Barefoot: A Novel

“John Walsh,” he said.

John Walsh. This was John Walsh. Brenda felt her good sense unraveling in her brain like a bal of yarn. She had not prepared herself for this—a man in her class, not a boy. He was beautiful, more beautiful than the girl-women who came streaming into the Barrington Room after him like rats fol owing the Pied Piper.

Brenda wiggled her feet in her Prada loafers and stared down at her scrumptious syl abus. Day one, minute one: She was attracted to her sole male student.

Once everyone was settled, she cleared her throat and checked for cups and cans, bottles of water. Nothing. Mrs. Pencaldron must have screened everyone at the door. “I’m Dr. Brenda Lyndon,” she said. “Please cal me whatever makes you most comfortable, Dr. Lyndon or Brenda.

We are here to study Fleming Trainor’s novel, The Innocent Impostor, and to compare and contrast Trainor’s concept of identity with those of contemporary authors. Was everyone able to get the books?”

Nods.

“Good,” Brenda said. She stared at her hands: They were scaly with dry skin, and trembling. She needed a spa treatment. She made a mental note to cal Vicki as soon as she got home. “Your assignment for Thursday is the first ten chapters of the book, and I’d like you to have the second half done by next Tuesday.” She waited for the inevitable protests, but she only met with more nods. There was a woman in a wheelchair, a black woman with a short Afro, an Indian woman with fingernails the color of red currants. The other girl-women were varying shades of winter pale with light hair, dark hair, purple hair. And then there was John Walsh, whom Brenda did not look at. “Here is your syl abus.” She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the whisper of the papers being passed around. “You’l be graded on two papers, one at midterm and one at the end of the semester. You’l also be graded on your contributions to the discussion, so please notify me if you’re going to miss class. My office hours wil be Thursday from nine to eleven.”

Brenda gave the class her cel phone number. She glanced at John Walsh and was both elated and mortified to find he was programming her number right into his phone.

She asked the students to go around the room and say their names, where they were from, and one thing about themselves. She started at the opposite side of the room from John Walsh on purpose—she started with the girl named Amrita from Bangalore, India, who told everyone she took the class because she’d seen that Dr. Lyndon had been given the top teaching marks last semester in the Pen & Feather.

“I’ve been here three years,” Amrita said. “I’ve encountered many bril iant minds, but I’ve yet to find one decent teacher.”

Amrita was blatantly brownnosing, but Brenda was too preoccupied by John Walsh’s unsettling presence to take the bait.

“Thank you,” Brenda said. “Next?”

The girls continued, and Brenda, half listening, made notes by each name. Jeannie in the wheelchair was a Democrat from Arkansas; Mal ory and Kel y were fraternal twins: Mal ory wore cat’s-eye glasses, and Kel y, with the purple hair, played a minor role on the soap opera Love Another Day. There were three girls named Rebecca; a girl from Guadeloupe named Sandrine, who played guitar in a band cal ed French Toast; the black woman, Michele Nathans, had just returned from a semester in Marrakech; short, squat Amy Feldman was a Japanese major and a sushi aficionado who also admitted, after prompting from one of the Rebeccas, that her father was the president of Marquee Films; and the last girl, named Ivy, announced that she was from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and a lesbian.

Was everyone extra quiet after this announcement, or was it just Brenda’s imagination? Maybe they were, like Brenda, waiting to hear what John Walsh would say.

Slowly, Brenda turned to look at John Walsh, praying she would keep her composure. At the top of her class list, she wrote: Call Vicki!

John Walsh had removed the pencil from behind his ear, and was turning it slowly in his hands. He raised his eyes to the girl-women and Brenda.

“I’m John Walsh,” he said. “Most people just cal me Walsh. I’m from Western Australia, a town cal ed Fremantle.” He tapped his desk with his pencil. “So . . . you probably notice I’m a bit older than your average col ege sophomore.”

“Yes!” In alarm, Brenda looked at the Jackson Pol ock painting, as though it were the painting that had spoken and not her. She waited for the girl-women to giggle, or whisper, but there was silence. Maybe they could teach her how to keep her act together.

“I did my freshman year at the University of W.A.”—this he pronounced dubya- aye—“and then I got caught up with a bit of the wanderlust. I dropped out of school. I traveled around the world.”

Brenda knew she should keep her mouth shut, but that was proving impossible. “Around the world?” she said.

“To Thailand and Nepal and India, up through Afghanistan and China into Russia. I’ve been to the Middle East, Jordan, Dubai, Lebanon. And then there was one year in Britain, where I worked at a pub. I spent some time on the continent in Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, Malta, the Canary Islands, Iceland . . . until I got to New York, when I ran out of money.” He stopped. “I’m talking too much, right?”

Right, thought Brenda. Al of the incendiary feminist texts she had ever read would say: Just because you’re the only man in the room does not mean that your life has been more interesting, more authentic, or more worthy than the rest of our (female) lives. But Brenda didn’t want him to stop.

For starters, she loved the sound of his voice. It was so . . . masculine. Part Crocodile Dundee, part Crocodile Hunter. Did the other women want him to stop? Brenda quickly surveyed the room. The women had the same expression of placid interest they’d had since they arrived. Wel , except for Amrita, the brownnoser. She was agog over Walsh, leaning toward him, nodding. Brenda took this as a sign.

“Go on,” Brenda said.

“From there it gets complicated. I needed a job; I met a bloke at Eddie’s down in the Vil age whose uncle had a construction company and I started working for him, but that got old right on so I thought, the only way I’m going to get anywhere is to go back to school. So here I am, a thirty-one-year-old sophomore.”