Louise had been there before—how, since she had no car, he didn’t ask—and showed him around. “They choose animals that can survive the winter,” she said. “It’s open all year. They don’t even know they’re in a zoo.” She pointed out the artificial mountain made of cement blocks for the mountain goats to climb on. Morrison didn’t as a rule like any animal bigger and wilder than a cat, but these kept far enough away to be tolerable. That day she had told him a little about herself, a departure: mostly she talked about her work. She had travelled in Europe, she told him, and had spent a year studying in England.

“What are you doing here?” he had asked.

She shrugged. “They gave me money; nobody else would.”

Essentially it was his reason too. It wasn’t the draft; he was really over-age, though here they kept wanting to think he was a dodger, it made his presence more acceptable to them. The job market had been tight back in the States and also, when he tried later, in what they called here the East. But in all fairness it hadn’t been only the money or the dismalness of the situation back home. He had wanted something else, some adventure; he felt he might learn something new. He had thought the city would be near the mountains. But except for the raw gully through which the brownish river curved, it was flat.

“I don’t want you to think of it as typical,” Louise was saying. “You ought to see Montreal.”

“Are you typical?” he asked.

She laughed. “None of us is typical, or do we all look alike to you? I’m not typical, I’m all-inclusive.”

She let her fur coat fall down from around her shoulders as she said this, and he wondered again whether he was expected to make a move, to approach her. He ought to approach someone or something; he was beginning to feel isolated inside his clothes and skin. His students were out of the question. Besides, they were so thick, so impermeable; the girls, even the more slender ones, made him think of slabs of substance white and congealed, like lard. And the other single women on staff were much older than he was: in them Louise’s briskness had degenerated into a pinpointing, impaling quality.