He heaved himself up out of the water and rested his elbows on the side. This brought his groin to meet Zora at eye level. For a full ten seconds, as if there were no material there at all, she was presented with the broad line of it running along his thigh to the left, making three-dimensional waves of his bumblebee stripes. Beneath this arresting sight, his balls pulled at the fabric of his shorts, low and heavy and not quite lifted out of the warm water. His tattoo was of the sun -the sun with a face. She felt she had seen it before. Its rays were thick and fanned out like the mane of a lion. The boy took our rwo earplugs, removed the goggles, left them on the side and returned to Zora's bobbing height.

'Got plugs in, man -couldn't hear a thing.'

'[ said [ think you've got my goggles. [ put them down for like a second and they went -maybe you picked them up by mistake ... my goggles?'

The boy was frowning at her. He shook the water from his face . . , know your 'What? No -look, can [ see those goggles please?'

The boy, still frowning, threw his long arm up and over the side and came back with the goggles. 'OK, so those are mine. The red strap is mine -the other one broke and [ put that red one on myself, so -' The boy grinned. 'Well ... If they yours, I guess you better take 'em.'

He held out his long palm towards her -coloured a rich brown like Kiki's, with all the lines drawn in a still darker shade. The goggles hung from his index finger. Zora moved to snatch them but instead nudged them from his finger. She thrust her hands into the water; they twirled on down to the bottom, the red band spiralling, inanimate, yet dancing. Zora took a shallow asthmatic breath and tried to dive. Halfway down the buoyancy of her own flesh reeled her back up, ass first.

'You want me to -1' offered the boy and didn't wait for the answer. He curved in on himself and shot down with barely a splash. He resurfaced a moment later with the goggles hanging from his wrist. He dropped them into her hands, another fumbling move, for it took all the energy Zora had to tread water while simultaneously opening her palms to receive them. Without a word she kicked away to the side, trying her best to climb the ladder with dignity, and left the pool. Except she didn't quite leave. For the time it takes to swim one length she stood by the side of the lifeguard's chair and watched the smiling sun make its way through the water, watched the initial seal-pup flip-flop of the boy's torso, the ploughing and lifting of two dark arms in turbine motion, the grinding muscles of the shoulders, the streamlined legs doing what all human legs could 'do if only they tried a little harder. For a whole twenty-three seconds the last thing on Zoros mind was herself.

'I knew I knew you -Mozart.'

He was dressed now, the necklines of several Tshirts visible underneath his Red Sox hoodie. His black jeans swamped the white scallop-shell toes ofhis sneakers. IfZora hadn't just seen him almost as God intended, she would have had no idea of the contours beneath all of this. The only clue was that elegant neck of his, angling the head away from the body like a young animal looking about the world for the first time. He was sitting on the outdoor steps of the gym, legs wide open, earphones on, nodding to the music -Zora almost stood on him.

'Sorry -if 1 can just...' she murmured, stepping round.

He slipped his earphones down to his neck, bounced up and kept pace with her down the stairs.

'Hey, hat girl -yo, I'm talking to you -hey, slow down for a second there.'

Zora stopped at the bottom of the stairs, pushed the brim of her stupid hat up, looked into his face and recognized him at last.

'Mozart,' he repeated, cocking a finger at her. 'Right? You took my player -my man Levi's sister.'

'Zora, right.'

'Carl. Carl Thomas. 1 knew it was you. Levi's sister.'

He stood there nodding and smiling as if together they had just cracked the cure for cancer.

'So ... umm, do you see Levi, , , or , , . ?' triedZora, awkwardly. His well-madeness as a human being made her feel her own bad design, She folded her arms across her chest and then refolded them the other way. Suddenly she couldn't stand in a position that was even half normal. Carl looked over her shoulder towards the fuzzled corridor ofyew trees that led to the river.

'You know, I ain't even seen him since that concert -I guess we was meant to hang at one point but...' His attention flipped back to her. 'Which way you walking, you walking down there?'

'Actually, I'm going the other way, just into the square.'

'Cool, I can go that way.'

'Br... OK.'

They took a few steps, but here the sidewalk ended. They waited at the traffic lights in silence, Carl had replaced one earphone and was nodding to the beat. Zora looked at her watch, and then around herself in a self-conscious way, assuring the passers-by that she also had no idea what this guy could possibly want with her.

'You're on the swim team)' said Zora when the lights refused to change.

'Huh?'

Zora shook her head and pressed her lips together.

'No, say again.' He took off his earphones once more. 'What was that?' 'Nothing -I just -just wondering if you were on the swim team -'

'Do I look like I'm on the swim team?' Zora's memory of Carl refocused, sharpened. 'Umm ... it's not an insult -I'm just saying you're fast.'

