ack felt like a performing seal sometimes. It was clear that no one took his classes on American history in order to gain an understanding of the past. Rather, they wanted to be told amusing stories, the kind his predecessor had specialized in, and wanted to be given multiple-choice tests, so easy that a monkey could get a "C" just by randomly checking boxes. It seemed that no one wanted to work anymore. Entertainment value was the yardstick by which college courses were now measured.

He surveyed the faces in front of him. It looked like the usual first-day-of-the-semester crowd. He could see that at least half a dozen students were reading the semi-literate doggerel that passed for a student newspaper (but what did he expect given the level of writing he had to read every year in his classes?), several were breathlessly comparing notes about the circuit of keggers they had visited over the weekend, one guy was discreetly trying to pick his nose, and the rest stared straight ahead, slack-jawed, waiting to be entertained by their professor.

It was amazing. He had only been teaching at this college for three years and he already hated it. He couldn't believe that he had spent eight years of his life taking graduate courses and writing a dissertation so that he could wind up trying to move the inert. At least the class was large enough that he was entitled to a teaching assistant this semester. There would be someone to share the load of the discussion sections with, someone to pass off the grading to. He would find a way to weed out the handful of bright students and convince them to sign up for his discussion section. His t.a. could deal with the rest of them.

Speaking of which, where the hell was this person? Class officially began in three minutes, and he didn't see anyone in the room who could be of drinking age. Then again, grad students were so young these days, he or she could be anywhere. Jack couldn't remember the name of the t.a. assigned to him, just remembered that the name was asexual. What was it again? Sydney? Lindsay? Taylor?

"Hi, Professor Williams, I'm Devon," said a voice at his shoulder.

He glanced up from his notes briefly. Well, it was a woman. "Are you my t.a.?" he asked curtly. "I don't have time to talk to you right now. Let's talk after class, okay?"

He watched as she moved to a seat in the auditorium. He guessed her to be in her mid-twenties, probably a second- or third-year graduate student. She was small, no more than 5 foot with short, dark hair that offset sharp cheekbones. Her eyes were dark but were partially hidden behind wire rim glasses. When she smiled at him, he noted that her teeth were slightly crooked, but the imperfection was not unattractive. It was hard to get a handle on her body. She was wearing the grad student uniform: sweatshirt, a baggy skirt that hung down to her ankles, Birkenstocks. But from what he could see she was pretty slender.

Jack had a theory about men and women. He figured that he, like other guys he knew, made an instant judgement upon meeting a new woman. Would he, or wouldn't he, like to fuck her? A quick image of the body that might be under those clothes popped into his head. Yeah, she was definitely fuckable, he thought.

He remembered that in a drunken moment he had explained this theory of male-female relations to his wife, Claire. She hadn't found it very funny. Ever since she had moved with him to Elba so that he could take this job, she hadn't found him all that amusing. It wasn't his fault she hadn't finished her goddamned dissertation before they left California.

Last night, she had initiated sex for the first time in ages. It was usually Jack who had to ask, but Claire had been in the mood. It turned out that she had had a good day working on the dissertation and wanted to celebrate. But it was the brusque, abrupt, routine, distracted sex that their love-making had devolved to over the course of the last several years. Nothing very interesting. He wasn't certain that Claire had really come. But he wasn't sure that he even cared. Sometimes he felt as if Claire was a fixture in the house, like a standing lamp of some kind. He figured if he needed her services, he could switch her on; in the meantime, he tried to avoid bumping into her in the dark. He was pretty sure that she felt the same way about him.

When he first met Claire, the two of them had gone at each other like maniacs, fucking each other at every opportunity, in every place imaginable. He remembered one time, after having a few drinks in one of their favorite local bars, that while walking home, he had nudged her into a doorway in a little used back street, and begun to kiss her. After a while, when they were both so heated up that they no longer cared they were in public, he had entered her. He remembered the sensation of the cool air against his skin, and the heat and wetness of her engulfing him. Claire had bitten his hand to keep from screaming out loud when she came and the two of them had stumbled, breathless, back to her apartment where they had made love again in the bathtub. But that was a long time ago.

