About the Author Elaine Hatfield is a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii. Her first novel, Rosie was published in June 2000 by Sterling Press. She has published more than thirty short stories in American, Canadian, Australian, and Indian literary magazines such as Aim, Aura Literary/Arts Review, fourW, Green's, Nite-Writer Äôs Literary Arts Journal, Manushi, Phoebe, Pleiades, Studio, and Tucumcari Literary Review. Two of her books have won the American Psychological Foundation's National Media Award. In recent years she has received Distinguished Scientist Awards (for a lifetime of scientific achievement) from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, and the University of Hawaii. A Perfect Circle is her second story in Nuvein.

Kristin Andersen scrunched in her chair, her legs coiled awkwardly around one another. At 15, she was the youngest student in Dr. Blunt's creative writing class. Technically, she was only a sophomore at Eaton Academy, but since Eaton didn’t offer a creative writing class, they’d allowed her to sign up for one at the University of British Columbia (a few miles away.) So sometimes Kristin passed herself off as a college student.

Kristin was definitely going to be a stunner once she grew into herself. She had Icelandic blue eyes, long flaxen hair parted straight down the center, and a wide comedic mouth. She was friendly but a bit clumsy, like an overgrown Labrador puppy. For now, however, her fellow college students treated her with amused tolerance, like a kid sister.

Soon Kristin spotted Dr. Blunt making his belated entrance into the inner-courtyard four flights below. Dr. Blunt reminded her of an aging hippie, with his wild, carrot-colored hair, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a sparse, straggly beard. Today he wore a wrinkled tee-shirt advertising: "Save the Whales" a rumpled pair of pipe stem Levi’s, and moth-eaten sandals. Kristin shifted to an even more ungainly position as she twisted to follow his progress. She watched as he shoved through the crowds on the steep stairs, which spiraled up from the courtyard to classroom. He circled up and up until he finally arrived at the door of their classroom, late as usual. Leaning against the doorjamb for a moment to catch his breath, he began searching the circle of chairs for an empty seat. He was attempting to find not just an empty chair, but a chair that he had not yet occupied.

During the first week of the semester, Dr. Blunt had told the class a little bit about his artistic philosophy. If you want to be a great writer, you must experience life. The average Tom, Dick, and Harry is stuck in a rut. He will come to class, sit in exactly the same spot, viewing the world from exactly the same perspective, week after week. But that was not his way. Oh, no! "Two roads diverged in a wood and I . . ." He had chosen a different kind of life: to take the seat less traveled by. "Of course," he said magnanimously, "if you want to sit in the same chair each time, that’s O. K., too. Different strokes for different folks."

This time, Dr. Blunt saw that there were a lot of choices open to him. Half of the chairs were empty. He flushed and said peevishly: "I ran all the way here to make sure I got here on time and now I discover that many of you didn’t even bother showing up for class." He glared at them. They glared back. They were here, after all. Why yell at them? "I suppose I should be used to it after twenty three years of teaching," he continued, in martyred tones. "By now I guess I should have learned not to expect so much out of life."

"Bingo," thought Kristin. "Now comes the big switch. Now he’ll take it all back." She was right. Dr. Blunt suddenly switched gears: "But, of course, it’s really up to you whether or not you want to come to class. I don't care. It’s not me that's missing out. Some might argue that you can learn more by skiing Snowbird than by sitting in a stuffy classroom. If that’s what works for you, I guess that’s what you ought to do."

Dr. Blunt often seemed at war with himself. Max the aging hippie had been a graduate student at Berkeley during the 1960s when the Viet Nam war protests were in full fury. There, he claimed, he’d found what he’d been looking for. He’d become a man of the spirit. A Zen Buddhist, a Jungian, an ecologist, and a poet. In all the world’s religions, he continued, the circle and the sphere were the forms of perfection. The Unity of Duality. A perfect balancing of oppositional forces: good and evil, pain and pleasure, Yin and Yang, anima and animus, persona and shadow.

