Charlie nodded.
“Well, maybe she’ll cool off, now. See Bud for what he is.”
“What is he, honey? You’re pretty damn hard on him.”
“Oh, Bud Nielsen is a bum. A born bum. Let’s face it.”
“A bum? I don’t know, Beth. He’s a nice guy.”
“Sure, he’s a nice guy. He’s a great guy. Everybody likes him. And he’ll never amount to a row of beans.”
“Well, I don’t know.” Bud was a good friend of Charlie’s.
“Oh, Charlie, he’s been an undergraduate for six years. The guy hasn’t even enough ambition to leave school, for God’s sake. Emmy’s as much in love with that trombone as she is with Bud. He’s a big wheel on campus—talented, everybody knows him. I’d never tell her, but I’m kind of glad they’ll be separated for a while. I think they’ll both come to their senses. I hope they will.”
Charlie disagreed. “Hell, if they took you away from me for a while would you come to your senses? Would I?”
“No, but—we’re in love.”
“Well, so are they.”
“They just think they are.”
“You just can’t resist analyzing everybody you know, can you? No matter how little you really know about them. You figure them all out and slap a label on them and that’s the end of them as far as you’re concerned. You never consider that you might be wrong, or they might be different. Try analyzing yourself some time. It’s no cinch.”
Beth was temporarily confused. “Well—I know Emmy pretty well,” she said.
“Yeah. And I know Bud. He may be a worthless character, but tearing him away from Emmy isn’t going to cool either of them off. That’s the best way I can think of to get them both hot. Right now Bud’s in love with Emmy and he’s damned unhappy. I feel sorry for the guy.”
“Oh, so do I. It’s not that I don’t, it’s just that all men are such—most men are such—oh, never mind.”
He grinned at her. “What are most women?”
“You’d never understand.”
“What’s Beth Cullison?” His eyes were curiously bright and narrow and Beth felt suddenly uncomfortable.
“You tell me,” she challenged him.
“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t know. I thought you did.”
She couldn’t look at his eyes and she despised her sudden shyness.
“Maybe we’ll find out together,” he said with a light smile….
And so the days went slowly by, with everybody bringing news to Emmy about Bud, with everybody discussing the situation over and over again.
Emily chafed and wept and wondered and beseeched her friends for more news. Bud griped and argued with anyone who would listen, and consoled himself with beer and music.
It got pretty bad. He liked to talk to Charlie because Charlie was a fraternity brother and Charlie saw Beth, Emmy’s roommate. Charlie was a friend; he listened.
“I tell ya, dad, it’s intolerable,” Bud protested. “If I could just see her. Just once. The thing is, nobody’d have to know. If I could just talk to her, work it out somehow.”
“They won’t let you talk to her.”
“If I could meet her someplace….”
“Hang on, boy. That’s not going to kill you. They’ll relent one of these days.”
“Yeah, sure, I can hang on. But what I mean is, why hang on if you don’t have to? Hell, this is a big campus. Nineteen thousand students. Who’s going to check on each one? If I saw her some afternoon where nobody’d suspect anything….”
“Yeah, but you have to worry about where. Why don’t you just forget it and let the thing ride for a few weeks? They’ll give in. Emmy’s acting like a damn puritan. They’ll have to let her out.”
Bud was quiet for a minute, and then he looked at Charlie with an intently confidential frown. “Charlie,” he said, “listen. Is there any time during the day when your apartment is empty?”
“No,” said Charlie firmly.
“Listen, boy—”
“No! It’s never empty. We have a resident truant officer.”
“Charlie, listen, it’d be so easy. Nobody’d ever know, believe me.”
“No.”
“Now listen to me, will ya, God damn it? Now listen. Look, Emmy has a two o’clock Tuesdays and Thursdays. She’s out at three, walks south on Wright Street—”
“Listen, Bud—”
“Charlie, you’ve even got a car. My God, this is perfect. You could pick her up, tell her about it in the car on the way over.”
“Way over where?”
“To the apartment, boy.” Bud flung his hands out earnestly. “Use your head. Jesus. Now listen, when’s your roommate in class? What’s-his-name?”
“Mitch.”
“Mitch. He there on Thursday afternoon?”
“Look, Bud, that’s beside the—”
“That’s great. That makes it just about perfect. He wouldn’t have to know a thing. Nobody’d know but you and me and Emmy. The fewer the better. Charlie my boy, listen to me—we’d be there only a couple of hours.” He watched Charlie’s face anxiously. “All right, an hour.” Charlie was silent, sympathetic but dubious. “Charlie, you hear me?”
“Yeah…I don’t know, Bud.”
“Man, what’s the matter with you? You so pure you never had a girl in your apartment?”
“No, but I was never under orders not to have her, boy. I was never shadowed by the university. If you get caught, we all get canned. The university doesn’t sponsor extracurricular love-making, in case you didn’t know.”
“Look, Charlie, if we get caught, which we won’t, nobody gets canned but us. Emmy and me.”
“Are you ready to do that to Emmy?”
“It won’t happen. Believe me. Besides, if it did we’d go on pro, we wouldn’t be expelled.”
“Who wants to be on probation?”
“Charlie, we’re just wasting time talking about it. It won’t happen, man.”
“It’s my apartment, my car—my bed, for God’s sake.”
“Okay. And I’m your friend. A brother. I could’ve asked to use the apartment without telling you why. You can make like you’re shocked as all hell if we get caught. Oh, hell, this is a lot of crap—we’re not going to get caught. Who’s gonna catch us? When does Mitch get in?”
“Oh—about five-thirty.”
“Any sooner? Ever get in sooner?”
“No.” Charlie shook his head.
“Okay, we’re out at five. Emmy walks one block to the bus, I go the
