“I’m Bil Franklin,” he said.

Aha! Bil Franklin was the drama professor, a famous queen, known among the students as “Uncle Pervy.” Brenda had never met him. He taught at night, in the university theater. He had an office in the department, but the door was always closed.

“Oh, hi! It’s nice to final y put a face to the name. I’m Brenda Lyndon.”

“Yes, I know.”

She smiled, trying not to let his unfortunate nickname color her first impression. Bil Franklin was in his midfifties, he had a nondescript, semi-desperate traveling-salesman aura about him. Something about him was familiar. She had seen him before. Around campus, maybe. Brenda sneaked another look at him sideways as she nibbled on a radish.

“This is a very nice event,” she said.

And at the same time, he said, “You seem to be quite popular with the kids.”

“Oh,” she said. “Wel , who knows? I like teaching. I love it. Today I was late and the class just started up without me.”

“You’re very young.”

“I’l be thirty this month,” Brenda said.

“Much closer to their age. They must find you intriguing.”

“Intriguing?” Brenda said. “Oh, I kind of doubt that.”

Bil Franklin was drinking a Michelob. He brought the bottle to his lips. He had a gray handlebar mustache. A handlebar mustache. Something about the mustache rang a bel , but why? Brenda got a funny-sick feeling in her stomach. It was a real y bad paranoid suspicion. Real y bad.

Through three bites of pasta salad, she watched Suzanne Atela conferring with the head caterer. Dr. Atela was pointing; Brenda heard the word

“coffee.” Brenda had to stand up. She wanted to look at Bil Franklin from across the room. She pretended to be headed for the punch bowl, though the punch was the color of Pepto-Bismol, and no one had touched it. She lingered, trying to get a good, long look without getting caught. Okay. He drank from his bottle, he saw her, he winked. Winked.

Brenda looked away, horrified. Horrified! We’re in Soho. It’s like another country. The man at the end of the bar would like to pay for your drink.

The man at the end of the bar at the Cupping Room the night Brenda met Walsh, the night she kissed Walsh and flaunted her hot longing for al to see . . . the man who offered to buy her a drink was Bil Franklin.

Brenda cancel ed Walsh without explanation, and nine o’clock found him leaning against Brenda’s buzzer until she let him in.

On purpose, she was wearing sweatpants. Since they were no longer to be lovers, he could see her looking grubby. Ancient Philadelphia marathon T-shirt, ponytail, no makeup. Wel , a little makeup. Brenda took a long time with the dead bolts. She didn’t want to see him.

“What’s going on?” he said. “You sounded bloody awful on the phone. What happened?”

Walsh stepped inside, and she locked the door back up. Her apartment, at least, was safe. She took her clothes off before Walsh could get a good look at them.

Later, as they lay in bed sweating and spent, Walsh kissed her temple. Some days he seemed much older than he real y was. Maybe because he was from Australia.

“You’re upset,” he said. “Tel me what happened.”

She inhaled. “One of the professors in the department . . . the drama guy, Bil Franklin . . .”

“Uncle Pervy?” Walsh said.

“Yes. He was at the Cupping Room the night we were there.”

“He was? How do you know? Did he tel you?”

“I recognized him,” Brenda said. “He tried to buy me a drink. I remember him. At the other end of the bar. He was wearing the same suit he wore to the luncheon. And his mustache, with the curlicue ends al waxed, you don’t forget something like that. He winked at me. Oh, God. It’s awful.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t some other bloke with the same suit?”

“I wish it was,” Brenda said. “But I’m sure. And I mean, sure. Same guy. And he knows. I’m sure he knows. He said al this stuff about my being young. He said the students must find me ‘intriguing.’”

“Intriguing?”

“He knows. It was the way he said it. He knows, Walsh. Okay, that’s it. I will be fired. You wil be . . . wel , hopeful y nothing wil happen to you.”

“Come on,” Walsh said.

“We have to stop,” Brenda said. “If I get fired, my career is over. My whole professional life. Everything I’ve worked for, the things I’m building on.

Because I would like to stay at Champion, and if Champion doesn’t want to offer me anything permanent, then I would like to teach someplace else.

I can’t have a weird sexual thing on my record. No one wil hire me.”

“I can’t stop,” Walsh said. “I don’t want to stop.”

“I don’t want to stop, either,” Brenda said. “Obviously. But is this any way to conduct a relationship? Sneaking around, hoping nobody catches us?”

“It hasn’t seemed to bother you before.”

“Wel , now everything’s different.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“I can’t believe you care what Uncle Pervy thinks. I hear stories about that guy al the time.”

