The Lowland

dry.
    He wore a brown corduroy jacket, a sweater underneath. He carried a battered leather briefcase in his hand. Though they crossed paths with comic predictability, mutely acknowledging one another, she never saw him smile.
    She assumed he was a professor. She had no idea what department he was in. One day she noticed a wedding band on his finger. She would see him on the way to her German class, always along the same section of the path.
    One day she looked back at him. Staring at him, challenging him to stop, to say something. She had no idea what she would do, but she began to want this to happen, to will it. She felt her body reacting when she saw him, the acceleration of her heart, the tautness of her limbs, a damp release between her legs.
    Seeking out Subhash in bed, she pretended she was with this man, in a hotel room, or in his home. Feeling his mouth, his sex against her own.
    On Wednesdays, the days she saw him, she began to prepare herself for the encounter. The class met in the morning, which meant there would be time. A little over an hour, to go with him and come back, before she had to get Bela. On Tuesdays she prepared more than she needed for dinner the next day, to accommodate the potential lapse in her schedule.
    But the next time she saw him was a Monday afternoon, in a different part of campus. She recognized him from behind. She needed to pick up Bela in half an hour, she’d been on her way to the library to get a book, but she changed course and began to follow him, racing to keep up with him while at the same time leaving a space.
    She followed him into the student union. She felt her inhibitions dissolving. She would go up to him, look at him. Please, she would say.
    She walked behind him into the double-chambered room lined with sofas, televisions in the corners. He stopped to pick up a copy of the campus newspaper, glancing at it for a moment. Then she saw him walk to one of the sofas, lean over to kiss a woman who was waiting. Touch her knee.
    She escaped to the only place she could think of, the enormous women’s room, pushing against the heavy door, crossing the thick carpet of the lounge, locking herself into a stall. She was alone, there was no one in the neighboring stalls, and she could not help herself, she pushed her hand up her shirt, to her breast, caressing it, another hand unzipping her jeans, hooking her fingers over the ridge of bone, her forehead against the cold metal of the door.
    It took only a moment to calm herself, to put an end to it. She washed her hands at the sink, smoothed her hair, saw the color that had risen to her face. She strode past the lounge, not checking to see if the man and his companion were sitting there.
    The following Wednesday, she took an alternate route to her class. She made sure she never ran into him again, walking in the opposite direction if she did.
    One afternoon Bela was occupied with a pair of scissors, a book of paper dolls. It was July, Bela’s school closed for the long vacation; the campus was at rest. Subhash was teaching summer courses in Providence, spending the rest of his time in a lab in Narragansett. Gauri spent her days with Bela, without a car in which they might go anywhere, without a break.
    Gauri sat with her own book beside her, Spinoza’s Ethics, trying to read a section to its end. But something was beginning to change: it was becoming possible to read a book and to be with Bela at the same time. Possible to be together, engaged in separate ways.
    The television was turned off, the apartment quiet apart from the intermittent sound of Bela’s scissors, slowly slicing through thick pieces of paper.
    Going to the kitchen to make tea, Gauri saw that they were out of milk. She returned to the living room. She saw the back of Bela’s neck, bent over her task. She was talking to herself, carrying on a dialogue in different voices between the paper dolls.
    Put on your shoes, Bela.
    Why?
    I need to go to the store.
    I’m busy, she said, sounding suddenly like a girl of twelve instead of six. As if, with a snip of her scissors, she had sliced away the need for Gauri, eliminating her.
    The idea presented itself. The store was just behind the apartment complex, a two-minute walk. She could see it through the kitchen window, past the Dumpster and the soda machine and the cars parked in back.
    I’m just going down to get the mail.
    Without stopping to think things through, she went out, locking