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sitting there, in their nice clothing, but I was seeing something else now, these whitish blobs at the centers of their bodies. It was their spirits I was seeing. I wasn’t scared or anything. Everyone’s a saint when it comes to the naked spirit. The other stuff just sort of grows over us, like weeds.
    I thought about that crazy professor again. He’d called me to his office after Thanksgiving to tell me I was flunking. He was all torn up, as if he’d somehow betrayed me. He asked if I’d learned anything at all in his class. I said of course I had, I’d learned plenty of things, but when he pressed me to name one or two, I drew a blank. Just before I left, he came over to my side of the desk and put his hand on my shoulder and said,
We all need someone to watch over us, James
.
    â€œDo you believe that?” Mr. Wilkes said.
    I was pretty sure I’d never see the three of them again and it made me a little sad, a little reluctant to leave.
    Wilkes was smoothing down his lapels. Mrs. Wilkessmiled with her gentle teeth and Mr. Wilkes began softly, invisibly, to weep. His spirit was like a little kerchief tucked into that big blue suit.
    â€œI think we’re going to be alright,” I said. “That’s the feeling I get.” This was true. I was, in fact, having some kind of clairvoyant moment. Everything that was about to happen I could see, just before it did.
    Outside, up in the sky, above even the murmuring satellites, an entire race of benevolent yayas was maybe peering down at me with glassy black eyes. I started waving. The waitress breezed by and blew me a kiss. Mr. Wilkes slid another fifty across the table and winked. The sun lanced through a bank of clouds and lit the passing traffic like tinsel. I waved like hell.

APPROPRIATE SEX
    T HIS WAS A F RIDAY in April, one of the last days of the term, and the undergrads were all worked up. You could see it in the way they touched themselves, those lewd innocent little caresses of the self, the way they lingered over their cigarettes out on the steps, a thousand bright sucking lips.
    The dress code in my own class was terrifying. Cutoffs. Halter tops. Garments that managed to fuse the sartorial aspirations of sportswear and lingerie. Spring was finally here (finally! finally!) and there was no holding the young skin back.
    We were critiquing a story called “Last Rites,” in which a mother mourning the death of her daughter decides, rather impulsively, to visit the girl’s prize Arabian stallion.
    â€œWhat’s the deal with the horse?” said Brendan Mahoney. “Is there something, like,
going on
with the horse?”
    â€œWhat would be going on with the horse?” said Nicole Buswell.
    Nicole—pale, chubby, ardently sexless—was our leaderfor the day. I myself didn’t lead discussions. I felt this would inhibit the class, and my philosophy as a teacher back then was to disinhibit.
    â€œI don’t know,” Brendan said. “I’m not saying anything, like, explicit, but—” He looked down at his copy of the story and squinted. “There’s this line at the top of seven: ‘She felt the heat of the animal against her body. The animal heat entering her.’ What’s that mean: ‘The animal heat entering her’?”
    There was a pause.
    â€œOh, that’s sick,” said Emily Givens.
    â€œShe goes and leans against the horse,” said Rob Tway. “It’s a human thing. Like wanting, like, contact. She’s just decided to take her daughter off life support.”
    â€œThat’s what makes the whole thing so weird!” Brendan said, as if Rob had helped him make his point. “I mean, if she’s so upset about her daughter and all, what’s she doing getting all sexualized over a horse?”
    â€œSexualized?” said Nicole. “Sexualized isn’t even a
word
.”
    â€œYes it is,” said Pete