Carl brought his shoulders down from where they were hitched, up around his ears, but his face held the tension. 'I'll be in the A-Team before I'm on the swim team, believe that. Gotta be in college before you on the swim team, as I understand it.'

Two cabs came parallel with each other now, heading in opposite directions. The drivers slowed down to a halt and yelled happily at each other from their open windows while beeping horns started up around them.

Those Haitians got a lot ofmouth, man. Sound like they screaming all the time. Even when they happy they sound pissed as hell,' reflected Carl. Zora jabbed at the traffic button.

'You go to a lot of classical -' asked Carl at the same time that Zora said, 'So you just go to the pool to steal other people's -' 'ah, shit -' He laughed loudly, falsely, Zora thought. She pushed her wallet deep into her tote bag and discreetly zipped it up.

'I'm sorry about your goggles, man. You still mad about that? I didn't think nobody was using them. My man Anthony works in the locker room -he gets me in without a pass -so, you know.'

Zora did not know. The sing-song bird call of the traffic lights started up so that the blind might know when to walk. '[ was just saying -you go to a lot of those things?' asked Carl as they crossed the street together. 'Like the Mozart?' 'Umm ... [ guess not... probably not as much as [ should. Studying takes up a lot of my time, I guess.'

'You freshman?'

'Sophomore. First day.'

'Wellington?'

Zora nodded. They were approaching the main campus building. He seemed to want to slow her down, to put off the moment when she passed through the gate and out ofhis world.

'Scene. Educated sister. That's cool, man -that's really -that's an amazing thing right there, that's ... good for you, you're going the right way about your shit and all that -that's the prize, education. We all gotta keep our eyes on the prize if we're gonna rise, right? Wellington. Hmph. That's nice.'

Zora smiled feebly.

'No, man, you worked for it, you deserved it,' said Carl, and looked around himself distractedly. He reminded her of the young boys she used to mentor in Boston -taking them to the park, to the movies -back when she had time to do that kind of stuff. His attention span was like theirs. And always the toe-tapping and head-nodding as if srillness was the danger.

"Cos the thing about Mozart, right,' he said suddenly. This is the thing right here -[ mean about the Requiem -[ don't know too much about his other shit, but that Requiem, that we were listening to -OK, so you know the Lacrimosa part?' His fingers worked the air like a maestro, hoping to conduct the reaction he wanted out of his new companion.

'The Lacrimosa -you know it, man.'

'Er... no,' said Zora, noting with alarm her fellow students pouring in to register. She was late already.

'It's like the eighth bit,' said Carl impatiently. 'I sampled it for this tune I made, after I heard it at that show, right -and it's crazy -with all the angels singing higher and higher and those violins, man -swish dah DAH, swish da DAH, swish da DAH -it's amazing listening to that -and it sounds mad cool when you put words over the top and a beat below -you know the part, it's like -' said Carl and began to hum the tune again.

'I really don't know it. I'm not really a classical music type of -'

'No, man, you remember -'cos I remember I overheard your people, your moms and everybody -they were discussing whether he was a genius, remember, and -'

'That was like a month ago,' said Zora, confused.

'Oh, I'm very memorizing -like I remember everything. You tell me something: I remember it. I never forget a face -you see how I don't forget a face. And it was just -you know -inneresting to me, about Mozart, 'cos I'm a musician also -'

Zora allowed herself a tiny smile at the unlikely comparison.

l'illd then I found out about it a little more -'cos, I've been reading about classical music, 'cos you can't do what I do without knOwing about other shit outside of your direct, like, your influences and shit -'

Zora nodded politely.

'Right, you understand me,' said Carl vigorously, as if with this nod Zora had signed her name to a declaration of undisclosed principles of Carl's choosing. l'illd so anyway, man, it turns out that that section -it wasn't even by him -I mean, it was partly him, right? Obviously he passed away halfway through, and then other people had to be brought in to finish it off. And it turns out that the main business of the Lacrimosa was by this guy Siissmayr which is the shit, man, 'cos it's like the best thing in the Requiem, and it made me think damn, you can be so close to genius that it like lifts you up -it's like Stissmayr, this guy, stepped up to the bat, right, like a rookie, and then he went and hit it out of the park and all these people be trying to prove that it's Mozart'cos that fits in with their idea of who can and who can't make music like this, but the deal is that this amazing sound was justby this guy Stissmayr, this average Joe Shmo guy. I was tripping when I read that shit.'

