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"I'm seventeen," I blurted. "I live with my mom."

She glanced down at my Glendale High letterman's jacket and said, "Baseball? Meet me at your pitcher's mound."

I nodded, having lost the capacity for speech.

When I got home that night and opened the front door, Frank was standing in the hall as if he'd been waiting there for hours, though I knew he'd responded to the scratch of my keys in the locks. "Good," he said, turning back to his room.

I was thinking about Isabel McBride. The way that shiny hair curled around her collarbone to touch the top of her chest. The faint wrinkles in her neck that her tan had missed. She'd had a child. Though I was less experienced than I wanted to admit, this opportunity had stepped forth as if from the pages of a stroke mag, and there was no way I was going to miss learning whatever she was interested in teaching me.

"Frank," I said, "lemme keep the window open tonight. It's like a hundred out."

He stopped and scowled at me, as tired as I was of the old argument. He looked wearier than usual, yet wired at the same time. "Comfort doesn't matter," he said. "Security matters."

I lay on my bed and read, urging the clock on my nightstand to move quicker. At twenty to one, I slid from my sheets. I carried my shoes, wearing my socks to stay quiet down the hall. Frank had left his door open, and I could hear his even breathing issuing from the dark room. I stole into the kitchen, managed to get the waterproof magnetic box out of the garbage disposal without making too much noise. The key inside fit an alarm panel in the kitchen wall, by the door to the garage. I disarmed the system and slipped through the back door, locking the knob but forgoing the heavy-duty Medeco dead bolts that slid home with wall- vibrating clunks.

Ten minutes later I was navigating the dark campus, positive that she wouldn't be there, that it was all a joke, that I'd made it up. But there she was, a feminine figure on the pitcher's mound, her hands clutching a purse behind her back. She'd gone home and changed, and she wore a sundress that blew against her splendid form, showing both curves of her thighs.

"Hi," I said, as I approached. "I'm not really sure-"

She put her hands on my face and kissed me, her tongue flicking inside my mouth. Her body leaned into mine, and we were both responding, the first time I'd experienced a woman confident in her sexual appetite. She tugged me by the hand, and we walked to the outfield grass, still damp from the evening's sprinklers. Her hands were at my belt, and then I was in her mouth, arching my back, making noises, unsure of everything. She fought down my jeans and pulled her dress up to her waist and reached into her bag. "Here," she said. "Put this on."

I struggled with the condom, trying to unroll it upside down at first, and with all the tugging and the slow burn of my mortification, I came. I felt myself flush, and I turned away and threw the thing and collapsed onto my back. She stroked my chest and leaned over me. Her perfume was too sweet, and her hair brushed my skin, raising goose bumps.

"You have a really nice body," she said.

"Didn't help me out much tonight, did it?"

"It got you this far." She laughed. "That's one of the benefits to being seventeen."

"What is?"

"Wait five minutes and I'll show you."

I did and she did, and I lasted at least twice as long. I lay back in shock and amazement, and she petted my face. She'd popped in some gum, and her breath smelled of watermelon. "You're a sweet boy," she said. And then she stood, stuffing her panties into her purse, tugging at her sundress. "I have to get home to my daughter. But come by the restaurant sometime."

"I will," I said. And then, in case she hadn't heard me, "I will."

I jogged home in a daze. At the side gate, I slipped off my shoes. Moving stealthily alongside the house, I checked my watch-2:18. My breath caught when I turned the corner.

The back door was open.

A rustling issued from inside. I was running, full of dread. I stumbled over the step but kept my feet and saw a dark form in the middle of the living room. I hit the light switch, and there Frank was, at the end of a short, bloody trail he'd scraped along the floorboards, propped against his armchair. Both hands pressed to the dark, glittering hole in his gut. He was trying to talk, but there was blood at his mouth and his features were jerking around and I could see steam rising from between his fingers. The Glock was a few feet to his right, an ejected casing beside it.

The kitchen door leading to the garage was open, fresh air sucking through the rectangle of darkness past my face and out the open door at my back. Fear sent me into a scramble for the gun before I remembered I'd never shot before. I was crying and pleading and apologizing, trying to place the gun in Frank's hand so he could protect us, but he could no longer grip. Then I heard the garage's side door bang open, clapping against the outside wall I'd crept along moments before.