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sabbatical, while Patti and her husband were moving out of their condominium to a house nearby. The condo would be vacant for a couple of months until the new tenants moved in; she could stay there and have the place to herself. Jacqueline had been unable to refuse; the monograph she was working on was finished and needed only retyping. Patti had mentioned getting together with their old friends Dena and Louise only after Jacqueline already had her plane ticket.
    She folded her arms, thinking of other times, twenty years before, when she had gone into her mother’s kitchen to fetch Cokes and potato chips while Patti, Louise, and Dena had gossiped about parties and boys. She had gradually become part of their group, hoping that some of their lofty social status in high school would rub off on her. By associating with them, she did not have to endure the slights and cruel comments many of the more studious students suffered.
    She had escaped them with a scholarship to an eastern women’s college. She had found new friends among young women she would have avoided in high school, people with whom she could share her intellectual interests. She had occasionally reflected on the time she had wasted in her struggle to be liked and accepted by Patti’s circle, but she did not have the courage to group herself with the outcasts then, had preferred her place, however tenuous, with the clique of cheerleaders, jocks, and partygoers.
    Jacqueline had nearly forgotten this aspect of the youthfulness she sometimes longed for—the fear of rejection, of being different, awkward, unliked. Her doctorate, the fellowship, the published papers and books would mean little to the other women, who led the kind of life others envied.
    “There you are!” Dena was standing in the entrance to the kitchen; somehow Jacqueline had missed hearing her enter.
    “Dena,” she said, trying to sound pleased. Dena’s body, like Patti’s and Louise’s, seemed shaped by aerobics and starvation.
    “Funny, isn’t it? We kept saying we had to get together sometime, but you had to come three thousand miles just to get us all into the same room.” Dena shook back her long black hair. “Well, you finally got here.” Patti and Louise had said exactly the same thing. “It’ll be just like old times.”
     
    They caught up with one another as they sat on the floor around a glass-topped coffee table. Louise had moved from Palos Verdes to a house a few miles away and was living on a generous divorce settlement, while Dena, who had recently bought a place in Manhattan Beach, sold real estate.
    “I was out here for a year before I bought my old place,” Dena murmured in her husky voice as she poured more wine. “That was a mistake. I should have bought something—anything—the minute I stepped off the plane. Things are slower now.”
    “Joe really lucked out on that piece of land he bought,” Patti said. “He wants me to stay home when we have our kid, and I guess we can afford it.”
    Dena lifted a brow. “A kid, huh?”
    “We’re trying. Deadline decade, you know.”
    Louise shook her blonde head. “Stop with one. One’s enough, believe me.”
    Dena turned toward Jacqueline. “Didn’t you say you were living with a guy?”
    “Another professor,” Jacqueline replied. “He’s in the English department. We’ve been together for almost ten years.”
    Dena sighed. “Long time. Is he cute?”
    Jacqueline thought of Jerome’s long face, graying beard, and thinning hair. “He’s tall. He’s in pretty good shape. I don’t know if I’d call him cute.”
    “Well, now that you’re here,” Louise said, “when are you going to move?” Jacqueline was silent. “Don’t tell me you want to stay back East now. You could teach out here, couldn’t you?”
    “It’s not that easy. I’m lucky to have the position I’ve got. The world isn’t exactly short of Ph.D.’s in philosophy.”
    Louise tapped one manicured finger against her cheek; she had