Previously: Retired teacher Lucinda remembers her favorite student Vernon. Reality interrupts when another boarder Nancy scolds her for talking to her daughter Shirley. She remembers letting it slip to Vernon that she didn’t like Nancy. She helps him with an essay about death.
“And in heaven we’ll praise God all the time for eternity.” He averted his eyes again. “Forever. I mean, even that scares me. No end. Going on forever and ever and ever. In a way, the atheists have it better, thinking there is a definite end someday, but even that scares me. Do we have to keep talking about this? I’m getting sick to my stomach.”

“No. We can go on to the other paper. Tell me about Dante and his seven levels of Hades.” Her tutorial ethics kept telling her she needed to move away, perhaps to the blackboard. But she couldn’t make herself move an inch.

Vernon flipped over a page in the notepad. “Look at this and see if I’m on the right track.”

“If you wish.” Lucinda leaned in even further to read from the pad. “You have grasped the meaning of each level very well. You’ve expressed it concisely and clearly if not elegantly.”

“Heck, I don’t think I could ever write elegant.” He laughed, and the pitch of his voice raised, making him sound more like a child than a young man.

“Are you still seeing Nancy?” She knew none of this was any of her business, but something in the pit of her inner being made her ask.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sure you’re a good influence on her.”

“She says I’ve taught her a lot.” Vernon nodded, his eyes were still fixed on the notepad.

“That’s good.” Lucinda felt her influence on Vernon was being passed on to Nancy which satisfied her need as a teacher to spread her life lessons.

“Of course, she’s taught me a lot too.”

“Oh.” She didn’t like the sound of that.

“Is this sentence okay?” Vernon pointed to a particular paragraph at the bottom of the page. “I got going on it, and it’s awful long.”

“What?” She was finding it difficult to concentrate on the essay because the physical sensations of their closeness made her light-headed.

“Look here.”

As Vernon pointed again to the paragraph, Lucinda leaned over even more, enjoying the warmth of their contact, until she lost her balance. He jumped up to catch her before she landed on the desk.

“Are you all right?”

Lucinda straightened and looked as though she had been caught in an immoral act. “Of course, I’m all right. I just lost my balance for a moment, that’s all. It could happen to anybody.”

“You need to be careful. You nearly fell all over me.”

“I don’t want to remember that!” She recognized the panic in her voice, and she couldn’t control it. “No! It did not happen!”

“Don’t get upset, Mrs. Cambridge.” He wrinkled his brow.

“I’m not upset.” Lucinda shook her head in adamant zeal. “Nothing happened.”

“I thought maybe you couldn’t see the paper good, and you had to lean so far in that you lost your balance,” Vernon explained. “I could put the paper closer to you.”

“Please, I don’t want to remember I did that!”

“Lose your balance?” He chuckled. “I lose my balance all the time.”

Lucinda turned to walk back to her desk, blinking her eyes, trying to return to the present. “Vernon, please go now.” The scent of the honeysuckle outside her boardinghouse window grew stronger. She was almost there. “I don’t want to remember this.”

“Okay.” Physically Vernon was almost gone. His voice grew fainter. “I’ll try to figure all this out.”

“No! Don’t try to figure it out!” She was on the verge of tears. “It was all very innocent.”

“I meant Dante’s Inferno.” The echo of his voice faded.

“Oh.”