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Hostile faces all around the table glaring at you and, with Brünhild leading the charge, derisive applause for every slash and rip?
You guessed it! But verbal assaults usually spend themselves against obviously unmoved listeners. I had told Gretchkow to hold back until I nodded to him. When the tone of the questions evolved from sarcasm to concern, I let him remind the furies of everything they had forgotten: The legislature had allotted the money to hire professors who had distinguished themselves both as scholars and as teachers. It had excluded any other criteria, such as ethnicity, creed, sex, etc. Thus the absence of any allusion to sex in President Softack's announcement conformed with the legislature's mandate. Any resemblance to language describing measures that had resulted in alleged discrimination against women was due to the fact that such language had always been used to describe such measures whether they were discriminatory or not. Since the president had made the announcement only the day before, the dean's office had scarcely begun to follow the traditional procedure. Consultation with all interested parties was an essential part of this procedure, but it would have to take place in due course. While the intervention of the UVW was understandable, there were other interested parties in the university who deserved a hearing.
What does the V stand for?
Vigilant. The Union of Vigilant Women, Hilda Sonderling President and Founder.
That prose doesn't sound like Gretchkow.
I coached him, he memorizes quickly. The other deans he worked for thought he was hopeless, but they overlooked his potential. Among his other peculiar talents, he is an excellent lightning rod.
Well, how did you handle the furies?
Getchkow left them mumbling and grumbling. Once they were quiet, I asked whether they had anything else to say. Silence, except for a grunt from Brünhild. I said that Miss Klingelstedt's notes would be in the consultation dossier along with the testimony of the other groups. Would they like for her to read them? Silence. If any of them had something further to add later on, they need only ask for an interview with Dean Gretchkow.
Ha! Ha! Ha!

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Some of them made a face.
Much to your amusement.
Much to my amusement. Gretchkow was all the more effective because they loathed him.
How did Brünhild assemble all those women on such short notice?
E-mail, telephone, word of mouth. Brünhild called ten women, probably the same ones who attended the meeting. Each of them called ten more and so forth. She sent an e-mail message to the UVW listserve which numbers several hundred. She told all professors, instructors and assistants who had classes at ten that morning to bring them to Laniel Hall.
How did you find that out?
Every university has its share of tattletales. I have a policy of neither encouraging nor discouraging them. Few secrets escape me. There were some students who resented the use of class time for a manifestation and the implication that attending it would please the teacher. They weren't just men either.
Did you discipline the teachers?
Every dean before me had winked at this abuse for fear of a hornets' nest. As you know, I love hornets' nests. I had the departmental chair people scold the teachers and insert a report in their dossiers. The hornets buzzed in my ears for a few weeks, but they kept their stingers sheathed. Some of them buzzed in Brünhild's too for getting them in trouble. It was time to let her know something without saying anything.
I had always assumed that you could only do that with lovers.
Maybe that's how I learned it. Almost everyone realizes that the most important information follows a devious path. Once the Superior Professorship Committee had guessed what I had decided, it recommended that women be appointed to three of the six chairs and I announced "our" decision. It came as no surprise to anyone, although many, as usual, would have preferred a different one.
On the other hand, unexpected news travels from mouth to ear?
Yes, and especially at cocktail parties. The most important business takes place when the nomenklatura meet with a drink in every right hand on Friday between five and seven. When I returned to Concordia, the competition to assemble them in one's own house had resulted in a chaos of rival invitations cluttering weekends. I

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insinuated the order we have now and Gretchkow keeps the calendar.
I can see you with a drink in your right hand picking your target and, after preliminary small talk, conjecturing: "Wouldn't it be nice if..."
Yes, I use that approach for issues like the proliferation of cocktail parties, but the superior chairs involved dangers that required a more subtle one. I had Gretchkow scratch Prickly Hembrake's itch to backbite everyone out of earshot. When Prickly said Brünhild was dying for a chair and didn't deserve one, Gretchkow looked doubtful. I always back into a corner at cocktail parties to keep an eye on the crowd. When Prickly left Gretchkow, he looked for Priss Charitzky and, since she doesn't hide, he found her soon enough. She is one of those weeds that bloom in university soil. Prickly is the only man she ever forgave.
Is he really a man?
Has anyone ever seen him with his pants down? No, she forgave him for being ugly.
Ugly? You mean her.
Yes, Priss.
She has a grudge against men because she was born ugly?
I'm trying to imagine how she thinks.
Brax used to call them Prickly Charitzky and Priss Hembrake.
A standing joke by the time it reached him. Prickly doesn't really like Priss, but he enjoys telling her gossip because she shrieks and waves her arms. Her parents must have thought she was cute.
Once she had made a sufficient fool of herself, Prickly let her go and she flew to Brünhild?
Who always occupies the corner opposite mine.
And lets people come to her just as you let them come to you.
Priss doesn't shriek or wave her arms when she talks to her. Brünhild arrives at cocktail parties promptly at five. She likes to catch the hostess in a rush to get ready. She leaves at six fifteen and, this time, she smiled at me as she went by on the way to the door.
Damn!

