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  "Do you like to touch me?"

  "Yes. I—used to be timid about touching people. I don't know. When the kids asked me to scratch their backs, I used to dislike it Now—I like it With you."

  "The rain sounds good, doesn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "Want to crawl in with me?"

  Mitch didn't answer. She pulled the covers back and lay beside Leda, taking her hand from her back and turning over to face the other way. When Leda's arms came around her to hold her, she felt a warm aching that eased into peace and she slept until the rain stopped and the sun came through the blinds in the morning.

  * * *

  Marsha said, "So you see, Mitch, it's up to you. I know it's a ridiculous request, but we've got to save the reputation of Tri Ep."

  Mitch backed the car into a space in front of the library. Outside it was hot, and even now in the early morning, near ten, the people passing in the streets had a tired, damp look about them. A bespectacled young man dropped his books and stooped to gather them.

  "But why?" Mitch turned to Marsha. "Why would Bud Roberts want me to ask him to our housewarming ? It doesn't make sense."

  "All I know is what he told me on the phone. He said, 'If Susan Mitchell asks me to your housewarming, I'll forget it.' That's what he said."

  "I don't trust him."

  "Listen, Mitch, it's three weeks away and you won't have to be alone with him. It's right at the house, and we'll all be around. Try to believe me, I know how you feel. I'd never ask you to do it except that we-can't afford an enemy like Sig Delt. If they black-list us, the other fraternities will be too proud to date us too. And after all, Mitch, you did make it pretty messy when you ran to another sorority for help."

  The car was hot and Mitch opened the door. She said, "O.K., I'll ask him. I better get my course cards. The line's getting longer by the minute."

  "Thanks, Mitch." Marsha smiled and touched her hand. "Thank you very much"

  Marsha waited to cross the street while Mitch joined the line, standing behind a tall, angular blond boy. A warm buzz began in Mitch's stomach when she thought of Leda. She traced an L in the dirt with her foot, and shielded her eyes from the sun with her arm.

  The blond boy said, "Hot!"

  Mitch nodded. The line inched forward while he talked to her.

  "Then we're in three courses together," he said. "That's swell!"

  Afterward, as they sipped Cokes slowly in Mac's, he told her that his name was Charlie Edmonson.

  It had grown cloudy while they were in Mac's, and now the rain started heavily on the roof and splashed down at the windows. "My car!" Mitch exclaimed. "The windows are down!"

  They ran to the door and stood under the awning, watching the rain teem down. "Can't get to it in this," he said. "It'll be a quick one, anyway."

  People in the streets dodged for shelter, and one boy rolled his pants up to his knees and tore off with a newspaper over his head.

  "When it lets up," Mitch said, "maybe I can drop you off. What fraternity are you in?"

  "Me?" Charlie pointed to himself, laughing. "I'm not a fraternity boy. That stuffs too fancy for an old Kansas farmer."

  "Then you're an independent," Mitch said blankly, moving back from the awning where the leak was and the rain came through. She thought of the song they had sung at the Sig Delt house last night, the refrain humming distantly in her ears.

  "He's a goddamn independent, He's a G.D.I.

  Ignore! Ignore! Ignore the bas-tard!

  Ditch the guy, The G.D.I."

  "I think it's letting up,'; he said. "Want to run for it?"

  Chapter Four

  It was Thursday, the week of the Tri Epsilon house-warming party, and the leaves on the trees along the streets of Cranston were the way they are in October. Mitch stood in the entrance to Jacob Hall, glancing nervously at her watch, moving up and down from the top step to the second step.

  "Sorry, Sue," Charlie said when he arrived. "Professor Rudolph got talking after class and I couldn't get away from him.

  "We haven't got time for a Coke. I have to get back to the house this afternoon."

  They walked along the path to the street while Mitch explained that all pledges had to assist in decorating the house for the party on Saturday. As soon as she had said it, she felt a sudden surge of embarrassment sweep through her. It had been three weeks now that she had been going for Cokes after class with Charlie. He had asked her to go to a movie one Tuesday evening, but the Tri Epsilon pledge study-hall system had started, and pledges could not date on week nights.

