“Mrs. Heino?” Ellen raised her voice. “You can send Billy to get me in the lounge when everyone’s through eating.”

Mrs. Heino nodded and Ellen beat a hasty retreat. She had ten minutes, perhaps fifteen if Mary Christine Fanger dawdled over her food.

When the current year had opened, Ellen had been delighted to find that the first and the sixth grades had common lunch periods. That meant she’d see Rob Applegate in the teachers’ lounge every day. Since he was the only male teacher, and single, and she was the only female teacher under forty, it seemed natural that eventually they’d get together.

Twenty-eight years old, Ellen hadn’t been out on a date since her junior year in college, when her roommate’s fiancé had buttonholed one of his friends to take her to their engagement party. Ellen’s escort had danced with her dutifully, but the moment the party was over he’d dropped her off at her dorm and she’d never heard from him again. Men just didn’t seem to be interested in tall, lanky women with glasses. Of course, she had plenty of men friends. She helped them write their term papers and study for their exams, but they’d never shown any signs of wanting a closer relationship.

Rob Applegate was different. A thirty-six-year-old bachelor who lived in an apartment over his mother’s garage, he was as tall as she was, and almost as skinny. Alma Jacobson, who taught third grade and knew everything about everyone in Thief River Falls, said he didn’t have a girlfriend, but that his mother was hoping he’d get married before she was too old to enjoy her grandchildren. And he seemed to like Ellen, always stopping by her room to ask how someone’s younger brother or sister was doing.

One day over coffee in the teachers’ lounge, Rob had mentioned that he didn’t like to see women in slacks. Ellen had never worn them to school again. And when he’d said that his favorite color was aqua blue, she’d gone right out and bought an aqua-blue sweater even though she hated the color. She’d carried flowers to his mother when Mrs. Applegate had gone into the hospital for gallbladder surgery, the card signed by the whole staff so it wouldn’t look obvious. And she’d roused herself out of bed to drive to the Lutheran Church every Sunday because his brother was the minister. She’d even volunteered to teach a Sunday school class, although the last thing she wanted was to face more children on the weekends. Not that any of it mattered, now.

On her long-anticipated date with Rob, they’d gone to see a movie at the only theater in Thief River Falls, a Saturday matinee. Ellen had thought it was rather good, a shoot-out between two rival gangs on the streets of New York, but Rob hadn’t liked it at all. On the drive to a steak house out on the highway, he’d complained about its gratuitous violence, another example of the movie industry’s lack of commitment to the younger generation.

Despite the fact that Rob drove slowly, obeying every traffic law and speed limit sign, they’d arrived at the restaurant early. The hostess had seated them in the bar and asked if they wanted a drink. Ellen said a glass of white wine would be nice, but Rob had ordered plain 7UP. Then he’d warned her that it wouldn’t do for anyone in the community to see her drinking. She was a teacher, after all, and she should take her responsibility for molding young minds more seriously. She shouldn’t get the idea that he disapproved, but he only drank at home, where no prying eyes could see him.

Though Ellen had kept her glass out of sight and there was no one else in the bar, Rob seemed to be terribly nervous. When the waitress had come to take them to their table, a lovely spot looking out over a snow-covered garden, Rob had insisted they move to a place in the center of the room. Windows could be drafty, he pointed out, and he didn’t want to take any chances of catching a cold and having to miss work. Even though he always left detailed lesson plans, a substitute couldn’t begin to teach his class as well as he could. They’d ordered a steak for her and chicken for him. Red meat was bad for the digestion and a man over thirty had to watch his cholesterol. No garlic bread either; he didn’t believe in strong spices. Decaffeinated coffee, of course, since it was past six.

Ellen still wasn’t willing to give up on the only bachelor she knew. As they ate, she attempted to make conversation. Had he seen the special on public television about ancient Rome? Rob didn’t own a television set. He was firmly convinced that television had done more to corrupt the morals of the young than any other technological advance in their lifetime. Ellen scratched television off her list of possible topics and asked about his hobbies. There she struck pay dirt. It seemed Rob was an amateur photographer, specializing in local birds. Did she know that there were over seventeen varieties of finch in the three-mile area surrounding Thief River Falls? He’d recently acquired a very excellent telephoto lens, four hundred millimeters. And the first day he’d gone out with his motor-driven Nikon, he’d managed to capture the mating ritual of the North American crested grosbeak. He’d be delighted to show her his photographs after dinner.

Accepting, Ellen had spent the rest of the meal wondering whether being invited to a man’s apartment to see his photos of North American crested grosbeaks was the same as being asked to view someone’s etchings. She hadn’t asked out loud. Rob had left a straight 15 percent tip and then they’d driven back to his apartment.

That was when the trouble had started. He’d asked her to duck down in the seat three blocks before they’d reached his mother’s house. It didn’t look good for a bachelor to bring a woman home at night; people might talk. Ellen had complied, what else could she do? He’d driven into the garage, shut the door behind them, and whispered for her to be quiet so his mother wouldn’t find out she was there. And after they’d tiptoed up the stairs, he’d headed straight for the bottle of brandy hidden behind the sugar canister in his cupboard.

She’d seen his pictures, all of them, and learned much more than she’d ever wanted to know about birds. By then he’d finished the bottle of brandy. For a man who didn’t drink in public, he certainly made up for it at home. The moment the bottle was empty, he’d grabbed her and kissed her. And then he’d passed out on the couch.

Furious, Ellen had grabbed her coat and walked the ten blocks to her own apartment, practically freezing in the skirt she’d worn to please him. Rob Applegate was a terrible stick-in-the-mud and a hypocrite to boot. He’d even had the nerve to come up to her after church the next morning to ask whether she’d had a good time.

As she headed down the hallway, Ellen caught sight of her reflection in the mirrored door of the multipurpose room. Wearing a new red pantsuit she’d ordered from the Penney’s extra-tall catalog, she thought she looked much better than usual. Skirts always hung awkwardly on her boyish hips, and if she tucked her blouses in, only a padded brassiere gave her any bustline at all. This pantsuit’s tunic masked her figure and her legs felt warm for the first time this winter.

Heading on down the corridor, Ellen frowned at the grimy handprints on the walls. They could do with a good scrubbing or even better, a bright, cheerful paint job. Everything outside was black-and-white, glaring white sheets of snow dotted with the bare black skeletons of trees. Children needed color in their lives and the school was decorated in dirty beige and anemic green. Red and blue stripes would be nice, or even a bright cheerful yellow. Billy Zabinski might be less of a problem if school offered a nice bright environment.

A bad draft whistled under the big glass doors that led to the playground, and Ellen shivered. The snow was blowing so hard she could barely see the pine trees at the far edge of the playground. If visibility grew severely limited, as predicted in the weather report, the buses might come early to take the children home. And if the wind kept on blowing through the night, they might just have a school closure in the morning. It would be nice to have a snow day, but in Minnesota the plows hit the roads the moment the snow started to fall and stayed out until it stopped. The whole system was very efficient. They’d had years to perfect it.