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narcissist. With depressive tendencies.”
    “Are you a shrink?”
    “I teach Latin American literature. Maybe that does qualify me as a therapist. I should be charging more for my services.”
    Nick rejoins them with Alice’s coffee and muffin. Silva rises.
    “Some of us poor wage slaves have a class to prepare.”
    “Off you go, Luis,” says Nick. “Shine the light of your soul upon them.”
    Silva makes Alice a small old-fashioned bow and goes on his way.
    “Fine teacher,” says Nick.
    He settles down facing Alice. He studies her as she drinks her coffee, his gaze lingering on her hands, her froth-stained lips, her eyes. She hasn’t expected this level of interest and doesn’t know how to respond. When he smiles his whole face wrinkles. His smile says: I’m happy to be here with you.
    “Your friend says your course hasn’t been renewed,” says Alice.
    He nods. “I’m a visiting professor whose visit has now come to an end.”
    “What was the course?”
    “Paradise on Earth: the Changing Image of Arcadia in Literature and Art.” He gives a little roll of his eyes, as if to mock his ownpretensions. “Now referred to by Luis as Paradise Lost. Luis has never really got irony.”
    She wants to say, Your friend also warned me not to fuck you. There seem to be no rules here. She’s feeling dizzy.
    “So what will you do now?” she says.
    “Early retirement?” He speaks the words with his head on one side, as if trying them out for the first time. “I’m fifty-five.”
    “You don’t look it.” Then, embarrassed, she adds quickly, “I’m twenty-four.”
    This is ridiculous.
    “That looks about right,” he says.
    Alice drinks the coffee she doesn’t really want, staring at the book on the table without seeing it.
    Nick says, “So you know Laura Kinross?”
    It takes Alice a moment to realize he means Jack’s mother.
    “Yes,” she says. “I used to go out with her son.”
    “How is she?”
    “Fine, as far as I know.”
    Jack’s mother is settled in life, part of the unchanging background. It doesn’t occur to Alice to ask herself how she is.
    “She was my first love,” says Nick. “The one that got away.”
    “Everyone has to have one of those.” She has no idea what she’s saying.
    “Jet-lagged?”
    “Very.”
    She attacks her muffin.
    “So you’re doing something on Emily Dickinson?”
    She gives him the short version of her project. Nick listens attentively.
    “I’ve heard of the Mabel–Austin affair,” he says, “but I knowvery little about it. I’ve met the people who live in what used to be the Todd house. And of course the Dickinson houses are open to the public now.”
    “I’m going on the tour at eleven,” says Alice.
    “We live just down the road from the Homestead,” says Nick. “On Triangle Street. Emily’s buried in the cemetery half a mile up our road.”
    Then, sitting back, watching her sip her coffee, “So where are you staying?”
    “I’m at the Amherst Inn.”
    “How long are you here?”
    “Two weeks.”
    She catches a passing scent of the aftershave he uses, but fails to identify it. Together with the fragrance comes a sense of his physical presence: comfortable, assured, interested in her, but not troubled by what she might think of him.
    “Might you really retire?” she says.
    “Why not? Become a gentleman of leisure. All the great achievements of civilization—art, music, literature—have been created for the amusement of gentlemen of leisure. I would take it as a solemn duty.”
    “A solemn duty to be amused?”
    “Oh, you mustn’t think amusement is trivial. It’s the polar opposite of boredom. Boredom is the loss of interest, the loss of appetite, the loss of desire. When we become bored, we begin to die. When we’re amused, we’re alive.”
    Alice is silenced.
    “Forgive me,” he says. “I see I’m being too serious for breakfast time. Tell me about yourself. What do you do when you’re not researching