“Who IS that woman?” Max wondered. She was standing in line at the campus coffee shop. Something about her eyes looked so familiar. She smiled. At him? He wasn’t sure. He nodded slightly in her direction, just enough so that he wouldn’t appear rude. He hated his inability to recognize people out of context. In his position at Kentwood College, he met a lot of people and was expected to remember them. But no matter how hard he tried, he was terrible at remembering faces.

But those eyes were so familiar. He was sure he knew her from somewhere. A donor dinner? The wife of the new endowed chair? That new hire in HR? No, he didn’t think so. He scanned his memory for all the women he’d met recently but simply could not place her. Sighing, he turned his attention back to his laptop.

Checking Instagram, he learned that his son Michael, a junior at Kentwood, was attending “Filmaddicts: Tarantino Festival.” He smiled, wondering what could possibly be considered festive about Tarantino. He saw a photo of Michael and his his girlfriend Janie looking happy. That was good. They’d had some ups and downs, but for now at least, they were still together. No drama this week. Maria, his tenth-grade daughter, had recently changed her profile picture. She replaced the summer theater camp photo with one of herself proudly modeling her new Homecoming dress. He thought the dress was more than a little too revealing but was voted “Best Puritan Buzzkill” by Maria, with endorsements from Michael and Janie. Max tried to recruit his wife, Pam, to his side but she helped Maria choose the dress. With no allies, he was forced to concede. Maria was trying her best to look adult and seductive and might have pulled it off if it weren’t for her mouthful of braces. $7000 for a perfect smile and a couple more years of childhood. Not a bad deal, all in all.

He took a sip of his coffee and glanced around the room. Now the mystery woman was sitting at the next table, facing in his direction. Like him, she was working on a laptop, engrossed in her work. She nodded as she read, frowning slightly. He realized he was staring at her but felt protected by the two laptop screens that separated them. He studied her carefully, hoping that he’d remember where they had met. She reached absentmindedly for her coffee, tipping it over.

“Shit,” she said. The coffee covered the small table, endangering her laptop. She picked it up and noticed the mess dripping off the edge onto her purse and coat. “Damn it!”

Acting quickly, Max pulled the last paper napkin out of the tabletop dispenser on his table. He set her paper cup upright again and tried, in vain, to wipe up the spill. “Hey! You’re wiping the coffee right onto my stuff,” she wailed.

Still holding the open laptop in one hand, she tried to move her coat and purse out of the way. Her coat dragged across the table knocking the cup over again, this time directly onto Max. “Shit!” he said. The coffee left an embarrassing wet spot on the front of his Dockers. “Jeez! Look what you did! I was trying to help you!”

She looked directly at him, her eyes filled with frustration and anger. And he remembered. Sally Mansfield. They were both in the English Department at Columbia, years ago. She looked different now- hair color maybe.

“Sally?”

She eyed him uncertainly.

“Sally Mansfield? Max Trowbridge.”

“Max! Oh my God! It’s been a long time. I didn’t recognize you. You look…”

“Older,” he interrupted. “Older, fatter and balder. But you look great!”

She smiled. He did, in fact, look older, fatter and balder, and she, in fact, did look great. Nodding slightly, she changed the subject. “It must be what, eight years now? What brings you to Kentwood College?”

“Actually, it has been ten years and I work here. Dean of Arts and Sciences. And you?”

“I’m leading a couple of workshops in the honors creative writing classes. Nora Walsh invited me. She’s an old friend of mine. And I am doing a public reading from my new book.”

Max smiled. “Well then, on behalf of Nora Walsh and the English Department, welcome to Kentwood! Care for some coffee? In a cup?”

Laughing, Sally replied, “Sure. But you better put your laptop away first.”

Max ordered more coffee for Sally while she gathered her belongings and moved to his table.

“Administration, huh? When did that happen?” she asked as he sat down across from her.

“About 5 years ago. I needed some new scenery and some new challenges. And here I am. Are you still at Springfield University?

“Yup. It’s not Columbia, but I like it. And, I am very excited because my third novel was released a couple of months ago.”

“Wow! That’s great! Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I am really pleased. How’s your work going? I guess I sort of lost track.”

Max looked down. “Well, the administrative gig is pretty much all-consuming. I keep promising myself that I’ll revise that textbook I wrote in ’09, but I just haven’t done it yet.” Max’s book was big news, even at Columbia, when first published. “War on Words: Blasting the Canon” was widely heralded as the textbook for advanced lit courses. Those were heady days for Max, but in truth the book was the last original thing that he did, if a textbook could even be considered original.

Sally smiled. Kindly? “Yes, I am sure that the administrative work keeps you pretty busy.”

“So, you’ve written three novels now? “

“Yeah. I had the first one nearly done when I came up for tenure at Columbia. I submitted the manuscript with my tenure file, but since it hadn’t been published, it didn’t count. I know they reviewed it though. My tenure rejection letter was a pretty detailed account of why I’d never rise above mediocrity to be a successful writer.”

Max took a sip of his coffee. Her tenure case was coming back to him now. He wasn’t on the tenure review panel, but the chair had asked him to review her manuscript. He found it to be stunningly average. Not bad, just nothing special. It was never going to win any prizes, no Bookers, certainly no Pulitzers. If it got published, and that was a big if, it would disappear into the black hole that consumes books that are neither popular nor literary. It certainly would never have the impact of … well … of “Blasting the Canon.”

Sally continued, “It was really tough having to start all over. It took another 7 years, but last year, I finally got tenured and promoted.”

“Well, congratulations on that!” Max paused slightly and asked, “Your partner was a biology professor at Columbia, right? “

“Yes, and still is. At Columbia, that is. Not my partner.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Another academic casualty. Maya was very close to her tenure decision when my denial came. Her tenure looked secure, so it made sense for her to stay behind after I went to Springfield. The idea was that once she earned tenure, we’d try to find new positions in the same place. But, in our case, distance didn’t make her heart grow fonder, at least not fonder of me. So she got tenure and then started dating a grad student.” Again, her eyes gleamed with anger and frustration. Suddenly, she relaxed. “Yeah, so anyway, I got rejected. Twice. And… I moved on. All because some asshole reviewer who didn’t know anything about me said that I would never win a Pulitzer prize!”

Sally sipped her coffee. She looked at Max who sat gazing off into space. Suddenly ill at ease, he shifted in his seat, as if he were about to say something. She looked at him expectantly and he looked straight back at her. Nothing in her eyes suggested that she suspected his role in her story.

He took a deep breath, cleared his throat and mumbled, “I’ve got to run. I’ve got a meeting at 4. But, hey, it was really nice to see you again.”

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