Summary

“Early September. It’s raining outside. An accessible apartment in Princeton …” (17) First generation immigrant Jess is nervous. “It’s been a while. And she feels very foreign here” (17).

After brief small talk with a man in an offstage bathroom, and after offering to help him without pay, Jess watches as John (who is described as having cerebral palsy) wheels himself out of the bathroom. She is surprised that he is “beautiful” (18).

Conversation reveals, as John looks at Jess’s resume, that she is a recent graduate from Princeton, and that he is completing a PhD in Political Science from Harvard. “I have money,” he says at one point. “I can basically do anything I want except the things I can’t” (22).

Conversation becomes increasingly tense and confrontational as John questions Jess’s qualifications and she insists that she can do the job, with...