He hoped this class would evolve into a circle of friends: calm, orderly, centered in harmony. The first step was to do something about the awful architecture of the room. Just look at it! He perched on his desk gazing down on the assembly of ill-matched chairs in military rows. That had to change. From now on, as soon as the students arrived, they should select 18 of the brown plastic bucket chairs (one for each member of the class), from the lineup. They should arrange them into a tight little rondure. The extra chairs could just be piled up in a corner.

Each day when Dr. Blunt arrived, he would check out the circle, smiling approvingly as he nudged a chair or two this way or that, assuring himself that the curve was just right.

So, Max Blunt’s philosophy was one of openness, acceptance, and going with the flow. Herr Dr. Blunt’s temperament, Kristin observed, was very different. He was inclined to be self-righteous, dogmatic, rigid, and persnickety. He was also quick to anger. Dr. Blunt was a struggle of opposites: yin/yang, cerebral/simpleminded, loving/angry, liberal/reactionary, tyrannical/laissez-faire, laid-back/uptight, tolerant/fussy, youth/age. Nurture straining to overcome nature.

Kristin’s reverie ended as Dr. Blunt selected a chair a radius away from her and began to fold himself into it. Earlier in the semester, she had noticed how spindly his little legs were. Rattle-bones. When he sat down, he reminded her of a preying mantis, scissoring into the chair. When she was especially bored, (as she often was for Dr. Blunt tended to drone on), she entertained herself by pretending he was an insect. She visualized his little aphid head, biting off words, gnawing them, and spitting them out. Sometimes she imagined him as a chocolate covered grasshopper. Imagined snapping off one of those crispy little legs and gnawing on the bone. As a polite young woman, however, she was always careful to maintain an appearance of rapt attention while entertaining herself with these bloodthirsty daydreams.

Now, Dr. Blunt caught her attention. "What," he asked rhetorically, "are the great writer’s ethical obligations to Art versus Humanity?" His answer took some time. "A great writer couldn’t allow himself to be hamstrung by other people’s opinions."
"He must never ask, ‘Is my story any good?’"
Only, "Did I accomplish what I set out to do?"
"For some reason, people just can’t seem to get it," he said, shaking his head. "Last week, when I told my wife that we’d been discussing Philip Roth’s ‘The Ghost Writer,’ she asked if you students liked his story. Imagine! She should know better! She should know that ‘good versus not-good’ is the least interesting of questions!

"The artist's primary responsibility is to his craft. He must be ruthless. All a writer has to write about are his own experiences. A writer’s family and friends might be pained by his depictions, but that’s as it has to be. The Buddha teaches us to transcend Self. Art is what matters, not our mothers’, brothers’, sisters’, lovers’, or friends’ selfish feelings." Kristin scribbled furiously. She thought Dr. Blunt’s arguments were right on.

After class, Kristin hung around for a bit. She wanted to talk to Dr. Blunt. . . . to Max. (He’d invited her to call him Max. In the cosmos, he said, "old and young, superior and inferior, experienced and inexperienced have no meaning.") Anyway, she wanted to talk to Max about the Point-of-View in a story she was thinking of writing. Dr. Blunt, Max, said that since Henry James’ time, all great 20th-century writers agreed: A writer must adopt a single POV. But Kristin resented that rule. She wanted to be Omniscient. She wanted to be in charge of what everyone thought, felt, and did. Why should she be limited to a single POV? She was tired of seeing things from her own POV. It was borrring. She yearned to soar.

Dr. Blunt smiled when he saw Kristin hanging on, waiting for him, and once free, he invited her to the Pit for coffee. Normally, he was a bit leery about seeing undergraduates socially. In the 1960s professors had been criticized for being too aloof. Now, in this era of ‘political correctness’ and radical feminism, WASP professors got eaten alive if they got too close. At UBC, Abelard had better keep hands off Eloise. It was so easy for things to spiral out of control. But with Kristin this was not even an issue. Kristin’s aura was the purest of lights. She was a cool headed woman: mature, poised, and circumspect. She would not mistake his intentions. Not his Kristin. They ended up talking for several hours over their caffe au laits. They talked about Woody Allen and William Trevor. Martin Amis and the Cahiers du Cinema. Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler. Ice-T and Fats Waller. They spoke a little about love and life as well. Max thought it was important to experience everything. Kristin agreed.

