Outside the cold rain fell and the wind howled through the naked trees. Gerald looked up from his book, shivered, and shuffled over to the window. Grabbing the ends of the heavy curtains, he pulled them together, trying to close himself off from the nastiness outside. He couldn’t let it intrude on his thoughts. His mind was in a different place, a warm and sunny region in the distant past, where he commiserated with Gallus over losing Lycoris to a rival. He’d been lost in Virgil’s 10^th Eclogue for the past week, examining each phrase, word, and element of syntax for some secret meaning, some hidden clue that no one else had noticed for 2000 years.

He was on to something. The phrase florentis ferulas had caught his eye. It was translated variously as flowering canes and flowering fennel. The usual word for fennel was foeniculum, but the stalks of the plants were called ferulas. Surely the gerundive florentis, meaning flowering made more sense with plants than stalks, so he preferred the fennel translation. But why didn’t Virgil just use foenicula instead of ferulas? Was it just because the phrase florentis ferulas scanned better and rolled off the tongue in a more pleasing way, or was Virgil hinting at something else? The word cane held a negative association for Gerald, who as a youngster attended a Catholic school where the rod wasn’t spared as a disciplinary measure, and he suspected ferula might have had a similar connotation for the ancient Romans. What meaning did Virgil’s word choice shed on the poem?

His research informed him that the fennel plant had some interesting folkloric associations. It was connected to marital infidelity, and deceit, quite fitting for Lycoris, but he hadn’t yet tracked down the sources and couldn’t be certain if those attributes of the plant were known to Virgil. Prometheus, he discovered, used a hollow fennel stalk (μάραθος) to steal fire from the gods, according to Hesiod’s Theogony, and perhaps that theft was responsible for its connection to deceit. Ah, there was so much to research.

Gerald had a lot to think about, so he made for his chair, where he did his serious thinking. The desk was where he did his work—reading, translating, marking passages, drafting essays, and all the other onerous tasks of scholarship—and the chair was where he mused and pondered and consolidated the disparate facts he collected into cohesive thoughts. He grabbed a fleece throw blanket off the chair and wrapped it around his shoulders. Despite the stuffiness of the room, he couldn’t seem to get warm. He lowered himself into the chair and immediately felt a sense of well-being. It was a decadently luxurious, high-backed Queen Anne style armchair upholstered in soft Italian leather. He sat and surveyed his surroundings with a sense of satisfaction. Books were scattered everywhere, many lying open with other books atop them to mark his place. There were dictionaries, concordances, grammars, treatises on botany, volumes on ancient history, and of course, numerous literary works.

Some might have called the room messy, but to Gerald it was perfection. Everything he needed was there. It was a refuge from all the nastiness and uncertainty of the world outside. He closed his eyes and soon dozed off. It wasn’t long, however, before he was startled awake by a rattling at the door. He felt disoriented, couldn’t imagine who would be visiting. Whatever was out there, he didn’t want any part of it. He just wanted to return to the peaceful slumber he’d been awaken from. He stayed perfectly still, waiting for the disturbance to pass, but it didn’t. The banging on his door got louder and more insistent.

He rose slowly from his chair, walked to the door, and opened it just wide enough to stick his nose out and call out, “What do you want?” The figure on the other side mumbled something which he couldn’t make out through the clatter of rain and barking wind. “Don’t want any,” Gerald said, pulling the door shut. He thought he heard something about a flyer. Probably a Jehovah Witness or someone else trying to sell him something he didn’t want.

“I’m not selling flat tires,” came the voice again, louder and more clearly this time. “I have one.” A woman stood pointing at a car in front of the house. “Can you help me?”

He opened the door a little wider and winced at the dirty and disheveled figure standing there, drenched to the bone.

“I can’t fix your tire.”

She just stood, arms crossed, looking at him until he motioned with his head and said, “Come in.” He hoped the interruption wouldn’t last long. He had to get back to his work.

She followed him in and Gerald bit his lip as he watched the water drip from her soaked clothes onto the Persian rug by the door.

“Here,” he said, removing the blanket from his shoulder and holding it out to her.

She held out her hands which were filthy, and said, “I don’t suppose I can clean up a little, huh?”