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Have you ever seen her smile?
No.
Neither had I... How much of the rest do you already know?
Well, the press eventually reported that Brünhild got one of the chairs. But Julie-Anne Bechtôt and a woman from Berkeley got the other two. Neither of them seem to have much in common with her.
I had to persuade Julie-Anne to accept.
You did?
She made one of her shrugs, raising her eyes to the heavens.
Brax said they were typically French, but better than the others he had seen.
If our most distinguished scholar-teacher in the humanities refused a superior professorship, I told her, the legislature would regret their generosity. Her reply would have raised no eyebrows at Oxford. I could barely detect a French r. In her research, she said, she had never sought to resurrect women who deserved to be forgotten on the excuse that they might have been famous if men had given them a chance. Nor had she ever tried to cultivate female students by encouraging them to think that men owed them compensation for the prejudice that had held other women back in the past. Since she had successfully competed with men herself, she declined a chair that would assimilate her to women who had avoided such competition.
Did Brünhild hear about that?
Don't ask me, but she knows what Julie-Anne thinks of her and she has never dared to say anything about Mademoiselle. She used to leave that to lieutenants like Priss and Millie, who courtsey in front and sneer in back.
Used to?
Yes, the furies saw that nothing had come of all their efforts except Brünhild's chair. The superior professor tried to make them understand that they had put her in a position to champion their cause, but stooping came even harder to her from her new elevation. Her automatic e-mail signature includes all of her titles, including Superior Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures.
The more words, the greater the honor! You amputated the furies' leader, thus forcing them to rely on lesser demagogues. But you also sacrificed a chair to a determined mediocrity who will

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draw an exorbitant salary for another ten or fifteen years.
Neutralization of a dangerous pressure group came at that price. Since I control her raises, however, I make her prove her "superiority" and that keeps her busy.
Resurrecting unsung heroins of rebellion against male dominance?
Research, writing and submission of manuscripts that editors no longer snap up because others are following her lead. Begging for letters of recommendation for fellowships that she doesn't always get as she used to. Cultivating students who now have easier idols to worship. Infrequent but persistent humiliations haven't undermined her vanity much, but she has little time to mend her feminist fences or make trouble for me.
Do you really think Julie-Anne is the most distinguished scholar-teacher in the humanities at ZU?
I don't know, neither does anyone else. It's impossible to compare high distinctions.
You didn't explain how you persuaded her to accept a superior chair.
I proposed to change the name of hers to the Pierre Courtgrain Chair of French Literature.
Wonderful idea! But did she object to his Huguenot background?
On the contrary, she liked the subversive implications.
Courtgrain has given ZU so many millions, I suppose, that naming a chair after him raised no problems even if he didn't pay for it.
It might have raised a problem with Forthwright. I found him in his corner at a cocktail party in the governor's mansion and, after explaining Professor Bechtôt's objection to the word superior by her modesty
Her modesty?
Forthwright doesn't know her. I proposed to rename her chair the Damion Forthwright Chair of French Literature. He was appalled, as I had expected, and I burst out laughing. Once he had understood the joke, he laughed too and readily agreed to name the chair after Courtgrain, who contributes to his campaign fund.
Damn!

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I was going to give you an example of consensus decisions orchestrated by me.
The only one I can remember was your committee's reservation of three superior chairs for women.
You got more than you asked for, you should be grateful.
Oh, I am... What do I have to do to convince you?
I was kidding.
So was I.
It's your turn to tell me about you.
Well... Where shall I start?
Tell me what you do for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Thanksgiving and Christmas?
The two worst days in the year. I have tried everything: New York, Tahiti...
No happy families anxious to invite you?
I accepted a few times. Sooner or later, they felt sorry for me and that ruined it.
You must have friends without a happy familiy.
I tried that too. It doesn't work.
I can't imagine why.
At first we feel sorry for each other, then each of us feels sorry for himself.
You must have had a few happy Thanksgivings and Christmases with Brax.
The emotions we excited in each other on those two holidays made a mockery of the distinction between joy and anger. The violence that erupted in us left us exhausted and anxious for a return to everyday distractions. We were like oxygen and hydrogen.
I have forgotten my required chemistry course.
Oxygen and hydrogen react with each other.
You mean there was a continuous explosion?
Yes.
Brax didn't react with anybody else like that.

