Colleges and universities competed with each other to offer Joe a scholarship they thought he couldn't refuse. Yet he accepted the least lucrative offer, which came from Zenia Free Faith College or ZFF as we called it, a small, reputable, conservative institution in Mapleton. My parents begged Zenia University to admit me, which it did only because Uh! Oh!, who had described Joe as the best student she had ever taught, wrote that I had the potential to become a good one too. Although my parents had allowed me more freedom than they should have, the practically unlimited freedom of life at the university went right to my head. I only had to stay out of trouble with the campus police and pass at least three of my five courses. Thus I continued my high-school habit of having as much fun and doing as little work as possible. None of the professors and assistants who had to teach freshmen paid any attention to absences. When more than fifty students took their course, they couldn't have kept track of them anyway. I went to class from time to time to catch up and, after dying of boredom the first few times, I decided to do the assignment before I did. More and more classmates admired me for the minimum amount of study I needed to get a D on tests. Nor did the campus police pose much of a problem as long as I did nothing to disturb their routine. They ignored drinking that didn't result in violence or damage, and fornication that took place where they didn't routinely look for it. 

When I arrived at ZU, the endless number of friendly girls fired my enthusiasm. Attending the same university facilitated encounters as much as the same high school. When I smiled at them, they smiled back; when I spoke to them, most of them were friendly; when I suggested that we do something together, some were eager and especially the freshmen. Not only had the latter just graduated from their parents, but also from their boyfriends. The indiscriminate flirtation of the first week, to which I fervently devoted myself, yielded one durable affair. I followed a small, plump, cute and dainty freshman into an amphitheatre where my psychology class was going to meet and sat down beside her. During the three minutes before the lecture began, we exchanged names, campus addresses and telephone numbers. We also agreed that parties had a higher priority than studies. The sparkle in Betsy Simic's dark eyes and the twist of her lips, which reminded me of the composition I had written for Uh! Oh! convinced 

me that we were going to have a good time together. I never understood what girls saw in me, but she saw it and liked it. We exchanged a few smiles over some ironical remarks about sex by James Riesenkratz or Scratchy, who was giving the lecture. Then a left arm, whose size, shape and complexion reminded me of Boucher, reached across and wrote on my notebook: "Well?"

On hers, I wrote back: "Eight this evening on the sixth floor of the library annex, in back on the right side?"

"That will look better."

"How could I forget?"

"Eldridge," he said, astonished. That was his name!

We knew better than to trust him. After a few days of hesitation and frustration, she told me to meet her on the sixth floor of the library annex without a blanket.

"No blanket?"

I had taken Scratchy's introduction to psychology because the enrollment hadn't reached the course limit and I needed a fifth course. Yet he was the only professor who kept me interested, so I attended his course more often than the others. Tall and stiff behind his lecturn, he had a sonorous voice and a bald head that glistened under the ceiling light. Although he never smiled, he could make us laugh any time he wanted. He had asked for volunteers to interview for a study in youth sex psychology, his special field. Signing up for an interview, I filled out the preliminary questionnaire, which asked for the details of my sex life in a matter-of-fact language that I had never heard or read. Receiving me more cordially than I had expected, Scratchy invited me to lie down on a black leather couch. "How do you feel?"

"On your couch? Relaxed."

"Yes Sir, and because people are supposed to relax on psychologists' couches." 

He smiled: "Then people do things because they are supposed to. What does supposed to mean?"

"... When people keep telling you that a certain cause always has the same effect, you expect it to happen to you too."

"I think I would throw something out first to see what happens."

"No Sir. I felt excited when I was near them. Even if I hadn't seen other boys touching them, I would have myself. Once you start that..."

"Yes, Sir. Animals seem to feel the same thing."

"The earliest thing I can remember was when my parents took me to see a baby giraffe. The mother and the father were standing behind and on either side of it, as if they were proud of it and expected us to take a picture. I still have the picture."

"Yes Sir, but I have never been in a hurry."

"I felt I was doing something that was supposed to be wrong."

"I enjoyed it all the more because I was frustrating hypocrisy."

"People tell you things they don't believe themselves because they want you to believe them. Parents, teachers, preachers..."