“Oh,” he said and raked his fingers through his hair. “This way.” He led her to the bathroom and looked her up and down. “Would you like to take a shower?” he asked grudgingly.

“A shower would be swell.” Squeezing some water from her sleeve, she added, “You don’t happen to have a washing machine, do you?”

He nodded his head, unhappily. “Wait here. I’ll get you a towel and something dry to put on.”

She sat down on the lid of the commode and started removing her shoes and socks. Gerald returned with a bath towel, a pair of flannel pajamas, and a terrycloth robe which he gingerly placed beside the sink.

“Wow, fancy. You run a first class joint here.”

“We can throw your things in the washer when you’re done.” Feeling uncomfortable in that private space with a strange woman, he made his exit quickly. As he walked away he heard the door shut behind him and the lock click. Boy, he thought, she’s treating me like her footman. Didn’t even bother to say thank you. What have I gotten myself into? I never should have let her in. But what could I do, let her stand there in the rain? He turned to his desk, piled high with books and sighed. This is the worst time for an interruption like this. Everything is beginning to come together and I’ll lose my whole train of thought if I don’t get back to work soon. He sat at his desk and tried scribbling some notes, but drew a blank. It was was hard getting back into his former state of mind. Poor Gallus being consoled about the betrayal by his lover wasn’t engaging him the same way. As soon as I get rid of that nuisance woman, things will be normal again.

It wasn’t long before the bathroom door opened and she emerged, holding out the bathrobe. “I love the feel of this, but it’s too damn hot in here. Mind if I open the window?”

Somewhere along the line he’d shed the fleece coverlet and felt a little warm himself, so he said, “Go ahead.” He took the robe from her and tossed it onto the sofa. The woman looked a little more presentable cleaned up. She wasn’t pretty but not wholly unattractive either. Maybe it was seeing her wearing his own familiar pajamas. Looking at her stirred him in an unsettling way, and to break the spell he said, “Let’s throw your clothes into the washing machine.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, the bathroom’s a mess.” It was. There were clothes and towels strewn all over the place and the room was steamy as a sauna. No wonder the house felt warm. The woman, or girl—Gerald figured she was in her twenties, probably ten years younger than him—started snatching up wet clothing and towels from the floor and piling them onto his outstretched arms. Playing the valet again, he waited till she collected everything. He turned and started moving to the door when she grabbed a triangular cloth from the shower door and tossed it on top of the heap. “My panties,” she said. “Can’t forget them.” He tried his best to avoid looking at the flimsy garment right under his nose as he carried the bundle to the utility room.

As they were loading the machine, Gerald asked his guest how she managed to get so wet when her car was parked right in front of the house.

“What a day it’s been. I was on the highway and the steering started going wobbly, so I took the first exit. I hoped there’d be a garage or service station around, but there was nothing but houses. I couldn’t go much further so I pulled over. I got out to see how bad the damage was. It was raining like a sonofabitch, but what could I do? As I suspected, the front tire was completely flat, sitting on the rim. There was a big flathead screw sticking out of the sidewall. I opened the trunk to see if there was a spare and a jack, and I was in luck. It’s not my car, you see. Borrowed it from a friend.”

“Couldn’t you call a garage or something?”

“Who could I call? So there I was in the pouring rain, jacking up the car, and it was a bitch getting those lug nuts off. I had to jump up and down on the damn wrench. Actually, that was kinda fun. I finally got the bastard off, put the spare on and tightened the lugs. I was all set. Threw everything back in the trunk and was ready to take off, but took another look to admire my handiwork, and what do you know, the spare was as flat as the other one. That’s when I started pounding on your door.”

She was laughing like it was a big joke, and Gerald couldn’t get over that. He couldn’t imagine going through what she described. He didn’t know the first thing about changing a tire. “Wow,” he said. “What are you going to do now?”

“Don’t worry,” she laughed, patting his cheek. “You look like you’re gonna shit a brick. I’ll be out of your hair soon. I’m not gonna take up residence in your house. My teammates will be by in a couple hours and they’ll get me fixed up.”

A couple of hours! he thought, but didn’t say anything. By this time they had loaded the wash and were walking back into the living room. She was headed for his chair and he tried to steer her toward the sofa. It didn’t seem right for this woman from off the street to be sitting in his special chair, the place where he thought his lofty thoughts. But it was as if she was programmed to do exactly what he didn’t want her to.