On Tuesday, Dr. Blunt arrived in class, late as ever. He and Kristin, the snow kissed Amazon and the dry walking stick, settled awkwardly into their plastic chairs. "What," he asked the class, looking straight at Kristin, "did you think of Robertson Davies’ The World of Wonders?" Kristin thought a moment and then said with real enthusiasm: "I thought it was wonderful. It was like a Canadian fairy tale. . ."

Dr. Blunt cut her off, obviously annoyed. "At Eaton, you are probably encouraged to sit around all day and B.S. Saying: ‘I like this’ and ‘I don't like that’," he said in a mincing voice. The class laughed. "And then you can spend another two days saying why you ‘like this’ or ‘don't like that’. But whooooooo cares? You can waste all day on that kind of crap, but it doesn't get you anywhere.

"Take out the handout I gave you the first day of class. You’ll see that I’ve listed five things the pros consider when discussing a short story." The class dutifully dragged out their tattered lists.
1. Point-of-view (POV). Writers should take a single, consistent POV.
2. Character. Writers should sketch compelling and realistic characters. The main character should be a complex, "round" character, reflecting the dualities. Secondary characters should be simple, "flat," and consistent.
3. Time. Center your story in the present. Live in the moment. The present is all we really ever have. Never look back. Don’t keep wishing for a future that may never come.
4. Place. Write about the places you know best. Students who’ve spent their entire lives in Vancouver sometimes try to write about China in the 5th century or Galactica Star Ship Four in 3333 A.D. That never works. Never forsake your roots.
5. Plot. All good stories involve either inner- or external-conflict. Great writers write about inner conflict. Popular writers depict external conflict. It sells better.

Of course, after going over Items 1-5, point by point, Dr. Blunt then proceeded to take back all his admonitions. He assured students that if for some reason they wanted, nay, insisted on doing so, they were free to write any way they pleased. He would not dream of telling anyone else what to do. "Different strokes for different folks." That was the way of the Zen.

Kristin found herself nodding off. She couldn’t help it. She always blew a mental fuse when she tried to reconcile the irreconcilable. She would, however, remember not to say "I liked that story" ever again. Still, she wished Dr. Blunt. . . Max. . . would allow her to finish a sentence sometime. He never gave her a chance to explain what she meant. And that "At Eaton" . . . How humiliating!

* * *

After class, Max and Kristin strolled back to his office. She decided to tell him right out that she didn’t like being called a high school student. It was unfair. In the cosmos, after all, what mattered age and status?

Kristin did like Max's office. It reminded her of the "groovy" crash pads and 1960s head shops she had so admired in Hair. Tiny Indian temple bells tinkled on the air currents. The walls were plastered with psychedelic posters advertising long-ago rock concerts. The groups possessed names like The Who, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane. Just like in all the old movies. One tattered poster urged, "Tune in, turn on, and drop out." The walls were a swirl of electric green, neon orange, and shocking pink. She paused in front of one icon she had seen many times before. "Make love not war." A smiling young woman leaned forward, playfully poking a daisy into the barrel of a National guardsman’s rifle. A coronet of spring flowers circled her flaxen hair, which fell long and straight like Kristin’s. ‘A gloss on Christ's crown of thorns?’ Kristin wondered. The young woman’s heavy breasts swung free beneath her filmy white gown. Her feet were bare. The young Guardsman stood rigidly at attention. He was trapped inside his carapace of battle regalia: a steel helmet, heavy flack jacket, and thick combat boots. Obviously he, too, preferred love to war.

Kristin loved all that old stuff. All the tiny, illegible writing. The spirals of color. She felt as if a time machine had dropped her into San Francisco during the Summer of Love in the Age of Aquarius.

