The child was old enough to tell John what he needed, I reminded myself, and I became more comfortable with taking short trips. During a visit to a college in Texas, I flirted outrageously with an assistant professor who brought me drinks and stood too close to me. The cumulative amount of eye contact we made over two days might have been only ten seconds, but it felt like an entire alternate life.

On the second morning, I went into town with the assistant professor and some other faculty. That afternoon, a graduate student pointedly asked, How was your morning? Then she asked the same question an hour or two later, and I said, I told you, I went into town…before I realized I sounded defensive. You seem to know a lot of people on the faculty. How do you know my advisor? I was cool as a cucumber, cool as a liar. Oh, we’re old friends. We were. But she thought I’d fucked him, and with good reason. I was acting as if I had.