With a shrug, he sat on the sofa, opposite her and asked, “You have teammates?”

“Yeah, my roller derby buddies.”

Gerald didn’t know what roller derby was and she told him all about it.

“Ugh, it sounds so violent and dangerous. Why do you do it? Is it your hobby?

“It’s my hobby, my job, my life. I love it. It’s a blast. You should try it. But that reminds me. Can I ask you for one more big favor?”

Gerald knew what was coming. She was going to hit him up for some cash. Well, if that’s what it took to get rid of her, he was ready to pay.

“Do you have some bandages and antiseptic cream?”

It wasn’t the question he was expecting. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Yeah, last week, in the rink. The bandage is wet and I should change it. Here, look.” She rose from the chair, turned her back to him and hiked up her pajama top to show him a square bandage on the small of her back. “Do you have something like this?” she asked, tapping the bandage with her hand.

“I have a first aid kit with stuff in it that should work. I’ll be right back.”

Pleased that he found the rarely used emergency kit so quickly, he came back and handed the white plastic box with a red cross on it to her.

“Why are you giving it to me? You think I’m double-jointed or something and can put a bandage on my own back?”

“Of course, not,” he said, taking it back. “So you want me to do it?”

She didn’t bother answering but lay down on the sofa and pulled the pajama top up. She felt for the bottom of the bandage, and pulled her pants down below it. Gerald, knelt down beside the sofa and started fidgeting with the contents of the box, drawn to yet trying to avoid looking at the appealing roundness of the top of her rump exposed before him. He tore open an envelope, and a second later, hearing the snap of plastic, the woman turned to him and asked, “What the hell are you doing?”

“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even touch you. I’m just putting on the gloves that are in the kit.”

“What the hell do you need gloves for? You’re not sticking a suppository up my ass. You’re just changing a bandage, for Chrissake. Why don’t you just go and wash your hands first.”

Gerald obediently went to the sink and scrubbed his hands with soap and hot water. “Okay,” he said, kneeling back down beside her, “I’m going to start peeling the old one off.” He gently tugged at the edge of the tape.

“Not like that,” she said. “Just rip the sucker off.”

“It’ll hurt if I do that.”

“It’s gonna hurt however you do it. Just pull it off.”

He held the end of the tape tight, closed his eyes, and yanked it off. As soon as he did, she let out a blood-curdling scream. “Are you okay?” he asked, his heart pounding.

“I’m fine,” she giggled. “Just pranking you. It wasn’t bad at all. How does it look? Is it all closed up?”

“I think so,” he answered, studying the scar carefully. “It’s beginning to scab over in some places. Most of it is pink, but there’s no blood and it’s not open. I’ll put some ointment on it and a new bandage.” He squeezed the tube carefully over the wound and placed the gauze on top. Then he cut strips of tape and pressed the bandage into place. As he smoothed the tape down, the feel of her skin made his fingertips tingle. “How did this happen?”

“Took a spill. Landed on someone’s skate. Occupational hazard. That one’s nothing. I have some real doozies. Get a load of this one.” She sat up and raised the pajama top to the nape of her neck, revealing a long, crosshatched scar around her shoulder blade. “Eighteen stitches for that one.”

“Wow!” he said, trying to keep his eyes his on the scar and not her breasts which were partly uncovered.

“It’s no big deal. My body’s covered with scars and bruises. Comes with the territory. And then there’s my nose.”

“What’s wrong with your nose?”

“Didn’t you notice? Look at it.” She stood in front of him, their faces just inches apart. “Broke it three separate times.” She outlined the crooked shape with her finger. He knew there was something funny about her nose but couldn’t decide if it was aesthetically abhorrent or not. He still wasn’t sure, but it was uncomfortable looking straight at her face when she was watching him.

“The wash should be finished. I’ll throw the stuff in the dryer.”

When he returned, he found her poking around his bookshelf.

“What are you looking for?”

“Nothing in particular. I’ve been wasting so much of your time and you must be eager to get back to your work. I’ll just find something to read till my friends come, and you can get back to what you were doing.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” he said, genuinely surprised she was capable of being thoughtful. “I would like to get a little work done, if you don’t mind.”

