“I started doing sit-ups a week ago,” Morgan said. He’d also started walking a mile a day in the evenings and laying off the bottle. So far he hadn’t seen the results, but he kept telling himself to be patient.

“Yeah, well it won’t make you happy,” she said. “I got myself into this routine. Exercise and vitamins and sprouts and yoga and I even did my apartment all in feng shui and I guess I’ve prolonged my life for twenty years; but I’m not living, if you see what I mean. I’ve locked myself into such a rigid routine it’s like I’m some kind of robot. I mean I’ve exercised and dieted and exercised and believe me I’ve got one killer body under these frumpy teacher clothes, but what good is it? It’s been so long since I’ve”-she shook her head-“Never mind. I’m running off at the mouth.”

“No, do go on.” Morgan grinned, flashed his blue eyes. “How long since you’ve what?”

Annette leaned back in the booth, half smiled at Morgan over her beer mug. “I know professors like you. You’ve probably got some free-spirit poetry spiel you toss around until some big-eyed grad student decides she wants to be your protégé.”

Morgan flushed and turned off his eyes. She’d caught him trying to use the same look he used on young girls. Indeed, he had been about to make his standard pitch. Foolish. That wouldn’t work on Annette. She was a mature, smart woman, not a blushing twenty-year-old.

“I’m divorced too,” Morgan said. “But I threw myself into self-destruction instead of health, late nights, hit the booze hard, moved around job to job.”

“How long’s it been?”

“Seven years,” Morgan said. “She tossed me out. I’m no good on my own. I stay up too late, bad eating habits. I don’t really take care of myself.”

Was this it? Was this how adults talked to one another? It had been a long time.

“Listen,” Morgan said, “I’ve been after you to have dinner with me for a while now. How about this Friday night?”

She scrunched her face, tapped her face with a thin finger. “I don’t think so, Jay. I like you. Really. But I don’t think you’d be good for me. I can’t start living big overnight, and I don’t think a week of sit-ups is going to change you. I think we better try being friends for a while.”

“I understand.” He felt a sulk coming on and didn’t try to stop it.

“But listen, I meant what I said about Ellis. Something’s going on.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I want you to talk to the dean,” she said. “The more of us who protest the better. Whittaker needs to know the faculty won’t sit still for every bullshit scheme the administration tries to put over.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you even paying attention to me? This is important.”

“If you say so.”

“Dammit!” Her nostrils flared. “I worked my ass off to get where I am. I’m not going to be a professor at some backwater diploma mill. I’m going to find out about this Ellis kid, and I’ll do it alone if I have to.” She slid out of the booth, dropped a twenty on the table. “That should cover my part of lunch.”

She didn’t quite storm out, but she didn’t look back.

sixteen

I don’t want to see any more rodents,” Morgan said. “You understand?”

“Yes.” Lancaster looked sheepish.

“No rats, no mice, no hamsters, no kind of furry animals at all, okay? I don’t want to read any more poems in which furry animals are symbolic of anything at all. You get me?”

Lancaster gulped. “Yes, sir.”

“I don’t even want to see little animals symbolize themselves. I don’t want to even see a person in your poem wearing fuzzy bedroom slippers that are even remotely reminiscent of anything animal-like at all.”

Lancaster went red at the ears. He couldn’t look at the rest of the class, head down.

Morgan had to come down on the kid hard. Sometimes these students got stuck in a rut and it just got worse and worse until somebody gave them a slap. “I hope I’ve been clear.”

Lancaster nodded.

“I want to read a poem about people. They can be fucking or making soup or driving tractors or buying baseball cards on eBay or chewing tobacco or anything you damn well want. But I want people.”

Lancaster said nothing, didn’t budge. He’d been thoroughly squashed.

“Okay.” Morgan shuffled his stack of papers to the last poem of the day. Hell. It was the Ellis kid’s turn. Morgan had been dreading this. He looked at his watch. Maybe he could claim they were out of time, put off Ellis’s poem until next class. No good. Still fifteen minutes left. Nothing to do but forge ahead.

“Sherman, read us your poem please.”

Ellis actually stood. This was different. Morgan wondered for a second if Ellis was actually about to leave, run out of the class instead of read his poem. Morgan had seen it happen before. But Ellis wasn’t going anywhere. He had a fierce look in his eyes, chest puffed out.

Ellis waved his fist in the air, slapped his chest with the other hand. “Okay, y’all, this is Sherman E in the house. I’m gonna need some help with this one. Everybody say YEAH!”

Everybody froze. The students looked at Morgan.

Then the poem:

Ellis recited his poem like he was angry, slapping his desk with the rhythm, saliva flying from his mouth, eyes white and wild.

At this point Ellis grabbed his own balls, hopped up and down.

Ellis looked at Morgan, waited for commentary.

The class sat in dead quiet. Dumbstruck. Morgan went pale, his lips squeezed tight and bloodred like wet paint.

Belinda paled, hugged herself in her seat.

Terrible. Morgan shook his head. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

Lancaster tugged at his collar. “Well…” He looked at his copy of the poem, made useless scratches with his pen. “Well, yes. Okay then. I think it’s very brave of Sherman to embrace certain clichés and stereotypes in an attempt to… uh… explore the dangers of…” He shook his head. “Look, I don’t really know what Sherman was trying to do.”

DelPrego’s mouth hung open. “Jesus.” He barked a hard laugh. “I mean… Jesus.”

Morgan shuffled the stack of poems, stood slowly. He turned, walked out the door. The students waited a minute, looked at one another, but their professor didn’t come back.

Ginny waited on Morgan’s porch. She was there smiling coyly when he arrived home.

He froze when he saw her, looked around.

“I thought you’d call me,” Ginny said. That’s how it was supposed to work. She cast her spell, and the poet wouldn’t be able to live without her. But he hadn’t called.

“I didn’t think you wanted me to.” He unlocked the front door, and she followed him in.

“You hurt my feelings,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to.”