David had been an exemplary teenager, keeping his parents informed of where he was going, who he was taking with him, what they were going to do and, above all, when they could expect him back. If he couldn't come home as early as he had said, he called and explained why. Seldom did he date the same girl or dance with her twice in succession and, although attractive ones had a crush on him, he treated them kindly without encouraging them. He even dated and danced with some unattractive ones and had a good time. If his parents, grandparents or friends of the family hinted that he would enjoy the company of some friends' daughter, he willingly obliged them and another wallflower bloomed. Every girl's dream and no boy's rival, he had a large number of mostly fairweather friends at an age when popularity meant more than wealth or power. Only a small number of hard-core machos begrudged him their friendship. His parents worried about having so little to worry about, much to the amusement of Maud and Fuss. Fuss reminded them of their endless goodnights -- "Goodnight my... !" Their voices had given him only slight relief, but their silences had roasted him over the devil's coals. Would Doz ever leave, would Siss ever shut the door behind him? They kept him awake later every time. Maud took credt for delaying David's birth until he could arrive with decency and dignity, which, in her facetious opinion, explained his youthful virtue.

When the subject shifted to Sabby, however, Siss and Doz found that they had a plenty to worry about. She had a crush on a different boy almost every week, unless it was one she had had a previous crush on. She was always coming home excited by the discovery of a new one, more often one she hadn't noticed than one she hadn't seen. Unlike her brother, she hated being told how often she could go out, what she could do and when she had to come home. Every time her parents refused to let her do what her friends' parents were going to let them do, she screamed, sobbed, ran to her room, slammed the door, threw herself on her bed or, worse, ran outside and roamed the field around the house or even the neighborhood. Forbidding consolation or concession, Siss sat the family down on the patio or in the living room, where they comforted each other as if under siege. Christy coined a family phrase when she described these crises as "Sabby's operas." The gloom inspired Jimmy to play the piano, on which he was making substantial progress, but he made them smile by his choice of music, such as the marcia funebre in Beethoven's A flat sonata. Since death 

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had only happened to people he didn't know, his interpretation expressed a tender solemnity that the composer wouldn't have liked, especially if he had seen the listeners smiling. It gave Christy the giggles, which gave Dad, Mom and Reg the giggles, to Jimmy's chagrin.

Everyone from Maud and Fuss to Jimmy and Christy hoped that Sabby would soon outgrow her "romanticism," as her parents called it. Instead of calming, however, it intensified as melodrama groped for tragedy without finding it. When she started an opera, her family prayed for the last scene of the last act. It used to take hours, now it took days. Passion became her, transforming a plain young woman into a wild beauty, who might indeed have fascinated millions. The whites of her eyes, the toss of her curls, the curve of her lips, the glow of her skin, her long arms and hands, her cavernous contralto and her sudden moods alarmed her family. Where was their Sabby? Rather than infatuations lasting a few days, she was going steady for weeks, raising other fears. Yet she ran little risk from vulgar seducers, whom she promptly detected, despised and rejected. The fifteen-year old soon discouraged her boy friends by demanding a devotion and submission they were incapable of. These demands intensified at sixteen when driven by a more mature passion, which exhausted one swain after another. She attracted and repelled, alternatively or simultaneously, fascinating and frightening. Wherever she went, she either passed unnoticed or turned heads.

Doz had often remarked how different she was from a photo of Sister Sabrina at the same age which he had seen once... but what did he know of the youthful Sabrina? He and Siss struggled to maintain their authority over their daughter without losing her respect and affection. Punishment for her infractions, they soon learned, incited revolt, unless they could persuade her to accept it as penitence. Sometimes they succeeded and sometimes they didn't. Sabby adored her parents, but any attempt to chain her demon only empowered his muscles to break the links. Fate had chosen her for an escapade with Damon Weathers, a white classmate with a reputation for tweaking authority's nose and goosing dignity in public. No one at Exxis High could flirt with trouble without getting into it as nonchalantly as he could and many an imitator 

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had come to grief. A tall, bony youth with his hair dyed blond and down to his shoulders, he walked with a loping gait you could recognize from a distance. Girls cooed and giggled when he passed without being able to explain why, either to each other or anyone else, let alone adults. Damon acknowledged their applause with the smile of a pop musician, but he took little interest in girls except for pretty ones who pretended, as he saw it, to ignore him or whose parents had loftier pretentions, such as a certain televangelist's daughter. Plump and silly, she echoed her father's spiritual platitudes even while covering her date with wet kisses, pawing at him feverishly and sighing loudly. Damon, who had a way with electronic gadgetry, staged such a scene in the dark on his mother's sofa, where he had focused a video camera with a night-vision lens. The tape revealed the televangelist's daughter climbing on an astonished Damon under siege at his end of the sofa. He showed it only to trustworthy disciples and, as rumors spread and diversified, an increasing number of classmates pleaded with him to let them see it too. Playfully insisting that he didn't know what they were talking about, he yielded only to those who earned his favor by pranks worthy of his approval. Discreet inquiries by clandestine agents of the televangelist encountered the same merry denial. Although he had noticed Sabby when exotic mystery redeemed her plainer features -- who hadn't? --, he paid her little attention until he saw that she didn't care about his video. Watching her more carefully, he decided that she was ignoring him. Why? It didn't even occur to him that she had never taken any interest in him.

Her apparent indifference struck him as absolutely intolerable. He even lost sleep wondering how she could ignore him. After double toil and trouble, he had his hair cut short, wore cleaned and pressed slacks instead of torn jeans, a snug blue Shetland instead of a loose black turtleneck, walked naturally, no longer smiled, kept to himself and came to class prepared, which made his fellow students glance at each other. His friends kept asking what was wrong, to which he replied by a shrug, and, when they persisted, "nothing," and when they still persisted, "nothing's wrong." This went on for several days, which seemed like weeks to his admirers. Then one day, between classes, he was walking down a hall where he knew he would meet Sabby going the other way. When he saw the whites of her eyes, he gave her a stare, which she 

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pretended to ignore despite a twitch of irritation. At once a rumor excited the student body: Damon was in love with Sabby Chinski. Asked whether it was true, Sabby reacted with annoyance and Damon, with a tragic look before continuing down the hall. The curiosity had no discernible effect on him, but it infuriated her to the point where she ambushed him on his way home: "Why are you spreading that rumor about me, Damon?" Her teeth flashed, her eyes blazed, her hair shook, her body coiled as if to strike.