"When I was a kid, I listened to grown-ups because I didn't know anything and they knew everything. As I was growing up, I saw they were doing things they didn't want us to do. The more they hid something from me, the more I wanted to find it out. The more they told 

me not to do something, the more I wanted to know whether they were doing it and, when I found out that they were, I wanted to do it too." 

"Yes, Sir."

"Most of them, but some push me away because they want me to try harder and others, because they just want me to admire them. It doesn't take long to find out which kind they are and, if one of them is giving me the runaround, I leave her."

"Yes Sir. I was dancing with one who wanted to dance close at the top but not at the bottom. As soon as I saw she wasn't going to let me get any closer at the bottom, I left her. You should have seen her face. It was funny because she was good looking. I don't know why nobody came to her rescue, but she only waited thirty seconds before dashing to the little girls' room."

"No Sir, I don't. Pretty girls are nice to look at, but they know it and expect special treatment. The closer you get to girls, the less you see what they look like and the more fun you have. I have friends who are crazy about pretty girls and they pay for it, whether they get anywhere with them or not. Being seen with one makes them feel good, but it doesn't satisfy them and they are the first to admit it."

"Yes Sir, a lot of people."

"Seducers prey on the girls I leave alone, the ones who only want to be admired. They take pride in overcoming the difficulty of corrupting innocent girls. They do harm and I don't."

"Yes Sir, I'm careful."

"People get married to have a family. I'm not ready for a family, but I am ready for intercourse. Why should I give it up when I need it most and can satisfy the need best?"

"... Maybe girls would take the initiative... Do you think it's going to happen?"

This interview changed my attitude. I began to do Scratchy's assignments more carefully, attend his lecture and the discussion sections more assiduously, take notes and ask questions. I discussed psychology with classmates and even friends who hadn't taken any courses on the subject. After a C on the first test, I got an A- on the second one. When a few students asked me for help, I gave it to them because I enjoyed talking about psychology. No, I didn't give sex, alcohol and mischief up, on the contrary, I just added a psychological dimension to the fun.

Joe called one evening to tell me about a traditional visit to ZFF by a student delegation from Pentecostal Tabernacle in Concordia. The delegation lacked freshmen because there hadn't been enough time to recruit them. The leader had asked Joe if he knew any ZU freshmen who might be willing to join them and Joe urged me to come. Although Betsy and I hadn't made any plans for that weekend, we had spent every one since we had met together. I was on the way to psychology worrying about how to tell her, when she slipped up behind me and hooked that arm of hers in mine, pressing her big round bosom against me. "You look like a dark cloud drifting along. You need to rain." I had an erection and I was afraid people would notice.

"Promise you will pardon me," I said.

"Pardon you? What crime did you commit? Some other girl?"

"Well, you can't be pregnant."

Laughing: "Let's name him Little Trav." 

Reassured: "Some other boy."

"Sounds queer to me!"

She unhooked her arm and stepped in front of me, looking me angrily in the eyes. 

"Are you sure your friend is a boy?"

"You are going to see a girl at ZFF."

"Did you just get religion or have you had it all along?"

"But?"

She raised her voice: "I don't have it and I don't want it!"

She returned to my side with a wry smile, took my arm and started me off to psychology again.

"You won't be showing me this weekend."

only less clearly than the air. The doors didn't squeak and, while the stairs did creak, they did it softly. In the library, Joe showed me a spiral staircase made of wood, with which he had replaced a rickety, wrought-iron one.

"A little harder than Josh U'Pretz's," I remarked, running my hand up the sleek railing. "It's a beautiful job, Joe!"

Unlike other colleges, it hired professors without research ambition but willing to dedicate themselves to teaching and association with students. Instead of tenure, it offered professors permanent employment as long as they taught their students well, kept up with their field and made a contribution to campus life. The dean judged a professor less by his publications than the content of his courses and less by his students' opinion of his teaching than the evidence of what they had learned from him. He never raised the salary of a professor who gave too many high or low grades; indeed, he fired one who cultivated the popularity of his students. To keep the number of students in every class down, he required professors to teach five courses a semester. ZFF concentrated on basic disciplines: English, math, history, philosophy, physics, chemistry and biology. Freshmen had to take a year-long course on the New Testament and sophomores, one on the Old Testament. Ancient languages included Latin and Greek; modern languages, French, Spanish and German. Recently, the faculty had considered requests to add Hebrew, psychology, music and art. After much deliberation, they decided to approve the dean's recommendation of one course in each of the last three disciplines. ZFF 

prided itself on the proportion of its graduates who entered the ministry, the professions and graduate schools.

