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before. For years, he looked at me like that. Then, gradually, he didn’t. Since Tim left, there have been days when I’ve wondered if anyone will ever look at me like that again.
    For now, at least, Tim and I had something in common, a shared goal. My first task was to “feel out” my contacts. I spent maybe three minutes thinking of the best way of approaching the dean. “Oh! I forgot to ask in my interview the other day—do you have hookers at your school?” I headed to the library instead.
    I love any excuse to leave the office, and a visit to the Boston Public Library, which just manages to be too far from the office to walk to, meant a trip on the T. To prepare for the journey, I popped into an Au Bon Pain for a croissant and an iced coffee. One must keep up one’s strength. Then, because I’d need something to read while on public transportation, I bought a decorating magazine entitled, Windows and Walls, both of which I happen to have in my apartment.
    At the library, I tried the computers first, but most of the information I sought was labeled “restricted”—meaning, I guess, that if you want to look at porn, you have to be a librarian. Instead, I hit the stacks. My first valuable piece of retail material: Mayflower Madam , by Sidney Biddle Barrows. I settled into a comfy chair and smirked at the thought that I was getting paid for this. Most people who make the kind of money that I do have to spend their days flipping burgers or punching cash registers. Thirty pages into the book, I was convinced I had chosen the wrong profession. As told by Barrows, prostitution was even better than being a lawyer, which, after all, involved endless briefs and gray suits with skirts that fell below the knee. Forty pages in, I realized that call girls had to do more than wear fabulous clothes and answer to a name like Camille. They actually had to have sex with the old farts.
    The library was pleasant: noise and temperature-controlled. Maybe I should have been a librarian.
    I leafed through some other books and clicked through some unrestricted on-line articles. By the end of the day, I was an expert on all the things they don’t teach you about in college: sexual role-playing, garter belts, and vaginal condoms. I developed a new appreciation for law-abiding madams who paid taxes. I discovered that most masseuses really aren’t hookers and that dominatrixes rarely have sex with their clients. Finally, I confirmed what I’d always suspected: that everyone was having sex more than I was.
    How I was supposed to apply all of this to Mercer College, I hadn’t a clue. On Monday, I’d “poke around” at the campus. I didn’t really know what that entailed, since my interviews had always been “soft,” engaged with willing participants who often approved my final draft before it went to print.
    Meanwhile, I had a weekend to endure.

six
    It could have been worse. I could have been eating Häagen-Dazs from a carton and watching cartoons when Dennis showed up at my door on Saturday morning. I use the term “morning” loosely. It was just past noon. And I was asleep.
    I don’t know why I even answered the door. A single woman living alone should know better. He could have been a rapist. Or a Mormon.
    At least I was decent, clad in the bathrobe my mother had given me when I was in college and she thought I was still a virgin. High-necked, flowered and frilly, it would arouse any man whose first sexual fantasies had revolved around Laura Ingalls.
    “Oh God. I should have called to confirm.” Attired in an apricot polo shirt and white Bermuda shorts, he looked crisp and clean, like he’d risen with the sun and energized himself with yoga and a supplement-laden smoothie. “I just—I thought we had plans . . .”
    I do not wake easily, especially after a mere twelve hours of shut-eye. “Uh,” I said. “Nuh. S’okay. Jus’ napping.” I am one of those inflexible types who hates it when someone shows up without