Thinking, with a thrill of fear—He still has time. Whatever he has in the backpack, he can take out to use against you.

“Fucking cunt. Like all of them.”

Kroff has stepped out of the office, but he pauses outside the door. You can hear him panting. You hold your breath, praying he will not suddenly turn back.

But after a moment Kroff walks away … You stand very still, listening beyond the pounding of your heart to him walking away.

It’s a trick. He isn’t gone. He is waiting.

In case he is listening, you take out your cell phone, pretend to make a call. In a loud, bright voice saying, “I’m leaving now, I’ve been delayed. No—fine. I should be home in twenty minutes …”

Hesitantly you approach the doorway. Peer out into the hall, which is dimly lighted. Your eyesight seems blurred, you can’t see clearly. But thank God, no sign of Kroff.

And so you gather your things with shaky hands, switch off the overhead light. Still, your heart is beating painfully.

Before you leave, you cast your eyes over the bleak, subterranean room. Two aluminum desks, books crammed into a bookcase, a faded poster for Shakespeare in Love. You will never meet the individual with whom you share this melancholy workplace.

A discomforting odor here of moldering old books, a young man’s heated skin, your own animal panic. You will never return, you think. If you have office hours, you will schedule them for the seminar room, immediately following the workshop.

Shut the door, which locks automatically. Make your way to the women’s restroom. Inside, trash containers are overflowing. There is a smell of drains. Timidly you cup your hand to a faucet, swallow two migraine pills. Ecstatic pain has already begun to blossom behind your eyes.

Soul sickness. The migraine deep inside the brain.

One day you will discover that Kroff is not a veteran. You will make inquiries, for he will have (soon) imprinted his fury deep upon your soul. Where no one else has entered, in that (secret) place of migraine pain, yet Kroff will (soon) enter. You will learn that he is thirty-two years old. You will learn that he did not serve two deployments in Afghanistan; he did not see combat anywhere. You will learn that twelve days after arriving at basic training in Columbia, South Carolina, Gavin Kroff was discharged for “medical reasons” and shipped back home to Minnesota.

But now: when you dare to leave the restroom, you hear footsteps on a stairway and recoil in fear, absurd fear (you are thinking), for it’s only a young woman, a student, who takes no notice of you.

And voices elsewhere, for Lyman Hall is not entirely deserted: evening classes are scheduled for seven o’clock.

Not alone. Not at risk. You chide yourself.