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Neither did I. You were going to tell me about your Christmases and Thanksgivings.
I'm afraid both were hopelessly conventional. As the family grew, the turkey did too. The crowd around the table kept getting bigger: our children, their boy and girlfriends, their husband and wife, their children... We had nineteen a few years ago. We set up a card table and a picnic table for the overflow. When squabbles broke out, Brax would hear each side and impose a peace that awed them both.
Brax?
Yes, he used his logic. It was cheerfully devastating. He showed each of the warring parties how wrong they were in terms that they couldn't dispute. A respectful silence always followed.
Everyone has his logic. He used to try his on me and there were never any respectful silences.
How could oxygen talk hydrogen out of reacting with it?
There was a whole half of Brax that I never knew.
It was the other half that I didn't know.
You were going to tell me about you. You were describing Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Holidays are rituals that cause happiness by force of habit, yet without any guarantee expressed or implied. I could tell when everybody was having a good time, because they were all talking at the same time, the noisier the merrier.
When everyone is talking at the same time, everyone hears what he wants to.
Each holiday has its fetishes, but Brax invented some variations on the themes once our children had grown up, such as a Smithfield ham.
Smithfield in particular?
Yes, I had to mail order it. Another time, we had a suckling pig with an apple in its mouth and plumb pudding with hard sauce. Brax was always discovering Renaissance recipes and recommending them to me. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn't. When they didn't, I made him eat everything on his plate.
How about Christmas trees?

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The greatest fetish of them all. It involved us in a lot of negotiation: I tried to delay the shopping expedition until the prices went down, but Brax wanted to go early and get a good one before the students had bought them up. Becky and Randy sided with him, so off we went in the wreck; scratching the roof wouldn't matter. As we made the rounds, Randy looked for one taller than last year and Becky, for one without holes in the robe. I drew their attention to good bargains, but in vain. Brax, who secretly agreed with them, argued that children should get the Christmas tree they wanted and, besides, what difference would a few more dollars make? Once we had bought the best one we could find and put it in a bucket of water in a corner of the garage, another conflict broke out: Becky and Randy were impatient to set it up in the corner over there and decorate it, but I was determined to put that off as long as possible and, for once, Brax agreed with me. We had different reasons, of course: I wouldn't be able to vacuum in that corner and he objected that beginning the ritual too soon would dilute the pleasure of performing it.
You were both right.
All of this must sound terribly quarrelsome, but we actually enjoyed arguing with each other. Somehow disagreement was never disagreeable, on the contrary.
The Christmas mystique.
Yes. Am I boring you?
No.
Well, Brax and Randy set the tree up on Christmas Eve in the afternoon. Becky joined them after supper to decorate, while I stood back here inspecting the work and telling them where to put or move the ornaments. They followed nearly all of my recommendations and, even when one of them disagreed, he was unusually tactful in explaining his reason. I have never understood why my authority inspired so much respect on this particular occasion every year.
I envy you.
I wasn't used to respect, you are.
There was no constraint in the respect you enjoyed.
... Of course we had the hi-fi and, later, the stereo going full blast. We must have heard Armahl and the Night Visitors over WZFM ten Christmases in a row, then we listened to records of carols sung by the King's College choir for ten more. Last Christmas was the tenth time. The children and grandchildren were a little too cheerful, but I was doing all right. I was

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supervising the decoration of the tallest tree ever which Randy had brought with him and erected in the stairwell, the only place in the house with room at the top. Tiff's little sister Tess slipped into the living room and put the King's College...
Penny! I'm so sorry...
... I ran upstairs, into the bedroom, shut the door and... and... Everything reminded me of Brax! I was looking at the bath tub when Becky came in, so I started washing my face. The first thing I knew, she was hugging me on one side and Tess, on the other. We looked like a Vigée Lebrun... Well, we went back downstairs where Randy had taken the records off. I told him to put them back on and we finished the tree almost as if nothing had happened.
Let me guess: you insisted on medium-sized bulbs, gold ones and red ones without an orange tint, because those colors set the green of the tree off nicely. You allowed only small, clear electric lights which did not flash on and off. You forbade any attempt to overload the tree that would transform it into a mere framework to hang ornaments on. The tree was the thing.
You might have been there watching. I hope you will be next Christmas.
... You're very kind.
Afterwards, everybody put his presents under the tree. Once Becky and Randy were married, Brax and I decided to limit everybody to two given and two received. Gus and Murma run a lottery for us and tell our givers who to give their presents to, a secret, and we do the same for their family. We set another limit on the amount to be spent which we adjust for inflation every year. The size, the shape and the wrapping inspire noisy speculation. At eleven-thirty, we pile into the wreck and drive to Nevers...
Nevers?
Yes, Nevers. You are going to say there's nothing there.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
Well, you're wrong.
All right, what could you possibly find in Nevers at midnight on Christmas Eve? Or at any other time?
Guess.

