It is cold. It is wet. It is almost November. So what is my place of employment doing? Why, they�re planning a huge outdoor celebration, naturally. White tents have sprouted across campus like a transient mountain range. The party begins tomorrow. I won�t be there. I will be home wearing wool socks, my hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.

The students are evaporating from the classroom. They�ll be back next week when midterms are over. This week there�s only time for the essentials. I understand, really, I do. I might have done the same. But when you sleep through the midterm and beg for a makeup, it is advisable to show up for the next class, not to mention the appointment you made with the professor. Another student missing in action. This is why I always make makeup assignments contingent on an office appointment. You have to make some effort. I hope she�s smart enough to remember she needs to pass my class to graduate. It�s too bad. I had the perfect assignment picked out for her too.

Other students are taking more initiative. They�re coming to my office hours, they�re asking questions. The two worst grades on the quiz were from two of my most diligent students. Both are very visual learners and are struggling with the fact that you can�t freeze music in time to examine it. I�m still trying to figure out how to help them. I can drill them, and that definitely helps. But I need to figure out a way to make them see what they hear. I�ve started by asking them to write out their trains of thought as they listen. And I�ve given them a checklist, sort of a flow chart for determining what they�re hearing. Is it monophony? If yes, then it�s probably Medieval. If no, then proceed to the next question. That kind of thing.

I�ve tried to reassure them by telling them I have the opposite problem. I need to hear things before I know if they�re right, before I remember them. Studying for my comprehensives, I could read and outline for days, but it only solidified when I talked about it with my study group. �Maybe we can help each other.� I feel like I�m translating at the same time I�m learning the language. A puzzle.

After the last student left, I packed up my things and went upstairs to hear the beginning of a recital given by my former boss and his wife. They greeted me like a long lost and much beloved relative. I felt bad that I had to skip out early, but I was glad I had the opportunity to explain first that I needed to get home to pick up AJ. After Mozart and Bach, I trudging through the rainy quadrangle, avoiding the one flagstone that is suspended on mud and has a tendency to spurt geysers of brackish water at your ankles when you trod on it. My jacket, which had felt too warm this morning suddenly felt not warm enough. I hunched my shoulders for the first mile walk and stuck the umbrella-free hand in my pocket. If there was only a cab, I thought, I would take it. But there are never any cabs here. They scurry away from the university like roaches surprised by light. Light. I was struck by a beam of light. It wasn�t coming from the heavens, but it was still an act of God: A cab had stopped directly in front of me. A suited and cashmere-coated occupant peeled off bills and disappeared into the business school, a corner of campus with deeper pockets than the neighborhood in which I dwell. He exited stage left as I slipped in from the right. It was an unearned extravagance, but as I easily stepped onto the train in time to pick up AJ from school, most of the residual guilt slipped away. Parental guilt trumps financial guilt every time.

* * * * *

Perhaps it was no act of God but instead a temptation in the road. I have clearly failed the test. The extravagance is wasted, I will still miss picking up AJ and I have been cast into the fifth circle of hell. There is a freight train blocking our path and no one seems to know how to remove it. Meanwhile, my headphones cannot block out �The doors are about to close,� on auto repeat. I am wondering if I could slip out the door (which is, no doubt, about to close) without being stopped, could I heave myself and my computer over the fence alongside the track? Probably not. Time to turn up the volume.

* * * * *

I call my husband to tell him I�ll be late. We have been sitting there for nearly half an hour and they still don�t know when we�ll be moving. He tells me of an accident in a town near ours on the anniversary, 11th I think, of the big bus accident, the one that made papers across the country. A high school boy road his bike across the track. He didn�t make it to the other side.

I hung up saddened, but let the feeling slip away. I slipped the DVD of Don Giovanni into my computer and lost myself in the overture and Riccardo Muti�s scowling face.

* * * * *

Finally, the train begins to move. Leporello is trying to impress Donna Elvira with Don Giovanni�s list of conquests. She appears in a trance. The train speeds down the tracks, stopping every now and then. I skip to the Act II finale. The statue is coming to dinner. The dead are walking. Outside the window, I notice the flashing lights of a police car. A bicycle is lying in the grass next to the tracks. It is covered in flowers. A crowd of teenagers stands around it, crying in the rain. I look away. The train moves on. I notice that the river is already turning to ice.

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