Chapter 4: The Quiz

I was off the futon and halfway to the door before Eleanor caught my wrist.

"Don't," she said.

"He's sitting in front of my building."

"I know."

"I'm going to ask him what he wants."

"He will tell you he's concerned about me," Eleanor said. "And then he will tell Lowell where you live, which he already has. Let him sit there."

She said it in the same level voice she used for the senator's portrait.

I stood by the door with my fists clenched and my glasses still on the desk.

Below the window, the grey sedan turned its lights on and rolled slowly away.

"He's gone," I said.

"For tonight."

Eleanor stood up and smoothed her sweater.

Her mouth was swollen, and her hair had come down on one side.

She looked furious, and she looked beautiful, and I thought that I had never wanted to hit someone so much in my life.

"I should go," she said.

"You don't have to."

"I do. If I stay, Lowell gets a second thing to say about you." She took her bag. "I won't have him say it."

At the door she kissed me once, very hard.

"Tuesday," she said. "Be ready, I've been studying."

She was not exaggerating.

On Tuesday at seven I gave her a practice quiz, twelve questions on means and spread, and she finished it in ten minutes.

I graded it on the table in front of her.

"Ninety-four," I said.

"What did I miss?"

"You rounded the last answer the wrong way." I flipped the page to show her. "Everything else is perfect."

She stared at the number.

Then she put both hands over her mouth.

"I haven't gotten an A on anything since I was twenty," she said through her fingers.

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