Jack sometimes felt that he was still married to Claire because of inertia-and because of the children. Their twin boys were six now. Sometimes, it occurred to him that the boys' existence had caused more disruption in Claire's life than his own. When the boys were born he had been there-he had cut both of their cords-but it was Claire who had assumed the role of alpha parent. When she had made the decision to breast-feed both of them, even though it meant that for several months she was never without a babe at the tit, he had tried to support her in her newfound role of mother-goddess. He did more than his fair share of diapering, tried his hand at cooking and laundry, even took the boys with him to the grocery store when he could pry them away from her.

He had even, when he saw how exhausted she was, tried to convince Claire to bottle-feed. That had been a mistake. She had screamed at him that he was not being supportive.

From that point on, he had stayed out of her way, and he had kept his mouth shut as her dissertation remained untouched for months at a time. He knew Claire was unhappy, maybe even clinically depressed, but he felt that it was up to her to figure things out. All he could do was to keep working away at his career so that at least one of them was bringing home a paycheck. And yet, even still, he could tell that she resented him because he was an academic and she was in graduate student limbo-neither working on her dissertation nor willing to withdraw from her program, she continued to pick up funding for promising research that remained unwritten.

And despite the fact that he and Claire had been having problems for a while, he hadn't cheated on her since they had arrived in Elba. God knows he thought about it. It was hard not to, being surrounded by so much female flesh-the young women who came into his office and sat so close to him, seemingly oblivious to the effect their tanned long legs or partially exposed breasts had on him. He was only human, for Christ's sake.

He had cheated on her right after the twins were born, shortly after the bottle fight, but the affair wasn't his fault. When he was a graduate student, he had had a brief tryst with another grad student. Laura had been one of Claire's friends, recently divorced, and she had begun leaning on him a lot as the aftershocks of her broken marriage had caught up with her. One night, he had run into her in the library. They had started talking, and he had invited her up to the t.a. office he shared with four others so that they could have a cup of tea and she could cry in a less public place. When they had gotten to his office, none of his office-mates had been there. Over their cups, she had indeed started to cry, and he had done the natural thing, he'd put out his hand to offer her some comfort. The next thing he knew, she had been sitting in his lap. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, and his erection against her thigh had surprised them both. They had made love on a hastily-made bed of coats and sweaters on the floor.

He remembered that he had intended the sex that night to be tender-he had wanted to coax the pain of her rejection from her. But, later, he felt drained and diminished by Laura's voracity. It had been a long time since he had been with a woman other than Claire; touching Laura was a trip through terra incognita. Where Claire was lush and full, like ripe fruit that begged for the flick of a tongue or the nip of teeth, Laura was muscular and firm. Sliding down her buff body reminded him of the boyhood sensations of sliding down banisters and the tingling in his groin at contact with the polished wood.

Laura had been more aggressive than any woman he had ever been with. "I like it when you touch me here," she had said, thrusting his hand up against her crotch. She was an ocean-God she was wet-and she undulated against his hand again and again like the incoming tide.

Jack felt like he was along for the ride. She pulled him on top of her and later, he wasn't sure who had fucked who. He had held on while she moved and moaned beneath him. But no matter what he did, she seemed hungry for more. He was glad when he came and it was over.

As it turned out, he had seen her a couple more times after that, both times winding up in her bed, but Laura had dropped out of grad school at the end of the semester and moved back home to Idaho. Claire had never found out, but he knew that she had never heard from her friend after she moved, a fact that she still occasionally commented on with some puzzlement.

Jack thought about all of this as he delivered his usual first day lecture. He explained his course outline, passed out the syllabi, explained his grading policies, and informed the class that once a final class count was in, students would be divided into several groups that would meet in mutually-scheduled discussion sections. He dismissed them early, having learned his first year not to actually present them with any course material the first day.

Devon approached him after the last of the students had come to him to ask for overload slips, or to ask about whether they "really" needed to buy the course books. God he hated this stuff. He looked up from the knapsack he was trying to stuff with his notes when she spoke. "Professor Williams, do you have time to talk to me?" she asked.

"Umm. Sure. I normally go get a cup of coffee after I lecture. Do you have time to join me?"

She looked a little surprised. "Yeah. That would be great. I didn't have time to have more than one cup this morning, so I could use another one."

"I like to go to the Chinoiserie," Jack said, noticing again that she was really quite attractive.

