Judy Greer

She is racing to get the words out before Martin appears.

She feels as though she is running for a train she cannot afford to miss.

I need you to help me, she says to her husband's mother, though she has no idea what kind of help there could possibly be.

Monica was 25 when she met Martin, a serious student, a quiet man, educated, intelligent, everything about him exotic to her, seductive, so dedicated, not yet 30, and a doctoral student in the philosophy department where she worked as a receptionist.

He smiled infrequently and she thought him intense, reflective.

She had been smiled at all her life by friendly neighbors in the town where she'd grown up, by school teachers and shopkeepers, by her reckless father and barely grown mother.

She had had her fill of smiles.

She was the one to initiate.

She was the one to stay at her desk until his Thursday seminar broke at 5.15, to pretend to sort through phone messages and interdepartmental mail until he zipped his coat and shouldered his bag and nodded at her on his way past the desk.

Martin, she said, and he turned, surprised.

So then, drinks late that Friday afternoon.

Informal, noncommittal.

He was reticent.

He talked with comfort about only his research.

But he reciprocated the invitation, and she was surprised.

A foreign film matinee the following Sunday, then drinks again, then lunch, weeks of quiet meetings.

Dates?

She was never quite sure.

For an hour or three, and then.

Then.