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the James and Forster
oeuvres
is extremely deft, never polemical. And that extraordinary early poem of Forster’s! Wherever did you find it? I applaud your research skills as well as your sensitivity to literary nuance.
Looking back at your midterm, I have trouble believing the same student wrote this paper. Never in my career have I seen such a growth spurt. Clearly the tension of the exam room strangles your creativity (as it did mine). Therefore I have decided to exempt you from the final. The paper, thought out quietly in privacy, is the form for you, and so I shall assess your future performance purely on that basis.
Last but not least, if you’re not averse, I’d like to nominate this paper for several departmental prizes. And if you have a chance, why don’t you stop by my office hours next week? Have you thought of graduate school? I’d like to discuss the possibility with you.
Grade: A
    Â 
    I put the paper down.
    â€œSo?” Eric said.
    â€œI guess she liked it,” I said.
    â€œLiked it! She went apeshit.” Kicking off his shoes, he sat down on the bed and started working on a joint. “You know, when I first read that part about the midterm, I choked. I thought, Shit, she’ll say it’s too good, someone else must have done it. But she didn’t. She bought it!”
    â€œI tried hard to make it sound, you know, like something a very smart college junior might write. I mean, as opposed to something Elizabeth Hardwick or Susan Sontag might write."
    â€œAnd now I don’t even have to take the final!” He laughed almost brutally.
“Stanford Biz School, here I come!
You really slung it, Dave.”
    â€œWell,” I said.
    My pulse quickened.
    Very casually he put down the joint, unbuttoned and took off his shirt. Then his T-shirt.
    He lay back. What a friend of mine called a “crab ladder” of hairs crawled from his belt up over his navel to disappear between small, brown nipples.
    He lit the joint, took a puff.
    â€œDave Leavitt, come on down,” he said. “You’re the next contestant on the new
Price Is Right.
”
    He started taking off his socks.
    â€œLet me do that for you,” I said.
    And did. I licked his feet.
    Above me, I heard him exhale. Reaching up, I felt his warm stomach rise and fall.
    â€œEric,” I said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI want to ask you something. I know it wasn’t part of the bargain. Even so—”
    â€œYou can’t fuck me,” he said.
    â€œNo, not that. What I’d like to do—I’d like to kiss you.”
    â€œKiss me!” He laughed. “Okay, sure. As your bonus for getting me out of the final.”
    I pulled myself up to shadow his face with my own; licked the acrid flavor of the pot from his tongue; sucked his soft, thick lips.
    â€œYou’re a good kisser,” I said after a few minutes.
    â€œSo they tell me.”
    â€œWho, girls?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œAnd how do I kiss, compared to girls?”
    â€œNot bad, I guess.”
    â€œAfterwards, you’ll have to tell me if I do something else better than girls do.”
    â€œTo tell the truth, I’m kind of curious to find out myself,” Eric said.
    Then for about half an hour, though he made other noises, he didn’t speak a word.

II.
    T HINGS STARTED LOOKING UP. My editor moved from Viking Penguin to Houghton Mifflin, which decided to bring out the paperback of
While England Sleeps,
as well as my new novel. “So it’s a done deal,” my agent said on the phone. “Oh, and by the way, I’m putting down a March of ninety-six delivery. Is that feasible?”
    â€œSure,” I said. “Why not? I’m working harder than I have in years.” Which was true. The quarter was drawing to a close, and I had two term papers to finish: “Mirror Imagery in Virginia Woolf” for Maty Yearwood, plus “Changing Attitudes toward Sex and