Abigail kicked the autumn leaves at her feet like a child. The wind swirled between the tall concrete buildings and rustled the branches of the now skeletal trees in the quad. Abigail drew her heavy woolen jacket around her and turned her back to the wind. She considered sitting on the wooden bench, haphazardly placed and seldom used, but instead continued her anxious perambulation. For the first time in years she wanted a cigarette and the nervous tightness in her stomach reminded her, not unpleasantly, of a past self, a darker, more reckless self. She checked her watch again. She still had time. It would be easy to walk back to the car and drive off. For a moment she imagined herself in the safety and warmth of her old Buick and yet she made no move away from the quad. Abigail's stubbornness surprised her and she wondered at it. Her thoughts next flitted to her husband, James, with a kind of sadness that eventually annoyed her. Then she heard the crunch of leaves approaching from behind. He was here, it had to be him. Now it was too late to leave and to escape the fate she had so stubbornly embraced.
Abigail had been married to James for five years. He adored her and she relished his adoration. They wore their happiness proudly and were envied by more quarrelsome couples. They spent their Saturday mornings at the farmer's market and their Sunday mornings ruffled up in bed with the New York Times sipping the pretentious West Coast coffee James insisted on buying. Abigail had been young when she married. The decision to commit to James was hard and until a few evenings ago it seemed the right choice, a good choice. The events of that evening had been played over and over again in her startled mind. In the end all she could say was that he had made her laugh. That was the only excuse, the only explanation she could give to herself.
The girls had suggested a bar not far from the lab where Abigail worked as graduate student and she met them there, arriving a little late as usual. She didn't like bars much and she wasn't a big drinker. She also didn't like being in a crowd of people. But it was her friend's birthday and so she joined in. They sat in a booth, Abigail, three of her girlfriends, one boyfriend and the new assistant professor who liked to hang out with the graduate students. She wore a purple cardigan around her shoulders covering a dark blue t-shirt under which she wore a black vest. Beneath her jeans skirt she wore black woolen stockings and a pair of brown Doc Martins boots. She listened to the conversation but made no effort to contribute to it. Instead she observed, noticing how the birthday girl was flirting with the assistant professor and registering the tension between the couple. She wanted to be at home with James and her cat. She always regretted attending these events. Her college days of partying and drinking seemed so distant, belonging to life of another person with whom she had fallen out of touch.
The assistant professor whose name she could not then recall had barely looked up when Abigail squeezed past into the booth. She remembered watching him in the lab when he first arrived at the beginning of the semester. He moved like a cat she had decided, swiftly, purposefully but smoothly. She thought that he was probably a good dancer. She had noticed how his hand gripped his coffee cup. These were idle afternoon thoughts but now in the bar she recalled them and reapplied her gaze to his movements, the way he moved his mouth when he spoke and the way his eyes danced when he thought himself clever.
Abigail conducted her observations from behind her whiskey and coke, camouflaged by her silence and her obscurity, tucked up in the dark corner of the booth. She adjusted her glasses and smiled at a neighbor's witticism she hadn't heard, a few ticks behind everyone else. She watched the boyfriend's hand slip beneath the table and rest on the thigh of his girlfriend and felt she could see the tension between them dissipate. She didn't understand the pang of envy that momentarily caught in her throat.
An argument erupted at the jukebox between a couple; a sharp exchange of hissing and angry words. Everyone at the table looked around. When she turned back the nameless assistant professor was looking directly at her. She was shocked at the brutality of his gaze. He turned away when the others shifted around in their seats to resume their chatter, the jukebox quarrel resolved. Abigail felt a drop of hot sweat slide down her spine. The ice in her drink trembled with her hand. He resumed his flirting with the other girls. She noticed his hands playing with a group of spilled peanuts on the polished surface of the wooden table.
His fingers seemed like precision instruments, moving them around as he dazzled the table with his charming words. Then she noticed that he had arranged the peanuts in a circle and that their number matched the number of people at the table. Then he stole a quick glance at her, the glance of a conspirator. Assuming the peanut closest to him represented himself, she named each one, including herself and watched. As he spoke to the birthday girl he rested his finger on the appropriate nut, when he spoke to the boyfriend his finger moved, confirming her hypothesis. He picked up the birthday girl nut and put it to his lips, touched it with the tip of his tongue, offered a small shake of his head and then returned it to the table. She watched his fingers move while everyone else focused on his words in the miasma of barroom noise. When he got to the peanut representing her he lifted it, inspected it quizzically and then suddenly dropped it into his open mouth. Abigail laughed loudly, failing to stop the snort of surprise that preceded the expulsion of air from her lungs. Everyone turned to look at her and she blushed deeply, the red blotches of her embarrassment appearing on her neck. His mouth offered her a smile while his eyes interrogated her, as if from a distance.
That night when she got home Abigail fought with James. He jumped up from his seat as always when she entered the room. However she walked right past him complaining she felt tired and wanted to go straight to bed. She rebuffed his enquiries and climbed the stairs leaving him standing alone and puzzled. As she lay, wide awake in the darkness of the bedroom she heard James carry the washing to the basement. It irritated her that his imagination was so limited that he thought her agitation could be quieted by the completion of a domestic chore.
The next morning there was an email from the assistant professor, blinking with electronic urgency. She sat in her small home office with a beam of autumn sunshine falling across her body. She felt exposed by the email's presence in her house. She felt he could see her gray sweatpants and her braless breasts beneath her cartoon character t-shirt. Abigail heard James approaching and in a quick panic deleted the email. James eased the door open with his shoulder bringing in two cups of coffee. He placed hers on the desk and then slumped down on the large easy chair. He asked how she was feeling which provoked a flash of anger that she couldn't control. She told him that she was tired of doing the majority of the household work and that he wasn't playing his part. She found herself fluently bringing up complaints against her husband. All she wanted was him to leave so she could be alone with the email, the third presence in the room. James didn't understand her anger but conceded his guilt and promised to do better. She could see the pain on his face. Her anger was so rare he didn't know how to either match it or defuse it. Eventually she sat in silence and willed him to leave.
Abigail had met James soon after his divorce. He was a crumpled man then, his sense of self and place in the world annihilated by his wife's sudden announcement that she had been having an affair and that she was leaving the marriage. Abigail herself was on the wrong side of a bad relationship. She had lapsed into round of drinking and risky sex, trying to recapture her college days. They both wanted stability and trust in their lives and they recognized in each other the same need. It took a while to fully gain James's belief that she wouldn't betray him but eventually he succumbed to her love and allowed his heart to venture out again. Five years on and the urgency of those early days, the precariousness of James's trust and her need to exit the chaos of drink and nameless men, had past. They shifted into their new lives and barely felt the easy comfort they'd so carefully built.
None of this passed Abigail's mind as she listened impatiently to James's footsteps trudging down the stairs. She clicked on trash and restored the assistant professor's email to her in box. His message was brief. 'I know somewhere we can go. Wednesday at 4 in the quad'. She deleted the message immediately after her reply which was a simple 'yes'.
