Shakespeare. Chekhov. Love.

The two of them sat in the beige cafeteria as lightning loosened the sky. All afternoon the wind had been shaking the leaves. She made a zigzag with water drops on the Formica top as if to pattern rain on the table. “And then Professor Howard patted his bald head and announced in our Shakespeare seminar that he was losing his memory. He couldn’t remember the word ‘prevaricate’ the other day. Or ‘somnolence.’”

Danny’s eyes followed Louise’s beautiful fingers. “I don’t even know that word.”

“It means ‘sleep.’”

Danny offered a lopsided smile, idle and winsome he hoped, and sat forward. “I thought I knew all the words for sex.”

“Sleep, as in ‘take a nap.’”

He put his hand on hers. He would gladly spend eternity with her, waltz and twirl through the cosmos until doomsday. “I was kidding. I know that word.”

“I don’t always get your jokes.” Louise withdrew her hand and picked up her teacup. Outside, the afternoon was darkening, storm clouds blowing in.

Her nose—she had a lovely nose, though she was sniffling now, sneezing. The nose had a bump at the top, which some might think made it imperfect, but he thought it drew attention to her other perfections.

He was wearing khaki shorts in late September. Optimistic, he supposed. Louise wore his favorite, a green plaid dress; he admired the repeating geometry of squares flowing around a curving body. At the table behind Louise sat a middle-aged couple. The woman wore a rigid dark blue suit; the man had carefully cut gray hair. Danny’s own hair was a bit shaggy. The woman was making tight faces. Danny was glad not to be on the receiving end.

He sipped from his coffee mug. “I’ll try hard to be clearer.” Some sort of Muzak settled on them, a love song fuzzy as white noise. Louise was not wearing perfume today. He remembered the fragrance of her freshly shampooed hair from the night before.

Louise massaged her forehead. “Then Professor Howard said he understood about Lear’s losing his mind.”

“I’ve never read the play.”

“It’s difficult. I wouldn’t recommend it as a first read. A Midsummer Night’s Dream works better with my freshmen.”

He rubbed a smudge off his knee. “I almost think you’re calling me dumb.”

“Came out wrong. Sorry.” She picked up her teacup, put it down. “Anyway, Professor Howard said there was something in forgetting. He lost everything in an apartment fire forty years earlier, when he was a young man and he felt freed. He lost books and clothes. Strange. It’s not forgetting, but he felt freed. Like he could forget his entire past and begin again.”

Danny had burned his hand this morning when he made huevos rancheros. Now he smoothed the Band-Aid. “Are you trying to forget something?”

“I’m wondering if he’s unhappy in his marriage.”

“Isn’t he too old?”

“Are you joking again? You have a Band-Aid on your knuckles. What happened?”

“It’s nothing. Come to my house. I’ll fix you an omelette with Gorgonzola.”

Louise played with the water drops on the table, made them squares. “Never too old for unhappiness.” She let out a long breath. Her eyes were wet. “I want to know things,” she said. “I don’t want to forget. Look at my parents. Look at your family. I want to remember everything. Shakespeare, divorce, Chekhov.”

“Remember love, too,” he said. “And good food. I’m a good cook.”

She blotted the water carefully with a napkin, seemed about to cry, put the napkin to the side. “I don’t know about us.”

Behind Louise, the woman in the suit gestured to the man as if she were giving driving directions and his shoulders fell. At the next table sat a couple of freshmen, staring at their iPhones. The music trailed into static and stopped.

Danny didn’t want her to hurt. “I’ve forgiven my parents,” he said. He wondered if he was telling the truth.

“My parents finalized the divorce. I think it’s in our DNA.” She blew air out from between her lips. “I’m doomed.” She glanced at the windows, as if for escape, and up at the ceiling.

He wanted to save her. “It’s more like a . . . legacy. You can refuse it.” He groped for a joke. “When they met, they were young and . . . erroneous.”

She sat back, straight and severe, as if to judge better. “And us?”

He saw she was taking him too seriously. “We’re perfect.” He gave a crooked smile. “We’ll never make a mistake.”

She didn’t laugh. She tapped her fingers on the table as if considering a travel route. She sneezed. “My allergies.” She wrinkled her nose. “This tea is weak.”

