her once or twice before-she remembered specifically the train station at Fishkill, on a snowy night when they were all coming back from a sledding party-but this was passionate and desperate, he was very drunk, and rough enough to make her push him off if he had not, in the first moment she had come up for air, gently taken off his glasses and placed them on a doilied dresser beside them, and then, in what seemed the same movement, reached behind her to lock the door. It was the odd, drunken gentleness of it, not to mention the snapping hint of danger from the lock, that changed her mind. And after two or three rebukes when he tried to get at the buttons that ran up the back of her dress, she thought, Why not, and although her acquiescence seemed to slow him down a bit, as if he was uncertain of the next step, she was enjoying herself enough by then to undo the last button without prompting and then to pull her bare shoulder and arm up out of the dress-first one then the other-and to pull dress and slip (she didn’t wear a bra, no need) down to her waist in a single gesture. And then-was it just the pleasure of the material against her bare flesh, his shirt front, her wool?-she slowly pushed dress and slip and garter belt and stockings down over her narrow hips until they fell to her feet. And then she stepped out of her shoes. (“Even the shoes?” the priest had whispered in the confessional the following Saturday, as if it was more than he could bear, or imagine-as if, she thought later, he was ready to send her to perdition or ask her for a date.)

The banging at the door was his excuse to turn away-some people had their coats in there-and while he stood with his back to her she dressed again and unlocked the door and walked out. She smiled at the taunts and jeers of her friends and when someone asked, “Where’s Mike?” she said, “I think I killed him,” which got a great laugh.

Mike Shea became a medic during the war and was now married, working for Pfizer.