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She shrugged. “Almost lunchtime.”

The bank of fluorescent lights above them emitted a high-pitched buzz. Vic’s left big toe throbbed. He wriggled it against the bumpy rubber sole of his sandal. Gigi’s horse Cisco Kid had stepped on it. He’d been holding Cisco while Ava tightened his girth, and the dumb horse moved sideways, planting his hoof on Vic’s sneakered foot. He hoped the nail wouldn’t turn black and fall off.

“How can you stand doing this day after day?” Gigi blurted out.

“I do it with half my brain tied behind me.”

“Is that any way to go through life?”

Why had he asked Gigi to work with him again? She hated work. She didn’t know how to work. She didn’t need to work. Her family had money. “We’re not all independently wealthy,” Vic told her.

Gigi spread her hands to check out her pink fingernails. She had beautiful hands, but they looked pale and cold. Vic could take hold of her hands, warm them for her. “Actually, I’m broke,” she said. “I need this job.”

“Your idea of broke is different from mine,” Vic said.

She shrugged. “I’m going to teach more riding lessons, too. That ought to help.”

She’d insisted he not pay her for Ava’s lesson on Cisco Kid, so he’d offered to take her out to dinner sometime instead. It had been wonderful to watch Ava’s total absorption while she rode and her straight posture as she posted around the ring. And he’d enjoyed seeing another side of Gigi—the competent horsewoman, passing on her knowledge, neither one of them paying the least bit of attention to Vic. Despite the heat, it would have been a perfect afternoon except for three things: 1. Caroline had not wanted Ava to go because she was worried about her having another fall, so Vic and Ava had had to spend way too much time talking Caroline down; 2. During the lesson Travis, Gigi’s son, had plopped down in the lawn chair beside his and had talked unceasingly about horse manure while staring at Ava; and 3. A horse had smashed his toe.

Vic’s next paper was about the philosophy behind The Little Engine That Could and how it had helped the writer achieve her goal to become class president.

“Here’s a perfect three,” Gigi crowed, waving her paper at him. “A narrative that’s all dialogue. It’s a tree talking to a bird.”

“Funny.”

“Want to read it?”

“No.” He wanted to put his head down on the desk and sleep.

Gigi smacked her lips and picked up another essay. “Yeah. Okay. This one’s about 1984. When are they going to put that book to rest? All it is, is an anticommunist manifesto.” She spoke in a Valley girl voice. “Like, it’s so cold war!”

Vic wasn’t looking at her. He was trying to make sense of the lines on the page in front of him. “Dear Sir,” the letter began. “I have some suggestions for alternative power sources that you may be interested in hearing about.” No, actually, I’m not, he silently answered the student, then told Gigi, “Let’s just read the fucking essays or we’ll be here all night.”

There was a few minutes of strained but blessed silence.

Gigi couldn’t keep quiet. “Vic,” she said, and waited until he finally glanced up at her. Her face was framed by the hood of her sweater, tendrils of blond hair wisping around her face. Little Green Riding Hood. “Is your toe bothering you?” She smiled at him, and he felt bad for being so cranky.

His toe, actually, was killing him. “Little Italy for lunch?” he asked her.

“You’re on. I’m gonna take me a bath in a hot bowl of pasta.”

The image of Gigi, naked, in a bowl of pasta, like a kind of old-timey black-and-white photo, filled his head and warmed him right up.

* * *

The following day they began training the newly hired temps who would score the sample portfolios. Gigi trained the Language Arts people, Ed did Science, Carol did Math, Sandra did Social Studies. Vic went from one conference room to the next, observing, answering questions when he needed to, making sure everything went well. The scorers were over-educated and underemployed, some of them mentally unstable (those people usually left after a few days), some of them