Standing with his stomach pressed against Viola’s back, he reached over his shoulder and shut off the overhead safelight. Utter darkness enveloped them. He heard her sliding open the bars of the rectangular cartridge that protected the X-ray film from light, then the rattle and pop of flexing film as she extracted it. Tom shifted back against the door so that she could turn and feed the film sheet into the machine. In the confines of the closet, her scent was even stronger than on the night she’d hugged him, strong enough to declare itself over the acrid bite of the developing chemicals. Tom felt his breath go shallow when her shoulder dug into his chest. She was trying to feed the film into the machine’s narrow slot.

“Sorry,” she said, as her shoulder prodded him again. “Got it.”

It would take ninety seconds for the exposed black sheet to pass through the chemicals—developer, stop bath, fixer—and finally the machine’s dryer. Even with his back flat against the door, there was no way to avoid physical contact. Viola’s upper back was flat against his chest, her hair brushed his face, and her rump pressed against his thighs and crotch. Tom’s mouth felt parched, but his palms were coated with sweat. Within thirty seconds his heart was pounding. He could feel her chest expand with each breath. To his alarm, his penis shifted, then grew steadily against her tight skirt. He didn’t know whether to apologize or to try to move away; any movement would only aggravate the problem. He was acutely aware that the rest of the office staff were outside the door, not to mention the twenty or so patients in the clinic. Yet in the cavelike darkness of the X-ray room, it was as though the two of them had stepped from a mother ship into deep space.

When Viola began to turn in place, Tom experienced something between panic and exultation. When she was halfway around, her hand slid up his arm, her fingers searching along his shoulder, his collarbone, and then his neck, like the hand of a blind woman. When her fingers found his mouth, she probed it with a fingertip, then rose on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. Tom’s back flexed against the door as the shock went through him. Then he recovered himself, and the wood behind him creaked as he wrapped his arms around her. He squeezed hard enough to crush the breath from some women, but Viola only slid her fingers up into the hair behind his head and pulled his mouth harder against hers.