“Well, I—okay.”
“See you at eight,” he said.
She hung up wondering if the rest of him was as impressive as his voice.
Beth was interested. “Charlie Ayers,” she said reflectively. “Isn’t he an ADO?”
Laura nodded.
“Seems to me I’ve met him somewhere. Where’d you find him, Laur?”
“Oh, he—he just called. I met him on campus.” She was amazed at her own fib, only half aware of her motives. They were many and involved and they boiled down to impressing Beth with her own importance.
At a few minutes past eight her buzz ripped down the quiet halls. She jumped up nervously, pulled her coat on, and opened the door.
“Laura,” said Beth, watching her with a smile. “You’ll need your scarf. It’s cold.”
“Oh, yes. Thanks.” She pulled it from the shelf and settled it around her shoulders, and started for the door again.
“Got your gloves?” Beth asked.
Embarrassed, Laura turned back to her dresser and pulled them out.
“How ’bout your purse, honey?” Beth chuckled at her.
“Oh!” said Laura impatiently, grabbing it and starting out again.
“Laura,” said Beth in a slow teasing voice. “Aren’t you going to kiss me good-by?”
Laura whirled and stared wide-eyed at her. Beth grinned. “Go on, honey,” she said. “Have fun.”
Laura backed out of the room and then turned and almost ran down the hall, her heart pounding, thrumming a thunderstorm inside her. Emily came out of the bathroom one door down and said, “Have a good time, Laur.” Laura watched her retreat down the hall toward Beth with a sudden pang of jealousy so strong that she had to admit it to herself for the first time. Her buzz sounded again, and she had to go downstairs and meet Charlie.
She gazed anxiously around the front hall as she came down, and finally she saw a young man with dark hair glancing through a magazine, standing with his back to her. The lower she came the higher he seemed to stand from the floor. He wasn’t aware of her until her heels clicked on the marble floor of the hall. Then he turned around, tossed the magazine down, and smiled at her.
“You must be Laura,” he said, and walked across the room to take her hand. “I’m Charlie Ayers.”
“Hi,” she said, intimidated by his height and afraid her nervousness would betray itself. His face went very well with his voice.
Charlie took her arm and said, “Let’s go to Pratt’s.”
He held the door for her and led her down the front walk to his car—an eight-year-old Ford with a dubious repaint job that left it generally green in tone. “It’s not beautiful, but it runs,” he said, laughing as he let her in. He was so sure, so calm and steady, that Laura began to relax a little. She tried to think of him, not of Beth.
Pratt’s had a fair number of customers for a Wednesday night when Charlie and Laura walked in. They found a booth and Charlie helped her out of her coat.
He leaned over the table while she sat down. “Beer?” he said.
“Just a Coke, thanks.”
He went to get it—no such thing as service in a student bistro—and left her to think. She made a powerful effort to avoid Beth and concentrate on Charlie. He was handsome and friendly and he didn’t seem disappointed to find her ordinary-looking. She thought boys who looked like Charlie wanted only beautiful girls. She pictured him with a beautiful girl. She made a cigarette ad of them, a little TV commercial in which Charlie, in a tuxedo, leaned amorously over a white-clothed table to light the beautiful girl’s cigarette, and she inhaled the intoxicating vapors till her strapless gown groaned with the burden of her breasts, and then blew the smoke out at the audience. And then she turned back to Charlie and smiled enchantingly into his wonderful face. They really made an eye-catching couple. When Laura recognized the girl in the picture it shocked her heart into action again. It was Beth.
Charlie set a Coke and a beer and glasses down on the table, and sat down facing her, interrupting her disturbing reverie. She couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Well, I guess our fathers have been friends for a long time,” he said.
“Yes, they certainly have.”
Laura let him talk, but she didn’t encourage him. She didn’t like to talk about her father. It always made her feel sad and a little frightened, and after a while it tired her out.
“That’s a fine house you’re in,” he said. “Let’s see, I should know some of your sorority sisters. Baker?”
“Mary Lou. She’s the president.”
“Yeah, I remember her. Sort of pretty. Nice gal. Gloria Clark?”
Laura nodded.
“Gee, I knew a lovely dish over there a couple of years ago…Beth Cullison. Never see her around any more.”
“Do you know Beth?” said Laura, uncertain and faintly alarmed.
“Oh, everybody knows Beth. I’ve met her a couple of times. I don’t think she remembers me, though. This was a few years ago when she was dating a fraternity brother of mine. Pinned to him, in fact.”
“Who?” she asked. She had to know.
“Oh, you wouldn’t know him. Graduated last year.”
“What was he like?”
Charlie smiled quizzically at her eagerness, without answering her. She began to feel the need to explain herself.
“Beth’s my roommate,” she said.
“Oh.” He nodded, smiling. “Well, he was a nice guy. Quite an intelligent boy. They used to have long philosophical discussions. I guess Beth went for that in a big way.”
Laura didn’t like him, whoever he was. She didn’t like to think that Beth had confided in him, kissed him, even. The thought produced a rash of gooseflesh.
Charlie ran his hand over the back of his head, the cigarette jutting out and away from his crisp brown hair, and he watched Laura as he did it. “As I say, I don’t really
