Hello, Dear Readers. Thank you so much for commenting and enjoying this story – makes it worth writing, knowing there are at least half a dozen folks out there following Backstory. A baker's half dozen, that is. Warms the cockles of me 'eart. Seven. Not an unreasonable number. Grace_Dimitri_fan came through, and I just want to add thanks and bouquets of virtual flowers for transcribing all those scenes that allow me to incorporate dialogue from the show as accurately as possible. You are incredible!

This is an angsty chapter, but then, D is an angsty kind of guy, and I'm discovering that I love angst in ffiction, even when it borders on the cliché. Angst captures our hearts and affections.

Chapter 19: Plans

"Oh!" Grace said, her voice happy. "Thanks. So, about tonight... I guess I'll just meet you at your house and then—" But now I became acutely aware of Alexa examining us, straining to hear every word. The word "covert" flashed into my head, awareness not to be admitted then, though now it doesn't matter. That the planned evening activity was not one open to all students. That it was not, really, a class activity.

"Yes Alexa?" I said pointedly. Grace stopped talking.

Alexa walked up to the two of us . "Oh, I was just wondering... are you still accepting stories for extra credit?"

I couldn't look at Grace now, had to play the impartial teacher, and it made me still more painfully aware of the clandestine direction my relationship with Grace had and was taking. "Absolutely," I said.

"Great," Alexa said, and continued to stand there, looking from me to Grace. She had asked her question, but she was not moving along. She was waiting. For something. Pointedly.

I couldn't pretend further, I couldn't talk further, other than saying a quick, "If you'll excuse me, ladies." And I left. I had to leave.

Behind me, I heard Alexa say, "What's the book?"

My stomach constricted, and I almost turned back – to do what? So I continued out of the classroom, hearing Grace's evasive response, "Oh, just this book he said I could borrow." And then I was out of earshot. My heart thumped in my chest as I walked down the hall and I felt lightheaded, dizzy. Even without opening it, Grace knew the book was important, was more than the usual bit of recommended reading. Soon she'd know for sure the Chekhov was not a loaner.

The book was no longer in my possession. Things were totally out of my hands. I wonder, now, what I had hoped to accomplish. The book was the catalyst to a finale, but even without that, something would have happened, something would have culminated between Grace and myself. I relive that week, ascribing different emotions to each day. Monday, innocent longing. Tuesday, anticipation of response. Wednesday naïve hidden joy on borrowed time, Thursday, crashing down.

I gave her the book. The book into which I had signed a very personal inscription, with a signature that revealed feelings inappropriate for a teacher to have for his student. On the one hand, I knew that, I knew what I was risking, for I had attached my name to that signature, and the book, found by the wrong person, could be incriminating. Would be damning. I was putting my job, my profession in jeopardy. For what?

I wondered, later, if it was selfishness. I'd like to think it wasn't, I'd like to think it was selflessness. Because I knew, although she had not said it in words, how Grace felt about me. That feelings were there. And rather than nip them in the bud, ignore them and do what I could to discourage them, as I had with Alexa, I did the opposite. More than the opposite. I encouraged those feelings. I returned them. I confirmed them with my fountain pen.

I think, in the beginning, I had a mix of compassion and wonder regarding Grace. Wonder, because she was one of those students who is brighter and better and truly good at English, loved to write and to read and to interpret what she read. The ideal English student. Yet she was a little on the outside, not fully integrated, bright can mean too bright, and I identified with that. And I felt pain from her, and wanted to help her hone her strengths as a means of escape from those elements at home and in her life that were causing her pain. Hence the compassion.

Except that somewhere along the way I fell in love, unexpectedly, terribly, wrongly, irrevocably. And for so long, I kept my distance, and even tried to alienate myself from her, make her not want to like me, except every time I did something like that, I sensed the hurt, and had to erase it. Like that fateful afternoon in the car, that car ride of almosts.

Then came the time after that ride. Sweet, easy, but things now could not really stay at that level, could they? Maybe they could, maybe it wasn't enough for me, because I needed to know, needed to declare, needed her to know.

And then what? What did I expect from Grace after I gave her the book? I think, on some level, I hoped for a Victorian exchange of affections – I gave her Chekhov stories, she'd send me a volume of poetry with certain stanzas underlined, I'd respond in a similarly erudite way, and what was between us would develop slowly and surely and literarily. Romantic, Platonic, but Unrealistic. Because I had grown increasingly aware of Grace physically, noticing the change of necklaces she'd wear, how she styled her hair, the fact that she invariably wore pants to school, favored solid, darker colors; safe, conservative clothes. How clear her skin was, how sometimes her auburn hair would catch the light as she turned her head, revealing glints of copper, gold. How she would lift her hands when making a point emphatically, and her fingers seemed surprisingly delicate, yet solid. How she'd moisten her lips as she spoke, as if to smooth her words as they left her mouth.