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... I give up.
St. Mathilda's.
I thought you and Brax didn't go to church.
He didn't go while he was married to you. But, when we got married, he made a deal with his parents to go "from time to time."
That sounds like one of his deals all right! They probably thought he meant once a month.
St. Mathilda's is a small wooden church with trees all around it. The organist drowns the wheeze in the leaky organ with mighty swells of sound. A choir of three chirping ladies accompanied by a roaring bass and tenor lead the congregation in lusty song. You can distinguish between town and country by the comfort of their clothes. The rector looks like Santa Clause, a role he plays at Sunday school on the last Sunday before Christmas. At midnight on Christmas morning, he must be the jolliest man on earth and his cheer affects every man, woman and child. He has always preached the same sermon at that time, which simply reminds us that our Savior was born just a few minutes ago. The processional is always "Hark the Herold Angels Sing!" and the recessional, "Joy to the World." After the final prayer, he urges all the men to kiss all the women on the cheek and he was doing that years ago when men dared not kiss any women except their own.
In public.
Yes, in public.
No one, I suppose, has ever dared to remind your Santa that Jesus was born in a different time zone.
Yes somebody did.
Who was that?
Brax.
Brax?
He couldn't resist.
He must have hurt Santa's feelings.
No, not at all. Santa burst out laughing and it wasn't resentful laughter, on the contrary. "Mr. Jones," he said, "you have just discovered the most wonderful secret of Christmas. Our Savior is born every year at midnight on this date in every time zone and yet it happened only once

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1983 years ago."
A miracle!
Yes, but I doubt that Santa checked it out with his bishop.
Why did he call Brax "Mr. Jones?"
He has never learned our name, so he gives us one of his own. I once overheard him calling another visitor "Mrs. Smith", much to her surprize.
Did you go this Christmas too?
Yes, Randy drove the wreck.
Two questions: Why do you call it "the wreck" and how did Santa take Brax's absence?
I'll answer the second one first: When he kissed me on the cheek, he told me that "Mr. Jones" was kissing me on the other.
My Lord! How did he know?
I think he just noticed that Brax wasn't there and assumed that he was dead.
How did you take it?
If you had heard his tone of voice, you would have taken it as I did.
It didn't upset you?
Not exactly, it brought tears to my eyes, but I indulged in his phantasy.
... Well, why do you call it "the wreck"?
Brax had a peculiar attitude towards cars. He wanted me to have a small new car, a Volkswagen when they were cement-mixers, for instance, a compact later on and the A4 I drive now. But he wanted a rusty, noisy, smelly, smoky... -- You get the idea! -- for himself and he actually enjoyed breaking down, especially way out in the country where it gave him an opportunity to meet the locals.
Did you ever break down on the road to Nevers?
No, we had divine protection and Brax drove as if he believed it, especially when there was ice on the road, as there usually is at that time of year. The men were always laughing about the danger -- "Dad! It's trying to kill us!" -- and the women were always whimpering.
The men were hypocrites and the women were sincere.

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Yes but women like that hypocrisy in men and men like that sincerity in women.
You are selling out to the enemy.
Once, when Randy was in law school, he started a speculation on who would inherit our millions if we were all killed in an accident on the road to Nevers. Everybody contributed his idea of the worse possible heir.
Santa would have been offended.
We got such a laugh out of it that he would have forgiven us.
The devil was dancing to your music.
Santa doesn't believe in him. Last Christmas, the men and the women were telling Randy he couldn't drive like Dad or Grandp, but they disagreed on whether that was good or bad. We were laughing so hard that I forgot, I almost forgot...
... Penny!
Yes?
... I don't know how to say this... It's kind of you to tell me about your Christmases... On one hand, I'm enjoying them vicariously, but, on the other, I have never had and will never have...
Oh Wilma!
There's something admirable and yet disconcerting about your testimony: I ask you to tell me about yourself and you talk about your family and especially Brax.
It's hard to talk about me without talking about him.
Evidently, after forty years of happy marriage... but maybe...
I see what you mean. I will have to start being me again. I have been trying, not very successfully I guess.
For me, it's the other way around. I'm me too much already and I've always had a lot of trouble trying to include other people.
Maybe we could help each other.
I was hoping you would say that. Let's give it a try. We could start seeing more of each other... but not on Friday evening.
No, certainly not then.
How would you like to have dinner with me on Saturday? I could invite Murma and Gus. We could even agree not to talk about Brax since none of us has to prove how we feel about him. OK?

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OK. How are we going to dress?
Ha! Ha! Ha!
What's so funny?
Have you forgotten how often we used to ask each other that question? Even when we weren't going out together, we had endless discussions and never came to a decision until one of us had convinced the other. If we had looked like each other, people would have taken us for twins.
I hope you won't mind, but I don't think I could put up with a twin.
Unless he were a boy.
I hadn't thought of that.
The only reason I thought of it was that I once had a beautiful girl in my seminar who said, when we were discussing twins one day, that she had an identical twin brother.
What a wonderful opportunity!
Yes. She lingered after class and I wondered if identical features would have the same effect in both genders.
"It does in our case," she said, "unfortunately."
"Unfortunately?" I asked.
"Well, people stare. It doesn't bother me," she laughed, "but it embarrasses Rob terribly."
"Do they stare at him when he's not with you?"
"Oh yes! He says he can see that they are trying to decide."
"Decide?"
"Yes, decide whether he's a boy or a girl."
It was my turn to laugh: "They don't worry about that when they stare at you?"
She laughed too: "No, they don't worry about that."

