So she thought only occasionally of Sylvester; and was able to forget him for days at a time. She worked very hard and thrived on it, was invigorated by it, uncomplaining, zealous, filled with ideas about how to organize her classes, how to draw out her quieter students, how to . . . make her way in this extraordinary phase of her life. Because she was new on the staff she hadn’t the immediate pressures of promotion and tenure to deal with; she even thought it rather petty, rather vulgar, of certain of her colleagues to spend so much time in careerist speculation. They were a few years older than Marya, extremely bright, competitive, hard-working; slightly fanatic on the subject of their futures; their youth a bit tarnished by habits of drollery and self-mocking irony. Impatient with the tone of an entire evening’s sociability, Marya made the point that teaching and scholarship really ought to be their primary concerns, and that this dwelling upon competing with one another, always competing, competing, made anything approaching friendship extremely difficult. And the group turned laughing on her, their good humor a little tinged with contempt: Why, how very extraordinary of Marya to have made this discovery! And had she come to such conclusions by herself? And was she planning not to “compete” but to leave the field to . . . her friends?

ONE WINTER AFTERNOON, late, Marya returned to her office from the library, to discover Sylvester seated boldly at her desk.

Big plump kingly Sylvester. Seated there at Marya Knauer’s desk, in her swivel chair. His face burnished and gleaming, his eyes hooded, the usual cigarette slanted in his lips. He must have heard her key in the lock and made the quick decision not to jump to his feet, not to betray any surprise or confusion or guilt. Instead it was Marya who was surprised, Marya who recoiled in alarm. The building had emptied out, they were alone on the floor together, it was past five-thirty and quite dark. . . .

Marya asked him what he was doing, what did he want, and though she was really quite frightened her voice sounded steady enough. Sylvester rose sighing and grunting from the chair, hitching his trousers. He made a last perfunctory swipe at the desk with one of his rags. “Just makin’ things neat,” he muttered, not looking at her.

Marya drew a deep breath and said, “I don’t want you going through my things. You know that. I asked you not to. I asked you. . . .”

Sylvester repeated that he was just making things neat, polishing things up, “just doin’ my job, Professor, how come you always at me?” She caught the little hiccup of merriment in his voice, saw the flash of his wicked gold tooth. When he brushed past her she smelled beer, sweat, tobacco smoke, Sylvester’s special dark odor of ammonia and disinfectant.