An Almost Perfect Moment by Binnie Kirshenbaum Page A

suggestion—eye shadow—but when she looked at the girl again, Lucille decided she was wrong about that. Maybe it was the diamond earrings adding that extra spark, but the kid didn’t need any eye shadow.
     
    Joanne Clarke did not have in her possession underwear that could be classified as lingerie, but with careful deliberation she chose her most recently purchased bra, a Playtex Cross-Your-Heart, and a fresh pair of panty hose to wear beneath her beige wool slacks and the brown V-neck sweater, because maybe —it would be their third date— it could happen.
    It had happened three times before. All three times during her senior year of college. The first was with a groundskeeper at the school, in the shed where he kept his tools, and maybe that sort of thing was Lady Chatterley’s idea of a time to remember, but for Joanne Clarke it brought about nothing but a brief moment of pain and a shame that would never leave her. Next was a boy her own age, a blind date where clearly each party was disappointed at the sight of the other. Then he asked her, “So what do you want to do?”
    Joanne said, “I don’t know. I guess just go someplace and talk.” Someplace meant maybe a diner to talk over a cup of coffee or even to a bar; she would’ve had a glass of beer, but he drove to a motel off the Long Island Expressway. Joanne didn’t know how to tell him that this wasn’t what she meant by someplace, that by talk she really meant talk . He rented the room for all of two hours, and they had time coming when he checked out. He never called her again, but she wasn’t expecting that he would.
    Last was her Bio-Chem II professor. Professor Chase. A nice man, but already near retirement age. His wife had died the year before, he told Joanne. He was lonely without her. Did Joanne know what it was like to be lonely? Yes, yes, she did. And so theysought solace with each other right there in the lab, and Joanne thought maybe she might even be a little bit in love with him. She imagined having a husband so many years her senior. She imagined being a faculty wife, the other faculty wives clucking over her, mother hens tending to their new chick. She knew in time that she would be a young widow, but she could always say, I wouldn’t have traded our days together for anything in the world .
    Many wisdoms are gleaned in girls’ bathrooms, vital information is shared, hard lessons are learned, and it was in the girls’ bathroom, the one down the hall from the chemistry labs, that Joanne Clarke overheard Melissa Greenberg say to Karen Elliot, “I can’t believe it. That disgusting Professor Chase made a pass at me.”
    “Did he give you the story about the dead wife? About how lonely he is?”
    “Yes!” Melissa Greenberg’s pitch was high enough to shatter glass. “How did you know?”
    “He tries that on everyone. Meanwhile, his wife works over in the admissions office.”
    Joanne Clarke remained locked in the stall in the bathroom until night fell.
    Now Joanne refused to think about such things. This, this night was different. After behaving like a perfect gentleman, concluding each of their previous evenings together with a brief kiss, but on the lips, John Wosileski obviously both liked and respected her. Therefore, if things were to go in that direction, she might very well say yes.
     
    John Wosileski was thinking about sex too. It was possible that tonight he could get lucky, and he felt a slight pressure in his groin at the prospect of a live woman. Because, he knew, Joanne Clarkelived with her father, if anything did happen, it would happen here, at John’s place, and so in preparation, should the event come to pass, he brushed off the bits of debris and crumbs from the sheets, and he picked his dirty socks up from the floor.
     
    Valentine Kessler came in through the back door and raced up the stairs to her bedroom, where she hid a book under her bed. No matter what the librarian said about not having to hide it,