She arrived to tutor the air, whistling a little as she signed her name on the time sheet. The room was as bare and stale as might be expected of a mathematics classroom recycled for evening use. Here she was supposed to elaborate for students concepts that had escaped them the first time in this close atmosphere.

Clever ideas…many had originated here, but most has perished without ever reaching the tongue or the pencil. The girl sat down behind the table without a hint of intelligent thought. Soon after appeared an odd-looking boy, one of an assortment who joined her on various days of the week. They buried themselves in their respective books and soon relaxed, abandoning the pretense of expectation.

The room absorbed their slight motions, the chairs' scraping, the unconscious foot tapping, the swish of a page. Nothing stuck in the mind in this place—no wonder tutors were necessary.

The girl found her breath quickening. There was no reason. She kept reading, eyes scanning and comprehending, but her lungs took in the chalky air higher and higher up, until the shallowness was too little support. Had she gasped, it would have made no difference in between these walls, but she restrained he impulse anyway. She fancied he looked at her. Did he? He was sitting awfully still. She kept her eyes on her book.

After a space he shifted slightly. He had been looking. The—effrontery? Gesture of passion?—was reduced to nothing but a happening by the paste-yellow walls. She did not care. She wondered why she had noticed.

Her knees hurt. She shifted them randomly, splayed legs, figure slumped habitually. She could smell the leather of his sandals. Was that disgusting? She didn't know.

The book became interesting and she exclaimed. Asked him what he read. Their dialogue was swallowed whole.

At last, time made an effort and recalled itself to memory. Once, a while back, she had come to math tutoring and noticed that her watch had stopped at the exact moment she had entered the room. Strange, that. They stepped out of the place together, a bit embarrassed at their pseudo-intimacy as the security guard appeared around the corner, come to lock up. The guard sees me with a different guy every night, she thought idly. It's as if math lab were a den of sin.

The boy looked at her again as she nearly ran into a pole. She was laughing too hard to see.