I don’t get the job. I don’t get any jobs till I show up in a Rugby shirt and beg myself into a single Basic Composition course, $1500 a semester at Walt Whitman Community College, and hang out in the bar with the dean and drink myself into another class, and beg myself into another school and a couple more classes. I’m making six thousand a semester, twelve thousand a year, eighteen when I luck out with summer session. And my daughter gets bigger and bills get bigger and Eliza’s pay gets bigger, and I feel like a jogger halfway through the jog. That’s fine she says, we can do this for a while. But it isn’t a while. Tenure jobs haven’t vanished, but a PhD won’t get you one. My last hiring committee said three published articles in scholarly journals would have put me in consideration. “But really,” the one with the most mascara shakes her head, helplessly sympathetic, bangles slide down her arm with a sound like Slinkies slithering, “You need at least a signed contract for a first book.”

              “Or second,” says the wide-bodied guy with the bald-on-top pony-tail next to her.

              “I Googled this faculty,” I tell Eliza. “Average age, fifty-seven. Average years employed in school, twenty-nine. One in five never got further than MA. Nobody’s published more than one article in their entire academic life. All have had tenure for fifteen years at least. They’re in, I’m out. It’s funny.” No laugh from Eliza.

              “You need to write a book,” she says. She bites her lip, drums fingers on the table, we’re at our once-every-other-week Tuesday Treat Budget Restaurant Dinner without Baby, “I know you need more time with all those ignorant papers to mark. I can’t take off from work, Ron’s never there, he’s thinking of running for city prosecutor and loading more and more submissions and processing on me. He pays well, but wants what he pays for. I’ll,” she thinks, “get us up an hour earlier, you won’t have to drop Re-Re off at daycare, that’ll give you two hours to mark papers, we’ll keep her there the whole day not half, it’ll be more money, but I’ll work out the budget, I’ll pick her up nights, giving you three hours for research. I’ll take over dishwashing and bath and putting to bed, two more hours for typing notes. Plus Saturday and Sunday, all day, every week. How’s that?”

              “What about sex?”

              “What kind of child-ish self-ish mor-on-ic priorities do you have?” she whispers fiercely, looks around to make sure nobody’s listening, takes a sip of her drinkable house wine. “Besides. This last six months it seemed to me sex was not at the top of your list or even high up.” She grabs at my hand, I move it away, she gets it anyway, won’t let go. “It was stupid to say that, I’m not complaining, I know it’s been difficult. I’ll get us up two hours early two days a week.” she bites her lip. “Three days a week. You can do this, I’ll help you. It’s what the wife does.”

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