I walked through the building the long way, as I had coming in. The teacher I’d fucked was not in sight, thank God. But standing in the entry to the building, talking to her hanger-on friend, was Lacey. My chest tightened. She had long, straight, shiny hair, the kind I’d always envied, and as I inched toward her she flicked it over her shoulder, giving her “friend” a smug little laugh. The other girl looked up at her, starved for more. Lacey glanced around and caught me coming toward them, then gave me that taut smile again.

“See you tomorrow,” she said, but there was something hard in her eyes.

I ran my tongue back and forth along the roof of my mouth—it’s a dick—but dicks weren’t the only thing I loved; I loved teaching, I did love my students, I did love Freud.

“Yes,” I said, “see you tomorrow,” and I brushed past them and out into the windy autumn afternoon, hair whipping into my mouth and all around my face.

I walked across the park and all the way to the other side of the island, then the fifteen blocks up West End. At the building on the corner, the doorman appeared to know every canine in the neighborhood; he squatted and threw open his arms, and they pranced over, tails swinging. “Ziggy!” he shouted. “Socks!” “Bernadette, my girl!” Two women in pencil skirts and a man in paint-covered pants and boots waited in line at the coffee cart. A mother with a heavy Russian accent spoke sharply to her unfazed daughter: “It like you don’t know even where you live!”

The building faced Riverside Park. I was still early, so I crossed over and sat on a bench. Nearby, a dark-bearded dad in rolled-up khakis and boat shoes, bare ankles catching the breeze, watched his two girls run in a circle, round and round, trailing streamers behind them. One of them saw me and gave a coy smile, so unanticipated it made me remember about laughter. The dad was relaxed, tilting his face up into a beam of sun, even as the wind blew his hair back like stalks of grass, and so his girls were relaxed, too, safe and elated.

One of the girls tripped and caught herself with her palms on the concrete. There was a pause while she registered the pain, and I braced myself for her cry. But her dad was walking over to her, not frantically, but with purpose; he was squatting next to her, putting his hand on her back. “You’re okay,” he told her, rubbing her small back: not a question, a statement. Not panic, a safety blanket. She was okay. She nodded, pushed herself back onto her feet, brushed off her knees. He gave her a gentle push and she was off running again.