  "It's just sort of a housewarming," she said, hoping it sounded unimportant and dull. Charlie scuffed his feet near the end of the sidewalk where there was a space between the ground and the asphalt

  "Could I walk you on home?"

  "Certainly."

  Kitten Clark passed them as they turned and she said hello to Mitch and looked at Charlie with a flat expression in her eyes. She had seen Mitch with him before, and she knew that he was an independent. His awkwardness, the plain, loose-fitting clothes, and the conspicuous absence of a fraternity pin pointed out the fact. As yet it was not a matter of concern to Tri Epsilon, because Mitch had not had a week-end date with him, or with anyone else since the trouble with Roberts. On Saturday she would emerge from the cocoon for the housewarming and the date with Bud. It was a complete enigma to Kitten why Roberts even bothered. Perhaps to save face, and more to prove that no girl could hit and run. Not him. She thought of the silverware that Mother Nessy had promised Tri Epsilon if they pledged Susan, and hoped they would have it in time for the buffet dinner on Saturday.

  "How come you aren't driving?"

  Mitch hardly heard his question after they had passed Kitten. She was thinking that Kitten would want to know who the boy was and what house he belonged to. She wondered vaguely what Jane Bell would say; if she would say that it was just as easy to have a Coke and walk home with a fraternity man after class, and that it was preferable.

  "Independents aren't lepers," she had told the pledge class at their last meeting, "but fraternity men are preferable."

  There were fraternity men in all of Mitch's classes—suave, confident young men whose loafered feet stretched out in the aisles, and whose bold guffaws echoed after the profs' jokes. They had names like Grey Gregg and Big Tom D. and Rabbit Man and they sat in clumps together. There was something different about them, Mitch thought, something that was not neutral but cold and hot as they willed in their way with others.

  "I said, how come you don't have your car in the lot today?"

  "Leda borrowed it. She had to pick up some equipment downtown."

  "Your roommate?"

  "Yes."

  "If I had a car, I guess I'd be afraid to let people borrow it. Maybe not. Hard to tell when you're as far from having a car as I am."

  "Leda's careful."

  "Must be going to be a big old party at your house Saturday."

  "Pretty big."

  "Just girls?"

  "No," Mitch said. "Boys and girls."

  "I was going to— I have this job downtown at Messer's Drugstore. Usually work week ends. That's why I haven't been able to ask you out. I was going to ask you out Saturday, but—"

  They cut across Swampcot Street and waited for the light to change. "Will you ask me some other week end?" Mitch said as they walked on.

  "Sure."

  "Because I have a date Saturday."

  When they reached the circular walk to the Tri Epsilon house, Charlie said good-by and handed Mitch the French book he was carrying for her, and he said after he said good-by, "Be good, Sue."

  The Tri Eps were busy trimming the entrance to the dining room in pink and blue streamers and Robin Maurer was polishing the mirror in the hall. She paused when Mitch entered the hall.

  "Get lost," she advised. "They got work around here that would scare an elephant."

  "Looks good. Who's your date, Robin?"

  "Some blockhead. I've seen h
im once. Looks like those prehistoric men in our soc books."

  "You know who mine is."

  "Yes," Robin said, wringing out the cloth, "I know. Marsha gave me a little lecture too, all about bowing and scraping to Sig Delt. I don't know, though. She's the only one in this bunch I trust"

  "Hey," Jane Bell called to Mitch. "Change your clothes and pitch in here. We need some work done in the basement if Mother Nessy lets us use it Saturday."

  At a previous Tri Epsilon party, a fraternity man had spent his entire evening and half of the following day on the moth-eaten divan behind the ping-pong table in the Tri Ep cellar. He was very drunk and it had happened last year and Mother Nesselbush had been called on by the Dean of Women to explain the incident. Since then, the basement was termed "off limits" for house parties. This year there was a skinny hope that it would not be a restricted area.

  The hope died shortly after Mitch changed into a pair of jeans and headed off in the direction of the back steps. There, congregated in a small mass, Tri Eps faced Mother Nessy. Her answer was a very adamant no, supplemented with the viewpoint that basements encouraged extravagant necking, liquor drinking, which was forbidden, and other "things."

