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dutiful parents had arrived early. Some kids had their own cars; others picked up rides from friends. The school was practically deserted by the time he got his father on the phone.
    “Give me fifteen minutes,” said Mr. Japhet. “Snow’s been steady all evening, and the roads are worse.”
    “Take your time,” said Ed, hanging up.
    Only the custodian was left, and he headed immediately for the basement “to turn the heat down,” but Ed and Lila knew, as did all the kids, that it was to settle himself near the boiler with a pint of Thunderbird, having been denied his evening’s comfort because of the festivities.
    It was a peculiar feeling looking down the empty hallway, seeing the school suddenly desolate, as if he and Lila had been the hosts of a large party whose guests had left and now they had this huge house to themselves.
    “We’ve got eleven minutes,” he said, glancing at the school clock above Lila’s head.
    He shut the door of the faculty room. They stood in the center of the silent rectangle. The huge overhead bulb seemed much too bright. Ed turned the switch off at the door and found Lila’s hand in the darkness. The windows were laced with snow. His heart seemed louder in the dark.
    He touched her beads and lifted them, his fingers brushing for an instant the nakedness above her breasts. He let the beads drop gently back into place as he put his hands to the sides of her face and kissed her, closed lips barely touching closed lips.
    She took his hands away from her face, and he thought for a moment she was stopping him, but that was not the case at all, because she had merely spread his arms apart so that she could step closer to him, and when they kissed the second time her body was touching his.
    They were both out of breath and laughing about it out of embarrassment, and Ed said, “It sounds ridiculous, but that felt swoony—it’s the only word.”
    As they kissed again, he felt the beat. A pulse was what the doctor felt in your wrist, or what you saw in someone’s temple when they were agitated, but the pulse he felt now was elsewhere, and he could tell from the expression on her face that she knew.
    “God,” he said.
    “I know,” she said.
    He felt her breasts against his chest and let one hand slip to her buttocks, something he had not dared before.
    “We’d better stop,” Lila said. “It’s almost time.”
    And so it was. Where had the minutes gone?
    Very close to her ear he said, “I love you.” He meant it, and hated that it sounded so corny. And then, impulsively, he kissed her hand, and in a second’s breath he was hugging her, kissing her lovely neck and then her mouth again, which was now open a little, and he could—oh, suddenly—feel her tongue on his lips and in his mouth and, at the same time, the fierce hanging ache in his testicles.
    It was Lila who turned the light back on.
    He let her adjust her hair in the mirror first, and then, when she was through, he combed his hair, and looked at the high color in his face. He straightened his suit a bit.
    Just in time. As they went out of the faculty room, he could see the outside door at the far end of the hall open and the small figure of his father enter amidst a whirl of snow, white on his hat and overcoat shoulders, and as he came closer one could even see the snow on his eyebrows. Strange how he expected his father might have known what was going on inside the faculty room.
    Ed waved awkwardly. Mr. Japhet blew into his frozen hands. “Forgot my gloves. That steering wheel’s cold. Where are the bags?”
    Ed gestured toward the faculty room.
    Mr. Japhet insisted on taking the heavier bag. “How’d it go?”
    “Oh, the prom was okay. You know.” He knew his father hadn’t meant the prom.
    “The show went beautifully,” said Lila. “It was really great. You ought to have seen it.”
    Outside, the snow was gusting in a directionless swirl of flakes, large and dry, sticking where they fell. Mr. Japhet pointed