Josie

Even though Josie Nixon had graduated from college and gotten married and knew how to hang curtains and had opened a retirement account, going to this conference still felt like the most grown-up thing she had ever done. Something about being sent somewhere for your work, about being paid to travel, about attending a professional event that had an acronym, just seemed so fucking adult.

After checking in at the long table in the student union building of Shepaug University, accidentally standing in the A–M line instead of the N–Z, Josie was given a cool tote bag with the AEC logo on it. It was white canvas, designed to look as though it were paint-splattered. She took the bag with her to one of the vinyl couches along the side wall and sat down. Inside the bag was her name badge, plus a lanyard to hang it on, and the program for the three-day-event. There was also a bottle of water, a bag of locally made potato chips, and a chocolate bar, also from a local company. She loved free stuff, and all her loot made her inexplicably happy. After snapping a picture on her phone of the other teachers checking in, she sent a text to Travis, even though he'd already told her that he didn't need a play-by-play of her weekend. He wanted her to feel independent, do whatever she wanted, but she did want him to know she'd arrived safe. She'd have felt that way if the roles were reversed. He texted her back right away, one red heart and one black.

She studied the program even though she'd already read it online, pre-picking the workshops and panels she hoped to attend. What was cool about the Art Educator Conference was that even though it had a pedagogical bent, many of the workshops were simply art instruction. She was most excited for collage, and for the puppet-making workshop. Two teachers wandered over and asked if they could share the couch. She slid along and they plopped down next to her, a man and woman, the man with a gray ponytail and the woman tall and fairly ravishing. Together they looked at the program. They were clearly colleagues, they'd been to this conference before, and they were making lots of jokes about the content. When the man read the name of the puppet workshop out loud, the woman said, "Hard pass."

When Brian, her supervisor, had told her that she'd been approved to attend this conference, she'd let him know it was going to be her first work trip. "Be prepared," he'd said, "teachers are the worst at conferences, like poorly behaved children. They do things they'd never let their own students do."

Suddenly feeling awkward, Josie stood up from the couch and wandered through the student union. It seemed like the vast majority of attendees had come in pairs or small groups. And they were more conservatively dressed than she thought they'd be, for art teachers. Lots of tucked-in shirts on the men and denim skirts on the women. She was wearing her oldest jean jacket over a lace-up burgundy dress. She had on her oxblood lipstick and her black pendant necklace, and she suddenly felt a little bit out of place, like the new kid in school who wore the worst possible outfit on day one. Telling herself it didn't matter, she made her way across the campus, its lawns yellow from the dry summer, to the dormitory where all the attendees were going to be staying. It was an ugly concrete building that looked more like a chain hotel next to an Outback restaurant than a dormitory at a New England college. In the downstairs lobby there was another check-in desk. She gave her name and they handed her a piece of paper that listed her room number and the combination that would open the door. Her room was on the sixth floor. She took the elevator, crushed in by another group of teachers, who were talking about a restaurant in town that was supposed to be great, then found her room. It was about what she'd expected: a single bed; concrete walls that had been painted white; bathroom down the hall. What she hadn't expected was the sliding glass doors that led to a shallow balcony. She hated heights—just the existence of an open balcony made her head feel dizzy and her heart thud. At least the room seemed to have air-conditioning, a noisy vent pushing in stale cool air. She told herself it was going to be an amazing weekend, even if she didn't make friends, then unpacked her rolling suitcase, laying out possible outfits for the next three days.

The following day she reminded herself that things were still great, even though she continued to feel alienated from her fellow teachers. Not surprisingly, the puppet workshop was absolutely amazing. She'd created a witchy-looking puppet in about fifteen minutes, using swatches of fleece fabric and string, and she couldn't wait to try it out with her middle schoolers during the next year. She hadn't been a huge fan of the teaching-methods panel but loved the found-object printmaking class, where they'd all been ushered outside to look for things to make prints with. She'd found an old plastic spork, plus some gingko leaves, and made a print that was now pinned to her dormitory-room wall.

On the Saturday night of the conference Josie drank way too much wine at the cocktail hour and found herself explaining polyamory to a group of art teachers from Sudbury in Massachusetts.

"So, are there rules, or simply no rules at all?" one of the female teachers, a young woman in paint-splattered jeans and an oxford shirt, asked Josie.

"There might be with real-deal polyamories, like the ones who get together for meetings and stuff. For Travis and me it's more like, we know that we're in love and that we're going to be together forever, so why not have the occasional hookup? Why lose that exciting part of life, you know?"

