moment to interpret. âNo, no, I just wanted to set up a lunch date with you.â
âI have lunch plans today.â
âSo how about tomorrow?â
âIâm leaving for a conference. Iâll be gone until Monday.â
âSo Monday then,â I said. âNoon?â
âIt takes me a day to get out from under the work that plilesâpilesâup while Iâm awayââ
âOkay, Tuesday. Next Tuesday.â
There was another pause. I thought she was considering hanging up on me.
âWhat is this about, Jill?â she said finally. âYouâre not usually this ang-shush to spend time with me. â
Ordinarily by that point in such a conversation with my mother, I would have said, âAnd Iâm not now either. Call me when youâve got a minute, okay?â But âcrawlâ instead of âcallâ? âAng-shushâ instead of âanxiousâ? I had to get her to lunchâand Iâd probably need a delegation from Alcoholics Anonymous with me.
âI just need to talk to you,â I said.
âAre you out of money?â she said.
âNo,â I said. The hair on the back of my neck was starting to bristle. She wasnât too drunk to get my hackles up.
âYouâre not going to finish your dishertation in time, and you want me to intercede for you for more funding.â
âNo,â I said. âIt isnât about me, Mother. Itâs about you.â
âWhat about me?â
âIâll tell you when I see you. Next Tuesday, noon. Iâll meet you at Marie Callendarâs.â
Then I was the one who hung up on her. âYou owe me, Max,â I said.
âOh, Iâm sorry,â a husky voice muttered from the doorway.
I looked up to see a tall, skinny girl peering in with apologetic gray eyes. It was Tabitha Lane, a freshman in my Math 19 class, the one who always reminded me of an adolescent giraffe. Iâd totally forgotten she was coming by this morning.
âSorry about what?â I said. âCome in.â
âI thought I heard you talking to somebody,â she said. âI can come back later if this isnât a good time.â
âItâs fine,â I said. I turned around and cleared off a seat on the straight-backed wooden chair next to my desk. Then I had to find the matchbook I always put under one leg so it wouldnât rock and drive me nuts. Most of the furniture in graduate student offices, at least in the Alfred P. Sloan Mathematics Center, looked like it had been salvaged from the Stanford attic. I kept talking as I hunted under the desk for the matchbook. âYouâve got an appointment. I was just on the phone.â
âI thought maybe you were talking to that guy you share your office with.â
âAlan Jacoboni?â I said. âHe never comes in until at least noon, the slacker. You know, youâd think with the amount of tuition people pay to go to this school, they could afford a chair that doesnât requireââ
I stopped in mid-sentence at the sound of wheels rollingacross the office floor. Tabitha was entering on roller blades.
âWhat the heck?â I said, looking up at her.
âOh, Iâm sorry!â Her face went pale under the spattering of freckles that covered her nose and cheeks like carelessly thrown confetti. âDo you want me to take them off? Are they too noisy? I can take them offââ
âNo,â I said, still staring. âYou can wear them in here. The question is, why?â
âItâs so much easier to get around campus with these,â Tabitha said. âI was ending up late to, like, every one of my classes, and they frown on that around here and so then I saw this girl in my dorm putting them on and I go, what are you doing, and she goes, theyâre totally the best, so I asked my mother to send me mine and of course it took, oh, maybe three weeks for me to get