“I used to teach in the Boston public schools,” he said. “You did?” My voice squeaked a little, which sounded stupid, but I was stunned. Boston public? In the seventies? That meant busing, poor black and white kids, intense hostility, the whole nine.

“You sound shocked,” he said with a laugh, taking another muffin.

“Well, Jerome, come on. I thought you’d spent your whole career in these rarefied environs. Teaching there must have been pretty tough back then.”

“It was.” His eyes went flat and dark.

“Why’d you leave?” I pressed. I couldn’t help it. We’d slept together now, after all.

“I … it simply became too difficult. Personally and professionally. I thought it best if I moved on.” He started buttering his muffin with great intensity, and I knew we were done with that topic.

It was awkward after that. He was solicitous and affectionate still, but the way he’d clammed up brought Helen’s warning back to me full force. We didn’t talk about the night before. We didn’t talk much at all. But as he left, at around noon, leaving us both to our empty days, he held me so tightly, like a drowning man, and kissed me so deeply that I was suddenly feeling like I was the one who was in over my head. We didn’t say anything about seeing each other again. Like this. Or like last night. I started crying not long after he left. It took a long time to stop.

All of the English teachers at Chelsea worked with individual students on their freshman-year chapel talks. The teachers chose the students rather than vice versa because, it was hoped, we would be more mature about it and even the kids no one liked would end up with someone to advise them. I’d picked Rashid long before he’d told me about his brother, and we were scheduled to meet on the Monday after the dance. On Sunday I pulled myself together after a while, made my weekly phone call to Sarah, told her a heavily edited version of what I’d been doing over the weekend; called Tina, one of my oldest friends from college, told her the unedited version, cried some more (wasn’t sure that was possible), and, bucked up a bit by her sympathy and kindness, finished the day with a long bath and an Agatha Christie mystery I hadn’t read before, which was soothing in its undemanding predictability. I did listen to Stevie Wonder while I was reading, though. And when I put the book down, I had an absolutely physical memory of the way I’d felt as he’d moved inside me, slow and deliberate and so full of longing. The same swoop in the stomach, the same longing for it to go on and on without having to think. I was glad to see Monday morning dawn.