"Damn!"

Smiling for the first time that week: "Sabby!"

"I have never seen you like that."

"I wish I could keep you like that."

"You are pretty cute when you are mad."

He just kept smiling

"Wow!"

"A charlatan? What's that?"

"I wasn't necking with her."

"She was trying to neck with me."

"I would never do that."

"You were pretty close to me a minute ago."

"By you?" He exposed his chest. "Hit me again! Please!"

"I didn't spread it. It spread by itself because it's true."

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"You give me a silly look and everybody starts telling me you are... [unh]... ?"

"I don't blame you. When a word is repeated too often, it doesn't mean anything any more."

He gave her the look again.

Siss felt as if icewater were flowing through her veins when she heard the recording of Sabby's voice on the answering machine: "Mom, Dad, Christy, everybody, you know how much I love you and I will never forget you, but Damon is... different. Don't worry about us, don't try to find us, try to forget about us. Maybe we won't get to Hawaii, maybe we will only get to West Virginia, but we are going to work hard, have lots of kids and, maybe, one of these days, you will be proud of us." That was all. Frantically they did all the things parents do when confronted by such a crisis. Everywhere in Zenia, everywhere in the United States, especially in Hawaii and West Virginia, the police had photos and descriptions of Sabby, Damon and his car, which resembled a discouraging number of eleven-year old Chevrolets. They had all the information they needed to find the couple and a lot more "just in case." Their blasé professionalism had dismayed Siss and Doz, but Damon's mother shocked them. Mrs. Weathers, who reminded them of her title as if it were Lady, resembled a sack half full of cotton and the cotton shifted when the sack shook. The friendly smile, the cheerful voice and the laughter with which she adorned her discouse clashed with the content: "You must be proud of your daughter [chuckle]. She's the only girl who has ever got my Damon in trouble [chuckle]. She had to put on a pretty good show to turn his head [chuckle]... [Double chuckle:] if my Damon and his car aren't home by this evening, if they aren't exactly the same as when your little girl ran off with them [smile], I'm going to sue you for every penny you have stolen from people like me." Doz caught Siss's hand before it hit Mrs. Weather's cheek. Even more frightened than furious, Lady Weathers smiled: "I might have expected that from a mother like you!" Spinning on her high heels, she departed with the cotton shaking the sack.

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The more lawyers display their discretion, the more they gossip. Freddy warned Doz that Mrs. Weather's attorney's clerk was searching public records for everything she could find about the Chinskis and the Fossezes. When Freddy heard about her threat, he consulted a colleague who told him that Mrs. Weathers earned part of her income conniving with a lawyer named Ditsy Cooper on nuisance suits, which usually ended in settlements out of court. Other schemes enabled her to defraud government programs, such as welfare, medicaid, unemployment compensation -- had she ever had a job? -- food stamps and grants to get juvenile delinquents off the streets, although Damon objected to pretending he was one of those. Despite widespread suspicion, she had so far proved too clever for indictment. As for her title, she had never married and apparently didn't even know which of her lovers had begat Damon. She must have found Weathers in the phone book. Doz asked Freddy to send his clerk to the records office and tell her to make a show of investigating her involvement in all of these activities. If she discovered anything damaging, so much the better! For the time being, Doz and Siss heard nothing further from their unprovoked enemy. But where was Sabby? In bed and unable to sleep two days after her departure, they heard the doorbell ring. In no time, five Chinski's were hugging the sixth while Bertrand jumped up on them barking. The seventh caught a bus home the next day to hell with classes. He had thanked Suzy for offering him her car but no thanks.

What a creep Damon was! Of course it wasn't his idea! It was hers! (Less sure:) She just wanted to see how far he would go. He thought it was just a dare! He kept expecting her to chicken out, hinting that maybe she didn't really want to go through with it. She had to kick him in the pants every time! He almost wet them when she withdrew the money in her bank account. She had to talk him onto the interstate. You would think he were afraid of the trucks or something! When they saw the Sickle's Stopover exit, she suggested that they stop there, but he hesitated because it was just a little place nobody ever heard of.

"Damon, that's precisely why we should stop there!"

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"Stop at a motel, get a room and close the door."

"I thought you were in love with me."

"Isn't that what you wanted everybody at school to think?"

"Get in the right lane."

A few minutes later: "Here! Stop and I will get us a room."

"Hunh?"

"... I was beginning to wonder."

How many occupants does it take to degrade a motel room to the point where even the most zealous cleaning women can't remove the stains and eliminate the odors, and the most zealous repairmen can't repair the furniture and -- Lord help us! -- the plumbing? Thousands had preceded Sabby and Damon. Although he nearly turned around and left, she had already begun to inspect the sheets.

"Any bugs?"

Shaking her head: "The sheets are clean and smell fresh. Are you afraid of bugs or me?"

She started undressing as if used to doing it in front of him. He hesistated, then rushed to catch up. As they looked at each other, she asked him if he had some condoms. She might have been saying: 'Do you have a comb, I want to comb your hair.' He had a comb, but no condom, hence a quarrel over whether he needed one. Getting the best of it, she told him to go and buy some, and she started putting her clothes back on. Exasperated, he dressed, left in his car and, twenty minutes later, returned empty handed.

"I couldn't find any."

"Where did you look?"

"Why didn't you try the pharmacy?"

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She told him to drive her to the pharmacy, took him inside with her and, within the hearing of Mother Cashier, discussed the right condoms to buy as he died a thousand deaths. Apparently more interested in her fingernails than their purchase, Mother Cashier slipped the package into a transparent plastic bag and accepted Damon's money after he pushed Sabby's aside. As soon as the door to the pharmacy swung shut behind him, he took his embarrassment out on her, shouting at her all the way to the motel and even after he had closed the door behind them. She found him amusing and more interesting than in his cowardly mode: "Roar on, sweet lion!" she teased him, taking his breath away. Where had she gotten that from?

