As Sarah’s appointment was in the afternoon, it seemed advisable to send her off to school, an attempt to give her the impression that all was normal in our eyes. I too was off to school to face my auditorium full of rock-bored underclass folks. Still, breakfast was a quiet affair, which saw us seated at the table together, a rare configuration, as I usually ate standing between the sink and refrigerator while Sarah sat at the table while Meg consumed nothing at all, spending her morning gathering her students’ work. This day was a nonteaching day for Meg, and I observed her unsettledness. I felt relieved that I had someplace to be and something to do, even if it was describing the geologic features of the relatively small alluviated lowland that was the Los Angeles basin.

Anas discors. Four bones of this species were found, identifications based on the diagnostic tympanum. The blue-winged teal is the rarest of the teals in the region.

I was standing in the doorway to the lecture hall when Rachel Charles walked past me. She was quite obviously still unhappy with my having blocked her attention that night in the desert, but it seemed she was no less interested in me. This I gleaned from her protracted sidelong glance and her clothes, which were somewhat more revealing than usual. She sat in her customary first-row seat and conspicuously crossed her exposed legs. That I noticed at all made me feel bad. With her eyes down the entire period, she appeared to be taking notes. I found the absence of her gaze slightly more disconcerting than the adoring, fixed, and hungry stare that I had grown so used to apprehending. The most annoying effect of her newly found motif was that it served to arouse me somewhat, an arousal that I immediately recognized as another attempt on my part to ignore what was happening at home, but that made it no less shameful or opprobrious. My lecture ended with a description of the Playa del Rey, Inglewood, and West Newport oil fields and the threat that I would continue the same lecture at our next meeting. The students collected their things and made haste out of the room as they always did, and as she always did, Rachel was quite slow about packing up until she was, in fact, the last one leaving. She still hadn’t looked at me as she headed for the door.

“Rachel,” I said.

“Yes, Professor Wells.”

“Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” A good question that made me feel small and rather stupid.

“I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings the other night.”

“Well, maybe. But you were right. Why would someone like you be interested in someone like me?” And then she walked out.

I had to admit that it was an unsatisfying exchange, and yet I was happy it was so abruptly concluded. What would I have said if she had lingered? Lord knows. It could not have been good, that was all I knew.