She checked his window again. Still dark, though they’d left hours ago. He must have gone to the office, she decided, where he was probably intently reading terrible manuscripts, making good suggestions that their authors would not heed. Marianne put on a pair of heels, low sandals, and walked across the garden. She could see the light inside, the door propped open.

But it was Tom she found, not Eric, standing helplessly next to the copier. All its doors were opened, and there was a burning smell in the room.

“Mary-Anne,” he said. “Thank God.”

In her heels and her dress, she knelt beside the copier, pulling levers and turning knobs, extracting torn bits of paper that smeared her fingers with ink. He backed away, not even bothering to pay attention to how to do it. Finally the copier made the sighing noise that indicated you could try again.

“Okay,” she said. “All yours. Just try one at a time. Have you seen Eric?”

“Not my day to watch him,” Tom said. He set his book on the glass and pressed the copy button without closing the lid, though she’d warned him that it wasted ink and made the machine more likely to jam. Turning his face from the copier’s green flash, he gave her the once-over. “Hey, you look really nice. You and Eric going somewhere?”

Marianne looked down at her wrinkled, toner-smeared dress. “No, I guess not.”

Tom turned the page in his book, then set it down on the glass again. “I forgot, he’s out with that Republican babe, right?”

“And Davonte. It’s a business meeting,” said Marianne. “Why would you be into a Republican, Tom? It doesn’t seem like your thing.”

He shrugged. “People have a lot of things. Sometimes you want to be with a woman you hate. Sometimes you want to feel bad. Guilty. It’s some kind of potent Oedipal shit.”

“Eric isn’t like that.”

“Yeah, probably not.” The copier jammed again. “Forget it. I’ll deal with this in the morning.”

“Great,” she said, yanking the paper drawer open again. “You’ll deal with it. Thanks a lot, Tom.”

She looked behind her and saw that Tom was already gone, and she was alone. She sank down to the grubby tiled floor and leaned against the exhausted copier, which should have been leaching chemicals into a landfill by now. It occurred to her to go by Janine’s room—it was only ten o’clock—and see if she wanted to take a walk.

She looked up her room number, then went back to her own room and changed into her only pair of shorts and a sweatshirt. She scuffed on her comfortable flip-flops and took out her heavy earrings.