Imagine you were on your way to a party where people would talk about things like "Conceptual Traditions in Agnostic Ontology," or "Existential Dilemmas in Cartesian Dualism." Would you be in hurry? Well I wouldn’t either, but it happens that on this particular occasion I was. Emma's now-famous philosophy conference began on a Monday, the third Monday in January I believe, and I was late for the opening reception. It was probably about 6:30 PM when I walked from my office to the College Inn to join Emma and the other philosophy professors. I am not — and I'd like to emphasize this point — a philosophy professor myself. I had agreed to come to dine with these philosophers merely as a courtesy to my partner, Emma.

On a winter evening, during semester break, the campus at Hammond feels acutely empty, like a beach on a rainy day in November. On any given Monday in the fall, the whole place teems like an ant colony, the sidewalks full of students gabbing and laughing on their way to class. But on that January night, as I crossed the campus, long brick buildings with dark windows surrounded the great open quads. I was surprised, in fact, to meet another person. I was even more surprised that the person I met was lying on the sidewalk.

In the darkness I nearly stepped on his chest before I even noticed him, and I gave a little yelp at the sight of his crumpled form. He lay on his back, the eyes in the gray head closed and the stubbled jaw hanging slightly off kilter with the mouth open.

I dropped down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Mister! Mister! Are you all right?" That, of course, was a pretty stupid question. A man lying on a sidewalk on a winter night in Iowa is, by definition, not all right. He is either dead, or on his way to being dead from hypothermia. The man's overcoat was unbuttoned and I saw a suit jacket and pants underneath, and a white shirt with no tie. Was he alive? I couldn’t tell. I frequently deal with people who appear dead — my 8:00 AM theory class springs to mind here — but I rarely encounter an actual body. Gingerly, I pressed my fingers against the skinny, whiskered neck, feeling for a pulse. I couldn't find one, but then I wasn't sure I was looking in the right place.

What to do? Obviously, I needed to call an ambulance. I had to get to an emergency phone and call the night watchman. (Hammond College is too small to have a full-fledged security force.) I looked around the deserted quad, but saw none of the little blue lights that shine above the campus emergency phones located at various spots around campus. I thought I remembered one in the lobby of Goddard Hall on the far side of the quad and around the corner. I took off in that direction, running as fast as I could in my mid-heeled dress shoes. By the time I reached the double glass doors at the main entrance to Goddard, I felt the cold air burn my lungs as I puffed and heaved. Goddard Hall is a good place to run in an emergency because it’s a computer center whose facilities are in constant demand by students writing term papers (the night before they're due, naturally) and therefore open around the clock. Unless, of course, the college is on break. Which it was. I cursed myself for forgetting that as I stood panting in front of the lobby door. Where is there another emergency phone? I thought. I remembered: back the other way, on the east side of the Chemistry building.

I started running again, back around the corner, across the quad toward where the man lay on the sidewalk. I would stop to check on him, button his coat up and put his hands in his pockets before going off to find the other phone. The clap of my feet on the sidewalk echoed off the windows of Prospect Hall as I passed it. By the time I approached the spot where I'd left the old man, I felt myself sweating in spite of the cold. Then I stopped running. There was no old man there.

Was I in the right place? For a few seconds I had to bend forward, my hands against my knees, puffing hard. Usually I make it a point never to go running when the temperature is below 15 degrees. I also make it a point never to go running when the temperature is above 15 degrees. I straightened up, looked around, squinting in the darkness. Yes, there was the imprint of his leg in the snow beside the walk; it was definitely the right place. The man just wasn’t there anymore. I had only been gone for a minute or so. Had he regained consciousness, gotten up off the sidewalk, pulled himself together and walked away? In that little bit of time I had been running across the quad?

I called out. "Hello? Is someone here?" I looked around, straining to listen. No answer. Louder this time, I said, "Hello, is anyone hurt?" My own voice echoed back from across the square, but nothing else.

I unbuttoned my coat and flapped the sides in and out a few times. The reception where I was headed would feel awkward enough without my having sweat stains under the arms of my blouse. The cold air felt soothing. A light wind stirred and a small piece of green paper flitted across the sidewalk a foot or two from where the old man had lain. I picked it up. It was from a Hammond College memo pad and the words "Someone called for you, 555-8519," were scribbled diagonally across the page. The scratchy handwriting I recognized immediately.

Looking back now, I marvel at the thought of how much easier it would have been for me if I just hadn’t picked up that piece of paper.

