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watching me. Instead, he’s picked up his piece of paper again and is reading it while he talks.
    “You know something?” he says. “Tonight, don’t even wait for me for dinner. I think I’ll stay in my office and grade those freshman essays. And then I can work on chapter five without being interrupted. That’s what’s killing me here—these constant interruptions.”
    “Actually,” I say, and feel a shameful flicker of satisfaction—really, this is one of my worst qualities, smugness—“as you may remember, tonight we’re having dinner with the Winstanleys. At the Villager.” Clark Winstanley is the head of the history department; he’s the one newly married to the grad student. Rumor has it that he’s arranged a series of dinners to reassure the faculty and their spouses that he’s still in his right mind. Either that or he’s showing off his total splendiferousness in being able to land such a young chick. The faculty wives are mixed on their verdicts.
    Grant’s face is filled with dismay. “Are you kidding me? That’s tonight?”
    “Yep.”
    “But I’ve got to work!”
    “Yeah, well, some would say this is your work.”
    “Gah! Doesn’t he have anything better to do than parade around showing off his stupidity? He might as well just pull out his dick and challenge everybody to a pissing match. Why do I have to suffer because some bastard decides to have a midlife crisis?”
    “Because this particular bastard is your chairman, maybe?”
    “For Christ’s sake. I do not want to have to think about his sex life!”
    I laugh. “This isn’t going to be a dinner to think about Clark’s sex life. This is a dinner so that Clark can try to make everything seem normal . All you have to do is talk about the usual topics and behave yourself. Trust me.”
    “What’s her name again?”
    “Padgett.”
    “Padgett. Right. I would’ve guessed Brittany or Tiffany, something of that ilk.”
    He runs his hands through his hair and looks longingly—some would say even with lust—at the piece of paper he’s been furiously scribbling on. He purses and unpurses his lips, sighs, throws his arms up to heaven, beseeches the fates through clenched teeth, and finally stomps off to the shower.
    Oddly enough, I feel happy for the first time this morning. At least we’re going out. And Grant has to go along.
    “SO DID you know that Clark Winstanley was dumping his wife before he went and did it?” I say to Grant on the way to the restaurant. “Do men talk about these things?”
    I have to say, I’m a little bit obsessed right now with people who chuck their old lives out the window. There’s something sick about this, I know, but I’ve never felt better about stuffy old Clark Winstanley.
    “What?” he says. “What things?”
    “Did you know that Clark was divorcing Mary Lou? Because I’ve been wondering what men say to other men when they’re thinking about something big like this.”
    Grant peers out into the snowy darkness, probably doing a calculation about how many flakes per minute are falling, and whether in a moment he might have to turn on the windshield wipers. He hates to use the wipers; you would think it actually cost extra money to run them. It drives me crazy, this miserliness with windshield wipers. I can’t see the road when he’s driving, I tell him, and he replies that I don’t have to see the road. I can sit there and be relaxed, knowing he’s never had so much as a fender bender.
    “So did he say anything to you specifically? Did you sense anything?”
    “God, Annabelle.” He laughs harshly. “I have no idea.”
    “It seems you’d remember something like a guy saying, ‘I’m breaking up with my wife.’ Or maybe you’d even see the new woman hanging around. Did she ever come to department meetings?”
    “Why are you doing this?”
    “What?”
    “Thinking about these people this way, when it’s none of your business.”
    “It has nothing to do with whose business