And all the time, while he spoke, and she tried, bewilderedly, to listen, his face was doing its silent voodoo on her, just as it seemed to work on everybody passing by him in this archway. 20ra could clearly see people stealing a look, and lingering, not wanring to release the imprint of Carl from their retinas, especially if it was only to be replaced by something as mundane as a tree or the library or two kids playing cards in the yard. What a thing he was to look at!

'Anyway,' he said, enthusiasm shading off into disappointment at her silence, 'I been wanting to tell you that and now I told ya, so...'

20ra snapped out ofit. 'You wanted to tell me that?'

'No, no, no -it ain't like that.' He laughed raucously. 'Damn, girl, I'm not a staiker -sister, seriously -' He patted her softly on her left arm. Nothing less than electricity shot right through her body, into her groin and ended up somewhere round her ears. 'I'm just saying that it stuck in my mind, right -' cos I go to stuff in the city and usually I'm the only Negro, right -don't see many black foik at things like that and I thought: Now, if I ever see that bad-tempered black girl again, I'm gonna lay some of my Mozart thoughts on her head, see how she takes them -that's all. That's college, right? That's what you paying all that money for -just so you get to talk to other people about that shit. That's all you're paying for.' He nodded his head authoritatively. 'That's it.'

'I guess: 'It's nothing more than that,' Carl insisted.

The college bell started up, pompous and monotonous, then the jollier four-note tune of the Episcopalian church across the road.

Zora took a risk: 'You know, you should meet my other brother, Jerome. He's a total music-head and poetry-head -he can be a little bit of an uptight asshole, but you should totally come by some time, I mean, ifyou want to talk and stuff -He's at Brown right now, but he comes back every few weeks... it's a pretty amazing household for talking even though they all kind of drive me a little crazy sometimes ... my dad's like a professor so -' Carl's head jerked back in surprise. 'No, but he's cool ... and he's pretty incredible to talk to ... but seriously, you should really feel free, just to come by and talk and just...'

Carl looked frostily at Zora. When a boy brushed past him, Zora saw Carl square his own shoulder, bumping the freshman forward a little; the freshman, seeing as how the bumper was a tall black guy, said nothing and continued on his way.

'Well: said Carl, staring after the boy he'd pushed, 'actually I did come by, but seemed like I wasn't welcome, so -'

'You came by ... ?' began Zora uncomprehendingly.

In her face Carl recognized authentic innocence. He waved the discussion away. 'Bottom line? I'm not a big talker. I don't express shit well when I talk. I write better than I speak. When I be rhyming I'm like BAM. I hit it on the nail, through the wood and out the other side. Believe. Talkin'? I hit my own finger. Every time.'

Zora laughed. 'You should hear my dad's freshmen. I was like: she said, pitching her voice high and across the country to the opposite coast, 'and then she was like, and then he was like, and I was like, oh, my God. Repeat ad infinitum.'

Carl looked puzzled. 'Your pops, the professor ...' he said slowly. 'He white, right?'

'Howard. He's English.'

'English!' said Carl, revealing the chalky sclera of his eyes, and then a moment later, seeming to have taken the concept fully on board, 'I ain't never been to England, man. I've never been out of the States. So...' He was doing a strange rhythmiC clicking into his palm. 'He be like a math professor or whatever.'

'My dad? No. Art History.'

'You get on with him, with your pops?'

Again Carl's eyes wandered around the place. Again Zora's paranoia got the better of her. She imagined for a moment that all these questions were a kind of verbal grooming that would later lead -by routes she didn't pause to imagine -to her family home and her mother's jewellery and the safe in the basement. She began to speak rather manically, as was her way when trying to disguise the fact that her mind was elsewhere.

'Howard -he's great. I mean's he's my dad, so sometimes, you know ... but he's cool -I mean, he just had this affair -yeah, I know, it all came out, it was with this other professor -so everything's pretry fucked up at home right now. My mom's freaking out. But I'm really like, hello, what kind of a sophisticated guy in his fifties doesn't have an affair? It's basically mandatory. Intellectual men are attracted to intellectual women -big fucking surprise. Plus my mom doesn't do herself any favours -she's like three hundred pounds or something...'

Carl looked down, apparently embarrassed for Zora. Zora blushed and pressed her stubby nails deep into the meat of her palms.

'Fat ladies need love too: said Carl philosophically, and took a cigarette from inside his hoodie, where it had been tucked behind his ear. 'You best be going, huh: he said and lit up. He seemed bored with her now. Zora was filled with the sad sense that something precious had escaped. Somehow with her blethering she had made Mozart vanish and his pal Sussawhatsit too.

'People to see, places to go, sho' nuff: he said.

