from "Some People Must Really Fall in Love"
In the living room, the conversation was about teacher/student romance. Most of the party-goers were clustered in the dining room, standing around the table snacking on brie and carrot sticks, but a small contingent from the English department sat on comfortable chairs, enjoying the elbow room.
"It's funny, though, isn't it?" Karen Bernstein taught a class on Modernism. "It used to be sort of cliché, this idea of the lecherous guy, but now it's all twenty-five-year-old blonde women! They just can't keep their hands off!" She grabbed the air.
"Right, right—like that woman who had babies with an eleven-year-old—what was her name?" Julie Specter taught Victorian lit, big novels with lots of characters. She was terrible with names.
"Mary Lou? Mary Beth? Something like that." Laura Reagan was the youngest professor in the department, and watched the most television. She looked at me, the second youngest, for confirmation.
Excerpted from Other People We Married
by Emma Straub. Copyright © 2011 by Emma Straub.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Fivechapters Books.