In that moment Bill McCraggen never felt more ecstatic with anticipation.
There he was covering a class of seniors; their teacher was absent, and this
Hispanic girl kept looking at him; looking away, then looking at him. She
smiled; he smiled back with a sort of perfunctory grimace.
He sensed her eyes still on him, so he turned the pages of his newspaper and
concentrate.
She came up to his desk; he didn't look up. Her fingers played with the back of
his neck, then started a stress-relieving massage. "What are you doing," he
asked. She wanted to talk to him. "What about?" Something very important.
"Okay, talk."
If she was going to graduate this year, she needed to pass Phys. Ed. "So."
Well, she hadn't been coming to his Gym class. "So." Well, was there any-
thing she could do to make up for the classes missed? "I don't think so."
She lowered herself on her haunches so that she appeared to be looking up in
his face. Oh, please, Mr. McCraggen, please.
He folded his newspaper, his eyes caught her eyes. And in that instant his
thoughts flew off to a lake in a wooded area in New Jersey, near where he'd
grown up; where every boy at some point stripped off and plunged right in,
simply because it was there and offered itself.
The pleading in her voice, the body almost in kneeling position, I'll do
anything.
They must have stared at each other for the longest second. Her eyes never
wavered. He turned his face away in case any student was observing what he
now considered an invitation to intimacy.
And in that moment, the thought occurred to him: Take the plunge, what do
you have to lose? With six months left before everyone, students and staff,
was scattered to the wind, the school slated for closing or recasting, what did
he have to lose?
Oh, please, Mr. McCraggen. Had he hesitated two heart beats longer, the
moment might have vanished through a hole in his stomach. "See me in the
gym. End of the day, okay? Okay?"
She moved away from his desk, putting a little swivel, he thought, in her waist;
not too much to attract the attention of the class; enough to keep his mind
focused. She knew he wouldn't be caught dead staring after her.
Three minutes later she was back at his desk. Permission to go to the bath-
room. He looked up from his newspaper, his forehead suddenly heating up, and
he gave her a long, patient stare. The smile was still there, but since their
intentions were already joined, she didn't need to play him any more. "What
did you say your name was?"
She made a little show of surprise and disappointment ̶ had he really forgotten
her name? He told her to be quick about it, the class was almost over.
Ipanema Vasquez. Of course, he remembered her.
Didn't want to change for his gym class, that was her problem. Couldn't bear
exposing her body (her bosom bulging alarmingly inside her sweater) to the
other girls, or something like that. As if anyone would pay any attention to her
body in gym shorts.
So she stayed away. Didn't even show up for his jog around the track program
on bright, still shivery, spring mornings; twenty minutes, six brisk warm-up
laps around the track, which the lazier kids loved. They strolled and chatted
their heads off and reported back pretending to wheeze and huff from the
exercise.
Ipanema Vasquez was a no show. Now she was ready to do anything to pass his
gym class; lazy fat fuck.
(from "Ah Mikhail O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 