than yours. She just happens to prefer writing in her native tongue.”
Sara tried to end the increasingly bitter dispute.
“Come on, Alan,” she said softly, “let’s go for a pizza. That’s all I wanted in the first place.”
“No, Sara, there’s a matter of principle involved here.”
“Mr. Davenport,” Ted said quietly, “if you’ll stop blustering I’ll give you the next available table. But if you persist in this obnoxious behavior, I’ll throw you the hell out.”
“I beg your pardon, garcon,” Alan responded. “I happen to be a third-year law student, and since I am in no way inebriated, you have no right to eject me. If you try, I’ll sue the pants off you.”
“Excuse me,” Ted replied. “You may have learned a lot of fancy concepts at Harvard Law, but I doubt if you studied the Cambridge city ordinances that allow a proprietor to kick out somebody — inebriated or not — if he’s making a disturbance.”
By now Alan had sensed that this was turning into a jungle duel, with Sara as the prize.
“I dare you to throw me out,” he snapped.
For a second nobody moved. Clearly, the two antagonists were squaring off for a battle.
Daphne sensed that her brother was about to imperil their whole livelihood and whispered, “Please, Teddie, don’t.”
“Would you care to step outside, Alan?” said a voice.
Alan was startled. For it was Sara who had spoken these words. He glared down at her.
“No,” he retorted angrily. “I’m going to stay here and have dinner.”
“Then you’ll eat it alone,” she replied, and marched out.
As Daphne Lambros thanked God many times under her breath, Ted stormed into the kitchen, where he began to pound his fists against the wall.
In an instant his father arrived. “
“I want to die,” Ted shouted, continuing to attack the wall.
“Theo, my son, my eldest, we have a living to earn. I beg you to go back and take care of tables twelve through twenty.”
Just then Daphne stuck her head through the kitchen door.
“The natives are getting restless,” she said. “What’s the matter with Teddie?”
“Nothing!” Socrates growled. “Get back to the cash register, Daphne!”
“But, Papa,” she replied timorously, “there’s a girl who wants to speak to Theo —the one who sort of refereed the fight.”
“Omigod!” Ted gasped and took one step toward the men’s room.
“Where the hell are you going now?” Socrates barked.
“To comb my hair,” said Ted as he disappeared.
Sara Harrison was standing shyly in a corner, shivering slightly in her coat, even though the place was overheated.
Ted walked up to her. “Hi,” he said with the casual expression he had frantically rehearsed in front of the mirror.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she began.
“That’s okay.”
“No, let me explain,” she insisted. “He was an insufferable bore. He was like that from the minute he picked me up.”
“Then why do you date a guy like that?”
“Date? That creature was a fix-up. His-mother-knows-my-mother sort of thing.”
“Oh,” said Ted.
“I mean filial duty has its limits. If my mother ever tries that again, I’ll say I’m taking holy vows. He was the pits, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” Ted Lambros smiled.
Then there was an awkward pause.
“Uh — I’m sorry,” Sara repeated, “I guess I’m keeping you from your work.”
“They can all starve, for all I care. I’d rather talk to you.”
“Me too,” she said shyly.
From the vortex of the busy restaurant his father called out in Greek, “Theo, get back to work or I’ll put my curse on you!”
“I think you’d better go, Ted,” Sara murmured.
“Can I ask just one question first?”
“Sure.”
“Where’s Alan now?”
“In hell, I suppose,” Sara replied. “At least that’s where I told him to go.”
“That means you haven’t got a date tonight,” Ted grinned.
“Theo!” his father bellowed. “I will curse you and your children’s children.”
Ignoring the increased paternal threat, Ted continued, “Sara, if you can wait another hour, I’d like to take you to dinner.”
Her reply was a single syllable: “Fine.”
The cognoscenti knew that the Newtowne Grill, beyond Porter Square, served the best pizza in Cambridge. This is where, at eleven o’clock, Ted brought Sara (in the family’s beat-up Chevy Biscayne) for their first dinner date. He had finished his chores at The Marathon with extraordinary speed, for there were wings on his heart.
They sat at a table by the window, where a red neon sign flashed periodically on their faces, giving the whole atmosphere the feeling of a dream — which Ted still half-believed it was. While waiting for their pizza they each sipped a beer.
“I can’t understand why a girl like you would even dream of accepting a blind date,” said Ted.
“Well, it’s better than sitting home studying on a Saturday night, isn’t it?”
“But you must be besieged with offers. I mean, I always imagined you were booked up through 1958.”
“That’s one of the great Harvard myths, Ted. Half of Radcliffe sits around feeling miserable on Saturday night because everybody at Harvard just assumes somebody else has asked them out. Meanwhile, all the girls at Wellesley have roaring social lives.”
Ted was amazed. “I wish to hell I had known. I mean, you never mentioned …”
“Well, it’s not the sort of thing you bring up over Creek verbs and English muffins,” she replied, “although I sometimes wished I had.”
Ted was nearly bowled over.
“Do you know, Sara,” he confessed, “I’ve been dying to ask you out since the very first minute I saw you.”
She looked at him with sudden brightness in her eyes.
“Well, what the hell took you so long — am I that intimidating?” she asked.
“Not anymore.”
He parked the Chevy in front of Cabot Hall and walked her to the door. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes.
“Sara,” he said firmly, “I’ve waded through a year of English muffins for this.”
And he kissed her with the passion that he’d stored up in a million fantasies.
She responded with an equal fervor.
When at last he started home, he was so intoxicated that he barely felt his feet make contact with the ground. Then suddenly he stopped. Oh shit, he thought, I left the car in front of Cabot Hall! He dashed back to retrieve it, hoping Sara would not notice his idiotic error from her window.
But at that moment, Sara Harrison’s eyes were not focused on anything. She was simply sitting motionless