“Come to my house. I bought some organic matcha with ginger.”

“I have a test to study for. Renaissance love poetry.” She shook her head. “Those writers—as if they understood. But maybe they did. How fleeting it is. Over and over, they talk about love like roses that bloom and lose their petals. Mutability.”

He would go to the edge of the world for her. He didn’t know what to say. “The test—you’ll ace it. I can make you a soufflé.”

“When I look at the kind of students I get in my Intro to Lit class, I’m not sure I want to finish my Ph.D. Do I want to spend my life teaching them to put quotation marks around quotations?” Embarrassed, she waved away her own questions. She blew into a tissue. Now her nose was red. “Trivial complaints, I know.”

“You’re carrying on the culture, for sure.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not prevaricating, are you?”

He smiled at her joke. Behind Louise, the lady in the suit dropped her spoon. The man picked it up and offered it to her, a gift retrieved from a dragon’s lair.

Louise tilted her head, as if in judgment. “An omelette is easier than a soufflé.”

“You’re worth the effort.” He watched her face. She could’ve been a statue, beautiful, immovable as a promontory. “Soufflé was my dad’s second favorite. His favorite was a toasted cheese sandwich–white bread with Gorgonzola and Muenster. He wanted me to be a doctor, architect, professor, not a chef. ‘Don’t make bad choices,’ he said.” Danny pointed with his forefinger in imitation.

She reached for his hand and patted it. “I’m sure your father loved you.”

“He’s gone. I forgave him when he died. I didn’t want to carry him forever. Couldn’t.” His dad, lying in bed, had softened at the end and said he loved him. “Dad told his judge joke again. The judge said to his dentist: ‘Pull my tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth.’ That was three years ago.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“I like to remember my dad’s love at the end.”

She brushed at her eyes. “Yes.”

“His cat slept on his ankles. Now on mine. His paws twitch in his sleep. What does he dream?”

“Loki’s a good guy. Such a purr.”

At a far table a group of giggling girls set down their Cokes. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Behind Louise the middle-aged couple stood up and walked away. Their shoulders sagged. The dishes were left on the table. Danny’s coffee smelled acidic.

She played with the water drops on the tabletop. “I was reading Chekhov’s ‘Lady with a Dog,’ My freshmen don’t like it. Too unhappy.” She wiped the water away. “The characters don’t find happiness.”

“But they do in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Her head snapped up. “I didn’t know you knew that.”

“I saw it once. With my dad. He took me to the Guthrie. It was summer. It was perfect. He wanted to improve me, I think.” The Band-Aid on his knuckle was curling up. He pressed it but the adhesive had worn away.

“Here, I’ve got one in my purse,” she said. She pulled it out and carefully peeled back the wrapper, extended it to him. He stretched his arm toward her, but kept his hand closed, so she put it on the red knuckle gently. Outside, on the quad the orange and brown leaves were tossed into fierce circles by the wind. “It’s not summer now,” she said. She straightened her skirt. “You must be cold in those shorts.”

“I have your love to keep me warm,” he said. “That’s from Hamlet, isn’t it?”

“You make me laugh.” She held her head in both hands, as if trying to press something in. “And now I’ve forgotten all about Professor Howard, my unhappy parents, your unhappy family, my unhappy students.”

He entered into her irony. “Let joy be unconfined. Mark Twain said that.”

“No. Lord Byron.”

“Both of them. All of us.” A clap of thunder shook the sky, and the lights flickered and dimmed but came back on. He raised his arm theatrically, as if he were conducting an orchestra. People at the other tables stood; their voices shrieked and laughed, lifted and blended. This was magic, he thought. “I made some crème fraîche. I’ve got sweet damson plums at my place.”

She gazed at him across the table, her eyes shining soft and queenly.

In the distance, thunder rumbled. “It’s the gods moving the furniture,” he said.

“And turning on the lights,” she answered playfully. Lightning crossed the sky.

The girls by the door laughed, picked up their Cokes, and left. The guys at the next table stood. Rain fell in streaks and streams on the windows.

“I have an umbrella.” From his backpack, he pulled out a folding umbrella. “It’s small. We’ll have to lean on each other.”

She raised her face toward the windows. “We’ll get a little wet,” she said. “I love the smell of rain.”