(My apologies, Dear Readers. What once went by this title is now incorporated into SEVEN SEAS FOR FOUR, a family story (but not what rate it “family” in theaters). What follows is entirely a different story, one about a teacher. Unfortunately, however, I can’t update the genre codings on some websites that include me.)

Let me establish one thing up front, no innuendo intended. Girls don’t care to talk about penises. Sure, we’ll beat around the bush -- whoops, no word play intended there either -- but male anatomy needn’t be documented. Girls -- myself having been there -- in addition to imagining making babies, look forward to holding them.

That doesn’t mean we don’t joke around, now and then maybe about the time we slow danced and thought it was a flashlight in his pocket, an Eveready? Get it? Or a joke about fishing for the pocket trout.

When I was my students’ age, we’d fantasize about Mr. Moore, our math teacher. He smiled a lot, but we couldn’t decide if he actually winked at us, or it was just how he blinked, but we voted for the former. Jenny Walton touched his fly in the hall, but he didn’t ask her to stay after class or anything. A couple of weeks later, though, they met up after school and had sex in his car, at least according to her.

I can attest as a female educator, that if you come out of Safeway sans bra, run into one of your students, ask him to help load your car, he’ll be happy to help. Maybe he sees a little something and you feel a bit wicked, but his fantasies don’t make you not his teacher.

I say all this simply to establish that I know the minds of my boys, how they brush against me in the hall, slipping away before they think I notice. Little ventures, but they’re just boys.

With Luke, maybe hardly even that, him at my desk, his finger against my elbow while asking me about quotation marks. What he’s actually asking, of course, is something else, even if he doesn’t yet know it.

I answer him at his desk by leaning in to indicate a passage in To Kill a Mockingbird, my breast brushing his shoulder. Not that much, but boys notice quickly.

Little ventures can be fun.

When Luke begins to stop by during lunch hour, I know it’s working and think of things for him to do. A teacher’s always glad for assistance.

Helping reshelve books, he reaches across me. I could make him room, but instead, just chat on as his arm crosses my blouse. Regarding my undone button, it’s my lunch hour.

Another time, I’m wearing a sweater, and before lunch slip off my bra. When he reaches to shelve a book, I wonder if he can feel the difference.

As more and more I notice his hand in his front pocket, I move him to the front row.

That a boy may be thinking about you as more than just as his English teacher is fun to think about.

What else do I know about Luke? I know he plays basketball and collects stamps, the latter from when he’d added a foreign stamp honoring Samuel Clemens to an assignment. I was impressed that our American author is honored by foreign countries.

Luke’s mother April tells me at parent-teacher how much he likes my class, what a teacher wants to hear. I say that I appreciate his help, and she says she can tell when he’s helped because he goes to his room as soon as he gets home. “Boys will be boys. Their mothers and teachers best know that, right?”

I’m a bit confused, but nod to appear not to be.

“Nice sweater,” she tells me.

“Appleseeds.”

“Got me one like it, just more beige. Luke said you had one like mine one time when he was helping you.”

Why he’d mentioned that, I wasn’t sure.

“Don’t you love when it’s just it against your skin?” she adds.

It turns out that April studied English, too, but in her case, hoping to become a novelist. She’d worked in the film industry when she’d been in school, but not on the script side because there really wasn’t one. We agree that it’s more about contacts than ability that gets you in print.

She brings us back to Luke. “You know more in general about boys than I do, Holly. What about one who’s attracted to his teacher?” to which I answer that such things do happen.

“Ever work the other way around?” she wonders, at which change the subject to our reading list. It’s good to keep the parents informed.

Lots of mothers mention getting together for coffee, but all you’d do would be to talk about her kid’s progress. With April, though -- maybe because we’d studied the same thing, but maybe also because we were single -- I actually hope we would.

The next day, Luke hangs around, and as we work on a bulletin board about Native American writers, for a moment he rests his hand on my back. On the back of my bra, to be precise.

