To the students whose names Tom kept mixing up, she repeated their names with each apology. She read and praised a strange and bloody poem about childbirth. She agreed with several students that punctuality was a way of showing respect (“Punctuation,” Tom said later, “that would show some respect”). She made tea for a woman who began crying in her office for no apparent reason. “Of course,” she said to each of them. “You’re right.”

By five o’clock her neck was sore from nodding. Each complainer left her office placated and soothed, while Marianne felt more and more exhausted, her feet burned from all the fires, her dinner plate smeared with remnants of unappetizing dishes. And how would they fare tomorrow? Marianne had once been in workshop with a young woman who had contradicted Lorraine on the reading of her poem. Lorraine had slid the violently marked up page across the table at the woman, who’d suddenly looked stricken with fear. “Let us agree then,” said Lorraine, “that it’s a subtle fucking masterpiece.” Marianne had not exactly warned her against such performances here.

By supper time, Marianne was hungry for chili mac, something cheesy and starchy, a gummy sauce thickened over Sterno. She had given up vegetarianism weeks ago, after Mark warned her it was anti-Christian. She still had not had a glimpse of Eric, and she looked forward to scolding him playfully for being late (she’d been impressed, if not surprised, that a slight tardiness and mild biblical ignorance were the only complaints levied against him). Maybe they could take a walk later, she thought, and she could let him know that there would be plenty of time to work out their relationship—whatever it was—after the students left. There were only eleven more days of workshops, after all. She had already crossed out today on her calendar, a fat black X.

She got up to draw the blinds and lock the door, but saw, approaching the office, another petitioner—another complainer—clutching a composition book to her side. Marianne snapped the blinds shut and retreated to the back of the office but the woman wasn’t deterred. She rapped on the door’s glass panes and peered through a gap in the blinds. “Hello?” she called. “Hello?”

“Office hours ended half an hour ago,” Marianne said, opening the door but blocking the woman’s entrance. She was, to Marianne, indistinguishable from many of the other students: ordinary, middle-aged, unremarkable in appearance. She had a thick middle hidden by a T-shirt, stick-like legs in capri pants, a girlish, sandy-brown bob. “Dinner is being served. Is it possible for me to see you in the morning?”

“Oh,” said the woman, clutching her notebook more tightly to her side. “I just saw someone leaving, so I thought …”