They exhausted their supply and she exhausted him wrestling with him. Although he wrestled back in the initial episodes, with each one, his energy diminished and his roar declined to a whimper. After the last condom, she told him to get dressed and try another service station. So what if they had to drive to the next exit on the interstate! Hearing him sniff, she touched his eye, which felt wet. So she took him in her arms, holding his head against her bosom. As if consoling a little boy, she spoke sweetly: "You know, Damon, I'm supposed to be crying and you are supposed to be consoling me... [a tender look:] you know that, Damon?" He sniffed and nodded. This scene, which might have figured in a movie, prefigured the next two days, during which he whined with embarrassment, shame and resentment. Shouldn't they move on? None of her proposals got a reply, yes or no. Worse, he farted whenever gas exerted pressure on his bowels and grunted with satisfaction over the relief it gave him. Nor did he bother to shut the door to the bathroom when he went to urinate and, although he raised the seat of the toilet, he spattered the rim and dripped onto the floor. They had another quarrel when she borrowed a sponge, a mop and a can of Bon Ami from the cleaning woman, and told him to clean his mess up. His mom had never asked him to do anything like that! "I'm not your mom and my brothers never leave any mess like that." When he finally submitted, she stood over him to see that he did a thorough job. All he could think of to occupy them was to drink a can of beer which made him sleepy, then a cup of coffee to wake him up, which excited him so much that he needed

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another beer and so on. She tried to interest him in the newly established library and museum, but he only agreed to wait for her in a nearby café, although the computer games were out of date.

"Damon, have you forgotten why we are here?"

"You are already looking for an excuse to get away from me."

"You want me to look over your big brave shoulder while you risk your virtual life and right virtual wrong."

"What a creep you are!"

To her initial surprise, she did manage to get him interested in a state park with woods, a lake and rowboats to rent. They stopped at a supermarket to buy lunch and a sixpack. Guessing why the excursion appealed to him, she asked him to stop at the pharmacy, but he didn't have the nerve to face Mother Cashier again.

"Besides, you took a pill, I saw you."

"A pill doesn't protect me from disease."

She laughed: "I almost believe you... " Pointing at a service station: "Try there."

"Let's go somewhere and scurrrew," he said in her ear.

Grabbing his hand: "No condom, no screw!"

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Naked for most of the next two hours, they wrestled with each other as he tried to penetrate her and she frustrated every attempt. He tried in the rowboat, in the water, on the shore, always in vain. His many ejaculations exhausted him and a final, desperate one spewed over her belly. With a scream that echoed, she ran into the water and washed herself, splashing furiously. Drying herself vigorously:

"You are disgusting, Damon!"

A look he would never forget: "You don't know what love is. You don't have it in you. I feel sorry for you."

The beer exhilerated her and depressed him. Limp as a rag, he drooped over the steering wheel. Twice she had to remind him where to turn. He had nothing to say and she had to repeat herself to get a response out of him. She got him to stop so she could buy a newspaper, in which she found nothing about their escapade, but he didn't even seem interested. Although, for supper, he wanted to go to a McDonald's, whose sign he had noticed at the previous exit, she insisted on a Japanese restaurant at the exit before that. Quickly she learned to use chopsticks, almost as quickly he abandoned them for knife and fork, with which he gestured. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I don't think you really want to know."

She shrugged to suggest that it wasn't really important.

"You have forgotten how your mom taught you to eat."

As soon as they returned to their room, he flopped on the bed and, before long, he was snoring. She packed her bookbag and shut herself in the bathroom to write him a note. After a few tries, however, she tore them up, threw them away, cut the light off, left the bathroom, took her bookbag, left the room and let the door lock itself quietly behind her. She had to wait a few hours in a café for a bus to Mapleton and, because of stops in places she had never heard of, arrived at the bus station only after a few more hours. Sitting on the first row behind the driver for safety, she tried to sleep, but a man on the other side was chattering endlessly about his Plymouth, boring the driver. Praising the 

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extraordinary virtues of this car, he mentioned his wife a few times. Had she inspired such enthusiasm before he fell in love with his car? Whatever Sabby did with her life, she wasn't going to throw it away on a creep! Never had she been alone late at night in a place as risky as the bus station and yet, to her surprise, she wasn't afraid. Indeed the men she saw shied away from the glances she gave them. After a cab ride home and a welcome that shed her tears, she took a shower, washing Damon off of her skin and out of her hair. Before going to bed, she even brushed her teeth and cleaned her finger and toenails to be rid of the slightest stain or odor. After only a few hours of sleep, she insisted on going to school the next morning where she managed to behave almost as if nothing had happened. Since her friends kept asking her anyway, she finally reminded them that Damon had made a big deal of being in love with her. Feeling sorry for him, she had given him a chance to show her what he meant by that. Well, he hadn't shown her anything special. When he came back to school the next week, his appearance and behavior tended to confirm her account. His claims that he had taken the initiative and orchestrated a symphony of sex incited mockery and derision.

Only Mom heard the whole story and she edited the information according to the sex and sensibility of each family member who got the news from her. She gave Doz a fairly complete version although she couched it in a rhetoric that eased the pain and anxiety it gave him. Her mother swallowed the more abstract and yet entirely explicit account she gave her with the effort it took to get it down her throat, but her father almost choked on the even more abstract and less explicit one she gave him. She coated the pill she gave her brother with legal considerations, since he had to be ready for trouble with Lady Weathers. The wholly abstract version she gave David didn't spare him the convulsions of a disillusionment she had feared. How could his sister not be the girl he had always thought she was? "Nobody is ever what you want them to be," Suzy warned him. "If you consider the circumstances and how she dealt with them, I think you will discover a different Sabby and one who deserves your respect. She certainly has mine." These remarks impressed him all the more because he knew that Suzy knew that Sabby didn't trust her. A carefully censured version of Sabby's story shocked Reg, until he remembered how she and her friends had caught him in

