One relatively calm and enjoyable night we were eating dinner at our place when we got on the topic of college. I had never gone, she had gone but never graduated, and I asked what it was like. Dianne told me about her two years at NYU—frat parties, early morning classes, football games, and finals—and I asked how she’d managed to get there when her parents had so little money. Her parents’ lack of financial stability had been a topic of conversation more than once, and it surprised me that they’d managed to find a way to get her through two years of it when they couldn’t afford to own a car. “I worked my tail off when I wasn’t in class,” she finally admitted.

“Wow.” I was impressed. I’d always known she was ambitious; it shouldn’t have surprised me. “Where did you work? When did you work?”

“Night shift,” she said. “Class during the day, worked at night.”

“Full time?” I laughed in amazement. “How did you have the energy to go to class?”

“Well … I didn’t work a full forty-hour week … I just got paid a lot.” She suddenly stopped eating and carried her plate to the kitchen. “I’m full. Do you want to rent a movie tonight or something? I don’t want to just sit around.”

I was wracking my brain trying to think of a job that paid that well and had a night shift. I couldn’t think of one. “Um, yeah, that’s fine, let’s do that. But where did you work—”

“Just drop it, okay?” she snapped. “It paid, I got through school as long as I wanted to, it doesn’t matter what I did, just that I was able to do it, okay?”

Whoa. That hit a nerve. Waitressing doesn’t cause that much secrecy. Factory work? Bartending? What night job pays enough to get someone through college but is too embarrassing to admit to?

That night, while Dianne slept, my mind idly wandered the list of possible night jobs a college student might have. Usually Dianne was more than willing to divulge her history to me; nothing had ever been off-limits before. This flat-out refusal to talk was highly uncharacteristic.

A new possibility popped into my head, not that I could believe it. Would it be plausible? I thought over what she had said, looking for an incompatibility, hoping I was wrong. For fifteen minutes I turned it over in my head, getting all the more irate and astonished and curious as I did. Finally I shook her awake, unable to stand the suspense and, in a half-snicker, half-whisper, half expecting her to say no, I asked, “Hey Dianne—you weren’t a hooker, were you?”