Metamorphosis

O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!

–Walt Whitman

Even a small Midwestern town isn't free from its share of creeps. And so on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when they're both done teaching evening classes, Paul Kovach waits for Jessica in his office so he can walk her home. Jessica lives just off campus in the low-rent Promenade, and it is the walk there at night that frightens her the most, especially climbing the poorly lit steps to her apartment on the second floor.

She is one of Kovach's new advisees, a petite blond master's student with a pixie haircut and a habit of saying intelligent, clever things. Yet her term is off to a shaky start because of a student of her own, a freshman whose crush has begun to take on the characteristics of a stalking: attaching inappropriate notes to his papers, appearing outside her apartment at strange hours, cornering her at the gym. Campus security said that this sort of thing happens more often than anyone would like to admit, though usually once a uniformed officer gets involved, sitting the student down and explaining the seriousness of his actions, where it could lead—expulsion, arrest—the student drops the class and leaves the teacher alone. Hopefully this would be the case this time. Jessica has confided to Kovach that she hasn't been sleeping and is considering taking some time off after the semester, which would be too bad; she is a good student and talented writer whose work is very close to publishable.

He typically walks her only as far as the top of the stairs and then waits until she is safely in her apartment. But last Thursday, as they reached the second floor, she asked, "So what are you doing now?"

A simple question, but it caught him off guard. And his answer —"Walking home, I guess"—made them laugh a little because it was so literal and obviously awkward.

"Quite a life you lead," she said, and smiled, and asked him in for a beer.

The inside of her apartment surprised him. Most graduate student apartments were a jumble of items from Target and the Salvation Army made presentable—though not really—by being set against loudly colored walls. But Jessica's walls were white, and the furnishings seemed high quality.

"Look, Paul," she said, once the beer bottles were opened and they were seated on the sofa, "I want to tell you how grateful I am for your walking me home."

"I've already told you, it's no big deal."

"Yeah, but it is to me."

He would have liked to say something intelligent and reassuring. Something slightly wise without seeming condescending. He would have liked her to know that these walks with her were the best part of his week and that it was truly no bother and would continue to be no bother for as long as she needed someone to accompany her. But instead of saying any of these things, he said, "Nice sofa," pressing down on it with his fingertips, as if testing its elasticity. "A lot nicer than mine."

"When my parents split up," she said, "they both moved out and got new furniture. I said, 'Hell, give some to me.' I mean, the divorce had already given me the material for plenty of bad poetry. I might as well get a sofa out of it." Her laugh came from nowhere, an embarrassed cackle, and her face reddened. "Anyway, here's to it being almost the weekend." They clinked bottles and drank.

She was being friendly, but her attitude, her body language, suggested more, and Kovach couldn't help wondering if the undergraduate in question had felt a similar confusion—not that she was handing out beers in class or acting inappropriately but that maybe there had been something said, or a gesture that could be taken . . . —and immediately he felt ashamed for even momentarily exonerating the undergraduate, who was either dangerously clueless or, worse, dangerously not.

Not that this was the first time a professor ever drank a beer with one...