Did you have them over together on a Sunday afternoon?
Oh yes, I couldn't resist the temptation. Together, they were like two suns surrounded by a lot of planets, but, when they separated, the solar system followed her and I had to introduce him to a conversation between the people who were avoiding her. It wasn't easy because they had been talking about them. Sunday

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afternoons are sometimes a challenge, but I enjoy them because they require skills very different from everything else I have to do.
Well, since you and I are not twins or sisters, not even roommates any more, since we no longer have anything to offer except friendship, we might as well give it to each other.
Why don't you just come as you are Saturday? Gus and Murma will certainly want to.
OK. How are you going to be?
Less dressed than I am now.
How much less?
Slacks and a blouse with an apron for cooking.
And looking like Saks Fifth Avenue.
More like Williams Sonoma.
And underneath the apron?
I have an outfit from Talbot's in mind. I bought it years ago.
I will have to worry about Murma too.
You are beginning to sound like a merry widow.
No sex left.
All used up.
Are you talking about me or you?
Both of us.
It's none of my business, but I should think yours had withered away for lack of exercise.
You don't really want me to brag about my sex life.
I get enough of that on the magazine covers at the checkout counter.
What would you think if you saw me on one of them?
"Wait a minute, where have I seen her before?"
Ha! Ha! Ha!
... You didn't sound as if you were joking.
I wasn't, entirely.

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You mean you had a secret sex life?
How could I just turn it off once Brax had turned it on?
I always wondered...
I had better not shock your Puritanical sensibility.
Come on, Wilma!
We used to have a lot of fun gossiping about our lovers' frustrations.
Maybe we were making it up like those magazines.
What we saw and felt wasn't made up.
Are you going to tell me or aren't you?
Nobody tantalizes like you.
Wilma!
You may have heard some rumors.
No, I can't say I have.
I have never confided in anyone, but there had to be at least one other witness every time. A dean of sciences and humanities attracts a lot of attention even when he tries to avoid it and, especially, if he is caught trying to avoid it...
And when that dean happens to be...
Exactly!
There's a computer in Brax's study!
You want to see me on one of those magazine covers.
I have never seen anybody I know.
A few months after Brax and I had separated, it began to get on my nerves. I don't know how I managed to keep the lid on until I got to Mountain Ridge. By then, however, I had given it some thought and I had devised a set of principles.
Uh oh!
1. I had to select a likely partner without letting him or anyone else notice; 2. I excluded everyone immediately associated with me, but I sought someone I could ruin without exposing myself: in those days, an undergraduate who had taken none of my courses; 3. he had to suit the roll I wanted him to play both physically and mentally; 4. if he passed the test of observation with other students, men as well

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women, I subjected him to another one alone with me.
How could you do that without being noticed?
I started a policy of seeing students, all different kinds including men who didn't interest me and women. I only needed a slight increase in the severity with which I had treated my lovers in order to win their respect without putting them off. I had coffee with them, lunch with them, saw games with them, went to parties with them, but I never let them forget that I was a professor and that they were students, although I was no more than five years older than they were. I was surprized when this policy resulted in my appointment as an assistant dean of students, which initiated my career in administration.
... Number Five?
Never in or near Concordia, not even in Mapleton, always in an out-of-state city where I knew the young man had never been before. I would engage him in a conversation about places where he had never been and would like to go: "Have you ever been to New Orleans?"
"No, I have always wanted to go."
"I was thinking about going there this weekend." If his reaction satisfied me, I might mail him a one-way ticket in an envelope without a return address, so that he would receive it in time for a departure on Friday afternoon and I could meet his plane in New Orleans. After a weekend orchestrated by me down to the slightest boom from the kettle drums, I might put him on a plane back to Mapleton on Sunday evening. By then, we would have discussed how he was going to explain his absence to anyone who might be curious, including his girlfriend if he had one -- they usually do. He also knew, without having been told explicitly, that he had better not let anyone have the slightest idea of what he had done that weekend. Of course, some almost certainly confided in a friend or two, and a few even in their girlfriend, with the usual preamble: "Never tell anyone..."
Hence the rumors you suspect.
I don't just suspect them. A few colleagues have hinted, on various pretexts: Priss tried, for instance, to cloak her frustration over a rumor that harked back before her time by faking outrage over presumed slander.

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"I heard the most disgusting rumor! I thought I had better tell you. Some people..."
How shrill your whine, aunty Priss! I didn't bother to conceal my amusement... I had realized that I wouldn't be able to prevent all rumors, but I made sure that none would spread indiscriminantly. My carrot was a weekend my lover would never forget and, of course, the more he enjoyed it, the more I did too. Another time? I let the notion float by his nostrils like a whiff of perfume. My stick was an offhand example or two of how much a dean knows and what he can do about it. When I saw him again in Concordia, I treated him exactly as I had always treated him before New Orleans and as I was treating all the others. If he stepped out of line, a glance put him back where he belonged.
[Whistle]
I hope you wouldn't have whistled in front of him.
How could I have trampled on your dignity?
... Do I frighten you?
A little.
I frighten me a lot.
Power is frightening.
I struggle to hold mine in check.
I can't imagine any harm to your lovers, as you call them.
What else could I call them? My victims?
They had the time of their lives. Maybe their girlfriends even benefitted.
Or their wives.
... Promotions must have enabled you to unh... solicit graduate students and eventually young faculty.
What else could I have done?
You were made neither for marriage nor for maidenhood.
How could I have been an old maid?
My father called every man or woman he had contempt for an old maid.
I was born with an excessive libido and a gift for the acquisition of power.