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the shower. Although she had made him mad, she hadn't done him any harm. Had she done this Damon any harm? Nothing but a good lesson. Had she done herself any harm? The more he thought about it, the less harm he saw in it. Mom told Jimmy and Christy that their sister had grown up enough to wonder if she could take care of herself. She had proved that all right, but she might have waited a little longer and found a better way to do it. In any case, Christy and Jimmy should treat her like a grownup from now on. The comprehension and affection of the family surprized Sabby, who had expected outrage and retribution. The prestige she now enjoyed at school and even among her teachers also surprized her. At an age when wealth consists in the number of friends and the sincerity of their friendship, she was wealthy. Sobered by her adventure, nonetheless, she restricted her favors so that any boy who had managed to dance closely with her or kiss her on the cheek bragged to his friends. Poor Damon's disgrace made her feel so sorry for him that she walked with him once between classes and sat next to him another time in class. He never resumed his popstar smile and loping gait.

As midterm approached, David fretted over his courses, but Suzy reassured him. Hadn't they had their first quarrel over whether to study or have fun? They had agreed to a reasonable compromise: spend as much time as needed on study and the rest on fun. The closer tests and term papers loomed, however, the less this compromise reassured him. Suzy always gave him the impression that she was being considerate and generous. On the excuse of studying together, she arranged meetings with friends anywhere they could find empty chairs around a table, such as the Student Union, a dormitory lounge, the library. On warm sunny days, they even sat on a grassy mound under an oak tree. Sooner or later, the conversation wandered from what the professor might ask on the test or what he expected on the term paper to satire of him, his course or students who were buttering him up. Suzy wielded this satire more skillfully than any of them and especially when she imitated male professors' speech. Her lover couldn't help laughing as loudly as the others and even felt proud of her, although anxiety nagged at him. He wasn't getting any work done. At the slightest frown, however, Suzy dissipated his gloom or irritation by squeezing his hand, bumping 

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his shoulder or pushing his hair away from his temples with dainty thrusts of her hand. He hadn't gotten around to brushing his wings down and curls hung down on both sides in front. When he saw himself in his mirror, he couldn't decide whether these curls made him look interesting or ridiculous. Brushing them away under the oak one afternoon, Suzy made a little speech praising him with a smile and in a tone of her husky voice that kept him and the others guessing whether she meant it sincerely or ironically. Since she admired his qualities as a lover, ignoring the others, she embarrassed him acutely, as everyone could see. Once they were alone, he gave her a tongue lashing, accusing her of treating him as if he were her Yorky. As usual, however, she endured his temper sweetly until it had spent itself. Then she cooed and caressed his resentment away, extinguishing it by the assurance that he was even cuter when he lost his temper. Basking in her affection, he forgot the evidence that every tantrum cost him greater subserviance to her.

During the week before midterm, he stayed up late at night trying to learn what he had neglected in the course or courses for which he had to take a test the next day. His desperation drove him to even more frantic efforts than others because he had always kept up with his courses in school and gone to bed on time before tests. Scheduled on the same day as a math test and on Thursday after a test on each of the preceding days, an English test had upset him so badly by early morning that incoherent notions were stampeding through his mind. At two twenty-three, the phone startled him. Was that Suzy speaking? He had never heard a desperate tone in her voice before. Fearing husky sobs, he forgot his own predicament and concentrated on hers, patiently and kindly questioning her. Indeed the affection he heard in his own voice surprized him. The English test had scared her, she admitted, and the more she tried to prepare for it, the less she learned. "My mind is a ping pong ball. It just bounces around without going anywhere." Spontaneously, David promised to come over right away and meet with her in her dormitory lounge. "Bring your books," she pleaded, "and don't forget the novel with the heroine who dies on the first page." When she let him in, he saw that distress became her even more than other emotions. Tears brightened her emerald eyes, which appealed to him between the carefully combed strands of her black hair. The mournful tone of her husky voice shivered his spine. A thick-knit white turtleneck 

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and well-tailored, gray tweed pants speckled with white showed that she had dressed as carefully for this occasion as the others. After a long, tight embrace, the couple sat down together on a sofa in front of a glass tea table where they spread their books. When they had had their friendly argument about the novel, she admitted, she had only read the first page and thumbed through the rest. "What do these poems have to do with it?"

"The heroine's a poet."

"None I have read either. But if they made you feel something you never felt before, wouldn't you say they are original?"

"They are discussing her poems. They are collaborating on a critical edition."

"No, they wouldn't have found out about her."

"No. He wanted to show how her death revealed her life and work. Before she died, only a small number of web readers knew about her poetry."

"No, except her lover."

"Fat and ugly people fall in love too."

David kept working until the English professor insisted that he and a few others hand their tests in. Suzy had left ten minutes ago. Sleepiness had been plaguing him for most of the hour. Again and again, his head 

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dropped and the jerk woke him up. Since he lost his concentration each time, he had to struggle to recover it. He felt perfectly capable of answering the questions on the test, but he hadn't found the time to answer any of them adequately and he had only been able to scribble an outline for the last one. As he left the room, Suzy ambushed him with a great hug: "I learned more from you in a few hours than I did from that course in six weeks."

He tried to appreciate her gratitude: "You must have done pretty well?"

"I... I kept falling asleep, I couldn't concentrate."

She got an A- on the test and he, a C+. Her midterm grades averaged A- and his, B-. Upset, she admitted that he deserved her grades and she deserved his. The symptoms of her regret resembled those of her distress the night before the test, but she had dressed a little too carefully for both roles and played them a little too well. On the day of the test, even the knee-tears in and the faded spots on her blue jeans suggested remorse, humility and modesty. Where was the borderline between sincerity and deception? The husky candor he heard in her voice overwhelmed his doubts. How eagerly he embraced her proposal to party less and study more! Since she had enticed him to have fun, couldn't she encourage him to work hard? Although he appreciated the thought, it troubled him: did he need her to decide?