CHAPTER 2

The philosophy conference had officially started on the morning before that cold evening when I found the old man. I knew Emma’s behavior would eventually show signs of stress that day, but I had thought she would be OK at least until some key milestones had been passed. Breakfast, for example. But I was still toweling off from my shower when Emma stormed into the bathroom in her frayed blue robe holding a white plastic tube between thumb and forefinger. It was short and fat and had a wide round top. She thrust it at me.

"Do you see this?"

Since it was three inches from my face, I could honestly say, "Yes, I do."

"The top is all white. Do you know what that means?"

That was slightly less obvious. I’d have to take a guess. "It means you’re not ovulating?"

"That’s right. I’m not. So now what do I do?"

Boy, these questions kept getting harder. I got my terry cloth robe from the hook behind the door. "Do about what?"

"About inseminating, Claire! The sperm comes today. I’m going to be tied up with this conference day and night for the next three days, when am I going to do it?"

With the sleeve of my robe I wiped the fog off the bathroom mirror. "Oh, you’ll probably ovulate tomorrow morning." I made a monster grin and examined my front teeth.

"I’d better." She sat down on the edge of the claw-footed bathtub. "I don’t even know how to keep the stuff — what do you store sperm in, anyway?"

"Normally, a husband." I rubbed a finger over the crinkles on the sides of my eyes — laugh lines my Dad would’ve called them.

"At what point in this conversation do you plan to become helpful, Claire?"

"Look," I turned to her, "there’s nothing to worry about. You can inseminate tomorrow before the paper sessions. You’re just all worked up about the meeting."

"Well, maybe." She held up the uncooperative little tube and examined it in the light from the frosted window. "But the last thing I need is to get up in the middle of someone’s presentation and say, ‘Pardon me, I need to go get pregnant.’"

I laughed. "I bet that’d be the most interesting thing anyone says at that philosophy conference." She tilted her head back and gave me a thin, insolent smile.

"To the Philistines in your field, I’m sure it would be." The tube hit the bottom of the waste basket with a pop.

We went downstairs for breakfast. My house — our house — is a big white Victorian built by a mill owner in the 1890's, the kind of house young academics can afford only in places like rural Iowa. There is a standard sequence of events when you move from a tiny, big-city apartment, in my case in Chicago, to a small town in Iowa. You see the big houses, you find out how cheap they are, you quickly buy one, you feel euphoric. The euphoria sometimes lasts a full week or more. It is squashed by the discovery that a house that size and age requires approximately as much maintenance as an aircraft carrier. After five years in that house, I still had a lot of renovation to do, but at least the first floor was in pretty good shape. I’d replastered the walls, refinished the floors in the living and dining rooms, put in new kitchen cabinets. Now, with Emma living there, I planned to do more. There wasn’t a lot of furniture for such big rooms, but we’d keep working on it if Emma stayed at the college. And if she didn’t? Well, on that first morning of the conference I had few doubts that she would be staying.

On my way to the kitchen I stopped to check the thermometer outside the dining room window. Twenty-one degrees — a little warmer than I’d expected. I opened the window and shook some sunflower seed into the bird feeder on the outside ledge. Through the bare maple sapling in our side yard, I could see our next door neighbor carefully spreading salt on his front sidewalk. Ice is ubiquitous in the Iowa winter, and people his age need constant vigilance against slipping and falling.

Through the open window I called, "Good morning, Mr. Leach," my voice brimming with sunshine and birdsong. The gray head turned toward me. His lips curled up into 12% of a smile. It lasted for about two-thirds of a second, then he went back to pouring the salt.

"Claire, stop torturing that poor man."

"Torturing him? I’m extending the hand of fellowship across the great gulf between our life styles."

"Of course you are, dear. And I’m the Caliph of Baghdad."

In the kitchen Emma stared glumly into the refrigerator while I went to the cabinet and pulled out coffee cups. Emma’s gift for my thirty-second birthday had already done its job; the coffee sat warming in the glass pot. I started toasting a bagel and Emma got her hot dog buns out of the breadbox. That’s what she likes to eat for breakfast: hot dog buns with butter and jelly. This is in spite of being a gourmet cook whose coq au vin is a legend in its own time. There are many swirls and eddies in Emma’s personality. I had been aware of this for all the years I’d known her, but only now that we lived together did it really become clear to me.

My bagel had just popped up when I heard a heavy thud, thud coming from the rear of the house. Just outside the kitchen door stood a tiny old man, alternately scraping and whacking the icy back steps with a garden shovel. He paused, poured some salt over the top step, then moved down to start whacking the one below it. He wore a ratty green parka, green work gloves, and green rubber boots unsnapped at the top. With a silver goatee on his little chin, he looked like he was here on sabbatical from Santa’s Workshop.