Joe took me to his dormitory, a three-story frame building, to show me the room he shared with two other men. He introduced me to one of them, who was studying, and mentioned that he was a junior. Seeing my surprise, the roommate, whose name I have forgotten, explained that the occupants of every room were from different classes. A committee, to which Joe had been elected, reassigned rooms every semester. "I didn't do too badly," the roommate said smiling, "but where am I going to get fatherly advice next semester?"

"How about me?" replied Joe. "Who is going to explain Greek syntax to me at two in the morning?"

Dinner was served at six o'clock in a room that could seat all 413 students, 27 faculty, 4 administrators and 3 other employees, most of whom came to lunch during the week. Before we sat down, a waitress rang a bell and everybody stood behind his chair, while the dean, who looked like an Old Testament prophet, said grace and then we sang "All things come of thee, oh Lord." The seating changed every Sunday according to rules like those for room assignments, but the students at Joe's table knew him well enough to give me a warm welcome. They kept asking me about ZU, which embarrassed me because what I liked most would have appealed to them least. I tried to get away with vague comparisons in favor of ZFF: selective admissions attracted students more anxious to get an education than have a good time; all the students in a small college knew each other and did 

things together; fraternities and sororities divided students into exclusive rival groups and facilitated debauchery; intercollegiate athletics distracted students from their studies, attracted students more interested in sports than study and exposed the institution to corrupution. Suspicious of my bias against ZU, however, the students around the table playfully pitted a counterargument against each of my arguments: selective admissions resulted in a sterile uniformity; a small college isolated students from the community; fraternities and sororities allowed friends to associate with each other and why shouldn't they? Didn't football and basketball allow athletes to develop their ability and students to unify in a common purpose?

"The devil is the nicest guy I ever met," said Joe.

"I was too dumb."

After dinner, we saw "The Nights of Caberia" and participated in a discussion led by a lady professor. A boy couldn't imagine a worse predicament than having to survive on prostitution. A girl vilified men who enslaved women to their perversion. Another boy agreed with both of them, but what would prostitutes live on if there weren't any men like that? Three girls protested and the professor asked them: "How would you solve the problem?"

"Throw the men in jail," said one.

"There would never be enough room for them," objected another. "Why not slap a tax on prostitution and use the money to fund job training for prostitutes?"

The third one asked: "How many of them would find prostitution easier than the job you train them for?" 

"The thing that gets me about this film," I heard myself saying, "is how Caberia's innocence entraps her in guilt."

"But doesn't her guilt also entrap her in innocence?" Joe asked. "Have you ever seen a more innocent smile than hers at the end as she follows the young man singing, playing his guitar and dancing down the road?"

Saturday morning, I joined Joe and the cleanup team assigned to the experimental science building. We started with the greenhouse on the roof and worked our way down floor by floor, biology on the third, chemistry on the second, physics on the first, the furnace room and two classrooms in the basement. We cleaned the sinks and counters in the laboratories; dusted the desks, chairs, etc.; swept or scrubbed the floors; washed the windows inside and out, removed the trash. Joe surprized me when he opened a professor's office without a key. I asked him how he had known that the professor didn't lock his office. None of them locked his office, he explained: no inside doors on campus were locked. Students had permission to study in offices whenever professors weren't using them. Our worst chore was airing, cleaning and resupplying the restrooms on every floor. The rest we enjoyed because, to my surprize, working together had made four boys and three girls, who hadn't known each other very well, close friends by the time we had finished. One of the girls jerked her hand away from mine when it fell on hers accidently along the railing as I approached a landing at the top of one flight of stairs and she started up the next flight in the opposite direction. I was following her again when we came back down: "Polly, you have some chalk dust in your hair."

