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mental preparation for his classes that morning, which was not dissimilar in nature from the sort of all-around readiness evinced by an actor who was starring in a play later that day. Stephen liked thinking on this level, letting half-formed memories percolate in a stew of ephemera. It was probably why he had become a teacher—for, unlike many of his colleagues, he viewed himself as a teacher first, an educator even, and a theorist second.
    He wished these were the only thoughts that preoccupied his consciousness as he started up the car and glanced back at the brick apartment building where Jay and Ramona lived. Stephen, it turned out—and it pained and embarrassed him on some level to admit it—was an actual
human being
who required companionship and suffered a deep primordial longing for the daily dramas his fellow
Homo sapiens sapiens
were so adept at creating. On a purely intellectual level, he wanted to be emotionally self-sufficient. He would even forgo his penis, that tyrant and benefactor, if the reward were to be total freedom from the weaknesses and caprice of
other people.
    Stephen flipped on his heater. It wasn’t terribly cold yet, but he was from California and had yet to acclimate to the tundra. The U. of Minnesota was a fine enough school, and given the hiring climate in the humanities he was lucky to have landed a tenure-track job there, even given his standing as a complete badass and object of fear and envy from the silverbacks in the department. Still, the U. had the distinct misfortune of being situated at approximately the same latitude as Moscow. This meant vividly painful winters, sheets of slippery ice, Stephen’s black car coated in road salt and sliding through stop signs in a miasma of slush and snow. Winter was coming in a matter of weeks—Stephen’s third in Minneapolis. The dread was almost enough to distract him from his driving.
    He had an ordered mind, and he doubted whether those who knew him earlier in life understood how psychically disciplined he had become since his dope-smoking, acid-dropping college days. Everyone back home remembered him as a stoner, a burnout, which kind of pissed him off. Now he went to the highest-level academic conferences, where people had heard of him and listened to his latest talk on Lacan or even Borges, for God’s sake, when he wanted to mix things up. When he went home he was cast as the bad boy. Shit, so he had acted like Syd Barrett for a few years. Now he was turning into Edmund Wilson. People couldn’t let go of the past—
their
problem, not his.
    There was a prime parking spot right in front of his duplex. He jogged up the steps, snatching yesterday’s
New York Times
in its blue plastic wrapper and tossing it on the table inside. Jay lived in postcollege splendor—she had some decent furniture her parents had given her—but there was no denying her age, which was demonstrated by the presence of milk-carton bookshelves in her living room. Stephen was a full-fledged adult with money and a good job. He had polished wood floors, an antique built-in sideboard, chandeliers, glassed-in bookshelves . . . all this shit that made him feel really good about himself. He’d grown up with money—quite a bit of it, actually, some of it filtering down to him still—but his parents had basically been well-heeled hippies who preferred the reek of incense, dust, and cat litter. Now Stephen aspired to elegance, quiet, and dignity—three things his parents would have had trouble recognizing, much less epitomizing.
    Papers, papers . . . notes. Stephen went through the things on his desk. He glanced up at the mirror and mussed his hair a little. He cultivated a slightly unkempt image. The girls he taught responded to it and, while he would most certainly never engage in any impropriety with any of them, at any time, on any occasion, he was not averse to being an object of attraction. To as many of them as possible. It was healthy in a sense; it fostered a