Entering Normal by Anne Leclaire

entire amount,” he says. He wants to be quite clear about that.
    While she punches the data into her computer, he stares at her shorn scalp. He shakes his head and thinks of Tyrone. The mechanic wears his hair in a ponytail, has a pierced ear. Somewhere along the line kids today have gotten confused, gotten the roles blurred.
    The girl looks up from her screen. “That class is still on the schedule.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œIt’s still on the schedule. It hasn’t been canceled.”
    â€œIt sure has,” he informs her, thinking, God, these people don’t know what’s going on around here. How do they expect to teach anyone anything? With more patience than he feels, he repeats what Rose has told him. “My wife should know. She was taking the class.” He stresses “wife” to show this girl that she’s dealing with adults here.
    The girl frowns and taps more keys. The long yellow nails make a clicking sound. “No,” she says. “Professor Jeffrey is still teaching that course. In fact, it’s in session right now. In room 306 Dalton. Dalton Hall. The humanities building. If you parked in Lot A, you walked right by it.”
    Ned stands his ground. There is a mistake, a mix-up. Maybe this girl doesn’t know how to use a computer. Fingernails like that, she’s probably struck the wrong keys. He’ll have to ask for the person in charge.
    â€œWhat’s your wife’s name?” she asks before he can act.
    â€œRose Nelson.
Mrs.
Rose Nelson.”
    She taps more keys on the board; they both wait while new information pops up. “Ah, here it is,” she says in her flat voice. “Rose Nelson.” She stops reading and casts a funny glance at him.
    â€œWe have Rose Nelson entered as a voluntary withdrawal. Of course, there’s no refund after the first month of classes. If she’d withdrawn a week earlier, you’d be entitled to a partial refund. Sorry.” She returns to her work, dismissing him.
    He is pretty sure, would have bet the shop on it, that Rose has never in her life lied to him. Why would she tell him the professor had an emergency, had to leave town? If she doesn’t want to take the damn writing class, she could have told him she quit. At that moment he could kill Rose. Not about the money, the hell with the money, but for embarrassing him in front of this ridiculous creature.
    ON HIS WAY TO THE PARKING LOT, HE PASSES DALTON HALL, and it comes to him that something isn’t right about this. He can just feel it. He looks about and, seeing no one in sight, crosses the walk. He pauses a moment, inhales a time or two, gets his bearings. He still wears his work clothes: green pants stained with oil, grease, and engine fluids that mark him as a trespasser. He doesn’t have one clue what he’ll say if anyone challenges him, asks him what he’s doing here.
    Room 306 is on the third floor. Out of breath by the time he’s climbed three flights of stairs, he’s glad to find the corridor empty. He passes by closed doors, checking numbers, peering into oblong windows of near-useless glass the size of a carton of milk. The room is midway down the hall.
    All it takes is one quick look. The guy standing in front of the class is younger than he expects, and wears a shirt, no tie. And jeans, for Christ’s sake. Ned has his number immediately. A know-it-all kind of guy, the kind that talks about movies you’ve never seen, makes a pain in the ass of himself at town meetings. He’d bet a week’s profits the guy drives something foreign. Probably a Volvo.
    Immediately, looking at this guy, Ned knows what happened to Rose, realizes how she’d written something in his class and this son of a bitch had ripped it to shreds. Naturally Rose is too embarrassed to return. A spasm of fury takes Ned for what this bastard has done to his Rose, but it passes quickly. His stomach for