"Trav!" she scoffed. "Why don't you just shake it out?"

That afternoon, we played volleyball in the Shed, a block of cinder blocks hiding behind other buildings. There was only enough room inside for bleachers along one wall and a volleyball court with a narrow out-of-bounds lane along the opposite wall, where pads hung to keep players from hurting themselves. First teams of men tried very hard to beat each other, then teams of women tried almost as hard and finally mixed teams tried but not very hard. Joe and I played on one of these and, at one point, I was next to a tall girl with a light blue ribbon around her hair on the front row. Somebody on the back row set the ball up between us, we jumped up to slam it and, bumping into each other, slammed it together into the net. Astonished, we looked at each other, burst out laughing and hugged each other hard enough to feel the laugh. I never heard whether we won or lost. While a few hundred spectators packed the bleachers, people were coming and leaving all the time. They were also visiting constantly, climbing over each other back and forth, up and down, so that the crowd milled about in 

happy confusion. Only half of them were paying much attention to the game and they systematically cheered for losers and jeered at winners. Attending the game was an antigame. Yet nothing displayed the bodies of young men and especially young women more beautifully than the upward thrusting of arms. I am still waiting for a sculptor to discover this opportunity. Since the noise had nowhere to go, it reverberated exuberantly between the walls. The number of friends I had after less than twenty four hours surprized me. They were taking me to meet friends of theirs and showing me off like a kangaroo or an ostrich. One even exclaimed: "So they have real human beings at ZU!"

That evening, we pushed the tables and chairs in the dining room back to the walls to make room for dancing and square dancing. A professor in overalls, whose eyes flashed as if lighted with electricity, called the square dances while plucking a rope with one end tied to the top of a tall stick and the other to the center of an inverted washtub, which he held down on the floor with his foot. Dancing on the other foot as he called or sang, he ran his hand up and down the rope to vary the note. The instrument made a thumping sound that recalled both the base viol and kettle drums. They called him Straw and I never learned whether that was his family name or a nickname; I never even learned what subject he taught. He was enjoying himself so much that I imagined him looking forward impatiently to Saturday evening all week long. Student musicians played a fiddle, an electric guitar, an accordian and a saxophone. Except for Straw, the band varied as some left and others came, and, from time to time, he called students up to sing, sometimes in twos or threes. Joe's imitation of Nat King Cole astonished me. Three girls including Polly sounded for all the world like the Andrews Sisters. Nor did the singers limit themselves to imitations. A sad sack with a scratchy voice named Tweeny sang a love song that would have got a pretty girl a job in a nightclub. When it came to dancing in couples, we stayed at arm's length and the girls did the breaking, so there weren't any wall flowers. Tweeny, Polly and the tall girl with her hair in a blue ribbon danced with me and a thought that seemed foolish at the time crossed my mind: if I had wanted to get married, any of these would have done nicely. Promptly at eleven, we pushed the tables and chairs back where they belonged and swept the floor. Everybody said goodnight to everybody else, the boys headed for their dormitories on one side of the lawn and the girls, for theirs on the other side. 

We saw each other again the next morning at Kingdom Tabernacle, a few blocks off campus. While all came in their Sunday best, some had dressed well, some badly and some only as well as they could afford. Church attendance had the unfortunate effect of revealing what college activities concealed. On that cool morning, for instance, Tweeny, Polly and Blue Ribbon, whose name I still hadn't learned, wore tweed suits in colors that harmonized with the leaves. Tweeny's seat and elbows were frayed from wear by a larger mother, big sister or aunt. Polly's high hem, pinched waist and wide shoulders distorted her straight figure. Blue Ribbon's full skirt and soaring bodice enhanced her natural elegance. I noticed these details as they approached, but forgot them as soon as their faces were near enough to reveal the complexion of a good night's sleep, youth, water and soap, of which the discreet fragance tickled my nose. None of them was pretty, yet all had a pretty smile and I had the urge to hug and kiss them. Even if Joe hadn't been standing beside me, would I have dared to try? I dreamt of meeting them on a path in a deserted woods. Since Joe was in the choir, I sat, sang and prayed with them, secretly imploring the Lord to let me keep them. Worship resembled that of Resurrection Tabernacle except that the mixture of students and city residents resulted in more sophistication. It hardly surprized me when Joe read from the Bible and commented on it, but his choice did surprize me. The parable of the wise and foolish virgins, he remarked, obligates us to distinguish between metaphor and literality. Evidently Jesus didn't intend to teach us polygamy or limit virginity to women. Virginity signified the state preceding commitment to the faith and the virgins, young men as well as young women who had not made this commitment yet. The wise youths anticipated the opportunity to make it, while the foolish ones yielded to distractions. The parable seemed all the more important to Joe because the New Testament didn't reveal very much about Jesus' attitude towards youth. I couldn't help thinking of the virgins on both sides of me.

