Roses
Margaret Edwards
The woman, who likes to be called Susan, not Sue, looks down at her hands in her lap; and when she looks up, still listening, the man once again catches her eye. He has dark, curly hair and a mustache. His look is steady, absorbed, savoring, unabashedly sexual. She has no idea how long he has been staring.
The audience for the lecture is arranged in a horseshoe around the lectern, which places Susan and the man, though 20 feet apart, virtually face to face. If she looks straight ahead, she cannot avoid him.
At first, she looks away. She turns her head to the windows which open greenly onto the perfect lawns of a Southern campus. Stuck into the grass at intervals are various impromptu signs, hand-lettered and lashed to pointed sticks, which serve to guide the members of the conference from one building to the next. She has never been to Mississippi before. She has been flown here this morning as an invited guest and speaker. It is May, and roses are blooming in carefully groomed plots. She is still experiencing the wonderment of disorientation. Her mind is putting down rudimentary paths in what is otherwise a blank acreage of the unfamiliar. Directly in her line of sight sits a handsome man.