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Men with those attributes seldom bother with your scrupules. But Wilma, you are dangerous, aren't you?
I'm afraid so.
Dangerous for you as well as others. No matter how carefully you choose those men, you can't know them well enough to detect a few secretly willing and able to take advantage of you. They might be tempted by blackmail, theft, violence, even revolt...
I faced those threats a few times, but I was able to frustrate them. I took all the precautions I could imagine. At the airport, I waited out of sight one gate down the concourse to watch for any signs of recognition between my man and other people. One made the mistake of laughing with another young man after looking around for me. That was in St. Louis. I don't know how he got back to Concordia, but I saw him only once after that and, as soon as he saw me, he walked away as fast as he could go.
So it only cost you a one-way ticket to St. Louis and a disappointing weekend.
The other adventures cost me a little more. I usually rented a car and drove the young man to a motel by a circuitous route...
It sounds like the kind of fiction in fashion these days.
I had already occupied a room and consigned my valuables to the hotel safe, except for the cash I needed immediately. I woke up once around two in the morning when my lover slipped out of bed. Instead of going to the bathroom, he went to the table where I had left my purse stuffed with tissue paper. When the paper rustled, he indulged in one of the usual four-letter obscenities and crept back into bed. The next morning, he wondered why I was packing my bag already and I said I didn't like leaving things lying around. As soon as he entered the shower, I left quietly, paid the bill and drove away. I never saw him again.
I suppose you took them to restaurants, cafés, nightclubs...
Of course.
Didn't some of them drink too much?
I didn't let them. My restrictions put some of them in a bad humor, a few threw a tantrum and one even tried to defy me. You know how bad humor tickles me,

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how tantrums allowed me to trap my lovers in tender ridicule. Irritation and anger only made them vulnerable and hence easier to manipulate. I had my weekend lovers... drinking out of my shoe. The defiant one had already drunk too many shoe fulls before I realized it. When I politely insinuated that he had had enough, he replied that he was going to have more, even if he had to pay for it himself. I called the waiter and demanded my half of the bill. Since it was a nice restaurant, that young man may not even have had enough to pay his half. Drink and his predicament drove him to whimper and whine for forgiveness, which made me even less inclined to grant it. I paid both bills, hustled him out to the car and drove him straight to the airport where I left him unkissed at the goodbye curb with a ticket back to Mapleton. I will never forget the expression on his face as I drove away.
Do you think he had enough for the limousine or the bus to Concordia?
I have no idea, but, if he couldn't find a ride, he could thumb. I saw him a few times after that. I ignored him except once when he lingered at ten paces hoping for encouragement. I gave him a look that sent him scampering. The rumor Priss heard may have come from him.
What if he had refused to get out of the car? The men you used to attract were well-built, many of them were athletes...
Like Brax, except that he was no sports fanatic. I never went on a weekend with anyone who participated in intercollegiate sports. The training and adulation inculcate vanity and arrogance on them, if not brutality. No thanks! My worst mistake had been a basketball star at a small rural high-school -- Sickles Stopover I believe -- but he hadn't even made the team at ZU. He seemed to have all the virtues of a perfect lover: he was kind, gentle, tactful... If he had been more intelligent, he would have been less charming. I have to admit that I was infatuated at the age of thirty-five. It wasn't easy to hide. Well, I met him at the airport in Philadelphia and all he wanted to talk about was the game that evening between ZU and Kentucky.
Heaven help you!
By the time we reached our hotel, I had understood that, if we didn't "grab a bite," as he kept saying, and watch the game on TV, he would sulk the whole weekend away. I decided to let him have his bite and see the game, but should I send him home afterwards or wait and see whether he reverted to his better self? If ZU

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won, maybe he would live up to my expectations.
Do you like basketball?
Me? Sweaty young men running back and forth on a floor more appropriate for dancing with young women and throwing a ball at each other and up at a basket worshipped like an idol! Television zooms in on the antics and howls of coach and crowd exaggerating for our enlightenment, while sportscasters gloat over this "enthusiasm" and, apparently, their paycheck.
None of my men liked spectator sports.
You were lucky. Everyone agreed that ZU lost the game because it was played in Lexington, but "we" would have won in Concordia. I was hoping that my athlete might take heart from the fact that ZU had lost by only a point when one of "our" players, overawed by the silence of the crowd, missed a foul shot. Penny, you can't imagine how depressed he was. His disappointment over the loss of the game swept him into an endless stream of conscience, drowning him in bitterness over his failure to make the team. His resentment against Gettough for cutting him from the team contrasted oddly with his sympathy for the one human being who needs or deserves it the least.
This is beginning to make me nervous.
And well it might! I didn't have the heart to rush him to the airport as I knew damned well I should have and the sooner the better! No, I felt sorry for him, which shows just how infatuated I was. I suddenly had the urge to get him in bed on the crazy assumption that a little sex might quicken his spirit. For the first time in my life, I had trouble doing that. Here was this handsome steer with his enormous brown eyes about to weep, slumping in an easy chair and staring at the television set. It was spewing the usual garbage at him, but he apparently neither saw nor heard it.
And you have been pinching yourself ever since because you didn't quietly repack your bag, put his return ticket and some money between his hooves, and leave him alone with the only company he deserved. Wilma, I don't want to offend you, but you must have been infatuated because you were thirty-five.
How could you offend me? I have always come to the same conclusion.

