An Almost Perfect Moment by Binnie Kirshenbaum

Fiacco’s memory. Besides the pretty girl in the listening booth, Lucille had assisted only two people thus far, which was well into the afternoon: Mr. Brickman, who came in every damn day without fail to read the newspaper because, even though Lucille happened to know for a fact—her sister’s husband was the old man’s accountant—that Mr. Brickman was sitting on a mountain of money, he was too cheap to spring for the Daily News . The other man who asked for help was lost and wanted only directions to Atlantic Avenue.
    Having finished with Glamour, Lucille paced the floor. If there’d been bars on the window, she would have rattled them, that’s the kind of stir-crazy she was going. The kind of stir-crazy thatprompted her to say, “Oh, what the hell,” and the kind of stir-crazy that led her to the listening booth.
    Most likely it was because she was wearing earphones, the pretty girl did not respond to Lucille Fiacco’s rap on the door, nor did she look up until Lucille tapped her on the shoulder. Then the girl slid the headset down around her neck, wearing it like a futuristic collar, as if science fiction took up the medieval punishment of the yoke.
    Lucille perched on the edge of a table, facing the girl. It was then that Lucille noticed the diamond earrings the girl wore. Holy Mother of God, what Lucille Fiacco wouldn’t have given for a pair of earrings like that. “What are you listening to?” she asked.
    “‘Are Vay Maria,’” the girl said.
    “‘ Ave Maria.’” Lucille corrected the girl’s pronunciation, but you’d be hard-pressed to have caught the distinction between the two deliveries. “So that’s it? You’ve been listening to the same song for over two hours?”
    “It’s so beautiful,” the girl said. “I heard it for the first time maybe a month ago, and I can’t get it out of my head.”
    “I take it you’re not Catholic,” Lucille said. “There’s no offense in that. It’s just that if you were Catholic, the ‘Ave Maria’ would be coming out your ears.”
    “Jewish,” the girl said, and Lucille Fiacco nodded knowingly. She would’ve guessed that. Jewish. If only because of the earrings. Those Jewish girls have jewelry to die for. “What’s your name?” Lucille asked.
    “Valentine.”
    “Valentine? Like the saint?” Lucille leaned forward, closer to the girl, and although there was no one to hear them, shenonetheless whispered, “Have you ever read Lives of the Saints ? It is so hot.”
    Twelve years of parochial school with the nuns taught Lucille Fiacco to sneak cigarettes in the ally behind the rectory, to drink vodka because it doesn’t smell, to roll up the waistband of her plaid skirt, the uniform of St. Joseph’s School in Bensonhurst, until it was at the midpoint between her crotch and her knee. She made out with boys named Vinnie and Paulie and Sal. She was what was known in her neck of Brooklyn as fast .
    It was at the College of Mt. Saint Vincent where Lucille Fiacco’s intellectual horizons expanded. There, among other sizzling theological works, she read and reread Lives of the Saints . For the hot parts.
    “Hot?” Valentine asked.
    You want teenagers to read? Give them books with hot parts.
    “I swear to you,” Lucille confided in this girl, “I’d read a chapter or two of that and have impure thoughts for a week after.”
    “Really?” Valentine arched her back, as if in preparation for an impure thought of her own. “Do you have that book here? Can I take it out.”
    “It’s in biographies. Two weeks, but you can always renew if you want to keep it longer. And the best part is, you don’t even have to hide it because everybody just thinks it’s a holy book. Unless you’ve read it, you don’t know that there’s smut on every page.” Lucille eased off the table. With her feet on the ground, she said, “I better get back to my desk.” She took two steps in that direction and then turned to Valentine, about to offer a friendly