Pru started in talking about witches, about the necessity of their role in early New England communities. “Everybody recognized they weren’t witches, actually. Really, their function was blame,” she said.

“I didn’t know,” I said.

Pru shrugged. “It was a way to deal with spinsters, ’cause unmarried women were threatening to a culture so small and so—you’d be astounded—so sexually active.”

Her eyes, I noticed, were shaded cobalt-blue.

“And not that many witches were actually burned, actually,” she said. “You probably know all this and you’re humoring me.”

I said I didn’t. I hadn’t heard Pru’s version, anyway.

“How was it you met Raf?” I asked her.

“Riff-Raf? Oh, he and this guy I fuck—or, used to—Raymond Hollander. They picked me up from work one night after my car croaked. Raf was real sick but he was cool behind it—he looked good—and he was fun to talk to.”

That was pretty much my own assessment of Raf, I supposed, except he wasn’t always fun to talk to.

I had a meeting with an SHS administrator—Carla Cook.

I said, “Carla,” but her focus stayed stuck on the memo before her.

Around her office, green and rhubarb-red plants exploded from macrame hangers. She had up a Wagner poster. Raspberry gulls flew off the rim of her teacup.

“Carla?” I said again.

“Let me interrupt you,” she said, “or I’ll lose the thought. To remind you about the president’s picnic for the summer people. It’s tonight, at five, in front of Lee Auditorium.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Now. As you know, I’m not working here anymore but you did promise to pay me up-top, although I learned the checks aren’t being processed till mid-September. Also—doesn’t matter now—but my parking decal and library card and swimming-pool pass still haven’t come through.”

Without glancing up, Carla handed over an envelope inscribed with my name. “That was left with us,” she said.

Inside was a poem from Barny, the particle physicist. I lowered into an armchair to read the folded page.

In the cyclotron is shattered

Matter into antimatter

Straining meaning through a sieve

Till all the world’s a negative.

“Sorry to appear rude, but don’t settle in,” Carla said. “Briefly let’s just agree we won’t enter anything into your work record, Mrs. Deveaux. We’ll pretend nothing happened.”

“With my class? Nothing did happen except one day they all decided they didn’t want to write poetry anymore.”

“I don’t buy it,” Carla said.

“I don’t care, it’s true.”

“True,” Carla said, without looking at me.

“You know it is,” I said. “I know it is. Your ugly plants know. What’s true is true.”

Davey Salizar, who’d got me the conference job, said, “Maybe she was right.”

“Shut up, Davey. For you the truth is whatever’s hardest, most loathsome, and disagreeable.”