“You mean allergies?” Molly was surprised they let a dog in the dorms at all.

“No,” said Beth. “If there were allergies I wouldn’t be in Hurlbut. But some of the students are sensitive.”

That was an understatement. The Harvard kids were at Beth’s door from dawn until dawn again. There was never a free moment to crawl between the sheets without some wiener tapping that sharp knock that said, “While I acknowledge that, in theory, I’m a needy piece of crap, I nevertheless require your immediate response.”

The freshmen wanted advice about applying to med school or to report that their neighbors’ GChat alerts were turned up too loud or that the toilet seats were splashed in poop residue and the showerhead holes coated in gum. The gum was intended to increase water pressure but ended up steaming people in mint. Beth indulged the students like precious, dear children, nodding deeply at their monologues, tapping their shoulders and rolling her eyes at their pain.

Molly entered the suite. Every surface was layered with overlapping rugs and southwestern blankets, an effort to make a dorm cozy when you were in your late twenties and unwilling to surrender anymore to bluish institutional white.

When she sat on the armchair she felt, for an instant, the smiling muzzle of Chowder in her lap. This was the first time she’d sat here without him burrowing in, as though out of sweetness, and then taking a long drag of her crotch. Beth wasn’t coming back until later tonight, but Molly should call and tell her what had happened. Beth loved Chowder more than she loved Molly, or her family, or herself, crazy as that was.

Molly listened to the ocean on the receiver before dialing out of the Harvard system and onto the sonic wave of tone. Beth was in session, or in the hotel revising. Her presentation was in an hour, and her phone was off. Molly cleared her throat, preparing to leave a message in her ghastliest voice. The news would land smoother when Beth called back expecting dire news.

But then, abruptly, Beth was on the line.

“I have to get dressed in two minutes,” she said, as though they were already midconversation. “Judith Butler is here. I can’t believe no one warned me. I have to raise the barn. I have to.”

Beth bungled aphorisms, which Molly found endearing, considering she was in her fourth year of a Comp Lit PhD. She’d finished her coursework but couldn’t begin her dissertation until she accumulated three first-author publications. She was presenting a paper at a conference called Bodies that Matter.

“Then raise the barn,” Molly said. She normally hated discussing Beth’s stress, which washed over her like second-hand smoke, reminding her of all the careers she wasn’t pursuing, all the progress she wasn’t making. But right now she’d take any topic but Chowder.

“How am I supposed to raise the barn if I’ve been writing this paper for three months and I’ve already raised the goddamn barn a thousand times, like off the farm and practically out of the atmosphere, and now I can’t raise it any higher or everything’s going to topple like some kind of, I don’t know, tower of scarves? Cars? Whatever that’s called?”