Scott

"Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."

-Noel Coward

I was sitting in Wendy's, feeling guilty for eating salty, greasy fries, and ...the pop song, "The Things We Do For Love" came on. Snapped me right back to high school. To Scott. He was a senior and I was a year older, having taken a year off before college, and we both lived in West Caldwell, N.J.

The school was putting on "The Diary of Anne Frank," and I must have been so brilliant they brought me back to play Anne's father. Scott was in the cast, playing Mr. Dussell. Not so hot. Maybe their talent pool was a little shallow that year and that's why they asked me back. Even at 18, I could tell this was only marginally passing as theater.

Scott was tall and unremarkable looking except for a slightly flattened nose. Being a nice Jewish girl boy, he obsessed about getting it fixed. We'd been subtly flirting -- I couldn't flirt any other way back then --and once we started fooling around I didn't even notice his nose. Well, maybe because I was usually occupied on his bottom half.

I hang my head in shame to the Theater Gods -- and I never did it again -- but backstage, about to go on, Mr. Dussell was feeling up Mr. Frank.

Sacrilege!

One day we were in bed at his parent's house -- both of them worked and wasn't that a great set-up for afternoon delight -- and I noticed the time.

"Holy crap! We've gotta be there in, like, ten minutes!" I said.

"Well, we can't go like this."

"Like what?"

"We smell like it. Like we've been doing it."

That was enough to knock us both into his shower and we did a quick clean-up. I combed my hair in the mirror and tried to dry it. That's when I noticed the hickey. Jesus Christ.

"Look what you did!"

"Oh, you can't even see it." he said.

We jumped into my Pinto and screeched off to the school parking lot.

"Maybe they won't have started yet," Scott said as we pushed open the double doors. "Most of the time we don't."

We walked into the middle of a quiet, intense scene. Everyone stopped and looked at us. I slid down the auditorium aisle and into a chair, praying for a fire drill. No such luck.

"Let's stop here for a break," Mr. Sempreora said. Everyone dispersed. Even Scott was nowhere to be found. This teacher had been my first mentor, the one who said to me, "No matter what happens to you in life, know that you can act." He had guided me, cared for me, pointed the way. And now this. He came up the aisle silently, just looking.

"I'm really sorry. We were out driving and I got a flat."

His eyes looked up at my wet hair and then down to the hickey. Nothing he could have said would have made me feel worse. I had let him down, as well as everyone working so hard to make the play work.

That night, Scott and I went to hang out at the

Colony Diner, and that song came on. Crammed into the ripped red vinyl seats he handed me a ring under the table so no one would see. It was just a cheap little thing with a tiny checkerboard design. Probably got it at the mall. But as "The Things We Do For Love," came on, we were at our zenith and this moment became hotwired into my mind, forever linked to hat insipid melody.

Obviously forever; here it is 30 years later.

Just found the ring today. It was a happy time and I didn't know what the next week was about to bring...