In One Person

"There's quite a lot you didn't tell me!" I called to her.

I saw that, in anticipation of my arrival, Miss Frost had already killed the lights in the main library. The light that glowed upward, from the bottom of the basement stairs--the basement door was open--bathed Miss Frost in a soft, flattering light. She sat at the checkout desk with her big hands folded in her lap. (I say the light was "flattering" because it made her look younger; of course that also might have been the influence of my seeing her in those old yearbooks.)

"Come kiss me, William," Miss Frost said. "There's no reason for you not to kiss me, is there?"

"You're a man, aren't you?" I asked her.

"Goodness me, what makes a man?" she asked. "Isn't Kittredge a man? You want to kiss him. Don't you still want to kiss me, William?"

I did want to kiss her; I wanted to do everything with her, but I was angry and upset, and I knew by the way I was shaking that I was very close to crying, which I didn't want to do.

"You're a transsexual!" I told her.

"My dear boy," Miss Frost said sharply. "My dear boy, please don't put a label on me--don't make me a category before you get to know me!"

When she stood up from her desk, she seemed to tower over me; when she opened her arms to me, I didn't hesitate--I ran to her strong embrace, and kissed her. Miss Frost kissed me back, very hard. I couldn't cry, because she took my breath away.

"My, my--what a busy boy you've been, William," she said, leading me to the basement stairs. "You've read Giovanni's Room, haven't you?"

"Twice!" I managed to say.

"Twice, already! And you've found the time to read those old yearbooks, haven't you, William? I knew it wouldn't take you long to get from 1931 to 1935. Was it that wrestling-team photo in '35--was that the one that caught your eye, William?"

"Yes!" I scarcely managed to tell her. Miss Frost was lighting the cinnamon-scented candle in her bedroom; then she turned off the reading lamp that was fastened to the headboard of her brass bed, where the covers were already turned down.

"I couldn't very well have kept you from seeing those old yearbooks--could I, William?" she went on saying. "I'm not welcome in the academy library. And if you hadn't seen that picture of me in my wrestling days, surely somebody would have told you about me--eventually. I'm frankly astonished that someone didn't tell you," Miss Frost said.

"My family doesn't tell me much," I told her. I was undressing as quickly as I could, and Miss Frost had already unbuttoned her blouse and taken off her skirt. This time, when she used the toilet, she didn't mention the matter of her privacy.

"Yes, I know about that family of yours!" she said, laughing. She hiked up her half-slip, and--first lifting the wooden toilet seat--she peed standing up, rather loudly, but with her back to me. I didn't see her penis, but there was no doubt, from the forceful way she was pissing, that she had one.

I lay naked on the brass bed and watched her washing her hands and face, and brushing her teeth, in that little sink. I saw her wink at me in the mirror. "I guess you must have been a pretty good wrestler," I said to her, "if they made you captain of the team."

"I didn't ask to be captain," she told me. "I just kept beating everybody--I beat everyone, so they made me captain. It wasn't the kind of thing you could refuse."

"Oh."

"Besides, the wrestling kept them all from questioning me," Miss Frost said. She was hanging up her skirt and blouse in the wardrobe closet; this time, she took her bra off, too. "They don't question you--I mean sexually--if you're a wrestler. It kind of keeps them off the track--if you know what I mean, William."

"I know what you mean," I told her. I thought that her breasts were wonderful--so small, and with such perfect nipples, but her breasts were bigger than poor Elaine's. Miss Frost had a fourteen-year-old's breasts, and they looked small on her only because she was so big and strong.

"I love your breasts," I said to her.

"Thank you, William. They won't get any bigger, but it's a wonder what hormones can induce. I guess I don't really need to have bigger ones," Miss Frost said, smiling at me.

"I think they're the perfect size," I told her.

"I assure you, I didn't have them when I wrestled--that wouldn't have worked out very well," Miss Frost said. "I kept wrestling--thus, I kept the questions at bay, all through college," she told me. "No breasts--no living as a woman, William--until after I was out of college."

"Where'd you go to college?" I asked her.

"Someplace in Pennsylvania," she told me. "It's no place you've ever heard of."

"Were you as good a wrestler as Kittredge?" I asked her. She lay down beside me on the bed, but this time when she took my penis in her big hand, I was facing her.

"Kittredge isn't that good," Miss Frost said. "He just hasn't had any competition. New England isn't exactly a hotbed for wrestling. It's nothing like Pennsylvania."

"Oh."