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All of the outcomes I can imagine to this adventure would have been disasters.
I finally changed into my nightgown and bath robe, cut the TV off and, ignoring his rage, turned the lights off and went to bed. This time, he took the hint and, having ripped his clothes off -- I heard them tear -- he jumped on me like a bull on a cow.
Oh dear!
Turning television off disconnects one instinct and reconnects another.
Brax's microfilm reader had the same effect.
Ten years earlier, I might have enjoyed such an assault, but this one was tearing me apart. Fortunately, he had three fast orgasms, each of them punctuated by a great howl, then, rolling over on his back, he fell asleep and was soon snoring. I felt as if I were on fire inside. I dropped to the floor, crawled to the bathroom and, locking the door behind me, administered some complicated first aid to myself. The bleeding scared me. Dragging myself around the room in the dark and gasping with pain, I packed my bags and left. Out in the corridor, however, I decided to go back and leave him his ticket home. He was still snoring.
What became of him?
After a few weeks, I asked a friend of his what had happened to him. He had left the university. The friend shrugged: "Cut from the basketball team! He never got over it."
That must have been a turning point for you.
I went on weekends less often with men my age or older whom I had known at least a few years. I have been slowing down ever since and, when hotel clerks ask me whether I want a king or two queens, I take two queens.
Whew!
Are you sorry you let me in your house?
Of course not! What do you take me for?
I wouldn't blame you.
I would blame me. What right, what reason, what excuse would I have? You did no harm, not even to yourself. You are the best dean ZU has ever had. Your worst enemies resort to petty complaints. Besides, your libido, as you call it, is history. Once you have retired, you could

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make millions by selling a book about it, but I doubt that you will.
... Your house is beautiful and comfortable, but right much for one woman to manage. Do you plan to stay here?
I have been wrestling with that issue. Every time I try to be reasonable, the children and grandchildren plead with me. It's their home too, they tell me, and they even offer to make it easier for me, but there isn't much they can do. They live in Mapleton, except for Tiff who is in Pilsbury West. Thanks to TIAA-CREF, my income is adequate and I have Mildred on Tuesdays and Fridays. She used to be my cleaning woman, but she has become my friend since Brax died and we have fun together despite all the differences between us. We even ask and give each other advice. Then there's my garden...
How about my guided tour? Isn't it about time?
High time.
With your patio doors, it's only a step away.
We are in luck with the weather.
Your jonquils are gorgeous. What a wonderful idea to concentrate them in the middle like that, like a big splash of yellow.
When they fade, I replace them by red tulips and later on by blue irises. Why dilute the best color in a flower by salting and peppering it? The white dogwoods back there are all the contrast I need, but there's a plenty of room in the side and back beds for other flowers, as long as the colors don't clash with the one in the middle. Later on, the roses on the fence will bloom in various colors: I don't mind mixing them on a brown fence.
... Are you going to let me see your garden then?
Why don't you come and see every stage?
... I would love to.
It's a warm day with a nice little breeze. Let's sit over there.
... That must be the window to your study.
Yes. On a day like this, Brax would leave it open and we would have a peculiar conversation while I was sitting here. When I said something, the response might come right away or a few minutes later. The timing depended on the point he had reached in the thought on which he was

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concentrating. If it was complicated and he had just begun to consider it, I would have to wait.
Didn't that annoy you?
Early in our marriage, these uncertain delays bothered me and, once or twice, when he was out of sight in another room, I was alarmed and came running to see if he was all right. It took me a few years to resist the urge to call and ask if anything were wrong. By the time we had moved into this house, I had not only learned that a response was certain, but I had also begun to enjoy the delays and even their uncertain length. While waiting for his response, I would indulge in a thought of my own, so that, when he replied, I already had the elements of my next remark or question. Then I took my time, if I needed it, to put them together and take my turn. We would go on like that for a half hour, an hour, sometimes even longer...
Some of our worst fights started when I asked him something important and he kept me waiting for an answer. I would cut his light off or slam his book shut and once on his fingers. You should have heard him howl! Once I was so angry, I grabbed his hair in both hands and shook his head. He stood up and shoved me so hard that I fell on my back and hit my head on the bottom drawer of a chest. He said it made a loud thud. Blood was spewing over the carpet and, even as he treated my wound, I was accusing him of ruining our brand new rug which had cost more than we could afford. I still have the rug with the stains on it. Sometimes I hide them under the chest and sometimes I turn it around so that they jump at me. When I'm particularly upset about something, anything, I turn that rug around and around.
... You are still in love with him.
I was born in love with that bastard, I will die in love with him, I guess you and I have that in common.
I guess we do, except that I would never call him a bastard!
Wagner would have written an opera.
I would prefer Verdi.
You're hugging me!
Yes, I'm hugging you.
And patting me on the back, which seems to be in fashion these days.
Do you mind being hugged and patted on the back?
I wonder whether I deserve it.

