“If you want, k’vod harav,” she said formally, her lips stretched tight.

“All right, all right, Shaindel it is.” He laughed. “But on one condition: stop with the ‘k’vod harav’ stuff, will you? I’m not here as your rav—there are plenty of those in this town—but your advisor, and I hope”—he caught her eye and held it for a moment—“a friend.”

She felt herself grow warm, a blush creeping up her neck.

“In fact, maybe you’d like to sit here, on my knees. All my patients are like my family, like my daughters. Maybe you’d feel more comfortable, more able to open up to me?”

Instinctively, she pressed her back against the wall as far as it would go, shaking her head vigorously.

He raised his hands and laughed as if she were being exasperatingly, childishly ridiculous and unreasonable, foiling his sincere, professional efforts to help her. “I’m offering, but if you don’t want…” He shrugged. “So tell me, Shaindel, what does a girl who wants to be a teacher like her late, saintly mameh, a serious girl who wants to go to seminary, do at night with a boy she met at a pizza parlor?”

Her face broke out in a fierce red bloom. She took a deep breath. “What do girls and boys do?” she answered defiantly.

To her surprise, instead of being offended, he laughed and pulled his chair closer. He reached out his hand, briefly touching her skirt just above her knee. (Was that even possible? she thought with alarm. Or was it simply an accident? An unintentional, awkward miscalculation? Or perhaps she had just imagined it altogether?)

“I want to know every detail—what you did with him and why. I want to know if you enjoyed it or if you are sorry. I want to know what you were imagining doing with him but didn’t. I want to know everything.”

She shot up. “I’m not comfortable with this, k’vod harav.”

He reached out and touched her hip. Now, there could be no mistake! He was calm, unmoved. “Sit down!”

She obeyed.

“Well, you’d better get comfortable with it, little Shaindele, and fast. Because otherwise, I’m going to be forced to tell your principal—who is a very close friend of mine—and your parents, who are paying so much money—that you are refusing to cooperate, and I can’t do anything to help you. And what do you think is going to happen to you then, little Shaindele? Huh?”