“Well, then,” she said, “I’d like that.”
I dropped her off at the dorm, made a date for the following Saturday.
She was waiting at the curb when I came to pick her up, wearing a yellow cashmere sweater, black-and-yellow tartan skirt, black knee socks, and loafers. She let me open the car door for her. The second my hand touched the steering wheel, hers was upon it, warm and firm.
We had dinner at one of the smoky, noisy, beer-and-pizza joints that cling to every college campus- the best I could afford. Staking out a corner table, we watched Road Runner cartoons, ate and drank, smiled at each other.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, wanted to know more about her, to forge an impossible, instant intimacy. She fed me nibbles of information about herself: She was twenty-one, had grown up on the East Coast, graduated from a small women’s college, come west for graduate school. Then she steered the conversation to grad school. Academic issues.
Remembering the insinuations of the other students, I asked about her association with Kruse. She said he was her faculty adviser, made it sound unimportant. When I asked what he was like, she said he was dynamic and creative, then changed the subject, again.
I dropped it but remained curious. After that ugly session, I’d asked around about Kruse, had learned he was one of the clinical associates, a new arrival who’d already earned a reputation as a skirt-chaser and an attention-grabber.
Not the kind of mentor I would have thought right for someone like Sharon. Then again, what did I really know about Sharon? About what was right for her?
I tried to learn more. She danced nimbly away from my questions, kept shifting the focus to me.
I experienced some frustration, understood for an instant the anger of the other students. Then I reminded myself we’d just met; I was being pushy, expecting too much too soon. Her demeanor suggested old money, a conservative, sheltered background. Precisely the kind of upbringing that would stress the dangers of instant intimacy.
Yet there was the matter of her hand stroking mine, the open affection of her smile. Not playing hard-to-get at all.
We talked psychology. She knew her stuff but kept deferring to my superior knowledge. I sensed real depth beneath the Suzy Creamcheese exterior. And something else: agreeableness. A ladylike
My diploma said I was a doctor of the mind, a sage at twenty-four, grand arbiter of relationships. But relationships still scared me.
My last date had been more than two months ago- a brief misadventure with a pretty blond neonatology intern from Kansas who asked me out as we stood in the cafeteria line at the hospital. She suggested the restaurant, paid for her own meal, invited herself to my apartment, immediately sprawled on the couch, popped a Quaalude, and got peevish when I refused to take one. A moment later the peevishness was forgotten and she was buck-naked, grinning and pointing to her crotch: “This is
Two months.
Now here I was, sitting opposite a demure beauty who made me feel like Einstein and wiped her mouth even when it was clean. I drank her in. In the candle-in-chianti-bottle light of that pizza joint, everything she did seemed special: spurning beer for 7-Up, laughing like a kid at the misfortunes of Wile E. Coyote, twirling strands of hot cheese around her finger before taking them between perfect white teeth.
A flash of pink tongue.
I constructed a past for her, one that reeked of high WASP sensibilities: summer homes, cotillions, deb balls, the hunt. Scores of suitors…
The scientist in me snipped my fantasies midframe: total conjecture, hotshot. She’s left you empty spaces- you’re filling them in with blind guesses.
I made another stab at finding out who she was. She answered me without telling me a thing, got me talking about myself again.
I surrendered to the cheap thrills of autobiography. She made it easy. She was a first-rate listener, propping her chin on her knuckles, staring up at me with those huge blue eyes, making it clear that every word I uttered was monumentally
At that point in time I was God’s gift to Sharon Ransom. It felt better than anything else I could recall.
Without all that, her looks might have snagged me. Even in that raucous place teeming with lush young bodies and heartbreaking faces, her beauty was a magnet. It seemed obvious that every passing man was stopping and caressing her visually, the women appraising her with fierce acuity. She was unaware of it, remained zeroed in on me.
I heard myself open up, talk about things I hadn’t thought of in years.
Whatever problems she might have, she’d clean up as a therapist.
From the beginning I wanted her physically with an intensity that shook me. But something about her- a fragility that I sensed or imagined- held me back.
For half a dozen dates it remained chaste: hand-holds and goodnight pecks, a noseful of that light, fresh perfume. I’d drive home swollen but oddly content, subsisting on recollections.
As we headed toward the dorm after our seventh evening together, she said, “Don’t drop me off yet, Alex. Drive around the corner.”
She directed me to a dark, shaded side street, adjacent to one of the athletic fields. I parked. She leaned over, turned off the ignition, removed her shoes, and climbed over the seat and into the back of the Rambler.
“Come,” she said.
I followed her over, glad I’d washed the car. Sat beside her, took her in my arms, kissed her lips, her eyes, the sweet spot under her neck. She shivered, squirmed. I touched her breast. Felt her heart pounding. We kissed some more, deeper, longer. I put my hand on her knee. She shivered, gave me a look that I thought was fear. I lifted my hand. She put it back, between her knees, wedged me in a soft, hot vise. Then she spread her legs. I went exploring, up columns of white marble. She was splayed, had thrown her head back, had her eyes closed, was breathing through her mouth. No underwear. I rolled her skirt up, saw a generous delta soft and black as sable fur.
“Oh, God,” I said and started to pleasure her.
She held me back with one hand, reached for my zipper with the other. In a second I was free, pointing skyward.
“Come to me,” she said.
I obeyed.