I opened the door. "Hey, Cubby, you’re making a lot of noise out here."

He looked at me sideways, still pounding the ice. "If you don’t clear off the snow right away, the sun melts it. Then when the night comes it turns to ice." He smoothed out the salt with the tip of the shovel. "How many times I gotta tell you that?"

"How many times have you told me?"

"About fifty."

"Well, I think fifty-five ought to do it."

He leaned the shovel next to the back door and came into the kitchen. Cubby lives in a small blue house across the alley between our back yards. "I don’t think you girls are gonna make it as Iowans," he said. He’s about the only person who can get away with using the word "girls" like that around Emma, who is the Kendall Professor of Feminist Thought at the college. He hung his parka on a peg and stepped out of his boots. I heard Emma in the dining room talking on the cordless phone.

"Want some coffee?" I said.

"Isn’t decaf is it?"

"Hell, no! I wouldn’t offer decaf to a farmer."

"Ex-farmer." He wore blue jeans and a denim shirt buttoned all the way up the neck. "Truth is, at night decaf’s all I drink now." He shook his head at this sorry state of affairs. I handed him his coffee: milk but no sugar. He sipped it and nodded. "You made this, right? Emma’s is always real weak." He took a gulp. "Hell, her coffee’s too weak to come out of the pot."

Emma came in from the dining room, writing down some notes on a little yellow pad. "Hi, Cubby."

"Hi, Em." He stuck out his thumb in the direction of the door. "You gotta clear off those back steps, Em, I was telling Claire. You don’t clear ‘em off, you get ice every time."

"OK, Cubby," she said. "Claire, that was Maria on the phone." Maria was the secretary for Emma’s department at the college, Philosophy and Religion. "She needs to go to the bank this morning and straighten out something with her son’s student loan. It’s some kind of ‘emergency,’ naturally. Maria thinks any problem her son has is an emergency." She paused. "So anyway . . . this is . . . kind of a problem for me."

"Yes," I said, "it does sound like a problem." Here it comes, I thought.

"So anyway, Maria won’t be able to go to the airport this morning, and she was supposed to pick up someone for me." Her eyes wandered away from my face.

"Someone?" I folded my arms across my chest.

"Yes, someone for the conference." She went over to the counter and pretended to butter a hot dog bun.

"Roger," I said flatly. "It’s Roger Stuhrm, isn’t it?"

"OK, yes, it’s Roger. Can you do this for me, anyway?"

"Who’s Roger?" Cubby asked.

"Just some guy I used to date," she said. "Take my car to the airport if you want."

I affected my 19th-century-school-marm voice. "Emma, I have neither the time nor the inclination to pick up Roger in Des Moines. I have work to do today."

"You used to date guys?" Cubby said.

"Come on, Claire, I don’t have anyone else who can do it."

"That isn’t my fault."

"How about you, Claire, did you date guys?"

Emma’s butter knife went clack against the counter. "You’re being deliberately obstinate. You could easily do this for me."

"Look, I’ve already agreed to do all kinds of things for this conference — to go to dinner tonight, to help with the party tomorrow — lots of stuff. It’s not fair to ask me to do more."

"Did you date this guy before or after you met Claire?"

"It wouldn’t take long, you’d be back by 11:00."

"That isn’t the point."

Emma sighed in frustration and slapped some butter on her bun. After a second she turned back to me. Emma has a strong repertoire of pleading looks and she gave me the one I call Beagle-Puppy-with-Hurt-Paw. "I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t really need it. Please?"

I waited a respectable three seconds before caving in. "Oh, all right," I said. We’d both known all along that my resistance was merely token.

"Thanks, honey." She smiled at me. It struck me at that moment how gorgeous Emma is, which is an odd reaction to her appearance in the morning. It isn’t the peak of her beauty cycle. Before she showers, her close-cropped, dark-brown hair is always jutting out at some improbable angle. She has few wrinkles, but at 34 her tall, slender form has started to soften at the edges. On her way to class, in one of her clever skirt-and-blouse outfits, conventional standards would label her "attractive." But in the mornings she wears that hideous blue bathrobe she kept from her eight months at Marlborough House. It’s ratty and frayed with blue threads and little beads of terry cloth hanging off it. Why does she keep it? She told me she’d felt safe at Marlborough House and maybe some of that safe feeling still clung to the bathrobe.

