The rain came down in torrents. The whole city was flooded in streams and the roads swirled into eddies, flowing rapidly back from some source in the teary-eyed horizon. I ran down Garden Avenue, to the gothic brick building, up the steps, and knocked on the door to my professor's apartment.

"Come in," he said.

I opened the door and was engulfed in a radiant heat; the dusty smell of old books, a fire. He was sitting in a chair, staring out at the rain. From his window I could see the pattering drops striking the little pools on the walk below and spreading out: dripping off of doused concrete, spreading into the thirsty brown grass that dotted the lots. Frail trees quivered with the cold and invisible motion of atmosphere.

"I'm withdrawing from my classes," I told him. He looked up, as if coming out of a spell. He got up and went to the stove, where he retrieved a little brass teapot engraved with the Chinese symbol for peace. He filled it with water, lit the stove, and set it down to boil. He handled the whole affair with an exceeding care, an attention to detail down to his pared and polished fingernails -- their placement in relation to the brass.

"Where will you go?" He turned and looked me straight in the eyes. I shrugged, looked at the floor, at a rug, at a dance of Persian patterns.

"I'll work. I'll get a job. I'll volunteer somewhere. I'll go out into the city. I'm going to live. Somehow."

He sighed. He walked to the book-shelf and took out a slim volume of poetry, bound in leather, kept with care. His reading glasses were sitting on the coffee-table, slight metal above the illustrated cover of a book on modern art. He took them, and gnome-like, licking his fingers, flipping through the pages, he found the one he was looking for. His fingernails were pink on cracked yellow, like a tender wound.

"Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother," he closed the book. He put it back in the shelf. The tea kettle hissed. He read like a child reciting the Credo.

"I'm going," I said. He was pouring hot water into a ceramic cup. He took a small bag with a yellow tag that said, "chamomile," and ceremoniously lowered it into the surface. The water took the little bag, it sunk like a submerged vessel and then disappeared below the surface of the luminous sea. Tea stain spread through the cup.

I tapped him on the shoulder, but he didn't respond. I took a book out of my back-pack, a heavy one he had leant me, I don't even remember the title anymore, and I laid it on the coffee-table above the modern art book.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" I walked quietly out of the room and closed the door. When I left it was still raining, but the rain had subdued to a drizzle. I headed down the streets, avoiding the still-flowing pools of water, cold from the long descent.