'ah, no ... I mean, I've just got a meeting. It's not really -'

'Important meeting: said Carl ruminatively, taking a moment to envision it.

'Not really... more like a meeting about the future, I guess.'

Zora was on her way to Dean French's office to empty her hypothetical future into his lap. She was particularly concerned about her failure to get into Claire Malcolm's poetry class last semester. She hadn't yet seen the boards, but ifit happened again then that could have a very adverse affect on her future, which needed to be discussed, along with many other troubling aspects of her future in all its futurity. This was the first of seven meetings that she had taken it upon herself to schedule for the initial week of the semester. Zora was extremely fond of scheduling meetings about her future with important people for whom her future was not really a top priority. The more people were informed of her plans the more real they became to her.

'The future's another country, man: said Carl mournfully, and then the punchline seemed to come to him; his face surrendered to a smile. 'And I still ain't got a passport.'

'That's... is that from your lyrics?'

'Might be, might be.' He shrugged, rubbed his hanos together, although it wasn't cold, not yet. With deep insincerity he said, 'It was nice talking to you, Zora. It was educational.'

He seemed angry again. Zora looked away and fiddled with the zip ofher tote. She had an unfamiliar urge to help him. 'Hardly -I didn't say a word, practically.'

'Yeah, but you listen well. That's the same thing.' Zora looked up at him again, startled. She couldn't remember ever being told that she listened well.

'You're very talented, aren't you?' murmured Zora without thinking about what in God's name she meant. She was lucky -the words slipped under a passing delivery truck.

'Well, Zora -' He clapped his hands; was she ridiculous to him? 'You keep studyin'.'

'Carl. It was nice to meet you again.'

'Tell that brother ofyours to call me. I'm doing another show at the Bus Stop -you know, it's down Kennedy, on Tuesday.' 'Don't you live in Boston?' 'Yeah, and? It ain't far -we're allowed to come into Wellingron, you know. Don't need a pass. Man. Wellingron's OK -that part of it is, Kennedy Square. It ain't all students -there's brothers too. Anyway ... Just tell your bro if he wants to hear some rhymes he should come. It might not be poetry poetry: said Carl, walking away before Zora had a chance to answer, 'but it's what I do.'

Up on the seventh floor of the Stegner Memorial Building, in an insufficiently heated room, Howard had just finished unpacking a projector. He'd slipped his hands on each side of its bulk, kept the armature steady under his chin and eased the whole ugly contraption out of its box. He always requested this projector for his first presentation of the year, when his class was 'shopped'; it was as much of a ritual as unpacking the Christmas lights. As homely, as dispiriting. In what new way, this year, would it fail to light up? Howard carefully opened the lid ofthe light-box and placed the too familiar title page (he had been delivering this lecture series for six years), CONSTRUCTING THE HUMAN: 1600-1700, face down on the glass. He picked the page up again, wiped away the accumulated dust and placed it back down. The projector was grey and orange -the colours of the future thirty years ago -and, like all obsolete technology, elicited an involuntary sympathy from Howard. He was not modem any more either.

'Pah-point: said Smith]. Miller, who was standing in the doorway, both hands wnpped around his coffee mug for warmth, eagerly keeping a lookout for the students. Howard knew that this morning would bring more students than the room could handle unlike Smith, he understood that this didn't mean anything. They'd have students sitting on the long corporate meeting table and the grim floor, students on the window ledge with their student heels tucked under their student backsides, students lined up against the wall like prisoners waiting to be shot. They'd all take notes like crazed stenographers, they'd be so involved in the movements of Howard's mouth he would have to convince himself that this was not a deaf school and these not lip-readers; they would all, every single one -in all sincerity -write down their names and e-mails, no matter how many times Dr Belsey repeated, 'Please only -only -put your names down if you're seriously intending to take this class.' And then next Tuesday there would be twenty kids. And the Tuesday after that, nine.

'It's a heck of a lot easier, pah-point. Ah could show you.'

Howard raised his eyes from his poor machine. He felt obscurely cheered by Smith's neat tartan bow-tie, his baby face spattered with light freckles, the thin ripple of ash-blond hair. You couldn't ask for a better helpmeet than Smith J. Miller. But he was an eternal optimist. He didn't get how this system worked. He didn't know, as Howard did, that by next Tuesday these kids would have already sifted through the academic wares on display in the form ofcourses across the Humanities Faculty, and performed a comparative assessment in their own minds, drawing on multiple variables including the relative academic fame of the professor; his previous publications up to that point; his intellectual kudos; the uses of his class; whether his class really meant anything to their permanent records or their personal futures or their grad school potential; the likelihood ofthe professor in question having any real-world power that might translate into an actual capacity to write that letter which would effectively place them -three years ftom now -on an internship at the New Yorker or in the Pentagon or in Clinton's Harlem offices or at French Vogue -and that all this private research, all this Googling, would lead them rightly to conclude that taking a class on 'Constructions ofthe Human', which did not come under their core requirements for the semester, which was taught by a human being himself over the hill, in a bad jacket, with eighties hair, who was under-published, politically marginal and badly situated at the top of a building without proper heating and no elevator, was not in their best interests. There's a reason it's called shopping.

