Telephoning home, she was certain to ask about everyone, including neighbors, in detail. And Wilma, echoing Marya’s bright manner, answered her in detail; though interrupting herself now and then, to say with a nervous little laugh that this conversation was long distance, wasn’t it, and must be costing a small fortune, and did Marya really want to know all these things . . . ? “Oh, hardly a small fortune,” Marya protested, though in truth she didn’t always exactly follow all that Wilma reported. Joey had a part-time job working for . . . and Davy was on the first-string football team . . . and Lee’s wife Brenda had another little girl, the sweetest thing . . . or had Wilma told her that last time? Everard’s blood pressure was high and the fool was supposed to be off salt but Marya knew how he was: stubborn as an ox: still twenty pounds too heavy. But business was all right, Wilma said almost reluctantly. She supposed they couldn’t complain.

The telephone line was beset with static when Marya, in turn, spoke rapidly and half in embarrassment of herself. She had the idea that Wilma followed very little of what she said, that her questions and approving murmurs were only courtesies (an article accepted where?—what kind of journal?—will it be on the newsstand in town, will people see it?); but at the same time it was Marya’s obligation to supply Wilma with something—virtually anything—about which she might casually boast to her women friends. (Oh, Marya called last night, she keeps in close contact though her life is very busy, yes she’s planning to come visit next time she has a chance. . . .)

Afterward Marya’s ear invariably ached from pressing the receiver so hard against it. She rubbed it, caressed it, gently, for some time.

IT WAS TRUE that her career prospered; she was doing very well for herself indeed. For instance, Maximilian Fein so clearly favored her that the others in his circle were jealous and even a little offended. She was one of the newer students in the program, after all; she was a woman of a certain sort . . . attractive, outspoken, possibly rather contentious; she certainly wasn’t self-effacing. (Maximilian Fein preferred his women—and his young men too, for that matter—to be self-effacing; or so it had always been thought.)

If Marya had been awarded a certain coveted grant for next summer, it was clearly Fein’s doing; if one of her seminar papers was scheduled to appear in Speculum, that most distinguished of journals, it could only be by way of intercession by Fein . . . after all, he was an advisory editor, wasn’t he? . . . and known to force his protégés on others.