She didn’t think to look for Marisol—she couldn’t think of anything clearly—but Marisol wasn’t there anyway; bored with this ordinary slow-dance, she had wandered away. Amy studied the boy’s face, to see what he would do. Then something smooth and hard-edged that was not the boy’s hand slipped into the back of her cast and pressed against her skin. The thing was warm, as warm as his hand, and pulled the cast tight against the front of her thigh.

“If you be quiet a little bit,” the boy said, “it’ll be all right.”

“What will?”

“Everything,” he said. His hand brushed the back of her skirt, and she managed not to gasp, and then it rested again at the small of her back. She tried to puzzle out the shape of the thing inside her cast.

“What is it?” she whispered. “I won’t tell.”

“Shh,” he said. “Don’t look. I’ll find you.”

Then he was gone, and Amy stood alone and watched him cross the gym floor, away from her. He stayed close to the folded-up bleachers, moving quick and careful, and then he disappeared among the boys who were just boys, who meant nothing to her, boys she saw every day of her life.

PAINT

MARIE WAS WASHING breakfast dishes at the sink, light from the east window gilding her hair and shoulders.

“Leave those,” Jack said. He wanted the morning to last, wanted to linger over the coffee. He guarded his cup.

“It’s almost done.” She was dressed smartly for work, his tall and formidable wife, in pressed black trousers and a silver blouse. Her black hair, striped now with gray, was twisted up at the back. She studied an ice cream bowl Jack had left to dry the night before, then dropped it into the sudsy water.

“That was clean,” he said.

“No, it wasn’t.” Into the water went the drinking glass he’d washed, the spoon.

“Marie,” he said sharply. She looked at him in surprise.

“Just leave the damn dishes,” he said. “Please. I’ll do them right.”

She finished in silence and dried her hands on a towel.

“I’ll be late again,” she said. “Don’t wait for dinner.”

She took her keys and was out the door. He heard the grinding noise of the garage door opening, then closing. The early gold through the window had diffused into ordinary daylight.