On the way back from the dance in the days of cars with bench seats, she slid over to you, 
put her hand on your thigh, said Shall we park? & she was dark & beautiful & now these 
many years later you see she was desperate for you & you for her & what did you say, 
Catholic boy? Oh, I’d better get home & fact was you could have said I’d love to, but I 
wouldn’t know what to do—and now you know that that would have been OK, that she 
would have said I’ll teach you, then—she was kind that way—for she’d been taught & 
perhaps had taught others & for her this was not new, and what a lesson it would 
have been.
        Twenty years later you’re alone on an elevator in a department store, you’re going 
down & the door opens at a floor before the one you want & you see in the distance a 
gold brocade dress draped across an ornate chair & from hard right she steps into the 
elevator & you look at each other & you hear her quick intake of breath as she must have 
heard yours & she turns to face the door & at the ground floor the door opens & each of 
you walks away.