Alone in Roanoke with a one-semester job he couldn't refuse, McNeil hasn't written to Shushie in three weeks, has phoned her only once in all that time, but he quickly crumples one more attempt at a letter, landing it in the Safeway bag with little more than her name—a salutation he cannot get past. Midway through the spring semester he's fallen for one of his students, finding, to his dismay, that it's a full-time preoccupation, this business of being infatuated. Like being back in high school, McNeil thinks, but even so, he tilts back at his kitchen table, imagining himself kissing the wonderful trace of whitish down that runs below Susan's ear and along her jaw line. Strange how the stuff can be so blond on a brunette. A tennis star from Florida, she has one of those fresh-off-the-court faces that beams health and wealth: freckles, high, ruddy cheekbones, and, more uniquely, faintly Oriental eyes. She is just two inches short of six feet, but with the soft, shy voice of a more diminutive woman, especially, it seems to McNeil, when they talk on the phone. The slight trace of a Southern accent bothers him, since he has not forgotten his last night in New York with Shushie. She had taken his hand as they walked the quiet suburban streets near their apartment, and McNeil had concentrated on holding her hand firmly, for often she would ease her grip, and his hand would slide free. Then she would say, "You don't have to hold my hand if you don't want to." But she had made no complaints that night, had only said half seriously, "You won't get distracted being at an all-girls school for a whole semester, will you?"