knows that. She was cheating on Moley right and left. Probably goes through box springs like you go through cigarettes.'
It meant something to Bilks. He was a three pack a day man and counting. Still…
'How do you like that shit?' Straker griped. He was combing the quadrangle with the Bushnells. 'First day she's missed all freakin' summer. Figures, don't it? We're all set to viddy that hot sweet tush with my brand new glasses and she ain't even here. Piss!'
Piss was right. Bilks felt disheartened. 'Let's wait a while,' he said, trying to be optimistic. 'Maybe she'll show. What've we got to do anyway? Fight crime?' He stuck another Marlboro in his mouth, lit the match and then paused over the flame. 'By the way,' he said. 'How did Moley die?'
The first letter came about a week after he'd left. She remembered it clearly even now, a week after he was dead.
Her memory was about a half-step from photographic. In matters regarding Howard there was reason to wish it were poorer.
And she'd thought at the time,
Okay, so she'd been involved with him a couple of months. The guy's parents had millions! What girl in her right mind wouldn't take a crack at it? Maybe the two of them could get along awhile, she thought, enough time for her to get her hands on a little of that green for her old age. Marriages could be short. Real short.
She'd tried it out, tested the water so to speak.
And decided it wasn't worth the swim.
The guy was pathologically dull. Didn't dance. Didn't like the movies. Never even wanted to go to any of the campus parties. Too busy reading about goddamn shelf fungus and mushrooms. Clara was interested in botany, sure (it was the easiest masters the college offered) but she wasn't obsessed with it, for god's sake. Howard pored over botany journals the way most men pored over skin mags. And that was another thing about Howard: he was equipped with neither the zeal nor the architecture to, uh, satisfy a woman's, uh, needs.
And a woman such as Clara had many such needs. But of course she'd filled that gap — no pun intended — with all the other guys, unbeknownst to poor little Howard.
No problem.
But he took too damn much attention. Smothering her with flowers and sticky displays of affection. She got sick of it.
So they'd had their little 'spat.' That was what Howard called it, anyway. She'd stood him up for dinner, then ducked his calls for a week, hoping he'd catch the drift.
No dice.
Howard was not only dull, he was often perfectly dense. He'd appeared at her dorm, actually curious at first, concerned, thinking that maybe something was wrong with her. And then, understanding, ludicrous in his ninety- pound-weakling rage.
'What the hell's going on?' he demanded.
She was cleaning up the room, faking a kind of nervous energy combined with a forlorn expression and, well, maybe a little cocaine. Double-whammy. It pretty much worked every time.
She picked up a stocking, worried it in her hands a little — though not enough to run the damn thing — and turned to him, sighing. 'Oh Howard,' she said. 'I don't know what I want.'
'After six months? You don't know?'
'Has it been that long?'
'Yes. It has.'
'It's just that the things I like to do you seem to hate…'
'What things? I love being with you.'
'I know you do — if it's dinner and long walks or sitting by the fire over sherry or playing chess. But you know, I like to go places, I like the clubs. I like to go dancing.'
'Dancing!'
She did not appreciate being yelled at. She yelled back.
'Yes! Dancing! And you can't dance! You don't even try! You won't dance and you won't even go to a movie unless it's got subtitles and twenty old Frenchmen sitting around drinking wine. Do you even know who the hell Arnold Schwartzenegger is for chrissake?'
Of course it wasn't the dancing. Howard Moley was just a card-carrying nerd. Polyester slacks. Button-down shirts with a pocket full of pens, an academic scarecrow. Plus, he had long stringy hair which Clara hated on men. And he fucked like he danced — like a puppet on strings.
Howard was incredulous. 'You want to break up with me because of dancing? Isn't love more important than dancing?'
'Howard, I never said I loved you.'
'Of course you did!'
Clara remembered. 'That was different. I was…drunk.'
'Drunk, great. That's just great!'
He stomped back and forth across her room, waving his skinny arms. A plucked chicken reciting his litany of grievances.
'You lead me on, you sleep with me, you say you'll marry me, you tell me you love me…'
'Oh, Howard, I did not.'
'And now all of a sudden you don't know what you want, you think you'd rather go dancing. That's just great. That's very mature. You'll go really far in life with ideals like that.'
'Howard.'
He stopped at her tone and looked at her. The tone was a very cold one. It was very, very easy for her to make it that way.
'Just leave, Howard,' she said. 'Just go away.'
She watched the color drain out of his face and the thin lower lip start to tremble. And then he was jerking past her toward the door.
'Fine! I will. Have fun on the dance floor, Clara.'
She opened the door for him as he babbled his way out into the hall. 'I know you'll find lots of genuine fulfillment there. Absolutely. You'd rather dance than be in an honest, mature relationship with someone who really loves you. That's great. That's…'
She slammed the door.
'Wonderful!' she heard him through the door. 'Go ahead. Dance your life away. See if I care!'
And now, musing as she douched out the sperm Johnny had left in her last night, she wondered how decent an exit he'd made out there in the Rain Forest.
She wondered why she was even thinking about him when she could be thinking about Johnny. Johnny with the great tan and the runner's body. Whose I.Q. was probably close to his penis size — about a twelve.
But who was counting?
She appraised her nude body in the mirror — high breasts and puckered nipples, the dark-blonde pubic plot
