“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, it sounds great, and it’s nice of you to think of me, but I’m not sure I could get away.”

“It’s only what, five days? Maybe six,” Viridian waved a hand. “Our friend Tony Presto’s in charge this year. He said he’s still looking for assistants.”

“I don’t know,” I said again.

Sacha said, “Now, we are not trying to set you up for some scandalous love affair. That’s your own business.” She smiled her pretty smile.

“She has a perfectly lovely boyfriend already,” Viridian said.

“See? Not an issue.”

“Anyway, it’s a very high-minded conference. Everyone’s expected to be on their best behavior.” More of the not-laughing.

“No one will harass you. We’ll see to it.”

“They’ll all just write poems about her.”

“I expect some of them already do.”

I didn’t want anybody writing poems about me. I didn’t want to be Anne Gregory. I reached for my keys. “I have to be heading out. You’ll need to turn those sprinklers off in another hour.”

I was starting the truck when Viridian called to me, walking across the courtyard. “Carla! Wait up.”

I waited. She leaned in at the truck’s window. “I’m sorry. We were teasing you and we shouldn’t have been.”

I stared straight ahead, not wanting to answer. It seemed like I was always getting my feelings hurt, then running away like a baby.

“We really did think the conference would be something you’d enjoy. Something you’d be good at. But you don’t have to have anything to do with it.”

I turned the engine off. “I guess I didn’t know what to think.”

“Well. Open invitation.”

If I was supposed to say either yes or no, I couldn’t manage either yet. “Can I just ask, why would anybody go out of their way for me? Why do you? I don’t know anything.”

She shaded her eyes with her hand. There were times when a trick of light or an angle of vision made her look either younger or older. At this moment she looked older, tired, the skin settling loosely into the grooves of her face. I began to feel bad for distressing her.

She said, “It’s exactly because you don’t know anything. Not yet. But you want to. Because you’re excited about learning, because it’s all new to you the way it has not been new to me for a long time. Don’t feel embarrassed about being young, Carla. My God. Glory in it.”

By now I wasn’t sure which of us should be apologizing to the other. It was thrilling to hear her speak about me, just this once, in such personal terms, for her to lessen the distance between us. Maybe she still felt bad about upsetting me.