She began teaching farther north at the College of Marin, then moved to San Francisco to be in the center of her work. I heard she had her hair cut short, bought a black Honda sedan, and started wearing suits and carrying her students’ papers in a briefcase. In this costume, she began to meet a higher class of men who drove Jaguars or BMWs instead of delivery vans, but by then I’d lost touch with her. I heard she met the unarmed man, but he didn’t recognize her; I also heard that when she saw him again he had arms, and smiled slyly at her confusion. Patty always claimed the whole thing was Ilka’s fantasy.

The truth is I don’t know how Ilka’s story ended, though I often think about the possibilities. Does she still expect to see him whenever a blue van comes up behind her, close on her tail as she heads down the freeway to San Jose? Self-defense has a different definition these days. Is she a cautious women who carries condoms wrapped in pink cellophane in her briefcase instead of a karate suit? Does he keep a box of them in the glove compartment below the dashboard of his van? Does he pull this box out with his toes, take off the lid, rip open a plastic packet with his teeth and, with his skillful big toe, glide the glistening pink sheath onto himself? Or does he reach his foot into the glove compartment and pull out a pistol, swirling it around on his big toe before he shoots her, just the way she likes it?

SUSAN ST. AUBIN

on “This Isn’t About Love,” first published in 1992

In “This Isn’t About Love,” I got the mix of my obsession with sex, politics, and personal relationships just about right, without the usual polemic I can so easily slip into. When I reread the story this time, I was surprised to find a lot more.

I was especially surprised by the autobiographical aspects. I’m always sensitive to this, protesting loudly that I make all this stuff up. “No, this isn’t my life, I’m lying, I’m inventing. I really lead quite a sedate life.”

But the truth is, “This Isn’t About Love” is a story about choices I made in my own life in the 1980s. It’s about the years that permanent teaching jobs were disappearing, both in public schools and in universities. I was a high school teacher in the 1970s, always a substitute, never permanent. Never any benefits. I went back to school to get my master’s in Creative Writing at SFSU with the hope of maybe teaching college, but there was no work there, either.