“A crush. I have them all the time. I have one on the guy who delivers springwater.”

“You, too?”

“We have the same guy?”

“I had an affair with one. It ended my first marriage.”

They stopped and looked at each other. LuAnn said: “That’s why it ended, and you never told me?”

“It was eighteen years ago, and it was dramatic and tragic and all that. Now it seems like another life.”

[...] Before he got to the passenger door, I was feeling that first wave of thrill. Oh, thrill is dangerous; living is dangerous. He filled the seat. I gave him a cigarette and a light and lit mine. He’s divorced and isn’t with his children enough; he doesn’t go home to them and wake up with them. He takes them on weekends, but sometimes he doesn’t have whole weekends; the home takes him—girls run away or try to kill themselves, or some staff have the flu. So he hurts. He’s one of those who hurts and just keeps going. There was a tree between us and the streetlamp in front of my car, and the road was lit, but we were in shadows there, and the lilacs between us and the home are tall, and I couldn’t see the downstairs windows. There were houses across the street with lights low, people watching television. You could make love on their front lawns and they wouldn’t know. Murder somebody, and they wouldn’t know till morning. I wanted to kiss him and I was trying to think of something to say, about Sylvie, about anything. Three drags on my cigarette. Two or three on his. Then he said: ‘I like watching you read.’ I didn’t say anything; it was in my face, though. Probably since he got in the car like a panther, if panthers were shaped like bears. Probably since I said: Join me.’ He leaned to kiss me and I leaned, and we were kissing and I reached behind him and dropped my cigarette out his window, and I felt him drop his. Then our hands were free: shirts unbuttoned. I was wearing jeans; we pulled them down and my underpants, and his. I wanted to get in the passenger seat, with him kneeling on the floor and my feet on the dashboard. I said: ‘Move.’ He pushed the seat back, got a condom from his wallet, and took off his shoes and slacks and shorts, and I was pushing my underpants and jeans—I had them to my ankles; then I knew I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Because of those seconds when we weren’t kissing and touching. I was touching my jeans and my pants and my skin. I saw myself walking into my house. I saw myself walking through the kitchen and the dining room to Ted in the living room. I didn’t see Ted. Or Julia and Elizabeth and Sam in their beds. I saw my face and the front of my body, walking toward—me. Walking on the floor toward me. And I knew I must not do this. I wanted to. All I could feel was my body and this thing in my chest that wanted to explode. Into blossom. But I knew, and I pulled on my underpants and I was pulling up my jeans and feeling with my feet for my moccasins, all that breathing in the car, and I said: ‘I can’t.’ I looked at him. I hadn’t stopped looking at him, but I looked at his eyes and said: ‘I’m sorry.’ I had my jeans up and my moccasins on and by the time I was buttoning my shirt, he was dressed. His eyes were beautiful. He said: ‘Don’t be.’

In the stadium the music was joyful and LuAnn walked to its beat. They passed the boys playing basketball, and she said: “I’ll go to confession today.”

“Really?”

“It’s at four on Saturdays.”

“I didn’t know you did that.”

“Not much.”

“Do you think you need to?”

“Yes.”

“To be forgiven?”

“No. I’m always being forgiven. But I’ll get strength from it. We do it face-to-face now. I’ll just go sit with the priest and tell him.”

“If you tell him like you told me, you’ll have another struggle on your hands.”

“It’s a very simple language. I’ll say I placed myself in the occasion of sin, and I nearly committed adultery, and I don’t want that to happen, ever.”