“Wouldn’t that be funny? If you wound up with a GWGW executive, and I wound up with Tom?”

“Very funny, Marianne.” Eric stacked his dishes and stood. That was how it was with him: one minute, laughing and joking, the next minute you’d gone too far.

“Sorry,” she said, grabbing his shirtsleeve. “I promise I won’t wind up with Tom.”

Eric nodded to show that he forgave her, but didn’t make any promises himself.

Meanwhile, unaided by GWGW, the workshops took on lives of their own, their strangenesses multiplying like feral cats under a porch. Lorraine began holding her classes in the sculpture garden, so she could smoke, and her students looked fairly happy to be sitting cross-legged and barefoot on the ground, in between Cain and Abel and Adam and Eve, while she barked instructions at them. Tom now began each of his classes with beachfront tai chi or meditative deep breathing to help soothe the anxieties and feelings of his students. Eric had begun running in the afternoons with Davonte, so they could talk about ideas for the novel. A few times Marianne caught him when he returned from these runs, sweaty and breathless and slightly scandalized. You don’t want to know, he told her, when she asked what they’d talked about.

The special classes on publishing and marketing were not scheduled until their next session, in August, but each day Marianne received emails from Regina, many of them including animated PowerPoint résumés of speakers they planned to book. The students’ complaints, so vigorous at first, had lessened with each passing day. She was not sure if the complainers were getting used to their teachers’ methods and quirks, or losing faith in her ability to intercede on their behalf.