Afterwards, we gathered in the community room, a wing of the tabernacle rather than the basement as in Nevers. I was impressed by the friendship between the students and the local residents, who took a genuine interest in each other. When I paid them this compliment, one of the residents asked: "You mean it isn't like that in Babylon?" We had a good laugh. At dinner, Joe and I sat at a different table with different students and, at the 

head of the table, a professor of ancient history and his wife, who were taking their turn during the weekend. Joe, who didn't know any of them very well, did nothing to attract their attention, yet the conversation revolved around him. My presence reminded them of our visit and the exchange of delegations with other institutions, which ZFF promoted to diminish the relative isolation of the college. Although everybody including the faculty couple took pride in their community, they worried about the concentration of students and faculty who resembled each other too much. Some wanted to make concessions that would attract members of other Protestant churches or even Catholics, while others feared the formation of groups that would divide the student body, an opinion shared by Joe. "Trav is an Episcopalian," he said: "You don't seem to mind the constraints of Free Faith."

"No, but I don't think I should join."

"Free Faith shouldn't be something you have to join," objected the professor's wife.

"And welcome them without asking them to give up any other ties they may have."

"How about Negro [This was many years ago], Hispanic and Asian Christians?" I asked.

"How about Jews, Muslims and other believers?"

"In my discipline," commented the professor, "you learn that such things don't just take years; they take centuries."

Surprized, she gave me a look I will never forget.

"Yes, you did!" she agreed, "and since we don't even know each other..."

She sighed: "Yes. And that's where I'm going right now."

She hesitated: "I'm not a waitress until I go inside and put my apron on."

For the next two weeks, I found myself playing a role previously unknown to me. I kept asking Lee Jankelevitch for a date and she kept putting me off because of her job, the time she had to devote to study and the suspicion that I only wanted to seduce her. She never even hinted at this suspicion, however; on the contrary, she thanked me for the attention I was giving her. "I'm not exactly used to it," she confessed. I had to settle for the fifteen minutes it took us to walk from her dormitory to one of her classrooms or the restaurant. She took none of the courses I did and asked me not to wait for her after work or even eat at the restaurant, but I ignored the second request a few times. I sat alone at a table in the corner, where I enjoyed watching her more than my steak. Ordering my meal and paying the bill were treats that resonated longer than they lasted. The second time, Betsy and her two athletes entered and sat at a table in the middle. She hadn't seen me because I was behind her. When Lee introduced herself, as her boss required, I could tell that the two men were making fun of her, although I couldn't hear what they were saying. When Lee left them for the kitchen, I caught a glint of tears in her eyes and my stomach churned. She stayed longer than usual, but, as soon as she reappeared, I waved her over 

and ordered a cup of coffee instead of desert. Nursing my coffee, I waited until she had returned to the kitchen, then picked it up, went over and stood beside Betsy, who looked up.

"Trav!" she greeted me, obviously pleased.

Inviting me to sit down, she introduced me to her jocks whose names I don't remember. I don't even remember what sport they practiced, but they made remarks about the sport I didn't practice that they thought too subtle for me to catch. Since I could tell that Betsy didn't like it, I had the confidence to smile them down. Surprized to find me sitting there, Lee approached shyly to ask them if they would like some desert.

"Something sweet like you," laughed the redhead, who also had oversized teeth.

"Me too, sweety," said the dark one with a shrewdy smile.