Cubby tugged at my sleeve. "So, how long ago did she date this guy?"

I frowned at him. "What guy? What’re you talking about?"

The back door opened and someone called in, "Hello?"

"Colin!" Emma said. Colin Jensen, the newest member of Emma’s department, was fair headed, handsome, and 26 years old, though he looked nineteen.

"How’re you doing?" he said. "I came over to get a copy of the Bailey paper."

"Hey, I’m glad you’re back. I was starting to worry you wouldn’t make it." Emma gave him a big smile. He took off his coat and threw it on the counter. Underneath he wore pale jeans and a red rugby shirt with tan and black stripes across the chest. He crossed to the table, bent down to let his lips briefly touch Emma’s, then went back to the counter to pour himself some coffee.

"Hi, Claire."

"Hi, Colin. Colin, this is our neighbor Cubby MacIntosh." The two men exchanged nods.

"So when did you get back, Colin?" Emma asked.

"I didn’t get in until almost midnight," he said. He began to describe to Emma his trip back to Berkeley. Cubby leaned over and whispered to me.

"Do they do that in your department?"

"Do what?"

"Kiss each other all the time."

"In Economics? Certainly not! We economists don’t express our feelings — it’s bad enough we even have them." Cubby gave a wheezing laugh. "No," I said, "it’s those people in the humanities who are always kissing each other. They’re really into the touchy-feely stuff."

Colin came over and joined us at the table. "Had a great talk with Matt Rosen," he said to Emma, "about a paper I’m hoping to cut out of my thesis. He thinks I could get it into Annals of Philosophy."

Oh, God, I thought to myself. Please don’t start this already, Colin. Not this early. Not today.

Emma said, "That’s terrific," but I could see the muscles in her face tighten up. Conversations about research always flick her compulsion switch. She’s constantly worried about her publication rate even though she’s published two books, three monographs and a score of journal articles. Her obsessive devotion to scholarship is admired by practically everyone who doesn’t have to live with her. She did not need to be reminded that this conference was slowing down work on her third book.

I went over to the counter to peel myself one of the pears that were ripening on the window ledge.

I looked down at the little knife I was using to peel my pear. Colin was so young and handsome, so filled with the earnestness of youth — a jury might not understand why I simply had to drag that knife across his throat. You kind of had to be there, I’d explain to them. Well, maybe instead of killing him, I could change the subject.

"So, Colin, you think it’s going to stay sunny for this conference?"

"I hope so, Claire, I’m presenting the best paper I’ve ever written." He got up, came over and stood across from me at the counter, his face beaming. "It’s a new twist on an old subject," he told me, almost as if I’d actually asked. "You know that Platburg accused Weber of plagiarizing his Discourse on Rationality, right?"

Having never heard of Platburg, I was naturally somewhat fuzzy on what he’d accused Weber of. I said, "Uh huh."

"Well, that’s a really old debate, whether Weber plagiarized. But I’m doing something no one’s ever tried before. I compare Weber’s early writings in the original German with his later stuff in English, looking for any inconsistencies that would bear on the plagiarism charge." He pushed his coffee cup toward me as if he were pointing. "See that’s where Morrison and Perkins failed — they looked at translated works instead of the original."

"Ahhh," I said.

"Now take, for example, Hermenutics, Verstehen, und Wahrheit. The original German conveys a much different meaning than Halberstam’s translation."

As he told me this, I realized with growing horror that Colin was on the verge of describing his entire paper to me. Perhaps, I reflected sadly, it’s time to draw this knife across my own throat.

Emma stepped in to save me. "I’m sorry to interrupt, Colin, but Claire has to go to the airport in a few minutes."

"Oh." Colin’s expression sagged a bit. "Oh, OK."

"Sounds good though, Colin," I said. "You’ll have to tell me about it later." Yes, later, I thought, so much later you can put flowers on my grave while you’re talking.

"Come on, Colin, I’ve got your copy of Bailey’s paper in my study."

"OK," Colin said. He got up to follow Emma out of the kitchen. "Hey, have I told you my theory about why Weber disappeared? I think he may have gone . . .," his voice trailed off as they went up the front stairs. I sat back down at the table with Cubby.

"Who’s this Vadar?" he asked me, "Sounds like the guy from Star Wars."

"Not vay der," I said, "his name’s vay ber. It’s spelled like Weber, but it’s German."

Cubby ambled over and picked up the coffee pot. "And he’s disappeared?"

"Who’s disappeared?"