His family hadn't heard from him since the weekend before the tests. Obviously he hadn't done well, probably Suzy had kept him from studying. Doz thought Siss could pry the truth out of him more easily than he could, so he asked her to call. Gently but persistently she extracted it like a dentist drilling rot out of a tooth. Only when she had it all did she tell David that they would all like to come up to Concordia on Sunday and see him. First they would like to attend the service at Pentacost Tabernacle, then they would like to have lunch in the Windsor Room and finally they would like for him to show them the places where he hung out. Less enthusiastic than he sounded, he accepted these propositions one after the other, although each of them conflicted with something he and Suzy had decided to do. Neither he nor Mom made the slightest allusion to her, yet she haunted the conversation. He 

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dreaded having to call her and renege on the plans they had made. Once he had stammered the bad news, she reacted with alarm:

"They are going to take you away from me."

"I wouldn't blame them. They were nice to me and I kept you from studying."

"OK... David?"

"Tell them... tell them I know it was my fault and I'm going to help you improve your grades... I wish I could tell them myself."

"I wish I could tell them myself."

When he saw a big beige Ford turn down the street in front of his dormitory, he ran down four flights of stairs rather than take the elevator. All six of them got out of the car, the women hugged him, including Christy whom he raised to his level. The men shook his hand and Dad threw his arm around his shoulders. Everyone was talking at the same time. Dressed in their Sunday best, they looked the same to him, while he looked different to them, "like a real college student," as Christy said. Everyone laughed including a few students walking by. Dad asked Sabby, who had just obtained her driving licence, to give David the keys, since he would know the way to the Tabernacle. Dad told everyone where to sit, a custom he had adopted as soon as Sabby was old enough to fight with David. Now she was sitting next to him, and Reg, next to her. In back, Dad had Christy on his lap on the right side with Jimmy in the middle and Mom on the other side. Pointing out the places they recognized, Mom and Dad explained what used to happen in them and David, what happened now. A scarlet wood-frame building that consisted of disproportionate rectangular parallelepideds and a roof slanting at different angles over each of them caught all eyes. The sky silhouetted an assortment of chimneys, the two tallest of which leaned 

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towards each other. Who had cut a section out of the screen porch across the front of the central cube and inserted a portico with four ionic columns? It had to have been some students without much money to spend! Out front the light-blue sign with the gold lettering that identified all university buildings announced "Slash and Burn." Dad: "Stop here a minute, David."

Chuckling, David pulled over.

Mom: "When I was a student, it was the Spiritual Center, but we called it the Ghost House. It was painted light gray. All the campus preachers had an office. I used to go and visit Joe Nethercloth. You could hear all sorts of strange things being said on the other side of the partitions. We always had a quiet laugh together. They added that big wing on the left, which was a chapel. Lots of disputes about how it would be furnished and decorated. They made a show of getting along together, but rumors of backbiting kept everybody laughing. Joe was the only one who could make peace... Later, the ROTC retreated to that building, tore the porch on the side down, added two little wings in back and painted it green."

David: "Well, it's a spiritual center again and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some ghosts wandering around inside. It's the place where students who are too wild or crazy for the rest of us can go and let go. The trouble is they don't get along with each other. The campus police always have to come and keep them from killing each other. You never can tell what they will do. They had an 'emergency meeting' to discuss 'the current crisis,' whatever that was, and, after a lot of shouting, the 'anarchists' got in a fight with the 'terrorists' over 'the appropriate course of action.' They broke some chairs and windows before the police got there. Another time, they were going to tear down the walls that cramp the universal soul. My dormitory must be a mile away and their music was throbbing in my ears. Suzy's is closer and she said it sounded like cats screeching at each 

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other. We happened to be driving by one night when men and women were running all over the place, stark naked and yelling. Apparently it had something to do with 'the rites of spring.' Last year, a 'purification rite' nearly burned the place down. The way I heard it, they were trying to singe each other's pubic hair with torches. They keep the campus fire department busy too."

Christy: "What kind of hair is that?"

Christy: "They really must be crazy!"

They were having such a good time together that they almost forgot to stop talking and laughing when they entered the tabernacle. After the service, when the minister greeted them at the door, he evidently hadn't seen David before, but no one said anything. Friends and acquaintances were chatting outside as usual. Glad to see them, Sadie Freelock came over and spoke to all of them including David, who was embarrassed. He should come to the party that evening, she told him. They were as much fun as the ones at Kingdom Tabernacle and you could bring your friends. As the Chinskis returned to their car, Mom nudged David away from the others and asked him why Sadie had embarrassed him? He said he would tell her some other time, but she wanted to know right now. They weren't in any rush! Mortified, he admitted that he had shouted at Sadie for suggesting that he take Suzy to an opera. People had turned and stared. Grabbing him by his lapels, Mom glared at him: "Go and apologize!" Her eyes, voice and grip startled him. She hadn't treated him like that since the time he peed in the rubber plant pot. Although her tender gaze and whispery voice tempted mischievous children to see what they could get away with, they always regretted it. Nodding obediently, he found Sadie, took her aside, told her what an idiot he had been...

"That's all right, David... Look, if you came tonight, I could introduce you to a guy I know you would like. I bet your friend would too."

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Mom and Dad had warned the four younger children not to make the slightest allusion to Suzy. Now they were afraid Christy might ask him why Sadie wasn't his girl friend. That wouldn't be an allusion to Suzy, would it? Instead, she said: "It was nice to see Sadie." Silence. David was driving as if he expected the car in front of him to slam on the brakes. Sabby elbowed his ribs, making him jump.

"Hey! What did you do that for? It was dangerous."

The others laughed, but Mom and Dad immediately returned to things they recognized. The timbered architecture of the Windsor Room made them laugh, so the younger children, who were impressed, wanted to know why. Colonial architechture, Mom explained, usually imitated that of the mother country, but the Windsor Room was an imitation of an imitation, like the portico on the front of Slash and Burn. The professors and administrators who dined there during the week had long since forgotten their silly surroundings. Students' families, who predominated on weekends, often admired them nonetheless. It was then, of course, that the student waiters and waitresses got their best tips. The poor girl who served the Chinskis inspired Reg's contempt for "trying to come from behind" and Christy's complaint that she was using "baby talk" on her. Sabby excused her because she had to work her way through college with an unpleasant job:

"The smell, the mess, people stuffing themselves."

