washington Square. I’m focusing on the characters of Catherine Sloper and Madame Merle. I’m using Butler and Foucault, mostly. Some Bourdieu too, although I mostly disagree with him.”

“Mm. When I was your age, no one even thought about reading that Frenchie stuff until graduate school,” he said. “Heavy artillery to aim at such delicate artworks. Well, I can sort of imagine your argument there.”

Was this a goad, or was the condescension genuine? She propped her elbows on the table and leaned over at him and grinned.

“Tell me what I’m going to say, then,” she said.

He leaned back in his seat. His wry smile deepened, revealing laugh lines around his eyes and forehead.

“This is just a guess, but I suppose you mean to say that the characters are products of discourses, including but not limited to the discourse of the realist novel, and you’re going to endeavor to show that these discourses are essentially male, an unfair game, and in the end you’ll have devised a way to extract the morals of the reticent author from his work. The triumph of theory over subjectivity.”

“I’m actually going to say that Henry James was a trans woman,” Lara said without missing a beat. “And that he hated himself for it so much that he was only capable of producing helpless female dupes and, like, caricatures of manipulative harpies. Both Madame Merle and Cathy Sloper are self-portraits.”

“Now that’s an interesting thesis,” he said.

“I’m joking,” Lara said quickly.

“You might not be entirely wrong,” he said.

“Don’t say that,” Lara said.

They both laughed in a forced sort of way. Fifty minutes left, she thought.

♒