The two heads spun around angrily at me.

"You asked for it," snapped Betsy.

"She your sweetheart or something?"

"No," said Betsy. "I am."

"So do we!" laughed the redhead. Those teeth!

"Harder than she does," insisted his friend.

"How would you like hers?

They shrugged a vague acknowledgement.

"All right."

I found a little envelope in my mailbox addressed to "Mr. Travis Pillsbury" and written in graceful but modest swirls. Inside, on notepaper with a daisy in the upper right corner, I read: "Thanks" in the middle and "Lee" down below to the right. To my surprise, my blood was boiling and I found myself running upstairs, two steps with each stride. A swain was in the telephone booth with the door open reciting a litany of sweet nothings to his... unh sweetheart. When I finally reached Lee, her voice had an affectionate tone. That crack in the crystal! It moved me so deeply that I wanted to kiss the microphone. If only I could send the impulse through the wires along with my voice so that it would touch her ear as the sound struck her eardrum! That ringless little ear behind which she was always pushing her hair! That afternoon, we had the first in a continuous series of library dates, which had the curious side effect of improving my grades. At first, we sat on opposite sides of the table, then side by side with the space between us diminishing from afternoon to afternoon and, finally, close together. We had already begun to hold hands when I accompanied her to class, her dormitory and the High Noon; soon we were doing it under the table in the library. Her hand felt surprizingly small, delicate and warm, feverishly warm. If I drew air through my nose, I could detect the slightest scent of mint, which impregnated her soap. I bought a cake and left it unwrapped on the desk in my room. When my new roommate complimented me on the scent, I told him about Lee, which became a habit. Although Pie studied as hard as Eldrige, he had sympathy and patience with me. Didn't I feel the need to confide in a friend, a need I had never felt before?

Nor had I ever known the respect that Lee inspired in me. Although she never discouraged or rebuked me, I dared not proceed without her acquiescence. Before long, we were hugging and kissing instead of merely kissing on the cheek. We no longer held hands in the library, but thighs. Finding a place to make love was even more difficult because she had the dignity of the disadvantaged. We had to have a room with a bed. Desperate, I proposed Carter's Cabins, provoking an angry reaction that ignited tearful eyes. How beautiful, how awesome she was! Shamed by her contempt, I racked my brain and suddenly recalled Scratchy's couch with its scientific comfort. Wouldn't the sensitive contents of his many file cabinets necessitate even more security than usual? He was supposed to keep the door locked. For that very reason, however, maybe he didn't. Since 

buildings with classrooms and faculty offices stayed open until ten at night, we could enter the Psychology Building at nine, when few professors were still there, and try his door. I will never forget the thrill of turning the knob and feeling the latch release the bolt with a slight click. Yet it was nothing in comparison to intercourse with Lee, who made love as if it were her only chance. Gently our muscles pulled and pushed, our limbs groped and grasped, our abdomens caressed each other.

"I can feel you moving inside of me," she murmured in my ear.

A few days later, I received an invitation to a buffet supper from Scratchy and his wife, who encouraged me to bring "a friend." By friend, Lee insisted, they meant a fellow student in psychology. Arguing with her, I realized that she didn't have the clothes she thought necessary. I had another argument with her trying to persuade her to let me buy them or at least give her the money to buy them herself. She rejected all of my reasons until I resorted to one that I had been holding back: if I didn't spend the money on clothes for her, I would party it away with the rowdy friends she had seen me with at the High Noon. Taking this as a threat, she reacted with angry tears, which made her beautiful, and she questioned me about what I was doing with these rowdy friends. I knew which one she had particularly in mind! If I refused to answer her questions, it would aggravate her suspicion, and, if I answered them, it would expose me to further questions. I tried to waffle my way out as I always had, but every assurance met with a skepticism that 

flashed in her eyes. How relentless she was! Resentment had replaced the affection in her voice. With every question and every answer, her suspicion grew that she had given me all and that I had given her only part. We had reached the top step of the entrance to her dormitory when she finally forced me to admit that I had gotten the same favors from other girls that I was getting from her. After a withering stare, she turned and entered without looking back. I stood there as if time had stopped, shivering in the cold. You are probably thinking that I got what I deserved and, if you are, you are right. In fact, that was exactly what I was thinking. Yet what had begun as a tender disagreement over Lee going to a party with me had became a bitter interrogation threatening our love affair, which now seemed more precious to me than anything else. The altercation had run its course in the fifteen minutes between the High Noon and her dormitory, which had become a cherished habit.