Max’s actual office was Spartan. Two tired beanbag chairs sagged toward one another. Between them was a long, low table covered with a creamy white altar cloth. The table was hallowed with a half-dozen gutted white candles stuck in old wine bottles, some wilted daisies carelessly arranged in a chipped drinking glass, and a brand-new Macintosh laptop computer. Probably Dr. Blunt used the PowerBook to compose his poems and short stories.
Max and Kristin plopped down in the sagging chairs. There really was no graceful way to get into those things, Kristin concluded. She looked at Max, smiled brightly, and opened her pretty lips to complain. Max smiled back feebly. Kristin shut her mouth. An intriguing question flickered across her mind. "I wonder if an old geezer like Max could be interested in someone young like me?" What a fascinating idea! Half-consciously, her interior monologue reflected itself in action. She looked hungrily at Max. She slowly licked the oval of her lips. She tried to assume a knockout pose as well, but the beans kept shifting beneath her, pulling her back. It was certainly hard to look sexy while trying to resist being sucked down into the quicksand of a beanbag! She finally succeeded in hefting herself up an inch or two from the bag. She thrust her large breasts forward provocatively. Max talked on.

Then, a great idea struck her. Last night, she’d watched an old James Bond golden-oldie. She’d seen this voluptuous Anita Ekberg type, what’s her name? (Melina? Bibi? Lise? Pussy Galore?) something like that, hulk over this tiny little shrimp of a guy. He’d gazed up at Pussy in awe and horror. Could she do that to men? A Nordic goddess, Pussy Andersen? She moved closer to Max, still trapped in his chair, and bent seductively over him, the two large melons of her breasts swaying. She gazed brazenly into his eyes, pretending to smolder. He glanced back, a little uneasy.

Then, all at once, Max went into meltdown. He gazed soulfully up at her. "You are such an exceptional young woman," he said, a catch in his throat. "As innocent as the spring. Sometimes I look at you in class and see a young Liv Ullman. So radiant. So vulnerable. You have such delicate skin. Such a soft and gentle mouth. Yet, when I stare deep into your eyes, I see an ancient soul, brimming with wisdom." Max reached out and gently touched her hand.

"Wow! That’s weird!" thought Kristin. "Imagine! An old guy like that! A professor!" She guessed he did like her. "As innocent as spring." "It has to be the Lancome moisturizer," she thought. Glamour said it was good. "Translucent complexion." "Radiant." "Wow!" She’d have to keep using it.

Max continued to stare into her 15 year-old eyes, windows to her teenage soul. She could see he was really getting into this. His face was pale. His breath had begun to come in quick little jags. A creeping circle of perspiration stained the armpits of his Mother Earth tee-shirt. His hand trembled ever so slightly as he caressed her hand. The air was electric.

Kristin licked her lips again, slowly and sensually. I'm glad I wore this Alexandra de Markoff long-lasting lipstick, she thought. She looked so pale when her lipstick wore off. She hated that. Sometimes her brother called her "shark bait." She really hated that.She wished she had thought to spray on a little Calandre. She would have smelled like fresh lemons.

"Now what?" Kristin wondered.

Max began to talk falteringly about his unhappy marriage, his unhappy three marriages, actually. Perhaps he wanted too much, he admitted. He yearned for a total Union: a Unity of mind, soul, and body. But he’d been disappointed.

Perhaps if he had married an old soul like Kristin. . .

Now, it was Kristin’s turn to say something. But she didn’t have a clue as to what came next. But then, just in the nick, she got a brain-wave. At Eaton, her Marriage and the Family teacher had assigned A More Perfect Union as a text. It had listed the Ten Commandments of Love. For a truly close, meaningful relationship, she recalled, dyads were supposed to:
1. Express love and affection,
2. Establish trust,
3. Communicate thoughts and feelings,
4. Listen,
5. Affirm the other person's being, and
6. . . .
She forgot the rest.
OK.
Express love and affection. Hey, she could do that. "When I look into the eyes of the boys at school," she said, her eyes riveted on Max’s watery orbs, "I see something sweet. They’re like good-natured puppies. But when I gaze into your eyes, I behold something wild and a little bit frightening."
Establish trust. "You can trust me," she said. "I would never betray you."

"You are so lovely," Max responded in a quavery voice, gazing up at his statuesque goddess. "I hardly know you. We are almost two decades apart in age. (Well, maybe two and a half. Three actually.) Yet, at this moment I feel as if I have finally found my soul mate. As if we’ve known each other all our lives." How exquisitely sensitive Kristin was to the risks he was running for her sake. How light her touch in assuring him of her discretion: "You can trust me. I would never hurt you." It brought a lump to his throat.
"The semester ends in two weeks," he said. "Would you like to go out for dinner sometime during Christmas vacation, say at the Rubina Tandoori, to talk about your writing?" When she nodded, yes, he kissed her tenderly on the forehead.