'See, now, with pah-point: persisted Smith, 'the whole class can see what's going on. It's pretty damn sharp, the image you git.'

Howard smiled gratefully but shook his head. He was beyond the point of learning new tricks. He got on his knees and plugged the projector's cord into the wall; a snag of blue light leaped from the socket. He pressed the button on the back of the projector. He twiddled the connected cable. He pressed hard on the light box, hoping to engage some loose connection.

'Ah'll do that: said Smith. He drew the projector away from Howard, sliding it along the table. Howard stood where he was for a minute, in exactly the same pose as if the projector were still before him.

'Maybe you should close those blinds: suggested Smith gently. Like most people in the Wellington loop, Smith was fully apprised of Howard's situation. And, personally, he was sorry for Howard's trouble, and had told him so two days earlier when they met to go over which worksheets needed photocopying. I'm sony for your trouble. As if someone Howard loved had died.

'You want some coffee, Howard, some tea? Doughnut?'

With one hand absently holding on to the blinds' strings, Howard looked out of the window on to Wellington's yard. Here was the white church and the grey library, antagonizing each other on opposite sides of the square. A pot-pourri of orange, red, yellow and purple leaves carpeted the ground. It was still warm enough, but only just, for kids to sit on the steps ofthe Greenman, reclining on their owri knapsacks, wasting time. Howard scanned the scene for Warren or Claire. The news was that they were still together. This from Erskine, who got it from his wife Caroline, who was on the board of trustees at the Wellington Institute of Molecular Research where Warren spent his days. It was Kiki who had told Warren; the explosion had happened -but no one had died. It was just walking wounded as far as the eye could see. No packed bags, no final door slams, no relocation to different colleges, different towns. They were all going to stay put and suffer. It would be played out very slowly over years. The thought was debilitating. Everybody knew about it. Howard expected that the shorthand, water-cooler version, currently circulating the college would be 'Warren's forgiven her' said with pity mixed with a little contempt -as if that covered it, the feeling. People said 'She's forgiven him' about Kiki, and only now was Howard learning of the levels of purgatory forgiveness involves. People don't know what they're talking about. At the water cooler Howard was just another middleaged professor suffering the expected mid-life crisis. And then there was the other reality, the one he had to live. Last night, very late, he had peeled himself off the crushing, too short divan in his study and gone into the bedroom. He lay down in his clothes, above the quilt, next to Kiki, a woman he had loved and lived with his entire adult life. On her bedside table he could not avoid seeing the packet of anti-depressants, sitting alongside a few coins, some earplugs, a teaspoon, all crushed in a small wooden Indian box with elephants carved upon its sides. He waited almost twenty minutes, never sure if she was awake or not. Then he put his hand, above the quilt, very softly; somewhere on her thigh. She began to cry.

lh got a good feelin' about this semester: said Smith, and whistled and released his sprightly Southern chuckle. 'Expectin' standing room only:'

On to the blackboard Smith was poster-gumming a reproduction of Rembrandt's Dr Nicolaes Tulp Demonstrating the Anatomy of the Arm, 1632, that clarion call of an Enlightenment not yet arrived, with its rational apostles gathered around a dead man, their faces uncannily lit by the holy light of science. The left hand of the doctor, raised in explicit imitation (or so Howard would argue to his students) of the benefactions of Christ; the gentleman at the back staring out at us, requesting admiration for the fearless humaniry of the project, the rigorous scientific pursuance of the dictum Nosce te ipsum, 'Know thyself' -Howard had a long shtick about this painting that never failed to captivate his army of shopping-day students, their new eyes boring holes into the old photocopy. Howard had seen it so many times he could no longer see it at all. He spoke with his back to it, pOinting to what he needed to with the pencil in his left hand. But today Howard felt himself caught in the painting's orbit. He could see himself laid out on that very table, his skin white and finished with the world, his arm cut open for students to examine. He turned back to the window. Suddenly he spotted the small but unmistakable figure of his daughter, clomping a speedy diagonal towards the English Department.