"Are you busy? I could come back later."

Barbara sighed and turned to the door.

"Come in," and she thought as she turned the key, there is nothing left for us to do now. You were so like Jinny then. It was the moment to have kissed you.

The girl was still a little breathless. She smelled of the evergreens, and in fact a few green needles had caught on her jacket.

"I started a story. Would you look at it now, please?"

Barbara lit another cigarette, sat at her desk, and unfolded the limp sheets of paper. Was this the girl who had read the poem aright? Yes, of course. Could she write as well as read? The two didn't always coincide.

The story began: "A bar should never have a mirror in it. It makes for vertigo. I used to believe that the mirror in my room over the dark oak dresser was a magic one, that it had the power of truth. Its image was the real one, and whoever looked in that glass saw himself as he was. So, on New Year's Eve, when my eyes met themselves, caught the mirrored eyes watching mine over the length of the bar, I was prepared a little for the truth. But only a little."

Barbara looked up. "Is this you?"

"Mhm."

"Where was the bar?"

"New York. Downtown.' Oh???

Barbara continued to read. "Hello, I said to the eyes. Who am I? And the eyes stared back, expressionless. I tried a smile for them. But they didn't smile back."

Barbara drew on her cigarette.

"You weren't alone, were you? Why don't you orient me a little? Are you going to say what the bar's like, and what your escort is doing? No?" "That comes later," the girl said.

one

"But I want it in the beginning like that just me and the mirror." "O.K."

"My escort was making out with another girl." "Oh."

Barbara could see the whole thing only too well: the college crowd slumming in the Village, drinking too much, waiting for something to happen that never did. Barbara wondered if it had been a gay bar. Probably not.

"The eyes in the mirror kept sinking back, further and further, and then I looked at the face. It was ageless, sexless or rather it could have been any age. For a moment it was a young boy, then a girl, then an old man, a baby face. At last of all the faces there was one I knew, had always known. It was a boy, a young man of the Renaissance, smiling in recognition."

Good God, does she know what she's saying? Thought Barbara.

"His smooth blond hair lay carefully on his shoulders. His full mouth. was somehow ironic; his eyes were a cool blue challenge.

Barbara looked up, not at all surprised to meet that blue challenge. "You put things nicely, sometimes. Ever read Orlando?"

"No."

Barbara resumed reading.

"I was so pleased with this self that I didn't realize for a moment that my date was standing behind me. She was laughing at my reflection. It was a hard laugh."

"She?" Barbara paused. "Don't you mean he?"

"No, I was with another girl. She was my date."

Barbara saw the words on the page, but she could not read them. It was not the first time she had discovered one of her students to be lesbian. though she had sensed homosexuality more often in the boys. It was curious. how unconsciously they gave them-