She smiled and turned back to the bookcase. It was a good piece of luck that he could get back to his project again. But try as he might, he couldn’t get a thing done. He couldn’t keep his mind focused on what he was doing. He turned and looked at her, demurely curled up on his chair, absorbed in a book.

“What are you reading anyhow?” he called over to her. She held up her book.

Christ, he thought. She’s reading Yeats, of all things. How did she pick that out?

“There are some really nice poems here. Have you read it? Listen:

       Wine comes in at the mouth
       And love comes in at the eye;
       That’s all we shall know for truth
       Before we grow old and die.
       I lift the glass to my mouth,
       I look at you, and I sigh.

“That’s nice, isn’t it? So simple, but just right.”

He had to admit it was. “Say,” he said, “would you like some tea?”

“Tea? Don’t you want to work?”

“I do, but I can’t seem to concentrate.”

“Okay, then, I’ll have some tea with you.”

He retreated into the kitchen and when he returned he was carrying two steaming cups on saucers. He handed one to her and took his to the sofa, where he sat facing her. They both sipped their drinks, not speaking.

After a while, she said, “So tell me about your work, sport. What are you up to with all these books?”

“I… I’m working on a poem.”

“You’re a poet?”

“No, I’m not writing a poem, I’m reading one. By Virgil. You know, the Roman Poet. You heard of Virgil, right?”

“The only Virgil I know is Virgil Kane who served on the Danville train.” This time it was Gerald who looked blank.

“It’s a song. Never mind. But I don’t get it. Why do you need all these books to read a poem?”

“Well, the poem is difficult to understand. It’s not in English and it’s from another time and place. You have to dig deep to find the meaning and to understand what it would have meant to the poet’s contemporaries. What’s interesting isn’t on the surface, but hidden inside.”

“Sounds a little weird to me. If a poem or a song doesn’t hit you right away, why bother with it? Either it means something to you or it doesn’t. Why give a fuck about what it might have meant to someone else, especially people who have been dead for centuries?

He shook his head impatiently. “You don’t understand.”

“Is that your job or something, reading hard poems? You get paid for it?”

“No, there’s no pay. I do it for myself.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? Where do you get money from?

“Well, I, uh, have money.” It was a sensitive topic for Gerald. He was sure she’d criticize him for living off the labor of others, which was kind of true but not really his fault. He couldn’t help it if he was born wealthy. He didn’t flaunt his wealth. He lived modestly and worked hard at what he did. He was starting to feel resentful about what he was sure she would accuse him of.

“So, you don’t have to work?”

“No, but I…”

“And you can do whatever you want, anything in the world?”

“Well, yes, I suppose, within reason.”

“Let me get this straight. You can do whatever you damn please and this is what you choose?” she said, holding her hands out toward the open books all around them. “Wow.” There was no condemnation in her tone, just wonder.

He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

Then she smiled and said with a toss of her head, “Well, each to his own.”

There was a loud banging on the door. She jumped up. “The girls are here. Well, sport, you were my savior. Thanks for everything.” She stuck out her hand to shake his.

“But, your clothes,” he said, as she made for the door.

“Huh?” She looked at herself and laughed. “I guess I got a little too comfortable in these.” She opened the door and yelled out, “Hey, girls. Be out in a sec.” She flew past him to the clothes dryer, and although Gerald couldn’t figure out how she could dress so fast, she was back in seconds, and then out the door, which she shut behind her. He stood there, scratching his head, knowing he should be relieved, but feeling a little sad. After a few minutes, he opened the door, thinking the sight her car would cheer him up. At least he’d see her once more when she came back for it, and get to say a proper goodbye, and ask what her name was. But the space where her car was stood empty. Her friends must have brought a tire and replaced the bad one.

She was gone and the emptiness she left behind was palpable. No use trying to take up where he left off. In his mind’s eye he saw, more vividly now in his imagination, her bare back, the alluring roundness of her buttocks, the tantalizing outline of her breasts. He reached out his hand to caress them, more entranced with her gone than he was with her there. Now he knew how Gallus felt, pining for Lycoris, loving her more in her absence than he ever could have while she was with him. It was the idea of Lycoris that consumed him, not the inconsequential person herself. That was it! Excited, he grabbed his pen and began writing feverishly. His heart was racing. He had a new thesis to expound.