"Wow!" thought Kristin. She’d never been kissed by a professor before. Only by a T.A. Wait until her friends at Eaton heard about this! She had been invited out by this really old guy. A professor. To a Tandoori restaurant. "Oh, wow!" It had to be the Lancome. "Awesome!"

* * *

On the weekend, Kristin spent all her free time trying to plot out a short story for Dr. Blunt’s class. It was due in just two weeks. She considered and discarded several possibilities. Suddenly, a brilliant idea occurred to her. She would write about what she knew, the brief encounter with Dr. Blunt last Thursday. She’d read lots of stories about young couples, head-over-heels in love. Or sour old-married couples, bitter about the ruin of their lives. But she would do something entirely new. Something creative, unique, fresh. She would write about an elderly professor, eager to relive his youth, who was madly in love with a beautiful, young, budding creative artist, experimenting with life. Dr. Blunt and Kristin. Two people, two stories. Yin and Yang. Dr. Blunt, passionate and intense. Kristin, the cool observer. Of course, she would have to disguise things to avoid hurting his feelings. Perhaps she could claim their names were Ingrid and Dr. Hunt and that he taught English at Simon Fraser or something.

But what about POV? Should she adopt His or Hers? The most creative choice would be to write from Dr. Blunt’s POV. Max would confess his powerful feelings. Naturally, he would assume Kristin felt exactly the same way. Somehow or other, she would have to make the reader see through Max’s wishful thinking and recognize that Kristin was ACTUALLY preoccupied, or bored, or something. Wow! That would be hard. She didn’t know if she could do it.

She could always choose to see everything from her own POV. But that would be too easy. A cop out. Besides, it was no fun to play herself. But that POV would make it easier to be wickedly funny. She’d like it to be really funny.

What she’d really like to do is to switch POV back and forth. Write two different stories in two different styles. Dr. Blunt’s story would be written in a romantic, throbbing, 18th-century prose. Hers in a post-modernist, MTV, edgy, bullet style. She could put his thoughts in italics, hers in plain type. A perfect Gestalt.

* * *

On Tuesday, Kristin arrived early. She and the other class members tried to find 18 identical chairs for the round, but they couldn’t. There were only 15 good ones. Three were missing. (Someone must have taken them to another room.) All the remaining chairs were wobbly, broken, or armchairs without armrests. Oh, well. There was nothing to be done but to fill in with those.

Soon, Dr. Blunt rushed in, late, carrying an armload of books. As he looked around the circle for an empty seat, the cheap green armchairs caught his eye. He frowned. What were those doing there? Quivering with anger, he struggled to hide his feelings. But his jerky movements gave him away. He snatched the offending chairs out of the loop and dragged them to the corner. Then he painstakingly arranged the remaining chairs into a tighter, more intimate ring. As class members recognized what had happened, a ripple of excitement danced through the group. Dr. Blunt had made a mistake. The students glanced furtively at one another to see if anyone else had noticed. Dr. Blunt had made a mistake! There were only 15, not 18, chairs in the ellipse.

When Dr. Blunt finally settled down, ready to begin class, Oskar Pollak raised his hand. The other students held their breath, knowing what was coming. "Dr. Blunt," Oskar said sweetly, "there are only 15 chairs in the circle." Dr. Blunt turned pale. He hated to be wrong. His eyes raced around the loop, counting. "You're right," he said, pretending it was a matter of no moment. He paused for a moment, thinking. "I will simply drop the two students who have missed the most classes from the rolls," he said. "That will make 16." Actually, that would be even better, he thought to himself. Four times four. The equation of perfect harmony. "I can get the 16th chair from next door," he said aloud. He smiled. Actually this was a lot better. Now he had a perfect circle; perfect symmetry.

And he was right. It would be weeks before Kristin published her short story in the Columbia Review and Max’s life spiraled out of control. . .