Jimmy: "Hey, you are spoiling my dinner."

Dad: "There's too much of it. Restaurants treat us as if we were all gluttons."

David: "It sure beats student restaurants."

"I never pay much attention to vegetables, except the ones I hate, like broccoli."

David appreciated their tact. They hadn't bothered him about his grades, they hadn't even said anything about Suzy. In fact, he had forgotten his 
promise to transmit her regrets. He wanted to tell his parents that he was going to concentrate on his studies and raise his average to a B by the end of the semester, but he couldn't find the right opportunity. He 

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was proud of them. They didn't fawn on their kid in college, they didn't admire everything like most families did, they just praised what they thought deserved it and criticized what they thought didn't. After dinner, he showed the family the improvements since his parents' time: the DNA lab, the computing center, the new library, the humanities building, Bekka Performance Hall and the Ishmael Black Culture Center then under construction. David agreed with critics who objected that the latter would aggravate racism. They were strolling across a recent extension of the campus, the work of a landscape gardener and architect who had reshaped the terrain, rechanneled a stream across it which empted into a pond at the lower end, accentuated the relief with flower beds and groups of trees. For the fall, he had selected Chrysanthemums that harmonized with the leaves of the trees, which were turning. Though impressed, Reg was losing patience: "When are we going to see the stadium?"

Everyone objected.

Dad: "Why do you want to see that?"

Sabby: "What is there to see if no game is going on?"

Jimmy: "Grass and a lot of empty seats!"

"I did?"

"... When I was reading the paper. What did I say?"

Sabby, Jimmy, Christy and Mom disagreed.

Christy: "He just wants to make believe."

Sabby: "Yes, pretend he's playing."

Jimmy: "Throwing passes and catching them!"

Mom: "Take him Doz! Show him where they wrenched your back! Show him where they knocked you out!"

David let Reg and Dad off at the stadium. They found an open entrance because employees were cleaning up after a game the day before. As they walked out onto the field, Reg's eyes shone with enthusiasm. Dad had to tell him twice to come and see where he had been knocked out and where he had wrenched his back. For Reg, his apparent recovery 

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from those injuries and the career he might have had eclipsed the danger he had faced. He insisted on knowing exactly where he had stood when he threw his passes in the scrimmage, where they had been caught and where he had run the ball. As they paced up and down the field, the thrill came back to Doz, shaking his convictions. Encouraging his son, he kept telling himself, would expose him to disappointment and injury. He noticed a robust silhouette coming through the open entrance and, almost immediately, he recognized Saw Sylvester. Saw had so big a grin on his face that there wasn't much face left. "Hey! You are trespassing on my field!"

"No I'm not! It belongs to me too!"

Reg was admiring him as if he had appeared in a vision.

"Even you don't have enough."

"How did you know we were here?"

"No, and I hope Reg won't either!"

Still the head coach at ZU, Saw swore he was going to stay on until a ZTech touchdown struck him down. He showed Reg the locker room, the equipment room, the training room and his office with the crowded trophy case, the blue and gold ZU wall hanging and the unmarked orange and black rug on the floor. Recognizing the ZTech locomotive under their feet, Reg laughed at the joke right away and Doz remembered that it had taken him a minute or two. Reg's laugh delighted Saw. Younger men had replaced all of the staff that Doz had met. Burgess had died of a heart attack, Marty Pedgman had retired and Jack Stimson -- Saw rolled his eyes in horror -- had become the head coach at ZTech. Despite their diversity, Saw's current staff resembled each other by their youth and their admiration for him, which exceeded what Doz remembered from his tryout. He had to apologize to an  

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assistant coach for calling him by the trainer's name. Dazzled, Reg followed Saw and Doz around as if in a dream. Saw treated him affectionately without cultivating his obvious enthusiasm for football, a precaution much appreciated by Doz. "Reg," he rasped turning to him, "I bet you are as crazy about football as other young men your age."

"Yes Sir!"

"... Yes Sir."

...

"I'm on my middle school team."

Doz chuckled.

"Reg, you are getting the best advice available from the leading expert on the subject."

"How about the shiny skin underneath?"

"That's why I made the remark! I wonder if Reg understands what you mean by the level of competition."

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teams. Every coach sets his standards as high as he can recruit."
Reg clearly understood, but Saw and Doz realized by the expression on his face that he meant to be the best player on the Exxis High football team, weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, and run forty yards in four and a half seconds. They gave each other a knowing smile.

Before Doz and Reg left, Saw offered them free tickets to the ZU-ZTech game and they accepted. Saw said he would arrange from them to sit next to Tom-Tom. Tom-Tom had in fact invited the Chinskis for a visit before they returned to Mapleton. An officer on the Concordia Police Force, he had acquired a reputation for reforming juvenal delinquents. He had married a pretty girl from Joshua Well, who had been an airline hostess "long enough to get good and tired of being nice to people I didn't know. [Chuckle] It was easier to be nice to Tom-Tom and I have been ever since, but sometimes I have to give him a piece of my mind."

"How many pieces you got left, Sherry? I thought I had the whole thing by now."

"Bart, I have already grown up."

"Football isn't a game."

Tom-Tom and Sherry had bought a house that reminded them of the ones they had grown up in. It was a one-story frame with dormer windows, a brick chimney on one side and a screen porch on the other, a sash window on either side of the front porch and a separate garage on the side. The white clapboards gleamed in the afternoon sun since Tom-Tom had just painted them. Unlike the houses in Joshua Well, no additions had distorted the architecture, which made both the residents and the visitors feel at home. Maples and oaks shaded the lawn, which Bart complained of having to mow for part of his allowance. He didn't like having to weed his father's vegetable garden either and he was glad 

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Ashley had the job of weeding her mother's flower garden. Each parent accused the other of taking up too much of the space in the back yard. Tom-Tom got another piece of Sherry's mind at the end of every summer for harvesting more tomatoes, corn, beans, etc. than she could serve, cook, can or store in the freezer on the back porch. Their neighbors, friends and church gladly relieved them of the surplus. Ashley invited Sabby, Jimmy and Christy to visit the chicken coop, which she took care of. Reg went along to get away from Bart, who couldn't stand the smell. The color of Rhode Island Reds is beautiful in chickens and ugly in everything else. Daring them to disturb his harem, Sir John, the rooster, started to attack Christy, but Ashley grabbed him and stuffed him with his wings flapping in a cage where he strutted back and forth glaring at them. She gave her older guests a hen to hold and stroke: Sabby got Dame Ford, who cooed appreciatively, and Reg got Dame Page, who squawked and flapped trying to get away.

