Edith was highly susceptible to idol worship; this was something that she had always suspected, but there was now no doubt. One of the reasons she had come to this conference was to prove to herself that she was no longer afraid of anthropologists, but the truth was that she still was. Anthropologists awed and terrified her. There was something about them that allowed them to pierce down into the soul of humanity, to tear out its heart and examine it coldly, before setting it back in place.

Edith realized this fear definitively at a panel discussion on the ethnographic interview when Markus Giswold sat down next to her. His face was fresh and friendly, apparently revitalized after a stroke several years ago. Wise creases ran down from his eyes and pooled into the hinge of his jaw. He smelled only faintly of cologne and the sports jacket that reached snugly over his shoulders gave off the suggestion of stifled energy.

She thought, maybe, that she saw him glance briefly at her badge to read her name and affiliation, though she wasn’t sure if she had imagined it. She felt unnerved at the thought, that he might know her name and speak it to himself.

After he sat down next to her, Edith tried hard to concentrate on what the speaker was saying – something about the trajectory of self, but it all blurred into a stream of anthropological mumbo jumbo as she found herself straining not to notice every time Giswold shifted in his seat or looked over at another panel member to register their reaction to some comment. It was as if she had the sight of him caught in her eye and was unable to dislodge the substance.

She tried to make herself at ease, to physically expand her body by leaning one arm on the back of the elegant chair beside her and crossing her legs wide, man-style. Yet her breathing had become shallow, her mind muddled by peripheral examination of this legend, this second generation of fathers who had established some of the most major recent works in the field. She had read every one of his books and, in fact, had leaned very heavily on his theory of mutability when writing her dissertation.

She had gone on to do something outside of anthropology – not because she hadn’t wanted to be an anthropologist, but because she had panicked and blown her first interview at the University. She lost control of her nervous rambling and, by the time she closed the interview with reflections on the Cartesian duality of her childhood hamster Cuddles, she knew it was over and that her name would probably circulate as an amusing anecdote about blundering, unstable faculty candidates. So, she had done what she had thought would be the next best thing: she became a travel agent.

Of course, it wasn’t the next best thing. It was miserable. She spent eight hours a day booking couples into beachside resorts where the only things that mattered were cheap rates and bellboys who spoke English. She knew her job wasn’t the real thing,. She was just sniffing fumes off the proximity to culture and she was worried that it was slowly killing her, dulling her senses, creeping up like a mindless fog into the panel of her forehead. But, the job had gotten her cheap airfare here, to a place where she didn’t belong, however much she wanted to.

To her left, Giswold chuckled. Edith found herself toying with fantasies of interaction. What if he turned to her and commented on the speaker? Would she be able to summon up anything intelligent? Would he be able to tell that she was so absorbed by his presence that she had no idea what the speaker was saying, though individual words made it through to her? Should she just come clean and confess outright that she was so intimidated by his presence that she couldn’t bear to speak with him directly?

She began inadvertently to wonder what it would be like to kiss him. Not on the cheek, as would befit a girl of her age and a man of his, but to deep French kiss him, to feel his lips pushing against hers at a delicious angle. Edith wondered what else his stroke had done to him, and if he was still interested and capable of sexual performance.

She flushed at the thought and worried that Giswold, an experienced and perceptive anthropologist, might be able to sense the tingling she felt on the side of her body nearest him. She thought she felt him look at her, from the sides of his eyes, and note to himself that she was looking at him through the sides of hers. Now brutally sensitive and now, she felt, how close to him and how unnervingly stripped bare by his presence.

She imagined what it might be like to go out for drinks with him afterwards. What their conversation would be like, if he could put her at ease or if she would be tongue-tied all night. She knew he was married (or at least she thought so) and wondered if that was something he took seriously. She wondered if she could match him – intellectually, that is – or if it mattered, even. Perhaps he was the kind of man who needed the flesh and naïve adoration of a younger woman to renew himself.

James Torril took the podium as the panel’s discussant. Another distinguished father. Still acutely aware of Giswold at her side, Edith was now transfixed by the triangle of vision forged between the three of them, for Torril often glanced at Giswold and addressed him directly as a valued peer. Torril spoke more slowly, more staidly than she had expected from his intricate prose. His hair was white and running longish in back, bald on top.

She wondered that the three of them might take dinner together and that the evening might be spent in suspenseful observation of the deep-rutted philosophical conversation between the two, and that at the end of the evening, she would go with one or the other of them to their hotel room and learn what it was like to make love to a body much older, much wiser, and much more versatile than her own. Would their bodies still be virile and powerful beneath those suits, away from the podium and from their peers? Would their bellies sag or be rippled by cellulite and hernias? Would their backs, when naked, be freckled and frail? Would she like that at the touch, or shudder at it?

 Torril went on at the podium, joking about “the inflammatory essay” that Giswold had been reading earlier that day when the fire alarm had gone off and conference attendees had been evacuated. Giswold laughed, his eyes sharpened and warm. Edith laughed too. It was an inside joke.

 Wouldn’t it be worth it? She thought, Wouldn’t it be worth it to be figuratively seeded by one of them, to have their passions, their sublime sensitivity to their surroundings implanted into her, passed into her bloodstream – not in the form of a child, but in the form of some discursive embryo? To have one or the other or both of them touching the weightiness of her breasts, hesitating on that volcanic moment of human transfer. From her, the desire of a younger woman, the naïve perspective, the innocent blindness and inexperience of her acts. From them, the wisdom, the power, the weighty settling onto and view from the throne.

And yet. And yet. Torril began winding down his speech and Edith was poised in turn at what would come next. His lips closed and she imagined them closing down on her skin. The audience began applauding and she felt the thunderous reverberations smoking up through the chair and pressing against her thighs. Edith swiveled slightly on her seat towards Giswold, who was standing, slinging his red backpack over his shoulder, and walking over to congratulate Torril on his concluding words. They disappeared into conversation together.

Edith didn’t dare interrupt

She didn’t dare move until it was too late and they were gone, save for the sensory image on her optic lens. When Edith finally walked out of the glittering hall, it was with a dazed smile seared onto her face. She was giddy at the intimate moment she felt they had shared.

It would keep her going for a while at least.