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not to slide my fingers beneath the desk and touch the bare skin of his leg.
    “Um,” he said. His hand began to scratch at his scalp.
    “Wait,” I said. “I have an idea.” I walked up to my desk and grabbed my purse and a box of Kleenex. “So what I’m wearing now is called fuchsia. Kind of a bright pink.” I sat and wiped it off, then took the fuchsia tube of lipstick out of my purse along with two others . “Okay, ready?” He nodded with sudden animation—we were about to play a game.
    I locked eyes with him. “Watch my lips,” I instructed. I applied the red and rubbed my lips together. His hands left the desk and folded in his lap. “Do you like this more or less than the one I had on?”
    He smiled and gave a small shrug. “I like them both.”
    “Let’s try option three, then.” I winked at him and cleaned the red lipstick off with exaggerated strokes, using far more Kleenexthan necessary, as though I’d just eaten a very sloppy meal. I loved having his full attention. “This last one is coral.” I applied it then rubbed my lips together and parted them with a playful smack. “Which one’s your favorite?”
    “They all look good.” His stare didn’t break from my mouth; he spoke in a hypnotized monotone.
    “Jack,” I said, leaning toward him, “you can’t go through life being shy with your opinion. Say that right now, you were making the decision as to whether I had to wear red lipstick every day of my life, or fuchsia, or coral. It’s your decision and you have to choose. Which one?”
    He swallowed. “The red is pretty.”
    “Perfect.” I smiled and grabbed the other two tubes of lipstick, then walked over to the trash and threw them in loudly, one at a time. “I value what you think.” I looked up and saw his lips parted, muted around the space of something unspeakable and subconscious lodged between his teeth. The lunch period bell rang in the distance. “Here,” I offered. “Let me write you a note for the cafeteria monitor.”
    I sat back down behind my desk and scribbled onto a piece of paper, then pursed my lips and blew on the paper while fanning it back and forth to dry the ink. “Here you are,” I said. As he walked up to get it, each step of his sneaker was a magnified sound in the quiet classroom. I looked at him in a shameless way as he approached, wondering if he would turn his eyes or look away. He didn’t.
    Before giving him the slip of paper, I held up my palm in the air again. “High-five, friend.” He placed his hand on top of mine once more. This time I pushed his fingers slightly apart with mine and slid them forward, entwined and clasping. His eyes wouldn’t stopquestioning but he didn’t speak or pull away. “Have a good weekend ,” I finally said. Then I gave a small squeeze and temporarily let him go.
    *
    Ford’s poker night
provided a perfect cover for my first stakeout. Every Wednesday after work several of his fellow officers would come over to the house for cards. Even though this was now routine , returning home to the sight of eight squad cars parked in our driveway still caused me to feel an instant and roiling vertigo; a few months ago I’d nearly swerved off the road and clipped a fire hydrant when I saw them all there. My immediate thought was always that my Internet search history had been discovered, or a latent report had been filed—perhaps about one of the indiscreet hallway gropes I’d tried to pass off as accidental clumsiness during my student-teaching days. There was even the illogical panic that the police had somehow managed to read my mind.
    The cigar smoke was reason enough to make myself scarce during the gathering. Through the sliding glass door, its grayish cloud nearly looked like a second mesh screen. Ford liked to joke that cigars keep away mosquitoes. I found the smell vulgar and fetid. It just made Ford seem even more ancient, as though he was smoking his very own future cremains. How opposite to the bouquet