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Come on, Wilma! Don't tell me you still have some odious secret that you're holding back!
Penny... I do have an odious secret that I have been holding back.
...
I can tell by the look on your face that no one will ever hug me like that again!
... You borrowed Brax!
Yes, I borrowed Brax. All I can say is that he lent himself... Do you want to hear how it happened?
[Angry shrug]
I ran into him on campus after I had returned from ZTech. We had coffee together and he mentioned that he would be attending the annual meeting of the Erasmus Society in Minneapolis a week later. He gave me a look that you would have recognized. I said that I had never been to Minneapolis, which was the truth, but I shouldn't have said it.
Maybe your libido couldn't resist the temptation!
My attraction to Brax involved more than libido. We spent the weekend together. I won't bore you with the details.
You mean the details are worthy of the magazines at the checkout counter!
No, those magazines are incapable of describing what really happens.
Another sustained explosion?
Yes, hydrogen and oxygen.
How many weekends?
[Sigh:] Eight? Ten? Ten, I guess. I feel, I have always felt guilty, very guilty.
I can tell by all the blood you have been weeping.
I don't weep easily. How would you feel if I threw myself on the ground, hugged your knees and wept in your lap?
Don't try it!
I asked you how you would feel, Penny.
Disgusted!
So would I.

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You seduced my husband!
Yes, but he seduced me too. We succumbed because we were what we were. I don't know whether he ever paid the price I'm paying now by my own consent.
What price are you paying? You are tearing me apart just as sadistically as your Adonis was tearing you apart, except that the wounds he inflicted on you would heal.
You are tearing me apart too, Penny!... Oh, Penny!
My name is an insult in your mouth!
Only a half hour ago you agreed that I had done no harm to anyone.
You dare to remind me of that?
No harm except when it happened to your willing husband?
You bastard!
So you would call me a bastard.
... What happened with those twins? Another one for the checkout counter?
We were discussing my relations with Brax.
What further secret are you hiding from me?
All right, since you want a confession...
Don't tell me you had a weekend with them too?
Yes, I had a weekend with them.
Both of them?
Both of them.
Your idea?
Not exactly. Jess was daring, like Celia Gretchkow. She knew what she wanted and she wasn't afraid to go after it. The conversation we had after class that day was nearly all we needed. I met them at the airport in Las Vegas. I got a room with an enormous bed and three pillows. Neither Jess nor I had ever made love with a woman before, but Rob had never made love with anyone.
Did you and Brax...?
No. Each of us alone was more than the other could handle. The idea never crossed our minds.

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I didn't know you were a Lesbian too.
I didn't either, but I was only a circumstantial Lesbian and I suspect that most straights are at least potential gays.
Not me, potentially or circumstantially!
How do you know?
The idea revolts me.
I'm sure the idea does. What about the act? You have apparently never accomplished it.
It has never tempted me.
That's what I'm trying to tell you Penny. Since you have never had any experience with it, you don't know whether it would revolt you or not.
In other words, I don't know what I'm talking about!
... You will stay in Concordia, won't you? Stay in your house and keep your garden?
You're changing the subject.
You changed it a few minutes ago.
When?
When you brought the twins up.
... No, I'm going to move away.
Where?
Anchorage!
Please don't do that, Penny. I will stay out of your life, I promise.
You bet your sweet ass...
You have never used that kind of language before.
Keep your hands off of Tiff until I get him transferred.
Penny, you forget that I haven't touched anyone Tiff's age in twenty-five years. Even if old women who fawn on young men didn't turn my stomach...
The idea or the act?
the grandson of my ex-husband and adulterous lover...
Sure! Sure!

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the grandson of my ex-roommate and the only sister I have ever had...
Your sentimentality drips with...
It's not sentimentality!
with piss!
Said like a feminist!
The trouble with feminists is that women are bastards too.
You must be the only exception.
I didn't say that!
No, I did, and I'm not being sarcastic. Brax didn't deserve you and I don't either.
Hypocrite!
You know that isn't true. I will always love you as I would have loved my own sister.
Just stay out of my bed!
Penny!
I hate you!
Punish me.
Get out of my house!
I'm not in your house, I'm in your garden.
The street is on the other side of that gate!
The neighbors will hear you.
I want them to know.
Goodbye...
You bastard!

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