"Hold her more gently," Ashley urged.

"She's not a football," Sabby remarked.

"Oh, that's not true," said Ashely. "You ought to hear her coo when Daddy holds her."

As the Chinskis were returning to their car, David felt something warm, small and soft in his hand. Looking down, he saw Christy walking beside him. "May I sit beside you?" she asked.

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"Sure! Why not?"

When he called Suzy to tell her that he had promised to take her to the party at Pentacost Tabernacle, her voice rose to a higher pitch. Shouldn't he have asked her first? He explained how his very desire to avoid involving her with Sadie and the Tabernacle had trapped him in an obligation to do just that. Suzy objected to everything he had done. The scene with the black girl particularly shocked her: all he had to do was decline instead of losing his temper. Although he owed Sadie an apology, he didn't have to accept her proposal to come to the party and he had no right to say he would bring Suzy. Maybe he used to enjoy church parties, but he was a big boy now and he didn't need religion to have a good time. Suzy couldn't imagine anything more boring than a Sunday evening at a church party. Since he had never known her to be that angry, he discovered that she could cut quick and deep with words that left him stuttering. Yet her resentment, which struck him as unjustified, provoked him into telling her that he was going to the church party whether she came or not. After a few minutes of shouting by him and hissing by her, she told him she was coming along to keep him from compromizing her further. She said so in a tone of voice that she might 

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have used to refuse to go and he accepted in one that he might have used to refuse to take her. It was the first time he had had his way with her. Her anger didn't keep her from dressing as carefully as for any other occasion. Though casual, her clothes looked sophisticated in comparison to the other girls. She wore a white blouse embroidered with small dancing figures in red, a full gray skirt with a red sash around the waste and white tennis shoes. Since her behavior was irreproachable, only David could tell that she missed the attention she usually got.

She treated Sadie cordially, likewise her friend Stanford Withers, as black as her but different in character. Sadie had lively eyes and an irresistible smile, which eclipsed less attractive traits that you forgot once you knew her. A bulbous nose, for instance, a dumpy figure, short, thick arms and legs. Her voice burbled with inexhaustible enthusiasm, which must have frightened Stanford when he first met her. Yet she knew how to be friendly without familiarity and tolerant without condescendence, virtues that reassured Suzy. Besides, would any other black girl forgive a white boy for shouting at her while people were walking by? Stanford insisted on being called Stanford and not Stan, which provoked a withering look, a pun snickered at beyond his hearing. Short and thin, he stood straight and stretched his neck trying to gain another half inch. Never laughing and smiling only when courtesy required it, he tended to solemnity with his taut face and elegant gestures. Curly hair doubled the volume of his head. A sonorous barotone, he spoke so correctly that he embarrassed his listeners, making them hesitate between imitating him and resorting to their usual speech. Like Suzy, he overdressed even when casual. His long-sleeved dark blue shirt open at the neck had been washed and ironed since he last wore it and his caramel slacks had been cleaned and pressed. Small of foot, he had shined his black loafers for the occasion. Introducing him, Sadie mentioned that he was a voice major in the Music School "and Sadie is a speech therapy major in the School of Medicine," he added. Only by Sadie's laughter did Suzy and David realize that it was a joke. Sadie and David could tell that neither Stanford nor Suzy felt entirely at ease that evening, but for different reasons. Church entertainment reminded Suzy of parental supervision, while the Free 

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Faith Assembly seemed like a sect to Stanford who sang in the choir at the Presbyterian church. Would he mind if David, Suzy and Sadie attended the service next Sunday to hear him sing? Of course not, but they shouldn't let anyone think they had come only for that. Stanford and Suzy enjoyed the party at the Tabernacle more than either had expected and, when the time came to leave, the two couples were looking forward to seeing each other again. Stanford invited Suzy and David to join him and Sadie at a party in his fraternity next Saturday. Mu Nu Psi was all black, cultivated and contemptuous of jocks. The brothers dressed and behaved like Stanford, but they threw parties wild enough to satisfy Suzy. For once, David received more attention than she did, because the fraternity, on Stanford's recommendation, had targeted him for pledging. Although he was white, his father was black, so he qualified for membership and his family appealed to them by its prominence and wealth. While saying nothing of this, they made it perfectly clear, not only by what they said on other subjects, but also their interest in everything he said. When the time came to thank their hosts, David had drunk as much as Suzy and they had their arms around each other as if to hold each other up. Wobbling across the campus and bumping hips, they discussed the brothers' intentions: "They think I'm black."

"How about me? Can't they see I'm yellow?"

She shivered. Was it the chilly air? "You have some things... that I better not mention." They both laughed.

"If you joined a fraternity of black snobs, they might try to take you away from me because I'm neither a black nor a snob."

"I have heard you say that before."

"Hey! What was that for?"

The conversation petered out as those things came into play. It must have taken them twenty minutes to say goodnight. In church the next day, Stanford sang a solo, which made a profound impression on them. How could such a voice boom from so small a chest? 

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Although Suzy was letting David party less and study more, they argued over the exact apportionment of his time. He had a dream in which she was jerking one of his arms and Christy, whose hand he could feel, was jerking the other. How could his little sister jerk so hard? They were arguing: "He's mine!"

"No, he isn't, he belongs to me!"

The ZU-ZTech game was always on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Tom-Tom and Sherry had invited the entire family to supper after the game. Doz dropped the rest of the family off, except for Reg, and Tom-Tom sat in the right front seat rocking the Ford to that side.

