Someone 

Robin Reif 

Midway through my precarious twenties, I met a man I’ll call Hugh. Decades older, an accomplished academic and critic, he was a minor though respected figure in New York literary circles.  

I first saw him standing at the window in an empty classroom, lit by a colorless sun, looking out on soot-stained dorms huddled in the winter haze. He was tall and portly; his jacket and tie did only a so-so job of elongating his thick middle. Though he was Sunday-school scrubbed—fresh shave, neat, sandy hair—I guessed his age as midfifties. “The Man,” I thought in the slang of the day, as a spasm of contempt ran through me. He stood in shiny wingtips, a lit cigarette dangling between his freckled fingers. I was sure that Hugh, an obvious WASP, gave off the superiority of class. Despite the faint tremor in his hand, I could not then see that he was a desperate smoker, nor could I read his fastidious hygiene as evidence of anxiety.