the last book I ever read (The Art of Fielding, excerpt eight)

from The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach:

They drove in David’s rented hybrid to Maison Robert, the upscale, slightly flagging French place she used to go with her father during her vacations from Tellman Rose. It felt nice to be among adults, even if the adults in question were David and a bunch of past-their-prime-if-they’d-ever-had-a-prime academics bleached white by one too many northern Wisconsin winters. Maison Robert served as a kind of de facto Westish faculty club. Bald pates shone in the yellow-puddled lights, wire-rimmed glasses peered at the immutable black menus, snifters of amber brandy clicked against bulbous goblets of deep red wine. Pella’s oral history professor, the preposterously chic, thoroughly un-Wisconsiny Judy Eglatine, dined alone in one corner, dressed in narrow black, an open book before her. A feathery lime-green boa flopped over the opposite chair in place of a companion. Pella caught her eye and waved shyly as David pulled back her chair with his usual wooden courtesy. Professor Eglatine smiled.