"I love that place."

ack and Devon pushed their way through the crowded hallway and out into the September sunshine. Gone was the haze that hung over Elba in the summer from the near 100 percent humidity of July and August. It was still warm in September, but it was breathable warm, pleasant warm-a day when one didn't mind being out in the sun. The walk to the campus coffee house was bucolic. Devon was telling Jack all about her summer spent in Florence, working on her language skills.

"My wife is an early modern Mediterranean scholar," he said. "She is working on a dissertation about the flood of Spanish Jews into Italy after the Expulsion."

"Really? I'd love to talk to her sometime. I've been thinking about studying the Jews of Florence myself."

"How did you wind up teaching for me this semester if you're an early modernist?" Jack asked.

"Oh, you know how it is in graduate school. All the Americanists are working for Stan Traub this semester for his survey course. Since you're teaching colonial America, which is almost early modern Europe, they figured I was the next best thing."

He laughed. At least she wasn't naive about department politics, he thought. Maybe she also realized that there weren't going to be any jobs in her field and she needed to be doing other topics. But he kept those thoughts to himself. Claire was the expert, maybe she could fill the kid in.

They arrived at the Chinoiserie in time to stand in line with a host of other faculty waiting for their morning caffeine fix. The coffee house had gotten its name because it was attached to the university center for Asian art, and the interior walls of the cafe were decorated with European tapestries, under glass, depicting the China of the nineteenth-century imagination. "Edward Said would have a field day with these tapestries," she said, smiling.

Jack laughed again. "Yeah, next time he comes on campus to give a talk, let's be sure to bring him here."

"Oh, and look, we could point out the sultan himself," she said, gesturing with a quick lift of her chin.

Jack looked and began to laugh. Over in the corner was one of his colleagues, sat at a table with a bevy of young women. Peter Johnson taught one of the department's large survey courses, so he was entitled to about six teaching assistants. By the looks of it, he'd gotten all women this semester.

"I've heard that he's schtupping half his grad students," Devon said.

He decided to pretend he hadn't heard her last comment. He'd heard the same thing about Johnson, but he didn't think it was a good idea to be discussing these things with the grad students. Jack didn't have tenure, and you never knew when something like that would get back to one of the senior faculty.

Still, they passed a pleasant hour going over the semester ahead. They agreed upon a work schedule for Devon that would include attending lectures, teaching two discussion sections a week, and grading the bulk of the papers, although Jack promised that he would do his best to help out with the workload. "I know that you're being paid slave wages for this work," he said. "If I can get out from under my other courses, I'll try to give you a hand."

They parted when Devon realized that it was time for her seminar. Jack stared after her retreating figure. He was smiling. Maybe the semester wouldn't be that bad after all.

e met with Devon twice a week, always after class. They got together to discuss the upcoming discussion sections, and, when Jack assigned the first paper topic, he checked with Devon to see what kind of questions she was getting from the befuddled undergrads.

Jack found himself looking forward to these meetings after class. Devon was remarkably candid, and shared with him gossip about his fellow faculty that he hadn't yet heard. "How do you know these things?" he asked her one day.

"What? You guys didn't talk when you were grad students?" she replied, wiping croissant from the corners of her mouth. "I thought everyone knew what was going on in this department. I mean, haven't you all slept with each other?"

Jack paused. "Umm. Well, no," he said, feeling the blush taking over his cheeks. "I'm married."

"Oh, right," she said. "I'm sure you'd never cheat on your wife."

He looked at her. The comment appeared to have been delivered in earnest, but had it been tinged with irony? He didn't understand women sometimes. What was she up to?

Devon looked at her watch. "Oops, gotta run," she said, pushing back her chair. "I'll see you on Thursday."

Essay day arrived and Jack was busy. He had a faculty meeting right after class and had to attend one of his colleague's talks that afternoon. He barely noticed his t.a., but he knew that they needed to divide up the papers. Jack thought he was being generous because he had decided to grade, himself, the papers of those in his small discussion section. That would give him 15 papers, and Devon could handle the other 55. When he had been a graduate student, he had done all the grading, so he didn't think she had cause for complaint.

