After This

They continued to look at one another, shaking their heads, “No,” they said. It was clear the two boys were wary of Mr. Wallace; they suspected he was making fun of them.

“No, of course not, David,” Professor Wallace said. “They hardly travel en masse. They’re an independent bunch, our American students. Aren’t you?” she said, looking around the room. “You’re made to come together, what is it, once a month, to see how you’re getting on, but that’s it, isn’t it?”

“Actually,” Grace said, “it’s every fortnight.”

“Is it?” Professor Wallace asked.

“It’s ridiculous,” Nate said from Monica’s knees. “I quit going.” Monica put her hand in his curly hair. She was loose-limbed, slim, and large-breasted. Her face was plain but there was a luster about her skin and her hair, a luster of sex and of good health. She shook his head a little, playfully gripping his scalp. “You were at the last one,” she said in a tone that seemed to imply that the last one had ended in some mad sexual transaction.

Grace had turned to Mr. Wallace, explaining. “Only a few of us live in the same halls,” she said, piling on the Britishisms (A

“And yet, here you all are,” David Wallace said. “All on the same evening.”

Quietly, Professor Wallace slipped out of the room, through the door to what A

“Great minds think alike,” Ben said, leaning over his lap on the small chair. Whether he intended to or not, he sounded bitter.

Mr. Wallace then questioned the three about their hometowns. Monica was from Long Island, too, and Nate from outside Albany. Ben was from Staten Island, “A city boy,” Mr. Wallace said, to which Ben replied, with a tilt of his beer bottle, “I hate New York City.”

David Wallace nodded, touched his silk cravat. They could now smell their di

But Ben seemed to miss the co

Now David Wallace looked puzzled. “A fan,” he said, as if the word were a colloquialism he wasn’t quite sure of. “Of Wordsworth. Since you don’t like the city, I assumed you’d be a devotee of someone like Wordsworth. The romantics. The pastoral poets.”

Ben was looking at Mr. Wallace with what A

Mr. Wallace asked, pleasantly, “Well, what inspired you to study in England then?” and Ben laughed once, through his nose, and raised the bottle in his hand. “The beer,” he said.

Nate dropped his head, amused at his friend. Monica leaned down over her lap to whisper something in his ear, her thick hair falling to shield them both.

Mr. Wallace turned to the two girls. “Well, that’s honest at least,” he said, although his face, A

Just as he returned with their fresh drinks (over his shoulder, “Can I get you gentlemen another. Young lady?”) Professor Wallace came through the door again with a tray stacked with di

Mr. Wallace took his place beside Grace again, with only a napkin, no pillow on his knee. Professor Wallace made the rounds with a small glass dish and a tiny silver spoon, sprinkling parmigiana like fairy dust over each plate.

Then she sat with her own next to A

“This is delicious,” Monica said. Nate had abandoned her knee and her lap and was hunched now over his plate. He may even have moved away from her a bit. “Oh God,” he said, looking up. There was a fleck of sauce on his chin. “So good.” It was a kind of moan. “The food in hall is so freaking bad.”

Professor Wallace smiled. “Poor dears,” she said. “I’m sure it takes some getting used to.”

Beside A

David Wallace was questioning them again. “Where are you going and where have you been?” he asked. Monica and Nate had been to Stratford and Bath and London. A

When all the plates had been cleared, Professor Wallace brought a tray of fruit and cheese and placed it on the footstool, serving them again, this time using small plates painted with branches and birds. She recommended the Rambling Club at the university to all the American students. A lovely and inexpensive way to see the countryside. She would suggest, she said, kneeling among them, slicing a ripe pear, finding a focus for your travels. Historical, literary. Lawrence walked through the Pyrenees looking for roadside crucifixes. Read his essay. An American student once followed the route of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Another made a trip to the Hebrides, for Virginia Woolf’s sake.

“Something like that,” Professor Wallace said. She proffered the slices of ripe pear, the Americans reached for them, childish, A