“I’m not sure I’d have handled it better—or felt differently—had I been twenty-seven. Not at the level of consciousness twenty years ago.” She slumped, loosened her hair again, fooled with it, flicked something away from the corner of one eye.

“The worst part was how alone I felt. Abandoned, with no one in my corner. I couldn’t tell my parents, because I was too humiliated. I told Larry Daschoff a sanitized version, because even though Larry had been my mentor for the summer and he’d been kind and helpful, he was a man. And I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I was to blame. So I just kept calling in sick to Achievement House, told my mother I had some kind of flu, stayed holed up in my room. Obsessing about what had happened, dreaming about it—in the dreams it was worse. In the dreams I didn’t get away and Larner came in my mouth and then he hit me and raped me and forced me to smoke the cigar. Finally, I realized I was falling apart—was wasting. I needed to do something. So I found out the name of the school’s chairman of the board—some downtown lawyer—Preston something—and after agonizing about it for a whole week, I called his office, got through after several attempts, and told him what had happened. Only I didn’t really tell him. I soft-pedaled it. Reduced it to grabbing—the same story I told Larry.”

Larry had told me, Mashing and groping.

“How’d Preston react?” I said.

“He listened. Didn’t say anything at all, at first. Didn’t ask any questions, which really upset me. I got the impression he thought I was crazy. Finally, he said he’d get back to me. Two days later a letter of dismissal arrived in the mail. I was being let go for poor work habits and excessive absenteeism. I never showed the letter to my parents, just told them I’d quit because the job wasn’t challenging. They didn’t care. My mother wanted me to swim at the club and play tennis and meet guys. What she wasn’t happy about was that I just wanted to hang around the house and not be social. So she arranged a family cruise to Alaska. Big luxury liner cruising past the glaciers—baby otters nursing amid the ice floes. All that blue ice wasn’t as cold as my heart was that summer.”

She stood, returned to the easy chair, tried to look comfortable but couldn’t pull it off.

“I’ve never told anyone what really happened. Not until now. But this was the wrong time and place, wasn’t it? Using a stranger. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, Allison.”