"It's awful hot, I know," she whispered apologetically. Standing there with her back to the window, she was faceless within a dazzling halo of hair, while the light was so strong on his face that it burned out any expression; she wore a mask of shadow, he wore a mask of light.

"I'll open the window so we can get a little breeze," he whispered.

"You can't. It's stuck."

"Jesus."

"Sorry. Would you like a glass of water? If I run it a long time, it gets cold. Well... cool, anyway."

"Do we have to whisper?"

"No, but I..."

"But you don't want your neighbors to know you have someone up here?"

She nodded. "You see, I've never..." She swallowed noisily, and the noise of it embarrassed her.

"Yes, I would like a glass of water, thank you," he said, not whispering, but speaking very softly. He sat on the edge of the bed, sunk up to his chest in shadow.

She turned the single tap above a chipped sink and let the water overflow the glass onto her wrist until it got cool, glad to have something to do-or, more exactly, to have something to delay what they were going to do.

The harsh streetlight picked out a two-ring hot plate on the table. Its cord ran up to a dangling overhead light. The bulb had been taken out and replaced by a screw-in socket. Cooking in the room was forbidden, but she did it anyway to save money. She unplugged the hot plate and hid it when she left for work. There was an open workbook and a pad of paper beside the hot plate: the Gregg Method. These everyday objects were abstracted, caricatured, by the brittle streetlight that set their edges aglow but coated them with thick shadow. The room had a shrill, unreal quality of a bright but deserted carnival lot.

She brought him the glass of water; he thanked her and drank it down; she asked if he would like another; he said he wouldn't, thank you; she told him it wouldn't be any trouble; he said no thanks, and she stood there awkwardly.

"Hey, what's this?" he asked, holding up a glass sphere that his fingers had discovered beneath her pillow where they had been unconsciously searching for that coolness that children seek by turning pillows over and putting their cheek on them.

"That's my snowstorm."

He shook the heavy glass paperweight and held it out into the band of light across the bed to watch the snow swirl around a carrot-nosed snowman. "Your own private snowstorm. A handy thing on a hot night like this!"

"I won it at the county fair when I was a kid. I used my ride money to buy a raffle ticket, and I won third prize. I told my folks I found it at the fairground, because they're dead against raffles and bingo games and all kinds of gambling. My snowstorm's the only thing I took with me when I left home. Except my clothes, of course."

"So your snowstorm's your friend, eh? A trusted companion through the trials and tribulations of life."

"I keep it under my pillow, and sometimes at night when I'm feeling real blue I shake it and watch the snow whirl, and it makes me feel safer and more... oh, I don't know." She shrugged.

"Back to your sentry post, loyal snowstorm." He returned the paperweight to beneath her pillow and patted it into place; then he reached up, took her hands, and drew her down to sit beside him.

"Please..." she said in a thin voice. "I'm scared. I really shouldn't of... I mean, I've never..." She knew her hands were clammy with fear, and she wished they weren't.

He spoke softly. "Listen. If you want me to go, I'll just tiptoe down the stairs and slip out. Isthat what you want?"

"...No, but... Couldn't we just..."

"You know what I think? I think I'd better go. You're scared, and I wouldn't want to talk you into anything you don't want to do." He rose from the bed.

"No, don't go!" Her voice was tight with the effort to speak softly.

He sat down again, but left a distance between their hips.

For a moment she didn't say anything, just sat there kneading the fingers of her left hand with her right. Then she squeezed them hard. She had come to a decision. She began speaking in a flat tone. "I was sitting at the table, like I do every night. Practicing my shorthand by the light of the street lamp because it's too hot to put on the light. And suddenly I was crying. I just felt so empty and lonely and blue! I wasn't sobbing or anything. The tears just poured out and poured out. I didn't think I had so many tears in me. I was so lonely."Her voice squeaked on the word. "I don't know a soul here in the city. Don't have any friends. Even back home, I never went on a date. My folks wouldn't let me. They said that one thing leads to another. They said boys only want one thing. And I suppose they're right."

"Yes, they are," he said sincerely.

"After a while I stopped crying." She smiled wanly. "I guess I just ran out of tears. I splashed cool water on my face and tried to work at my shorthand some more, but then I just closed the book and said no! No, I won't just sit here and mope! I'll dress up in my best and go out and findsomeone. Someone to talk to. Someone to care about me and hold me when I'm feeling blue."

"You decided to go out and just... let yourself be picked up?"

"I didn't think about it that way, but... Yes, I guess so."

"You wanted to make love with a total stranger?"

"No, no. Well... not exactly. You see, I've never..." She shook her head.

"Shall I tell you something? I knew you were a virgin when I first saw you. Yes, I did. You had that Good Girl look. Like June Allyson. But somehow-don't ask me how-I could tell that the good girl was looking for a bad boy to make love to her. Funny, how I could tell that, eh?"

"But you're wrong. I was just looking for someone to talk to. Someone who might care about me."

"Oh. So you didn't want to make love, is that it?"

"I don't know. Maybe I did. Sort of, anyway. I didn't think it out or anything, I just took my towel and went down to the bathroom and had a long cool bath, then I put on my good dress, and out I went. Just like that."

"...Just like that."

"I took the bus downtown, and I walked around. Boys on street corners looked at me. You know, the way they look at any woman. But none of them... I guess I'm not... I know I'm not pretty or anything..." She paused, half hoping for a contradiction. Then she went on. "They looked at me, but nobody said hello or anything, so..." She shrugged.

"So you decided to go to the movies. Woman's World."

"Yes." Her voice had a minor key fade of failure.

"But hey, wait a minute! You did meet someone! Not much of a someone, maybe. Just your common garden variety drifter. But you talked to him for hours over coffee. And now... here we are."

"Yes, here we are," she echoed. "And I'm afraid."

"Of course you're afraid. That's only natural. It isn't every day that a virgin sits in the dark with a bad boy she hardly knows." She didn't respond, so he pursued. "Even though you're a virgin. I suppose you know about how two people... love, and all?"

"Yes. Well, sort of. Girls used to giggle about it in the school locker room. They talked about how people... did it. I didn't believe them at first."

"I know just what you mean. To a kid, it seems such a silly thing to do. Putting your peeing equipment together. How could thatbe fun? And when you think of your own folks doing it...! It's enough to gag a maggot, as a folksy old tramp might say."

"The girls at school used to make up terrible stories about... it. Just to see me blush. I was easy to tease because I was shy, and I didn't know anything. My mother never told me anything. Once the girls played this joke on me? They gave me a folded piece of paper and asked me to write down my favorite number, then on the next line my favorite color, then my second favorite color, then-oh, I don't remember all the things; but the last question was whether I bit ice cream cones or licked them. Then they unfolded the paper and read it out loud. And there in my own handwriting I had written how many times a day my boyfriend and I didit, and what the color of his... thing... was when we started, and what color it was when we ended, and stuff like that."