Jenny had been my college roommate for four years, when we had challenged our intellects and our social lives on the Lake Shore campus of Loyola University. I majored in English but decided, in the end, that I didn’t want to teach, and that was how I ended up doing secret catering and working at a real estate office, occasionally tutoring young people who didn’t get The Scarlet Letter or Moby-Dick. Jenny had majored in elementary education, and she was now a respectable third-grade teacher. She had a cute two-bedroom apartment in a twelve-story building in the center of town, and while I liked my space better, I did admire Jenny’s sense of style. She had inherited some rustic-looking furniture, which she highlighted with little country accents like a whimsical goose wearing an apron and a wooden magazine rack with a dotted-swiss skirt. When I walked in, I waved to Jenny, who was tying her sandy red hair into a ponytail in front of her hall mirror; we were distracted from our meeting by a dark-haired child, who launched himself at me and began patting my pockets.
