In One Person

slender hands. “It’s one thing to have Kittredge insulting me—he insults everyone. But having
you
insult me, Bill—well, that’s just too much!”
    In an effort to leave the First Sister Public Library in a flamboyant pique, Atkins once again encountered that menacing mirror in the foyer, where he paused to deliver a parting shot. “I’m not your
shadow
, Bill—Kittredge is,” Atkins said.
    He was gone before he could hear me say, “Fuck Kittredge.”
    “Watch your language, William,” Miss Frost said, putting her long fingers to my lips. “After all, we’re in a fucking
library
.”
    The
fucking
word was not one that came to mind when I thought of her—in the same way that Miss Frost seemed an implausible Alberta—but when I looked at her, she was smiling. She was just teasing me; her long fingers now brushed my cheek.
    “A curious reference to the
shadow
word, William,” she said. “Would it be the unpronounceable word that caused your unplanned exit from
King Lear
?”
    “It would,” I told her. “I guess you heard. In a town this small, I think everyone hears everything!”
    “Maybe not quite everyone—possibly not quite everything, William,” Miss Frost said. “It appears to me, for example, that
you
haven’t heard everything—about me, I mean.”
    I knew that Nana Victoria didn’t like Miss Frost, but I didn’t know why. I knew that Aunt Muriel had issues with Miss Frost’s choice in bras, but how could I have brought up the training-bra subject when I had just expressed my love for everything about Miss Frost?
    “My grandmother,” I started to say, “and my aunt Muriel—”
    But Miss Frost lightly touched my lips with her long fingers again. “
Shhh
, William,” she whispered. “I don’t need to hear what those ladies think of me. I’m much more interested in hearing about that project of yours in the old yearbook room.”
    “Oh, it’s not really a project,” I told her. “I just look at the wrestling-team photos, mostly—and at the pictures of the plays that the Drama Club performed.”
    “
Do
you?” Miss Frost somewhat absently asked. Why was it I got the feeling that she was acting—in a kind of on-again, off-again way? What was it she’d said, when Richard Abbott had asked her if she’d ever been
onstage
—if she’d ever
acted
?
    “Only in my mind,” she’d answered him, almost flirtatiously. “When I was younger—all the time.”
    “And what year are you up to in those old yearbooks, William—which graduating class?” Miss Frost then asked.
    “Nineteen thirty-one,” I answered. Her fingers had strayed from my lips; she was touching the collar of my shirt, almost as if there were something about a boy’s button-down dress shirt that had affected her—a sentimental attachment, maybe.
    “You’re so close,” Miss Frost said.
    “Close to
what
?” I asked her.
    “Just close,” she said. “We haven’t much time.”
    “Is it time to close the library?” I asked her, but Miss Frost only smiled; then, as if giving the matter more thought, she glanced at her watch.
    “Well, what harm is there in closing a little early tonight?” she said suddenly.
    “Sure—why not?” I said. “There’s no one here but us. I don’t think Atkins is coming back.”
    “Poor Tom,” Miss Frost said. “He doesn’t have a crush on
me
, William—Tom Atkins has a crush on
you
!”
    The second she said so, I knew it was true. “Poor Tom,” which would become how I thought of Atkins, probably sensed I had a crush on Miss Frost; he must have been jealous of her.
    “Poor Tom is just spying on me,
and
you,” Miss Frost told me. “And what does Kittredge want to talk to you about?” she suddenly asked me.
    “Oh, that’s nothing—that’s just a German thing. I help Kittredge with his German,” I explained.
    “Tom Atkins would be a safer choice for you than Jacques Kittredge, William,” Miss Frost said. I knew this was true, too, though I didn’t find Atkins attractive—except in the way that someone who adores you can become a
little
attractive to you, over time. (But that almost never works out, does it?)
    Yet, when I began to tell Miss Frost that I wasn’t really attracted to Atkins—that not
all
boys were attractive to me, just a very few boys, actually—well, this time she put her lips to mine. She simply kissed me. It was a fairly firm kiss, moderately aggressive; there was only one assertive thrust, a single dart of her warm tongue.