"This Vayber guy," he said, "didn’t that young fella just say that?"

"Did he? I’m afraid my attention wasn’t riveted to that conversation."

Cubby made a swirling motion with the coffee pot; only a quarter inch of brown liquid swished around at the bottom. He opened the cabinet above the sink where he knew we kept the coffee beans. "So today’s the big conference she’s been in such a tizzy about," he said. "Why’s this such a big deal?"

"Emma’s chair expires next year, she’s hoping this conference will get her more money."

He looked at me. "How does a chair expire, exactly?"

"You know what an endowed chair is, right? Well, her chair is funded by a three year grant from the Kendall Foundation. The college is trying to raise money to make the chair permanent — it’s part of the big capital campaign. This conference is supposed to be a sort of showpiece for attracting donations."

"Why can’t they just give her a regular job like yours?"

I waited for the screeching of the bean grinder to stop. "Well, first of all there isn’t a job open. Not in Philosophy, anyway. And second, Emma’s way too expensive. To get someone as prominent as she is you need a chair. Big salary, lots of research money."

"So how come you aren’t helping with the conference?"

"I am helping with the conference, Cubby. Besides, she doesn’t have anything to worry about. This is just Emma obsessing— as usual."

Cubby filled the glass pot with water and poured it into the machine. In a few seconds drops of coffee plip, plipped into the pot. With a sponge from the sink he swept escaped coffee grounds into his hand and deposited them in the wastebasket under the sink. He took a cigarette out of the pocket of his shirt and glanced nervously at the doorway to the living room. In a loud whisper he asked, "Think she’d notice if I smoked in here?"

"I think she’d notice if you smoked in Des Moines." But I waved a hand. "Screw her, smoke if you want to."

Cubby put a cigarette in his mouth, turned on the front burner of the stove, then bent low and pushed the tip of the cigarette into the blue flame. I held my breath — I was sure his hair would ignite like a cotton ball.

"So," he said, "Emma’s worried this conference’ll mess up and you two’ll have to live apart again. That what it is?"

"Yeah, that and the other thing I mentioned to you."

"What other thing?"

I lowered my voice. "You know, that thing with the package? That’s coming today?"

"Package?"

I glanced at the kitchen doorway. "The S-P-E-R-M." What the hell was I spelling for?

"Oh, the Baby!" he practically screamed across the kitchen.

"Jeez, Cubby, keep it down — she doesn’t know I told you."

He glanced toward the kitchen doorway. "She doesn’t?" He walked over to the table and picked up the little pitcher that held the cream. "Is it a secret or something?"

"Well, she wants it to be. For the time being anyway."

"Why?"

I shrugged.

"Cause you’re both girls?"

I shrugged again.

He filled the cream pitcher with half-and-half from the refrigerator and put it on the counter. "That’s not so weird nowadays, is it? Two ladies raising a baby, I mean." He put the pitcher back on the table and picked up my empty mug. "If you guys have a baby, then the kid’ll just have two mothers is all."

I didn’t say anything while he poured some coffee into both our cups and came back and set mine in front of me.

"I suppose it’s two mothers, right?" he said. "I mean, you’ll be the mother, too, won’t you?" For the third time I simply shrugged.

"Well, what else would you be?"

"I don’t know, Cubby." I stood up, took a perfunctory sip of the coffee he’d given me and pulled my robe tight around my waist. "Well, I guess I’d better get ready to go to the airport."

Upstairs, dressing in front of the full length mirror, I wondered how much I’d changed since last seeing Roger. Staring back from the mirror was a tall, statuesque brunette, the morning sunshine brightly gleaming in her luxuriant mane of chestnut hair. Astonishingly blue eyes sat above high cheek bones and full sensual lips. Her figure curved downward from ample bosom through slender waist, to thighs as sleek and graceful as those of a gazelle.

OK, so that’s who I wished had been staring back at me. The woman who was actually there was short and her frizzy mane of brown hair was showing little streaks of gray. While her bosom was ample enough, those thighs would need to shed five or ten pounds before she could hang out with any gazelles. Still, it could have been worse at her age. She was OK looking, I guessed. On a good day, with a tailwind, she might make it all the way to cute.

I put on jeans, a white turtleneck, a purple Cardigan, and my no-longer-white tennis shoes over heavy wool socks. So the sperm’s coming today, I thought, but Emma’s not ovulating. If she couldn’t inseminate this cycle and had to wait a month to try again, she’d be really disappointed. Me, on the other hand, I could definitely wait another month. Yes, I could wait another month, and many more.