They agreed that since the day was so hectic, she would come by his office in the evening. He had started retreating to his office since home was bedlam-the two boys delighted in seeing which one of them could make the loudest noises or jump from the highest stair. Claire seemed oblivious to it, but it drove him up the wall. He had been working late most nights, trying to finish up his manuscript, and Devon said she didn't mind stopping by to see him in his office since she had research to do at the library that night anyway. "Besides, I'd rather get a jump on these papers as soon as possible," she said. "I've got papers of my own to write for next week."

hen she tapped at his door at 7:30, Jack was immersed in an article by a colleague that he had previously put off reading. He had been asked to referee it for a journal. Annoyed, he got up from his chair and approached the door, wondering who the hell was knocking on his office door at this hour. When he saw Devon, their appointment dawned on him. "Oh, sorry, I actually forgot we were meeting," he said. "Come in. Let me dig out the papers."

Devon settled herself on the old couch he had brought from home. He spent so many hours here now that he liked to be able to stretch out when he was reading. Of course, he occasionally slept on the couch overnight, when he couldn't stand to go home to his wife. Devon was wearing something a little different, he noticed. She had on a close-fitting shirt that revealed the outline of small, firm breasts, and a pair of jeans that hugged her hips. Temporarily distracted, Jack forgot what he was looking for.

"What were you working on?" she asked.

"I'm reading a submission for a journal," he said. "It's about some witch trials in Boston, prior to Salem. Pretty interesting, but the sources are questionable."

"Hey, the couch is pretty cool," she said. "You must get a lot of work done here."

Jack said nothing. Which type of work was she referring to? He continued looking for the folder of student essays. "Triumph!" he said. "Here they are."

He approached the couch. Should he sit down next to her? What the hell, it was his couch. He chose a spot on the far end away from her and placed the papers between them. "I haven't really had time to look at these," he said. "I thought that I would take the ones in my section, and you could take the rest. I'm sorry that I can't do more, but I have grading to do for another undergraduate course."

Devon got up from the couch and walked toward his bookshelf. "Oh, I didn't know you had this book. I've always wanted to read it. Is it good?"

Jack came up behind her to see what she had picked up. She was so close he could smell her perfume, something subtle, which radiated from the pulse point at the base of her neck. He was mesmerized by the smell. It reminded him of how Claire used to smell when she bothered to wear perfume for him.

He moved closer; her warmth drew him closer, like a siren's song. He slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her back against him. Her buttocks pressed up against his thighs and she relaxed her body against his. She turned towards him, her face up against his chest. It was clear that she was not afraid; in fact, he would later tell himself that she had been expecting it. When she turned her face up towards his, he kissed her, deeply, pulling her tight against him, cupping her ass with his hands.

It was a short walk back to the couch. He laid her down and began to kiss her slowly, his mouth on her lips, her hair, her neck. He slipped his hands up under her shirt, stroking her nipples. He unzipped her jeans and pulled her pants off. His mouth traveled down her torso and he inhaled deeply when his nose and mouth found her sex. He felt drunk. The air was perfumed with the smell of musty books, her cologne, and her musky smell.

He opened her legs, impaling her with his fingers while pushing his jeans down with the other hand. He gasped as she grabbed his erection and kneaded him like dough. He unzipped his pants as fast as he could with one hand and pushed them down around his ankles. He could feel the cool air of the office on his ass, and it briefly occurred to him the sheer ridiculousness of this situation. But it was also clear that there was no turning back-he fully intended to fuck her, here, now.

She pulled him closer, pushing her crotch up against his hardness. He was tangled in his clothes and he fell forward, his cock hunting its quarry like a bloodhound. She was incredibly wet, and when he finally penetrated her, he felt such pressure in his groin he thought he might come as quickly as a teen-age boy. But he slowed himself down, and began to rock her very gently, until her breath grew frantic and her legs tightened around his waist. When he came, it was like stars.

He wondered if the girl was in love with him. He was still laying on top of her, his head nestled in the crook of her neck, one hand on her hip. Devon was quiet, breathing regularly. Oh shit, had she fallen asleep?

"Hmm. Devon," he said quietly.

"Yes, Jack," she said. She burst into giggles. "It is okay if I call you Jack, now isn't it? I mean it would be sort of silly to still call you Professor Williams now that we've fucked."

