“Oh, sure, Jeeves,” Allison offers. Kassandra has called, relating the story of meeting the woman while serving coffee to the Stitch and Bitch Club. “She’s a professor up in the political science department. I’m surprised you haven’t met her before. She walks around town singing at the top of her lungs, or she used to. Also, she’s at every protest. For just about anything, really.” 

Kassandra recalls a woman’s face in the crowds of folk from the previous summer. It might have been Jeeves. The past year or more is a blur of faces, places, masks, signs. Some days, Kassandra would rather forget them all. 

“What’s she like?” she asks Allison.

“The one class I took from her, ages ago,” Allison shares, “was amazing. She was very, I guess irreverent is the best word. Made us all think about our own assumptions. Never gave a straight answer to a question: it was always, ‘it depends.’ But she had the sharpest insight into how the past impacts the present, and the future. Almost made a poly-sci major out of me, until I fell in love with the chimps.” 

There’s a tone in Allison’s voice that prompts Kassandra to ask: “Do you miss them? The chimps?” 

“Every day.” After a moment, Allison adds: “Seriously, Kass, you should call Jeeves. I think you two would hit it off. And if you’re at all worried that she’ll try to talk you back into school, don’t be. She’s not like that. Jeeves always talked about the multiplicity of paths, how they’re all good as long as they are walked with genuineness and humility. And any path can lead you wrong if you walk it with false pride or arrogance.”

That was the moment Kassandra decided not only to call Jeeves and ask her for crochet lessons, but to join the Stitch and Bitch Club herself. Looking back years later, an all-too-short lifetime of deep conversations, beautiful creations, powerful arguments, and side-splitting laughter behind them, Kassandra remembered that moment with sharp, bittersweet clarity.