His mouth was slightly open; he may have been drooling. He was certainly snoring, though very softly. Marianne looked away.

Over the copier’s slow, high-pitched whine came a rumbling sound, and Eric startled. “What’s that?” he said, sitting up and blinking. The rumble settled into the recognizable sound of a motorcycle, and as the motor stalled, then stopped, Marianne could hear the group near the pool go quiet.

“Let’s hope it’s Tom.” Marianne had given up trying to locate him hours ago and had prepared to teach his first class herself. This had involved reading chapter one of two memoirs—the first from the Desert Storm veteran, the second from the preacher’s wife. They’d encouraged the students to send new work—not the same material they’d used in their applications, and maybe that accounted for the awkwardness on the page. Both memoirs, oddly, had been written in the third person. They had also been written oddly.

Tom Marshall stood in the screen doorway, holding his helmet in one hand and running the other through thinning hair. He opened the door, then stepped through, blinking in the fluorescent light.

“Thank God,” Marianne said. She’d met him at a conference years ago, and he looked mostly the same: rumpled, unshaven, cowboy booted, surprised to be here. Part of his shtick was never dressing appropriately, which Marianne had not connected, at the time, to a penchant for motorcycle riding. “Where were you? Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

“Got lost,” he said, then made a show of finding his cell phone in his pocket. “You can’t hear these things on a hog. Maybe your little Suzuki, but not a Harley.”

“Probably shouldn’t answer them either,” Eric said. “On a hog. How’s it going?”

Ignoring Eric’s outstretched hand, Tom seemed to blink Marianne into his vision. He strode over to her and picked her up as if they were long-lost friends.

“Mary-Ellen,” he said, kissing her ear wetly through her hair. They’d sat together on a panel—“Life after the MFA: Alternatives in Employment Opportunities”—and had joked about the alternatives. Marianne knew someone who penned greeting cards. Tom, before grad school, had made some money doing medical research (being medical research, Marianne had corrected him). “Little Mary-Ellen the poet. How’s it going?”

“Marianne,” Eric corrected him.

“Oh,” she said, set down again and turning back to the copier. “I’m happy as a clam.”

“I can show you your room,” Eric suggested. “Where’s your luggage?”

“Just this,” he said, hefting a knapsack. “The Sandinistas taught me to travel light.”

Marianne rolled her eyes at the copier, then remembered the manuscripts.

She handed him the two thick packets. “These are up for discussion tomorrow. Ten o’clock. A.M. Breakfast is at eight.”

Tom looked wearily at the pages.

“Point of view problems,” she offered. “Among other things.”