Jack winced. God he hoped she wasn't going to make him talk about what just happened. He certainly wasn't about to make protestations of love. Now that he had gotten laid, he just wanted to get back to where they had been half an hour ago.

"Yes, of course you can call me Jack. But Devon, you realize that we've just made a terrible mistake. Don't you?"

He watched her face carefully. He saw something cross across her face, but he couldn't tell what it was. He assumed it was disappointment. He suspected that she was in love with him. That would explain the personal details she had been revealing to him, the choice of outfits tonight, the perfume. It was clear to him now that this had all been done for his benefit.

Her lips twitched at the corners. Oh God, was she going to cry? He didn't think he could handle her crying. "Yes, I agree, Jack. This was a pretty bad mistake. I'm not sure what I was expecting."

"Expecting? Oh, Devon, you know I can't have a relationship with you. I'm married. I've got kids. And besides, the university has strict rules about sexual relationships between professors and students.

Devon guffawed. Jack stared at her in shock. This child was laughing. What was so fucking funny? Perhaps this was her way of showing her stress. He didn't understand women. He had known his wife to laugh inappropriately, also.

"I'm sorry," she said, clearing her throat. "I think you and I are talking about apples and oranges here. I was talking about something else."

"Well, what then, I'm not following you," Jack said, pulling on his pants, which were still bunched around his ankles.

"I guess I thought when you said this was a mistake, you were talking about how sexually incompatible we were," she pulled her shirt over her head, and Jack noticed as her breasts disappeared from his view just how beautiful they were.

"Well, now I'm really not following," he said.

"Well, you know," she began, buttoning up her jeans. "I guess I assumed with you being older and all that you would be better in the sack. You know, I've read somewhere that the better educated a man is, the more likely he is to be a skilled lover. I guess you're not as experienced as I was thinking you would be."

Jack could feel his face becoming hot. His ears were burning. The last time his ears had burned had been in junior high, when he'd gotten an erection while talking to his older cousin, Natalie. "Are you saying that I'm not a good lover?" he asked, his voice cracking like some castrato in the Italian court.

"Well, no, I don't want to hurt your feelings or anything. I mean, I did come, but I guess," she stopped.

"Yes, go on," he snapped.

"I just thought it would be, well, more," she said. "I've never had any problems having orgasms. I can have an orgasm riding a bicycle. I sort of imagined that you'd be able to make me come a lot. But don't feel bad, my last boyfriend wasn't that great in the sack either," she said.

Jack was mortified. He sat down on the couch. He would have to ask his wife if she thought he was a good lover. Of course, that could be a little tricky.

"Well, maybe you could give me another chance," he said, making an effort to pull her into his arms again.

"Um. I don't really think that's a great idea, do you?" she replied. "Look, I really like you and, well, I thought that we could be really great together, but perhaps we should just leave things like they are now."

From across campus, Jack could hear the clock bells bonging the nine o'clock hour. "Jack," Devon said, "Do you want to give me those papers to grade now? I would like to get started on them tonight, since I don't have anything else to do."

He gestured at the essays scattered across the floor. "Take those. I need them back by Monday."

"Are you okay?" she asked, as she gathered the papers.

"I'm fine." He ran his fingers through his hair. He needed her to leave, now. God he wanted a drink of something. A bottle of scotch would probably do it.

"I think you've given me more than half, Jack. It doesn't seem fair that I should have to do all the grading," Devon smiled. "I have so much work to do this weekend, I don't see how I can possibly get more than, say 25 of them done," she smiled and handed back several essays.

Jack was silent. He realized what she was up to, but at this point, he didn't care. "Devon, it's not unusual for the first time to be sort of rough," he began. "I imagine that with some practice, you and I could be pretty good together. Why don't you come by here this weekend and we can try again?"

"I don't know, Jack. I have so much work to do, I don't think I have time to fool around," she said. "Maybe if I had less papers to grade, I'd consider it."

Jack reached out his hand towards the stack of papers she held to her breast. "Why don't you give me these, Devon. You get your work done, and I'll see you here, Sunday, about three o'clock?"

"Perfect," she said, walking towards the door. She placed her hand on the doorknob and turned back towards him. "You're the best, Jack. Thanks."