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rear view—heavy, stooped shoulders, yards of seersucker, and a fringe of curly iron-gray hair encircling a freckled head. He ordered coffee, then hid behind the outspread pages of the
Times
.
    Five minutes later Miles Jewell entered the diner, his thick white hair and summer tan set off nicely by a navy-blue polo shirt. He peered through his steel-rimmed glasses, located his buddy, and veered toward him. At the sight of his old friend, Ralph Brooke folded the paper and rose ponderously. In the most secluded corner of the diner, the two senior scholars pounded each other on the back and chortled together like a pair of happy thieves.
    T hat first Tuesday of September promised to be summery—hot and muggy—but when I enteredDickinson Hall at 8:47 A.M . it was clear the fall semester had begun in earnest. Students hustled through the halls, young women greeting each other with squeals, male students with manly back thumps. In the English Department office, Monica Cassale, our secretary, was enthroned at her desk, deep in a copy of
Oblivion Falls
—I recognized the cover with its flaming orange and red roses. Fielding queries about course offerings and professors’ office hours, Monica scarcely glanced up from her book. The English Department secretary was so efficient that if Miles ever sat back in his big, soft, leather chair in the inner office one day and died, Monica could simply close his door and run the department all by herself. At least for a while. At least until the smell got too bad.
    I nodded in the general direction of the desk, and the secretary nodded back without taking her eyes off the novel. I was sorting through the junk from my pigeonhole mailbox, when our chairman himself entered the office. I greeted him with the ritual back-to-school question, “Did you have a productive summer, Miles?”
    But it seemed he hadn’t. “Karen, every damn second of my time was eaten up by petty administrative details—curriculum planning, scheduling, hiring. I got no research done. This is absolutely—indubitably, without any doubt whatsoever—the final year I will serve as department chair.”
    “Umm,” I responded, with an enigmatic smile. I’d believe that when I saw it. Miles had chaired the English Department for the entire twentieth century. It would take nuclear fission to dislodge him from the seat of power. Especially now that he had his boyhood pal, Ralph Emerson Brooke, in that driver’s seat with him.
    I, myself, had had quite a productive summer, I thought, as I retrieved the only salvageable piece ofmail—a note from a former student—and carried it to my desk. And, I gloated, I was now on pretenure sabbatical leave. With no teaching scheduled for the entire fall semester, I planned to spend lovely leisurely days doing research for my biography of the nineteenth-century novelist Serena Northbury. I squared my shoulders in the desk chair, pulled up a yellow lined pad and a blue rolling-tip pen, and inscribed:
To Do This Semester!!!!
Number One: BEGIN BOOK .
    By 9:16 I’d become so paralyzed by the thought of Number One that my pen hovered over the half-page-long list of other obligations for two and three-quarters minutes without settling on Number Two. A light breeze nudged a whiff of late-rose fragrance through my open window, and an evanescent memory of Miles’s rose garden wafted through my mind.
Where was Jake Fenton?
I wondered idly. Aside from our encounter in the cafe, I hadn’t heard from the novelist, and, surprisingly in this small town, I hadn’t seen him around. He was probably doing research for his latest literary adventure, I thought, most likely somewhere in deepest, darkest, most primitive Montana. Then I brought my errant mind up short:
My God! Why was I thinking about Jake? I had a book to write!
    When the phone rang, I all too willingly dropped the pen. Given my experiences of the past couple of weeks, I half-expected yet another request for an interview about
Oblivion