Ladies and Gentlemen by Adam Ross

monk.”
    “Oh, please.”
    “I’m serious. Nothing but evenings of deep study, grading, and meditation.”
    “It sounds lonely.”
    “Profoundly.”
    She smiled at him. “Here, hold my beer.”
    Ramelle took the blond ringlets hanging loose around her face, pulled them back, and tied them off, watching him as she moved, and before Thane realized what he was doing, he took a sip from her bottle.
    “Come with me while I smoke,” she said.
    The bouncer at the back door let them out into the parking lot. Thane lit her cigarette, then draped his jacket over her shoulders and put his scarf around her neck. Perhaps it was the comparative silence out there, or the awareness that they were completely alone now, but she abruptly became more formal with him, having lost her confidence, he guessed. She talked about his Gothic Lit seminar so self-consciously that he was enfeebled by regret. He wanted to talk about regular things, to forget he was a professor for a while, to leave this safe middle ground and get to the place where they were headed.
    “Have you ever seen the star?” she asked.
    “What star?”
    “On Mill Mountain. The big star they light up every night.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s only, like,
fifty feet tall.
”
    “Oh,
that
star. I’ve always wondered about that thing.” He was standing closer to her now. “Why’s it up there?”
    “Because
duh
,” she said. “This is the
Star City.
”
    “Right, but did they put the star up there because this is the Star City? Or is it the Star City because of the star?”
    “You know, I have no idea.”
    She laughed at this. He laughed with her, relieved. She steppedcloser. Then she reached a hand out from under his blazer, took hold of his belt buckle, and gently pulled him toward her.
    “So,” she murmured, “how about I go inside and get my coat and things. And in the meantime you wait here like a good little monk, and then the two of us take a drive up there to see it.”
    Thane laughed once, his mouth dry, and leaned back. She pulled him toward her again. “You want to see the star, right?”
    “Yes.” He couldn’t help it, he was whispering.
    “Good. I
want
you to see it.” She took off his blazer and handed it back to him, but left the scarf around her neck. “Don’t go anywhere.”
    She tapped on the door and the bouncer opened it. With the red lights shining off the stage, the noise, and the smoky air wafting out, Thane felt like he was standing before a dragon’s maw. The bouncer nodded at him, then let the metal door slam, muffling the sound coming from inside the club almost completely.
    He stood in the parking lot, blowing smoke rings. A few minutes passed. He imagined the star on the mountain as clearly as if he’d spent many cold evenings bathed in its light. He closed his eyes and imagined himself lowering his mouth onto Ramelle’s. He thought about what that might taste like, and everything that came afterward. Then he stamped out his cigarette and left.
    Elliott Doyle, another professor in the English department, and his wife, Marcie, who taught at a nearby college in Lynchburg, owned the house Thane was living in. They were on sabbatical for the year, in Ireland until spring. Back in August, Doyle had been one of thefew faculty members to make a sustained effort to welcome him on board, he and Marcie taking him out to dinner a few times, showing him around downtown Roanoke. They had him out to the house for brunch one Sunday afternoon—another in a series of magnanimous gestures that in suspicious moments Thane had come to believe were part of a setup. It was a spectacular day, and the drive from campus to Troutville was splendid. It was late August and still hot, but the leaves were just beginning to turn; and as Thane took in the beauty of the rural Virginia farmland, he thought about Ashley. The road leading to this house wound through hundreds of acres of cow pasture bordered on the horizon by mountains. When Thane pulled