"And you tell one another?"

"Yes," Josie said. "That actually is a rule. No hidden flings. It has to be all out in the open."

"And what would happen in one of you fell in love with someone else?" This was an older man with a white goatee who leaned in very close when he spoke to someone.

"But isn't falling in love with someone else a risk for everyone in a marriage?"

"Sure. But I'd say that you're increasing the risk by taking your clothes off with other people."

Josie took a sip of her wine, spilling some down her front because her glass was fuller than she had remembered. Had someone just bought her a new drink? "Sure, absolutely," she said. "It's a risk, but the way I see it is that I'm so in love with my husband that I'm just not worried about it. And if it did become an issue, then I guess we would deal with it. Together."

"How often do you guys have flings?" This was from the woman in the oxford, and now she was leaning forward as well.

"So that's the thing. This is all more of a theory right now than an actuality. We live in upstate New York—not exactly swinger central."

"I thought you lived in Woodstock."

"We do. It's more Birkenstocks and crystal deodorants than young polys."

"So you're only interested in other young people, which means I'm out of the running," the older guy said, then laughed like he'd made an outrageous joke.

"I don't know who I might be interested in. I guess I'll know it when I meet them."

"So, is this trip...?"

"Travis gave me the go-ahead, and I'd be up for it, but like I said, it's not just with anyone. I mean, I want to be into it."

Afterward, when Josie was alone again, sitting on another stiff vinyl couch, looking at the program for the hundredth time, she went over the conversation with the three Massachusetts teachers and felt a weird sense of shame. It had been okay at the time, but now she felt dirty, remembering the way they looked at her, and imagining that they would trot out the conversation as a funny story from the convention. That weird-looking girl who was trying to fuck someone. She stared at the program without seeing the words and told herself that it didn't matter. It had been her truth and they could make fun of it if they wanted. And she was having a good time at this convention, even though it was now clear that she wasn't going to find someone to play with in quite the way she hoped. And now it was early in the evening and she was only thinking about the print she'd made that day and how excited she was about getting back to her dorm room and looking at it again. She hadn't felt that way about a piece of her own art for a long time.

"Do you mind if I sit next to you?" It was an older man, slender and tall, holding a bottle of beer.

"Oh sure," Josie said. "Sit down."

He sighed as he sat, as though his body hurt. Or maybe he was just happy to be away from the throng, like Josie was. For a moment she didn't think he was going to speak to her, but he turned and said, "Sorry if this sounds creepy, but I was happy to see you sitting alone. I spotted you yesterday and was hoping we'd meet."

"Just a little creepy," Josie said, but then she smiled to let him know she was only kidding.

Later, when they were naked in her dorm room, awkwardly entwined in the single bed, she had what felt like an out-of-body experience, the room shimmering with dark energy, her soul, or something that felt like her soul, floating a little above her body. The encounter with the man had started off kind of hot, him throwing her down on the bed, almost panting with sexual excitement. But then something had gone wrong. She'd climbed on top of him and felt him go instantly soft. Things had worked out in the end, her on her side, him behind her using his hands to make her come. Still floating a little above herself, she imagined her conversation with Travis, her telling him all about the encounter, about how she'd enjoyed herself, but maybe not quite as much as she'd been enjoying using the waffle maker at the breakfast buffet.

"Which was better?" he asked her in her mind.

"Waffle maker."

She laughed in her thoughts and she must have laughed out loud as well, because the man said, "What's funny?" and then she was back down inside her body.

"Nothing," she said.

"Sorry if I was..."

"No, it was great."

And then they were talking, and that part was actually interesting. She told him she thought he was afraid of sexually free women, and he laughed and said he probably was. And then he'd asked her what she was afraid of, and she told him how scared she was of heights.

"These rooms have balconies, you know," he said.

"Like that wasn't the absolutely first thing I fucking noticed when I walked in here."

She was still drunk, plus she'd eaten an edible an hour earlier, and somehow he talked her into stepping outside on the balcony in order to face her fears. They were both naked out there, the sky swarming with stars, their bodies drying in the cool night air. It was actually good—exciting, really—maybe only because it was dark and she couldn't actually see how high up they were, or maybe it was because she was now having the kind of experience that she thought she might have on this trip. Something new, and a little dangerous. She felt alive, but she also felt excited that the next day she would be returning home. It was time. And now she had new ideas for her classroom, plus she couldn't wait to see Travis, tell him all about her weekend. They hadn't spoken that day at all. Suddenly she realized just how much she missed him.

And that was when she was thrown off the balcony.