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the “autobiographical acts”—whatever those were—of Mary McCarthy, Edward Dahlberg, Lillian Hellman, and the then-obscure Maya Angelou. The day was terribly rainy; the store smelled of wood and damp—the floor, the shelving, the pasteboard. She stood four rungs up on one of those library ladders, reading from some ancient-looking text with an olive-green cover, completely engrossed. I stood right next to her, enthralled. Her presence before me seemed nothing short of miraculous. She was no more than thirty. She wore a trench coat and a Burberry hat. A drop of rain hung at the tip of her tapering nose. I had enjoyed her class, and had met with her in her office a few times, but now I was too frightened to talk to her. I followed her around the store. I stalked her. She addressed a clerk, and smiled a radiant smile; I looked away, grimacing at my own cowardice, and when I turned back she was gone. She had put down her olive-green book, deciding against purchasing it. It was called Getting to Know Your Cocker Spaniel.
    Imagine my thrill of recognition to encounter, years later, in my students’ English 102 text, “Three Girls” by Joyce Carol Oates, in which a pair of young college poseurs stalk an unglamorous peacoat-wearing hair-braided Marilyn Monroe, not daring to talk to her, in the very same Strand in 1956. (In Oates’s story, La Monroe hits the Judaica section, and heads to the checkout counter with Jews of Eastern Europe ; The Chosen People: A Complete History of the Jews ; and Jews of the New World. )
    Some of my college professors dazzled with their erudition. Some I mocked. Some I thought insufferable bores. I thought it criminal that a few of them were allowed to teach. But to all of them I took off my hat. To stand before a class, lecturing for hours at a time, armed with nothing more than the stuff of the mind, able to field any question, no matter how far-flung, seemed impressive.
    To teach college seemed a preposterous endeavor, but what I didn’t realize was how closely I fit the profile of an adjunct instructor. I had spent my college years mocking premeds and soul-dead accounting majors and psychotic computer science types. They all had the last laugh. I was a classic adjunct type with a master’s degree, a failed artistic career, and a need for cash. Men and women of my stripe litter the streets of the metropolis like discarded latte cups, waiting tables or proofreading for law firms or hanging on in their cubicles to the lowest rungs of the publishing industry. But in the exurban heartland where I live, they are in short supply. Where I live there are the country people, who have been here for generations, rather wealthy transplants, and civil servants, none of whom typically will be found adjuncting.

    Dr. Ludlow knew that she had a live one on the hook. She told me that she couldn’t believe how lucky they were to find someone like me. Then she looked away. “There’s only one thing,” she said. Her body language was alarming. She sat hunched forward in her office chair, her legs entwined beneath her, fingers interlaced. God, what was happening? The woman was all knotted up. “The pay. I don’t know what to say. The pay, the salary—it’s an embarrassment. I’m embarrassed to offer it to someone of your skills.”
    â€œWell, how much is it?” I asked.
    She looked to her office door. Her face was in direct profile. Her cowl of hair came to her jawline. High cheekbones, puffy eyes, bit of eyeliner, bit of a beaky nose.
    â€œI can’t make myself say it,” she said.
    â€œPlease don’t let it concern you.”
    She shook her head. “I can’t.”
    We had reached an impasse. I would have to worm it out of her, which was humiliating. I was pretty sure I had the job, so, unafraid of queering the deal, I did what you shouldn’t do at a job interview and made a joke.
    â€œPretty please?” I