“Yeah, but not with undergraduates. Not with his own students.”

“No, but stil . That guy has too many skeletons in his own closet to blow the whistle on us . . .”

Brenda slid out of bed and stumbled through the dark apartment to the front door, where she found her sweats in a pile on the floor. Brenda put them on. She thought about how much she loved her class. But Walsh was part of that class and part of why she loved it was because he was in it.

She thought of Bil Franklin winking at her. Ugh! They must find you intriguing. Because I saw you kissing one of your students at a bar. But that night in the Cupping Room had been nearly two months earlier, and if Bil Franklin hadn’t said anything about it to Suzanne Atela yet, he might be planning to keep it under his hat. After al , he had no reason to sting Brenda. He didn’t even know her. There were only five weeks left in the semester, anyway. The other day Walsh had told Brenda he wanted to take her back to Fremantle and introduce her to his mother, and Brenda had gone so far as to check flights from New York to Perth on the Internet. Brenda thought about their names, side by side at the top of his paper. John Walsh /Dr. Brenda Lyndon. He was a col ege sophomore. He was her student. Romantic or sexual relationships are forbidden between a faculty member and a student.

“Brindah,” he cal ed out.

Her mind was a muddy puddle.

. . . and will result in disciplinary action.

“Brindah?”

She couldn’t come up with an answer.

I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop.

I can’t stop.

Brenda didn’t stop. Her relationship with Walsh had too much momentum. And so, they continued to see each other, but only at Brenda’s apartment. Brenda was firm in this. The beautiful weather beckoned; Walsh wanted to be outside. He wanted to walk with Brenda, lie in the grass with Brenda. It was against his nature to be cooped up in her apartment, where the windows didn’t even open. But no, sorry—Brenda said no. She wouldn’t budge.

In class, Brenda was increasingly businesslike, serious, professional. She was young, but that didn’t mean she was frivolous! That didn’t mean she would fly in the face of the strictest university rule and sleep with one of her students!

Brenda was consumed with anxiety, but she had no one to talk about it with. She couldn’t tel her parents or Vicki and she hadn’t spoken to Erik vanCott since their dinner at Craft. The bad news of Erik marrying Noel seemed very minor when compared to the bad news of Brenda losing her job and watching her good name go up in flames. Besides, what would she possibly say? I’m sleeping with one of my students. When phrased like that, which was to say, bluntly, without nuance or detail, it sounded tawdry and lecherous. It was the kind of secret that Brenda would have been ashamed to tel her therapist, if she had a therapist. The only person Brenda could vent to was Walsh himself, and he was growing weary of it.

Brenda yammered on about getting caught, getting fired, what if, God forbid . . . until the words clinked like worthless coins. Relax, he said. You’re acting like such an American. Obsessing like this.

Brenda’s class read Anne Lamott’s Crooked Little Heart, which was the book Amrita the brownnoser had chosen to write her midterm paper on, and yet Amrita’s customary seat, to Brenda’s right, was vacant first on Tuesday and then again on Thursday.

“Does anyone know where Amrita is?” Brenda asked.

There was throat-clearing, a noise that sounded like a sneeze but could just as easily have been a snicker from one of the Rebeccas, a bunch of downcast eyes. Brenda got a funny vibe, but she couldn’t pinpoint it and no one in the class was going to talk. Brenda scribbled, Call Amrita! at the top of her notes.

Spring break arrived. Walsh had rugby games in Van Cortlandt Park, he wanted Brenda to come watch him, they could picnic afterward, but she refused. I can’t. Someone will see me. Someone will figure it out. Erik vanCott cal ed and left a message, asking Brenda to be the best man in his wedding. Brenda thought he was kidding, but then he left another message. Best man? she thought. Would she have to stand on the altar looking like Victor Victoria while “marriage material” Noel looked stunning in silk shantung and tul e? For her vacation, Brenda took the train up to Darien to see Vicki, Ted, and the kids. Vicki wasn’t feeling wel ; she’d been to the hospital for tests. Walking pneumonia, they thought it was. Brenda said, Ugh, are you contagious? She washed her hands, she kept a safe distance. She asked Vicki about being Erik vanCott’s best man. Tuxedo? she said. Black dress, Vicki said. But nothing too sexy. You’re not allowed to upstage the bride. One night, when Ted was out with clients, Brenda nearly confessed to Vicki about Walsh, but she held her tongue. Instead, they talked about Nantucket. Would they go, together, separately, when would they go, how long would they stay? Vicki said, I have a family, Bren. I have to plan. Brenda said, Just let me get through this semester.