The rest of that Tuesday remains a blur. I got through my afternoon classes on autopilot while I kept trying to picture Grace opening the book, feeling that antique leather between her hands, touching the uneven edges of the pages, coming across the inscription. Where would she be when she read it? What would she think? Would I know that evening, when we, and Russell and Lisa, would watch Rashomon?

It occurred to me I had never verified the number going to the movie – Grace had said she'd tell Russell and Lisa, I hadn't heard from them, or mentioned it to them. Grace had started to say, before I saw Alexa watching, "Should I come to your house?" No mention of others; and I hoped there would be no others. My necessary departure from the classroom left the decision on meeting for the movie unresolved.

I had ridden my bicycle that day. As I walked toward the bike racks, I heard a motor idling and I looked up. Grace, in her mother's SUV. She rolled down the front passenger window, and called out, "Can I give you a lift?" I walked over, feeling my mouth stretch into a silly grin.

"Thanks, but I have my bike. Another time, maybe." I leaned into the open window, saw Grace comfortably holding the steering wheel of the oversized car. My hybrid could practically fit in the trunk of this one. But then, I didn't have four kids with assorted friends needing rides. It's easy to be ecologically correct when you're single. "You look good behind the wheel," I added, and she blushed, which hadn't been my intention. Yet my pulse quickened as the color rose in her cheeks. A snippet of oft-quoted poetry slipped into my mind, with an addition, and lines followed. Hers was a name meant to be incorporated into poems, hers was a face to inspire poetry. The words surfaced, organized themselves, and lodged permanently in my mind.

Beauty is Truth is Grace
Known, when I gazed upon her face.
A gaze too long, not long enough,
The mask to shed, aged skin to slough.
To speak to know to then embrace;
Revealing Truth, revealing Grace.

But she recovered from her blush, and said, "Well, you know, I'm just a natural-born driver." Grace appraised me, as I leaned against the door, framed by the open window. "Anyway, so do you." My turn to blush, but I met and held her gaze, surrounded by the safety of the school building, the chasm of the passenger seat between us. She continued, "So, about tonight –"

"The movie starts at 7, so why don't you come by around 6:30? It's just a 10-minute drive, and we can leave from my house." I stepped back from the car. No reason not to meet at the movies. But we could all go in one car, no one would have to wait alone at the theatre. I rationalized. All of us.

I biked home feeling giddy. The prospect of going to the movies with Grace, even with Russell and Lisa as inadvertent, unknowing chaperones, gave me a thrill. To be able to share with her one of my favorite films, a way for her to know more of me, of who I was. I found I was whistling in the cool afternoon air, the tune of "Heart Like a Wheel" being lifted from my lips as I cycled into a soft wind..

At home, to the scratchy sounds of an early, early Joni Mitchell record, Song to a Seagull, I finished writing up the pop quiz I had warned the students about, hoping I'd get a better response this time, better demonstration of what they were learning from my teaching. For some reason, this out-of-print album I had found in a used record store 20 years ago had become my quiz-writing muse. Not knowing, then, it would be the final time I would be preparing such a quiz. My curriculum for my classes varied from year to year, following a same general theme, but tests, quizzes, and essay assignments changed, because I would rotate the books used. And pop quizzes were always new to minimize inevitable cheating.

"Describe the significance of Gardner's Grendel as sympathetic monster," I typed. "How does it differ from Beowulf's Grendel?" Along those lines. I printed it out and stuck the quiz in my valise, ready to run copies in the office the next morning. Which would be the last time I would use the Sinclair photocopy machine, but I didn't know that then, either. How odd, to feel nostalgic and sentimental about a temperamental photocopier, just the routine of seeing Estelle, the school secretary looking anything but busy as teachers came and went, ready to extract the latest gossip as we came through the office.

Preparing the quiz helped keep my mind off anticipating the evening, and wondering about my inscription, and berating myself for giving the book to Grace in the first place. I fixed myself an omelet with some diced mushrooms and slices of Chabichou; it's lovely when it melts, too. I felt like having a real meal, not just leftovers, and eating this cheese made me feel a connection with Grace, something we shared.

I was cleaning the dishes when I heard Grace's knock on the back door, what had become her usual way of entering my home.

"It's open!" I called.