After breakfast he drove her up to the university, where she did medical and scientific illustrating. “Cross-sections of vertebrae, detail studies of adrenal glands. I like it. I’m good at it.” She had held the job for more than a year.

“You don’t paint anymore,” he said. “I’ll have to take my easel back.” He had made the easel for her five years ago, in Oberlin, the semester that she went back to school. Julie smiled slightly at her hands.

“I never painted,” she said. “I can’t paint. I can draw, so I do that.”

Farrell said, “Jewel, you can do anything. It’s made a difference in my life, knowing you can do anything.”

“No, I can’t!” she cried harshly. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t fool myself so much these days. Stop imagining me, God damn it, it’s time for that too.” Farrell heard her throat close down and her teeth click. She said nothing after that until he stopped the bus on campus, as close to her office as he could go. He opened the door for her and helped her down in a way that began as a chivalrous joke and ended with them standing in a soggy heap of paper plates and torn political posters with their hands on each other’s arms.

“What happens now?” he asked. “What are we now?”

Julie prodded his stomach thoughtfully. “Goodness,” she said. “When I think I might have gone my whole life without ever knowing about that navel.” She pulled his shirt down, tucking it in carefully. “I go out for lunch around noon,” she said.

“I’ll be job hunting. Meet you for dinner.”

“There’a a Moroccan restaurant up near the Waverly. We can have couscous. I introduced you to couscous, didn’t I?”

“In the Rue du Four. Do you know, we’ve never eaten in the same place twice?”