The next morning, she didn't emerge with the other students from a class after which I always met her. I went to her dormitory and asked to see her, but, after a few seconds on the phone, the girl at the desk told me that she couldn't see me. Hesitating, she looked up at me and added "just now."

I left a note in Lee's mailbox telling her how sorry I was to have offended her, how disappointed, not to see her and how anxious, to hear from her. She hadn't called by eleven, so I came back to accompany her as usual to the High Noon, but she didn't appear. I decided not to inquire at the restaurant. Hoping that she would call, I waited in my room where Pie noticed how restless I was, so I explained.

"Maybe you should ask to see her again."

"You could ask the matron."

"She must have been through this before."

"Lee has left the university. Too bad! She was one of the nicest girls I had. You must be the reason."

The matron shook her head: "She didn't leave any telephone number or forwarding address." 

I had to call three Jankelevitches in Mapleton before I reached Lee's father, whom she had asked not to tell anybody anything about her.

"She didn't think of telling me not to ask anybody myself," he said half perplexed and half anxious.

I hope none of my tears fell on the letter. I told Lee how miserable I felt and blamed myself. I pleaded with her to send me on a pilgrimage to Rome like 

Tannhäuser. Her mother had sung in a chorus before dying an unWagnerian death and leaving her husband without any income. "Dad just can't do anything," she had once lamented. "I can't either," I wrote, "not without you." I felt so depressed that Pie served as my psychologist as I laid on my bed. He reminded me of a chipmunk although he had none of this animal's impertinence. His little round glasses sat crooked on his nose, magnifying his gaze. I hadn't seen enough of life to give up on it. He prescribed Scratchy's buffet as therapy.

"He expects me to bring a girlfriend," I objected.

"Betsy?"

"Hunh?"

"... So you think she will dress and behave appropriately."

Damned if Betsy didn't know how to dress! She had put her hair up behind her head with a silver hairpin. She wore an armless cocktail dress with a high neck, an ample bodice and a full, knee-length skirt. Light blue tulle covered black wool so that the darker color shaded the lighter one variously as she moved. She walked on her steep, black high heals as if she did it every day all day long. Never had I seen her in stockings before. When I offered to help her into her beige overcoat, a magnificent left arm with a tiny silver watch on the wrist reached for the sleeve. Distracted by her fingers sticking out of the other end, I forgot the right arm which was groping for the other sleeve and she laughed at me. Only her lipstick was the same as usual, but I realized that you had to look closely to see it. Unable to take my eyes off her, I thought of Lee and, for once, I felt guilty. Although Betsy's appearance upstaged the other young women at the Riesenkratzes, she did nothing to attract attention, thus compounding my astonishment. Only the innocence that radiated from her face reminded me of the girl I had known. As time passed that evening, however, I realized that one of the other girls was actually prettier and another one, just as pretty, but who noticed? Maybe they had lost their mother, maybe their father lived in a 

trailer. Suddenly, Betsy gave me a look as if to say: "I just wanted you to know, Trav." For a minute or two, I lost track of the conversation. 

The Riesenkratzes had invited about a dozen of us, all undergraduates, but only one other couple and they were married. The students treated Betsy and me as if we were married too, but neither of us saw a need to correct them. Scratchy and his wife, a gaunt, austere woman who had met him in graduate school, lived in a big, white frame house about five minutes off campus. Competence in psychology, children of their own and experience with entertaining students made expert hosts of them. Except for the couples, the other guests didn't know each other, but the Riesenkratzes put us all at ease, involving us in a conversation that never went stale. Transformed, Betsy impressed everybody by her charm, which didn't surprise me, and her modesty, which did. I could see it in Scratchy's face. After dinner, he nudged the conversation towards old cars and, as we left, he led us around to the side street next to the high hedge that bordered his lawn. There he showed us a 1941 Dodge that his father had given him after the war. Fluid drive had been a step in the direction of the automatic shift. He opened one of the doors to show us how roomy it was inside.

