Florence Gordon by Brian Morton Page B

at her—
    Who the hell cares what I look like? I look good enough.
    Lev had been away for the last week, doing one of his rounds of cross-country fund-raising and conference-going. He was supposed to be returning today, but he wasn’t in the office when she got there.
    Even when he wasn’t there, it felt as if he were. She’d never known a workplace that was as friendly as this one was, and she was sure it was because of his influence.
    She spent the morning talking to college students, most of whom had been on Ritalin so long that she wondered whether it had subtly addled them, and then she reread an article she was writing. Actually, she was helping two other people write it. It was about the brain chemistry of willpower; they knew the science and she knew how to render it in clear language.
    In the late afternoon she drifted out to the living room.
    When the townhouse was converted into an academic building, Lev had retained the living room, wanting to provide a comfortable space where people could talk at their leisure.
    From where she sat, she could see him in the kitchen. He was back. She felt suddenly happier and more alert.
    He was standing at the coffee machine. Hot water was dribbling out of the side of it, bypassing the carafe and pooling on the counter.
    “This damned Mr. Coffee. When we had the old thing . . .”
    She resisted the urge to do the traditional womanly thing and get it working for him.
    “Good luck,” she said, and went back to her office.
    Lev’s smell was a little bit mothball-y. She liked Daniel’s smell, but it had never felt like home to her. This used to make her sad when they were younger. When she was first becoming troubled by her feelings for Lev, she was relieved to note that he didn’t smell like home to her either.
    When she was done for the day she went back to the kitchen, made herself a cup of coffee, and visited him in his office.
    His office was always in a state of cheerful disorder. Papers piled up in his inbox and next to his inbox; books sitting on top of books—on the filing cabinet, on the desk, on the floor. It was as if they were spawning.
    “How did you get it to work?”
    “As well as being a top-flight psychologist,” Janine said, “she makes a fine cup of coffee.”
    “Right,” he said. “Oh, well. Listen—I read the last draft of your article. You’re doing a marvelous job.”
    They talked about the marvelous job she was doing, and his comments made it clear to her that she had another few drafts to go. His criticisms were extensive and specific, but somehow none of them stung.
    “And what about Pittsburgh?” he said. “Are you going to have time?”
    “I think I am, but I’m still not sure. I might have some things I can’t get out of that weekend.”
    “You’ve been saying that for the last two months, but never mind. Just let me know by Wednesday, okay?”
    The lab was empty except for the two of them.
    The peculiar intimacy of the workplace after everyone else is gone. His office door was open; his wide desk was between them; there was nothing untoward about the situation or the setting; but being here with him at five on a Friday evening was somehow more intimate than it would have been to be with him in the darkest bar.
    “I have half an hour,” she said. “What shall we discuss?”
    “What shall we discuss. Let’s see. Well, you can tell me how you got into this.”
    “Into . . . ?”
    “How did you become a psychologist? We’ve been doing nothing but gabbing for months, but you’ve never really told me how you got started.”
    “How did I get into this. I got into this because I just love listening to people. I love listening to people tell their stories. I mean, I could tell you about my mother this and my father that, and my self-esteem, and my probably culturally conditioned desire to help people, but really that’s pretty much it. I’m never that sure if I
am
helping anybody, though. Sometimes I feel like all I can