in a steamfilled diner in a college town flannery jansen catches sight of something more beautiful than shes ever seen a graduate student reading the seventeenyearold new to everything around hercollege the east coast bodies of literature and the sexual flurries of student lifeis shocked by her desire to follow this wherever it will take her when flannery finds herself enrolled in a class with the remote brilliant older woman she is intimidated at first but gradually becomes anne ardens studentbaudelaire lipstick colors or how to travel with a loverflannery proves an eager pupil until one day learns more about anne than she ever wanted to know