E: Of course not. He seemed to adapt to the rhythm of the music. It didn’t hurt anymore, quite the opposite. It felt like we were in a dream. We kept on doing it as long as the concert went on. I have no idea how long it took. It felt like days, I swear. Years, aeons even. The next day I couldn’t walk. Nothing ever was anything like whatever happened on that bench. It wasn’t just sex. That was the least of it. It felt as if we had changed along with the music, I don’t know, like we were many things, not only ourselves, but light and time and thought, all drifting though some infinite space . . . This sounds stupid, but it was like we were the entire world. It was perfection itself.

B: And since then?

E: Then I thought sex was like that. I tried it again with him. I tried it with others too, but it wasn’t the same. Each morning I would wake up crying, because that night in the classroom I experienced a kind of bliss nothing could measure up to. I didn’t know how to recreate it. Now you think I’m crazy?

B: No. Not at all.

E: Yes, I can see that. You believe in it, right? You believe that all this really happened.

B: I do.

E: Eventually I realized what was missing. Not the right man or the mood. The music. The music was missing. I focused very hard, and one of the melodies came to me. The only melody, perhaps. I started humming it during sex. And it worked. Nothing came close to the band actually playing, but with the melody I could approximate that original experience. It’s only because of this that I’m able to survive. My parents freaked out of course. After all I was a genius, top of the class, I was going to be a biochemist. Then I decided to be a prostitute. I wasn’t forced into it like so many others. Do you think it’s strange? I like it this way. I can still remember the melody. That’s what my clients come for. For me to sing to them. I need them, too. Each time we fly back to the classroom for a little while. Each time they’re with me, in that classroom, on that winter night. They’re with me and we’re young again, touching something that’s beyond . . . beyond us, beyond what we are, what we see. It pays good money too, but the money’s not what I care about.

B: Why haven’t you looked up the band?