“But Lilian told me something you should know. We were reading through the packet, at the beginning of lunch, which is how our divorces came up. Her husband consulted on that case.”

“What?”

“On the Schiavo case. He was one of the doctors who declared her brain-dead. I don’t think she realized it was you. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

Janine was suddenly very dizzy. She gripped the sides of her chair to steady herself.

“I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Janine said. “You should have. It’s amazing, what God puts in front of us.”

6

By the end of the first full day Marianne had listened to a long parade of complaints from the students, many of whom were new to the workshop process. The complainers made a continuous and ever-changing line, sometimes three and four people deep, outside her door, and Marianne would apologetically but carefully close it in the hope that she could contain the complaints. Putting out fires, Mark called it. Marianne always pictured his businessman clichés in literal terms—her own feet stamping out actual fires, two people standing on the same giant page, a dinner plate overflowing with things to do.

Tom thought one of his students was a neo-Nazi. Eric was ten minutes late for class. Lorraine ended class twenty minutes early. Lorraine did not discuss any of the poems by the students. The chili mac was too spicy, too greasy, too salty. Tom had already mixed up two young blond students’ names, repeatedly. Tom said what the hell did twentysomethings have to write about anyway? The salad bar’s sneeze guard had been sneezed on. Eric had misunderstood a short story’s central biblical allusion. Lorraine had never asked anyone their name.

All day Marianne had looked for Eric. She had left the door to her office open, in between complaints, in case he might happen by. She’d felt immediately sorry after kicking him out of her room—sorry for the look of disappointment on his face, sorry too for the emptiness of her room, the loneliness she’d felt after he was gone. But he did not walk by, not even once, and she had to settle instead for disparaging scraps of him delivered by the students.

“You’re right,” she said, to the woman who complained about Eric’s punctuality. “I’m sure he’ll be on time tomorrow.” “I don’t know how he could have missed that allusion,” she told another student. “I’m sure he’s reading about it now.”