  Leda heard them arguing back there when she drove Mitch's car in the drive and pulled the packages out. She set them down in the living room and went upstairs. As she took her worn green suede coat off and tossed the matching beret to the top of the closet, she noticed the yellow paper on Mitch's desk. It was Marsha's paper. Marsha had reams of this paper, pale lemon-colored onionskin with a small silver initial at the top. The third time this week, Leda realized. Whenever Mitch could not be found, she was down in the suite helping Marsha, or in the evening after closing hours, making cinnamon toast in the kitchen with Marsha, or listening to records with Marsha in the living room. Irritated, Leda glanced at the scrawled words on the yellow paper:

  "Want to help me trim the side hall for the party? I'll meet you there when you're changed. Love, Marsh."

  "Good God!" Leda said aloud. "Trimming the side hall with Marsh. What a great big fat kick that is!"

  She stretched out on the bed and shut her eyes. In a persistent, conscious dream, Jake was beside her, his hands on her, her ears filled with the harsh profane words he used. Then, in that crazy state of half awareness, she projected herself into Jake's ways and saw Mitch, large and muscular, but less strong than Leda, who held onto her. Suddenly she heard the footsteps in the hall and Mitch appeared, shaking the dream, chattering noisily about the decorations, how Marsha had helped her with her French assignment, and what Mother Nessy had said about the basement.

  "Mitch," Leda said, breaking in, "who's the guy?"

  "What?"

  "They say you're hanging around with some guy after classes."

  "Oh, Charlie. He's in a couple of my classes."

  "Like him?"

  "Sure."

  Leda blew the smoke from her cigarette toward the ceiling. Mitch thought it was time now for the harangue on independents if Leda knew, and if not it would be time after she asked and knew then.

  "Why don't you ask him to come Saturday? Tell Roberts to go jump and ask him."

  "I can't. Marsha asked me to do this. Leda, you know why I had to ask Roberts."

  "That's Marsha's idea. Listen, kid, don't be pushed around. Marsha could have settled it some other way."

  "But I thought," Mitch said, confused, "I thought it was the only choice I had. I don't understand you now, Leda."

  "You understand Marsha, apparently."

  Mitch sat down on the bed and tried to reason why Leda was afraid again, almost as she had been that night. Weeks had passed and Leda had seemed aloof and busy, with Jake all the time, and tired in the evening. Now this, and Leda was angry.

  "Charlie is an independent," Mitch said, "so he wouldn't be a good date to bring anyway."

  "Charlie?"

  "The boy you said I should ask instead of Roberts."

  Leda searched in the bookcase for her Spanish text and finding it she grabbed her coat "I've got work to do," she said. "I can't think about it all the time. Do you hear me, Mitch? I can't think about it all the time!"

  Mitch didn't say anything.

  "Marsha! I'm so sick of hearing that girl's name. You think she's God, don't you? You think that girl is God?"

  Mitch reached in the drawer beside her bed and found the nail polish. She was wearing it regularly now, bright red, and her nails were growing long and tapered.

  Leda stood before her waiting for an answer but it did not come. She said, "I thought you were my friend. I thought you cared about me because no one else had ever given a damn. No friend. Jake cares for his own damn reasons and Jan doesn't care. The two Fs in my life. J for junk. But I thought you gave a damn and I ran around pouring my heart out telling you things. Then you run to Marsha when you have a problem and you do what Marsha says."

  "I haven't." Mitch's voice cracked. "I talk to her because she's president."

  "President! President of what? Of the world? Of the United States of America? I laugh my fool head off at her being president."

  "I don't know what to say, Leda. I don't know why you're mad all of a sudden."

  Leda shook her head and walked out of the room, slamming the door. She walked down the hall and the steps and out of the door to the street, and she knew why it was this way. She knew. Before she had thought she knew, and she had erased it like a pencil mark on a sheet of new paper. It came back. And Susan Mitchell, of all those it might have been, and the way she was, like a baby.

