Ms. Hempel still held the photograph that she wanted to know more about. She would have her chance, eventually; she and Ms. Duffy were friends, school friends, in the sense that they had belonged to the same group of youngish teachers who adjourned to a dark Irish bar as soon as the bell rang on Friday afternoons. Returning the picture to its pile, she gathered up her untouched books, wondered if her failure to reread act 2 of Romeo and Juliet would prevent her from sparking a spirited class discussion (maybe she’d just ask them to act out their favorite scenes instead; the boys could cheerfully spend an entire period bellowing, “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”), and watched as Ms. Duffy was escorted out of the faculty lounge, in search of her former fifth graders.
“Look who’s here,” cried Ms. Olin, leading the way.
The whole display was affecting, but naive. Ms. Hempel imagined a procession moving in stately fashion down the middle school corridors, cheering administrators, a swaying litter, children tossing flower petals and pencil shavings in its path. Ms. Duffy was back! Once more there would be field trips to Chinatown for soup dumplings, and scavenger hunts in the botanic gardens, and sing-alongs to the Meat Puppets and other college-radio stars of the ’80s. Once more the Temple of Dendur would be erected in all its cardboard and tempura glory. The final bittersweet pages of Tuck Everlasting would again be read aloud in Ms. Duffy’s husky, choked-up voice. Fifth graders of the world, rejoice!
But Ms. Hempel knew better. Ms. Duffy was merely stopping by. She knew as soon as she saw her: Anna Duffy wasn’t ever coming back, even after her big hard belly resolved itself into a baby. Most likely necessity prompted this visit; she probably needed to empty her locker, or roll over her retirement plan. Didn’t the others see? She was no longer one of them; at some point during her year, she had turned away. Slipped into her civilian clothes and disappeared. And if she was back now, it was only to say good-bye or — if Ms. Hempel were writing the script — So long, suckers! A farewell so improbable, it made Ms. Hempel laugh.
THE IRISH BAR WAS ONLY a few blocks away from their school. Beautiful Ms. Cruz, who really did lead the fabled double life of the librarian, had discovered it one night while careening through town with a free jazz drummer nearly twice her age. Mooney’s had been their last stop. What must Ms. Cruz have been thinking when she stepped out onto the sparkling, empty avenue, her head resting against the drummer’s shoulder, dawn only an hour away, and saw that she was literally around the corner from her desk, her rubber stamps, her little stack of late notices? Maybe she was thinking, How perfect. To feel one’s real life rub up so closely, so careless, against one’s school life — there was no greater enchantment. Or so Ms. Hempel supposed, having never put enough distance between the two to experience it herself. She liked to hear Ms. Cruz talk, in her mild and self-effacing way, about all the old musicians she had fallen for. The hard-drinking drummer included. Ms. Cruz took him home with her that night, and then on Friday she took the teachers to Mooney’s.
The narrow space was illuminated by strings of colored Christmas lights and a glowing clock. A jukebox stood in the back, in between the cavelike entrances to two bathrooms whose affiliation with any particular sex was never rigidly observed. Black battered tables, high unsteady stools, linoleum floor. The floor was wonderful to dance on. It made Ms. Hempel feel very graceful and coordinated, even before she started drinking. All the teachers loved to dance on Friday afternoons. They did the Hustle. They did the Electric Slide. The sticky blinds on Mooney’s windows were always pulled shut, so it was easy to forget that it was only four o’clock and the sun was still shining outside and no one had come home from work yet. They danced as if it were the middle of the night. They did silly moves they remembered from high school and looked good doing them. When Mr. Radovich tried to dance like he was black, no one minded. They were too happy feeding quarters into the jukebox, shimmying to the bar and back. As she bumped hips with Ms. Cruz and sashayed toward the bathrooms, Ms. Hempel realized that she was actually meant to spend her whole life dancing, like those characters in the Ice Capades who go about their daily business on skates.
For someone who had an abundance of freckles and almost always wore clogs, Ms. Duffy could dance astonishingly well. She shook back her hair and half closed her eyes and lifted her chin ever so slightly, as if a handsome, invisible person were tilting her face up to kiss her. And then she stepped from side to side, with a barely discernible lilt in her hips, her spine long and straight, her shoulders faintly twitching, the movement small, purposeful, precise, and entirely effortless. It was the simplest dance in the world. And also the most beguiling, somehow. It inspired a feeling of great confidence in Ms. Duffy’s body and the various things she could do with it. Other dancers drew close to her, unconsciously. She could often be found in the middle of a spontaneous dance sandwich. One afternoon Mr. Polidori sprang from his bar stool, cracked his knuckles, and then slid across the linoleum floor on his knees to arrive breathless at her neatly shuffling feet.
Ms. Hempel liked to think that this was the moment at which their grand passion began. Of course she could be wrong; Mr. Polidori performed sudden, extravagant gestures all the time — kissing your hand in gratitude, wrapping his fingers around your neck and gently throttling you, draping his arm across your shoulders with comradely indifference — gestures that thrilled Ms. Hempel whenever she happened, through luck and proximity, to be the recipient. Her skin on fire, she felt how ridiculous it was: Mr. Polidori, as a rule, could not be taken seriously. And Ms. Duffy did not appear to do so. After he came gliding across the floor, arms outspread, she merely offered him her hand and hoisted him up, never once losing the beat of her winsome little dance. But what if, as their hands joined, a secret message was exchanged? A message that took them both by surprise. Ms. Hempel wished that she had been sharp enough to catch the exchange; she thought of this moment only in retrospect, as she tried to make a story of what had happened. How interesting it would have been to witness the very inception of an affair! Or, rather, a thing; these days only married people were entitled to affairs. Either way, she could have hoarded up the image — he on his knees, she swaying above him — to share with Amit when he came home. Walking back dreamily from the bar, the afternoon light slanting across the pavement, Ms. Hempel was full of marvelous jokes and observations and stories to tell him. But then she went inside and it got dark; she turned up the television and felt a headache coming on, and by the time Amit returned from the lab, she couldn’t think of anything to say, even when he wrinkled his nose and tranquilly asked, “How come you smell like cigarettes?”
MS. HEMPEL WONDERED about the father of Ms. Duffy’s baby. A sloe-eyed camel driver singing beneath his breath? A poet studying English at the university, or maybe a young doctor who led the way through a bazaar? She spent much of last period considering the possibilities. And if in her speculations she caught a whiff of something faintly rotten and imperial, she ignored it. Of all the wonderful novels E. M. Forster had ever written, A Passage to India was her favorite. It made her wonder, Were there any caves in Yemen? Caves that Ms. Duffy could have wandered into to explore, and then stumbled out of, dazed and transformed?
At the entrance to the library, Ms. Cruz sat behind her enormous wraparound desk. It resembled a sort of cockpit, its high sides studded with librarian paraphernalia, Ms. Cruz wheeling expertly about the interior in her ergonomic chair. The desk had two levels; the lower level was intended for the librarian’s use as she tried to do her work, while the higher level was meant for those standing around the desk and bothering the librarian. It was chest-high, the ideal spot for quickly finishing one’s math problems before class, or asking importunate questions about the fate of the dinosaurs, or resting one’s elbows, as Mrs. Willoughby was now doing, and speaking in confidential tones with Ms. Cruz below.