Beans is pretty sure that Marta does not know what to make of him, but that her refined and at least partially unconscious powers of pattern recognition have convinced her of his intelligence. He, for his part, would like: First, to secure a letter of recommendation from her, and, then, with this out of the way, to attempt to understand what makes her tick. If he were not currently practicing celibacy as a form of mental and spiritual self-discipline, it is likely that the two of them would be making love on a daily basis.

Marta is drinking white wine from a small green glass she must have brought for herself from home. Beans hovers at her side. Marta smells—he thinks, uncharacteristically employing simile—like an ocean breeze traveling along the tip of a rosebud. In fact, she is sex on a stick. Her face is small with a long, straight nose. Her jewelry makes elegant sounds.

“So my procedure,” Beans begins to explain, but here something very, very unpleasant occurs.

An enormous male-model type in a hot-pink hat inscribed with an obscene slogan appears at the condiment station. Beans’s fragile web is disturbed as Marta’s interest shifts. The bro has a pair of plump dogs over which he deploys nauseating quantities of ketchup, nodding approvingly to himself. A couple yards off, a weird, undersized person who looks a lot like a fraternity torture victim due to fading permanent marker drawings on his face, and who must be the wingman of the philistine, is miserably peeling the label from his beer bottle.

Marta turns away from Beans.

It is like this scumbag thinks Marta is another student, albeit one aging gracefully into her mid-forties via a budget that permits investment in Prada and the occasional foray into Comme des Garçons. And the truly frightening thing is that Marta seems to like it! She smiles that slow, dreamy smile of hers and offers the goon her hand. She greets him as if she remembers him from somewhere, which, if Anton Beans permits his worst fears momentary realization, must be his application to the program.

“Troy Loudermilk,” Marta says. “Welcome.”

The piece of shit is saying, “Welcome to you, too.”

“Yes,” Marta tells him. She makes no effort to introduce herself, rather examining the face of Troy Loudermilk. “You look so different?”

“That’s funny,” this most complacent of oafs replies. He is fussing with a pickle jar.

“I meant, from how I’d imagined you,” Marta finishes. “I never look at the photographs. It’s barbaric the university even makes us ask our students for them. The unaccountable needs of bureaucrats!” Some stronger sentiment seems to flit across her face but is quickly dissolved under another indolent smile. “Lovely to see you.”