D. in cellular biology of humans. Anne was offered a job at a biotech company in the Boston area long before she had given her dissertation. With all ...his going on it had been four years since Anne had gone out on a date. At the age of 24 Anne had become something of a social recluse. As she boarded the train that morning Anne thought back to her days in graduate school and how her friends had told her how she had it made in life. She wondered what that meant if this sort of life, a solitary. After talking with a couple of nursery people, we determined that we needed an in-ground sprinkler system that worked on a timer. I was giving the situation a lot of thought, and after dinner one evening, I suggested that perhaps things would go better financially, if she handled the estimates alone. When she asked how that would work, I pointed out that a guy might be more responsive to a good looking woman than to a man or a couple. She gave that some thought, then agreed that it might work.. She sat in my car for a few minutes complaining about the rain. She reached over and gave my hand a good squeeze before getting out of my car and thanking me. She said, “I think I’m going to like our friendship.” Thursday night she brought an umbrella as did I. After class it was not raining as hard but we walked to my car and she got in. We talked about meeting at the library to begin our research on our papers we were to write the following Saturday. Saturday we met at the library around 9 in. He was a geeky dropout, with amazing travel storiesthat were so implausible, they just had to be true. Anyway, he had shownme a stupid, highly addictive game called 'minesweeper' and I seemed tohave the knack, I could almost see the patterns.A few days later, when I was getting my daily minesweeper fix, my unclecame into my room for a chat. As he watched me play, I becameincreasingly nervous. Not just because of his studied silence, butbecause of a strong feeling that my life was heading for.