"Wow!" exclaimed Reg.

"As long as you don't capsize us," said Doz.

"Hey! Why didn't he run the ball instead of taking a sack?"

Doz: "He might have fumbled or gotten hurt."

A few minutes later: "Hey! Why aren't they double-teaming the middle linebacker? They will never make more than one or two yards."

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"The center can't handle the noseguard alone. If both guards go after the linebacker, they will lose one or two yards."

Ten minutes later: "Hey! Why didn't he just let the ball roll into the end zone?"

"He's a runner. Runners like to run. Especially when they are three touchdowns behind."

Seven minutes later: "Hey! Why is Coach Sylvester so nervous? You would think he was losing."

"You know why they call him 'Saw'?"

"No."

"But he's four touchdowns ahead. Why doesn't he just sit down and relax?"

"Relax? He doesn't know how. He can't watch without wanting to play himself."

Intrigued, the neighbors asked Tom-Tom and Doz whether they had played for him. Although Tom-Tom admitted that he had, he disagreed with Doz on whether he had. Towards the end of the third quarter, ZU ran the score up to 45-0 with a field goal. The ZU players and cheerleaders were celebrating even more wildly than before, but they looked subdued compared with Saw, who was bucking like a rodeo bull. The ZU band struck up the ZU song as if they hadn't already played it six times, with more exuberance and less discipline each time.

"Hey! Why are they putting on such a show?"

"You said it isn't a game and now you say it's a show. You are right on both counts."

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Tom-Tom and Sherry had asked Doz and Siss whether David had a girl friend he might want to bring with him. After a discussion which I will leave to your imagination, Tom-Tom had called David and encouraged him to bring Suzy. The harder Suzy tried to make the right impression, the less she convinced the Chinski women, who, together with Sherry, Ashley and even Bart, found the taste a little sweet. Doz and Tom-Tom detected hints of flattery, while Reg and Jimmy applauded and David delighted in Suzy's performance. Aware of her failure, Suzy noticed that Reg was being neglected, so she outflanked the other women. Since Ashley was playing a new CD for Sabby, Suzy approached and asked: "Reg, do you know how to dance." Every heart skipped a beat.

"Me?... No."

Explaining and demonstrating, she had him dancing correctly after the first track and easily after the second. The older observers had to admit that feminine charm could teach and athletic ability could learn pretty fast when it came to dancing. Pleased by Suzy's initiative, David invited Ashley to dance. Sherry called a huddle in the kitchen, where she told Tom-Tom to dance with Sabby, while she and Siss busied themselves with dinner. Bart, who thought dancing was silly, had taken Jimmy to play a game on his computer and Christy was playing with the kittens. Even with the furniture pushed out of the way, they were bumping into each other and enjoying it. None would forget bumping into Tom-Tom! Once again, Suzy had become the life of the party. Dancing with a prettier girl than he had ever seen on television, Reg felt as if he had grown up in a half hour. Maybe girls were useful for something after all! When Bart reappeared for supper, his sarcasm about jocks encountered sarcasm about eggheads. David came to his rescue explaining some geometry to him.

Sherry had cooked enough food for twice the twelve people around the table. Compliments from the seven Chinskis and Suzy, whom a newcomer might have taken for an eighth, resulted in a playful argument between Tom-Tom and Sherry with Ashley supporting her mother and Bart pedantically arbitrating the dispute. Sherry teased Tom-Tom about growing too much food and Tom-Tom protested that he couldn't grow enough for all the meals she was cooking. Not only for family and 

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friends, but also the church, the PTA, the brotherhood of police, the home for the elderly, the shelter for battered wives... With every additional recipient of her generosity, his voice rose to a higher note exciting louder laughter.

"Men are always sitting around telling jokes," Ashley complained, "while women slave away in the kitchen."

Ashley sighed with exasperation.

"In Joshua Well," Sherry said, "families are big, friends are welcome and everybody has a good time. Maybe I'm crazy, but I like cooking for a lot of people."

"Then I'm crazy too," said Suzy, "because, if I could cook like you, I would invite a lot of people too."

"I should think you could find all kinds of exotic food in Mammoth," Sabby prompted.

"Yes," responded Suzy, "that's true, but it's surprizing how much you can find right here in Concordia, in ethnic groceries run by former students."

Tom-Tom: "They are in business because most of the restaurants are awful. Students and sports fans love bad food."

David: "Restaurants are opening and closing all the time, but Suzy and I like Weng Chen's."

Suzy: "Nothing can beat Mrs. Tom-Tom!"

"She sure put one over on you," Reg told Sabby. He was sitting in back on the right and she, on the left.

"She sure did!" Dad was driving them back to Mapleton.

"On me?" protested Sabby. 

"I think she put one over on all of us," said Mom in the right front seat.

Sabby: "On Reg, for instance, when she taught him how to dance." 

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Reg: "Hey! A pretty girl offers to teach me. What do you expect me to do? Say something nasty? You never offered to teach me! You are just jealous."

Sabby: "Jealous? Of that Chinese slut?"

Mom: "Sabby! You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Christy: "What's a slut?" She was sitting in front between her parents.

Mom: "Slut is a nasty word. It means a woman who runs after men."

Dad: "Yes, except for your mother. Suzy isn't a slut. On the contrary, I would be enthusiastic about her if she weren't using David."

Mom: "If he stood up to her, she would either respect him or lose interest in him. I wish he weren't so naïve."

Sabby: "She was using you!"

Mom: "David will never fall for a slut. He fell for Suzy precisely because she is refined, intelligent, beautiful -- Let's face it! -- and dignified. Everything he is."

Mom: "I wonder if she didn't choose him because she knew she could dominate him. I hope David doesn't go through life kowtowing to Suzy Wus and Nathan Elboxes."

Sabby: "He saw through Nathan."

Sabby gave him a dirty look over Jimmy's head.

Mom: "Yes and we will be chewing our fingernails again."

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Sabby: "You wouldn't have fallen for them! You aren't that kind."

Reg: "If I meet a Suzy, I'm going to wear the pants."

Everyone laughed.