The Abstinence Teacher. Tom Perrotta

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      On the way to homeroom, Ruth stopped by the library to deliver the grande nonfat latte she regularly picked up for Randall, the Reference Librarian, a fellow caffeine junkie who returned the favor by making the midday Starbucks run. The two of them had bonded several years earlier over their shared revulsion for what Randall charmingly called the “warmed-over Maxwell Piss” in the Teacher's Lounge, and their willingness to spend outlandish sums of money to avoid it.

      Randall kept his eyes glued to the computer screen as she approached. A stranger might have mistaken him for a dedicated Information Sciences professional getting an early start on some important research, but Ruth knew that he was actually scouring eBay for vintage Hasbro action figures, a task he performed several times a day. Randall's partner, Gregory, was a successful real-estate broker and part-time artist who built elaborate dioramas featuring the French Resistance Fighter GI Joe, an increasingly hard-to-find doll whose moody Gallic good looks were dashingly accentuated by a black turtleneck sweater and beret. In his most recent work, Gregory had painstakingly re-created a Parisian café circa 1946, with a dozen identical GI Jeans staring soulfully at each other across red-checkered tablecloths, tiny hand made Gauloises glued to their plastic fingers.

      “Thank God,” he muttered, as Ruth placed the paper cup on his desk. “I was lapsing into a coma.”

      “Any luck?”

      “Just a few Russian infantrymen. Mint condition, my ass.” Randall turned away from the screen and did a bug-eyed double take at the sight of Ruth's outfit. “I'm surprised your mother let you out of the house like that.”

      “My new image.” Ruth struck a pose, jutting out one hip and sucking in her cheeks like a model. “Like it?”

      He gave her a thorough top-to-bottom appraisal, taking full advantage of the gay man's license to stare.

      “I do. Very Mary Kay Letourneau, if you don't mind my saying so.”

      “My daughters said the same thing. Only they didn't mean it as a compliment.”

      Randall reached for his coffee cup, raising it to his lips and blowing three times into the aperture on the plastic lid, as though it were some sort of wind instrument.

      “They should be proud to have a mom who can carry off a skirt like that at…” Randall's voice trailed off diplomatically.

      “… at my age?” Ruth inquired.

      “You're not that old,” Randall assured her. “And you look great.”

      “Lotta good it does me.”

      Randall sipped his latte and gave a philosophical shrug. He was a little older than Ruth, but you wouldn't have known it from his dark curly hair and eternally boyish face. Sometimes she felt sorry for him—he was a cultured gay man, an opera-loving dandy with a fetish for Italian designer eyewear, trapped all day in a suburban high school—but Randall rarely complained about the life he'd made for himself in Stonewood Heights, even when he had good reason to.

      “You never know when opportunity will knock,” he reminded her. “And when it does, you don't want to answer the door in a ratty old bathrobe.”

      “It better knock soon,” Ruth said, “or it won't matter what I'm wearing.”

      Randall set his cup down on the Wonder Woman coaster he kept on his desk, next to an autographed picture of Maria Callas. The serious expression on his face was only slightly compromised by his milk-foam mustache.

      “So how are you feeling?” he asked. “You okay about all this?”

      Ruth shifted her gaze to the window behind the circulation desk, taking a moment to admire the autumnal image contained within its frame: a school bus parked beneath a blazing orange maple, a bright blue sky crowning the world. She felt a sudden urge to be far away, tramping through the woods or wandering around a strange city without a map.

      “I just work here,” she said. “I don't make the rules.”

      RUTH SPENT most of first period in the lounge, chatting with Donna DiNardo, a Biology teacher and field hockey coach in her late thirties. Over the summer, after years of being miserably single, Donna had met her soulmate—an overbearing optometrist named Bruce DeMastro— through an internet matchmaking service, and they'd gotten engaged after two magical dates.

      Ruth had been thrilled when she heard the news, partly because of the fairy-tale aspect of the story, and partly because she'd gotten tired of Donna's endless whining about how hard it was to meet a man once you'd reached a certain age, which had only served to make Ruth that much more pessimistic about her own prospects. Oddly, though, finding love hadn't done much to improve Donna's mood; she was a worrier by nature, and the prospect of sharing her life with another person provided a mother lode of thorny new issues to fret about. Today, for example, she was wondering whether it would be a hardship for her students if, after the big day, she asked them to address her as Ms. DiNardo-DeMastro.

      Although Ruth felt strongly that women should keep their names when they married—she hadn't done so, and now she was stuck with her ex-husband's last name—she kept this opinion to herself, having learned the hard way that you could only lose by taking sides in matters as basic as this. She had once offended a pregnant friend by admitting—after persistent demands for her honest opinion—to disliking the name “Claudia,” which, unbeknownst to her, the friend had already decided to bestow upon her firstborn child. Little Claudia was eight now, and Ruth still hadn't been completely forgiven.

      “Do whatever you want,” Ruth said. “The students won't care.”

      “But DiNardo-DeMastro?” Donna was standing by the snack table, peering into a box of Dunkin’ Munchkins with an expression of naked longing. She was a heavyset woman whose body image anxieties had reached a new level of obsession now that she'd been fitted for a wedding gown. “It's kind of a mouthful, isn't it?”

      “You're fine either way,” Ruth assured her.

      “It's driving me crazy.” Donna lifted a chocolate Munchkin from the box, pondered it for a moment, then put it back. “I really don't know what to do.”

      With an air of melancholy determination, Donna backed away from the donut holes and helped herself to a styrofoam cup of vile coffee, into which she dumped two heaping spoonfuls of nondairy creamer and three packets of carcinogenic sweetener.

      “Bruce hates hyphenated names,” she continued. “He just wants me to be Donna DeMastro.”

      Ruth glanced plaintively around the room, hoping for a little backup from her colleagues, but the two other teachers present—Pete Fontana (Industrial Arts) and Sylvia DeLacruz (Spanish)— were ostentatiously immersed in their reading, none too eager to embroil themselves in the newest installment of Donna's prénuptial tribulations. Ruth didn't blame them; she would've done the same if not for her guilty conscience. Donna had been a kind and supportive friend last spring, when Ruth was the one with the problem, and Ruth still felt like she owed her.

      “I'm sure you'll work something out,” she said.

      “If my name was Susan it wouldn't be such a big deal,” Donna pointed out, drifting back toward the Munchkins as if drawn by an invisible force. “But Donna DiNardo-DeMastro? That's too many D's.”

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