As he’s leaving, he says that his mom wonders if I’d like to come over for dinner sometime. He can show me his stamp collection.

Love to.

Dinner at April and Luke’s is fun, the three of us playing Authors in honor of the greats. I tell April how much I enjoy getting to see my students outside of the classroom, and she says that Luke’s been hoping to know me better, too. Sweet of her to say.

April and I have a lot in common, actually. Oldest child. Liked cooking. Marginal Methodists, me more so than her. She says I should come to church with her to see how things are changing “We’re all welcome,” and mentions her women’s chorus. You don’t have to sing that well.

I recall “I am Woman,” but admit that I probably wouldn’t fit in, to which she says it’s open to anybody who considers herself inquisitive.

As we clear the dishes, Luke again brushes against me, but more up and over than at school. I think his mother notices, but maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe now would be a good time for him to show me his stamps, April suggests. His shutting the door behind us surprises me, but I suppose it’s out of habit. His album is at one end of his bed, shoeboxes of envelopes at the other, the middle for us to sit.

“Wow, Luke. I don’t even know where half of these countries are.”

It’s one thing, a blouse that shows a little. It’s another, him back and forth across its front every time he shows me a commemorative.

After showing his British colonials, Luke clears off his bed, props his album against the headboard, and we stretch out to look at postage from the United Nations, one of that body’s side businesses, it seems.

I’m thinking he’s maybe going to put an arm around me so I won’t fall off while he’s explaining plate blocks. But all that transpires is him showing me postage from the Vatican, another supplemental enterprise.

Oh, well

When we emerge, April is right there in the hall.

“So soon?”

“Didn’t see all of them,” I explain,” just what he said were his favorites.”

“Maybe just as well,” her thought, “as boys don’t think ahead.”

Once the two of us were alone, she has more to say. “I played you so he could practice.”

“Practice what?” realizing as I ask that given her acting experience, I’m not sure I’d want her playing me.

“Reaching across to show you his stamps, for starts. I said to let you know he’s game to take things to the next step,”

“It was to get the ones from Peru.”

“Maybe he got the last-minute jitters. Maybe next time.”

This is not at all what I’d expected.

The following Friday, Luke’s the last to leave. “Game against St. Mary’s tonight, Ms. Rennick. We need all the fans we can get.”

I wish him good luck. “Got a minute to help me move something? Shouldn’t take a second.”

As he and I slide my desk -- me pushing it and him pushing me -- he reaches around me to push harder. He shouldn’t cup me while doing so, but we need to keep it sliding, and once we get it where I want it, he stays there while we catch our breath, but I’m sure he’s not thinking.

“See you at the game, Ms. Rennick. Mom says I’ll probably score. She’ll save you a seat.”

I just wish my nipples weren’t so obvious, but it’s what happens when you exert yourself and are massaged for a time afterward.

April’s waiting in the bleachers, and when Luke sees me, he waves from the bench and I wave back. It’s so exciting when our team almost catches up that April and I hold hands.

Had I known I’d afterwards be invited over, I’d have worn my sweater like the one she has and we could have been twins,

Luke, it turns out, doesn’t have any place else to go, so it’s the two of us with a glass of wine, and him with a root beer.

April says it was fun playing Authors last time. How about a different version? Sure. Two players each draw a card and if the others can make up something that ties together a work from each author together, the two have to kiss, not the sort of game I’d usually play with a student, but it would be OK if his mother’s present.

Luke’s Melville, April’s Dickens, and I tell them, “The largest species of mammal swims to Minneapolis-Saint Paul.” Pretty clever, I think, them being the “twin cities,” -- not “two cities” -- and April and Luke do a kiss.

When I’m Hemmingway and April’s Victor Hugo, Luke says, “The old man builds a street barrier, and because of where it is, you have to do it the French way.” A bit too much, my thought, especially with him watching, but his mom says to.