"Did you notice something?" asked Betsy as we left.

"Yes, I was hoping you hadn't noticed."

"He leaves it unlocked."

"Some other time."

"You have all those clothes on."

"You dazzled me. I hardly recognized you."

"The hell I don't!"

"No, you just have to wait until I feel like it again."

I made a face: "You were a wise virgin tonight. Maybe you can stay that way for a little while... Just a little while." 

"You got religion."

"The hell I did!"

"Wise virgins..." I kissed her, "mind their own business."

"A few days, a week, I don't know."

It had become a game. Every time I headed for psychology, I slowed down when I reached the lawn and never looked back. Betsy, who lay in wait for me in a different place every time, ran up behind me, slipped her arm over mine and pressed her bosom against me. We never said "Hi!" or greeted each other in any other way. Instead she told me about the dream she had had that night, even if she hadn't had one. She exploited the vocabulary we were learning in psychology to describe intercourse with me, interjecting tender cries, whimpers and groans. If she could give me an erection before we entered the psychology building, she won and, if I managed to control myself she lost. When I felt that she might be winning, I was very anxious to dissuade her from looking and yet my anxiety, which she detected, tempted her to look. Although she wanted to avoid an obscene spectacle as much as I did, she wouldn't have minded if a few others noticed a discreet indication of her powers that struck me as a humiliation. Thus a secondary competition reinforced the primary one resulting in a comic tension and, occasionally a whispered argument. During the semester, two or three fleeting smiles among the other students provoked quarrels too angry for words, which Scratchy must have noticed but, of course, he didn't let on. This competition generated a happiness that must have shone in our faces. A few students who didn't know us very well assumed that we had married recently. In those days, you were still supposed to get married, have children and live happily ever after, a fantasy exploited by pop trash. 

Needless to say, Betsy and I were using Scratchy's Dodge, for which we felt all the more gratitude because we dared not make the slightest hint. Then one day, she hooked my arm on the way to psychology without saying anything. Nor was she in the mood, as I saw when I glanced at her. 

"No dream?" I asked.

"A nightmare?"

I had an empty feeling. "Despite your precautions and mine!"

"Pie would never do that."

"We will just have to wait and see."

Slipping my arm around her, I gave her a squeeze, to which she yielded affectionately.

I thought a lighthearted film might help. That evening, she was wearing a dark blue sweater and skirt that covered her more decently than ever before. "What's so funny?"

"You would think we were going to church."

"You look pretty good in your underwear."

"Betsy!"

"Maybe you would rather just take a long walk."

She shook her head, more I suppose because it was easier to hold hands watching a silly movie than discuss a subject that tormented her. Walking back to Cosgrove Hall, we had hardly said a word when she buried her face in my chest: "I wouldn't mind five kids, Trav, ten if you like... but not now!"

No, I hadn't forgotten Lee. She haunted me when I wasn't with Betsy and she haunted me even more when I was with Betsy. Lee's absence hurt more than Betsy's presence helped. Though sure I loved Lee and not Betsy, I had enough affection for Betsy to take her seriously when she said 

five or ten kids but not now. My reaction to her overdue period further embroiled the confusion in my head, since it scared me less than it endeared me to her. How many times did I extinguish my enthusiasm over the possibility that she might be pregnant with our child? It rekindled every time. On the other hand, I had sent Lee a second letter and it had come back undelivered. I had tried to call her father and found the phone disconnected. Pie, who noticed my perplexity, guessed a tale of two women and told me to take the one I could get and forget the one I couldn't. Every day that went by without a letter from Lee reduced the likelihood that she would write. Besides, wasn't the plump one crazy about me? If she were crazy about Pie, he didn't know whether he could resist. We both laughed. I asked him: "Have you ever given in to something that you know is sentimental and stupid?"

"Every day."

"I felt good about ZU winning the basketball game last night."

"How about your fluid drive?"

"That's when you are at your best."

"If you behave? A few days."

She laughed: "I'm doing you a favor."