  Mitch watched her from the window until she was out of sight. Across the street the Delta Pi's were staging a song practice on their side lawn. In even rows of more than a dozen, they faced their white-flanneled leader and sang out in fine, gruff voices. They were singing the Cranston football team's "Fight Song," and listening to them, Mitch thought that this was the way she had pictured college. This singing, and the fall leaves outside, and the hazy questions in her mind about the French translation and the English composition, and no Leda, or Bud Roberts—nothing like that. Still, there were Leda's eyes, and the deep blue tinge of hurt that had shown when she left like that

  * * *

  The housewarming was to begin immediately after the football game, and that Saturday afternoon the Tri Eps had gone in a body to the stadium. It was the first home game of the year, and tradition brought together the fervid assemblage of fraternity brothers and sorority sisters in solid blocks throughout the grandstands. To Mitch, it was a bewitching spectacle, with the lively mass of people and the beat of the drums in the uniformed band parading down the field. Robin Maurer sat beside her. Of all the pledges, Robin was the one whom Mitch knew and liked best. The others seemed to be absorbed into the whole, with no particular individual traits of their own. Sissy Callahan and Bebe Duncan and Jett Duquette and Travis King, all somehow alike, with die same neutrality toward you as the fraternity men's. Most of them wore their hair long, curled loosely, their faces tinted with the popular liquid powder base they all used. Their arms were caparisoned with silver bracelets, and their shoes varied only from loafers to saddle shoes and saddle shoes to loafers and they called everyone darling. That was together. Alone, there was Sissy's brother who flew transatlantic flights and had been married four times. Bebe Duncan's father was an author and his books were dedicated always "To B. and Bebe," because her mother's name was Beatrice. Jett Duquette was named after the race horse her uncle made his first million on. And Travis King had false teeth, which only made her more beautiful and which she talked about, often, in mixed company.

  They sat there, too, with Robin and Mitch. But Robin was the one that counted. When the whistle blew and the football sailed off in the air, Mitch leaned forward and drank in the movements on the field below. The cheering and the songs and the tense moments near the goal line caught her up and carried her with them. Once Leda turned around from the row down in front of her and winked at Mitch. She saw the excitement on Mi
tch's face, the red, ruddy look to her cheeks, and the eyes shining as though she had fever. Mitch was happy then. It was their first exchange after yesterday's quarrel. There was something in the look that meant, "All right, it's all right," and Leda was beautiful, looking up like that and laughing.

  During the half Marsha called down to Mitch and Robin to come up and sit with her. She was munching a hot dog, and some of the boys from Delta Pi had crawled under the ropes and were standing there chatting with her. Mitch and Robin scrambled up and joined them, and they met Ted and Lucifer, the two Delta Pis. When the band struck up the "Fight Song," the five of them roared out the words, and Mitch laughed at the way Lucifer sang, deep and loud like a bass drum.

  "Hey," he said. "You're laughing at me."

  The whistle blew and she sat down beside him for the next quarter. "I've seen you somewhere before," he said, "somewhere that smells vaguely of formaldehyde."

  "Gosh," Mitch exclaimed, "that's right! Lab! You're in my zoology lab."

  "No, no!" He smiled, tipping his black and gold fraternity cap. "You're in my zoology lab. Remember, I am Lucifer."

  Mitch saw Leda looking back, searching for her, craning her neck and peering over the heads of the others to the seats Robin and Mitch had deserted. Mitch did not know why she leaned down and pretended to tie her shoe, so that Leda wouldn't see her. She did not know why, but she knew that it was better not to have her see.

  "Walk you home," Lucifer said, after the game was won and elated students jumped about in the bleachers, hugging one another and singing out in husky choruses. "You're a neighbor, that's why. I only walk neighbors home. Hate foreigners from other streets."

  Lucifer jabbered on about nothing and Mitch liked him. He was a short boy with huge thick glasses and an unbelievably short haircut. Mitch was taller than he was and he would not let her forget it, but the way he joked and the way he talked charmed Mitch.

  "You're taller," he said, "and so you undoubtedly consider your length a blight on your whole day. Because why? Because Lucifer said he would walk you home. Because Lucifer is very tiny and prefers that his women be very tiny. And furthermore because you have a feeling you are going to fall madly in love with Lucifer. But never mind. Lucifer has a soul. It is very possible that he will make a little room in his life for you from time to time."