“Well,” said Laura, savoring each word, “it’s just that Beth isn’t in love with you, Charlie. She was never in love with you.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “That’s all. I’m sorry.”
He knew better. “Yes, she is,” he said. Laura shook her head with a smile. “How do you know she isn’t?” he said. She looked at her lap and finally Charlie sat forward and knocked some ashes out the window and said some words he had only thought of once before, vaguely, when he was very drunk. “She’s in love with you, I suppose,” he said with a taste of sarcasm in his voice.
Laura looked up at him and smiled. It was intoxicating. Charlie gazed thoughtfully out the windshield, waiting for her denial, not taking his own words seriously until the silence forced him to review them. And suddenly, with painful lucidity, the light came; the sense and reasons fell deafeningly into place.
Laura watched him minutely; saw the tiniest line between his eyes grow and deepen; saw the hand with the cigarette start for his lips and drop slowly back to the steering wheel; saw his lips part a little and his eyes widen. And then he turned and stared at her and she looked full into his face and smiled. He stared, and all Beth’s little mysteries and refusals and anxieties and half-finished sentences smiled back at him. Laura never said a word; she just smiled serenely at him.
Charlie shut his eyes for a moment, wishing he were stone drunk, and then looked unwillingly at her again, and then at the floor. Laura watched him hungrily, remembering every second, every detail of him, every sound.
Finally he said in a husky voice “Laura—is it true? Is it possible?” He looked at her. “Beth?”
Laura didn’t answer him. Her lips parted a little as if she meant to, but she didn’t. Then she succumbed to temptation. “Is what true?” she said softly.
“Is Beth—is she—” It was hard for him to say, and Laura enjoyed his difficulty. She felt like patting his arm and saying the question for him and then answering it lightly, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Charlie breathed deep. “Is Beth—in love with you, Laura?”
Laura looked down for a moment and her smile widened. And then her eyes came up slowly to his face. Charlie took her shoulders and shook her.
“Answer me!” he commanded. “Answer me, Laura! Is she?”
Her shoulders hurt from the grip of his hard hands and she saw the ripple of movement in his cheeks as his jaw clenched. Laura let her head fall back a little and she smiled gently at him and said, very slowly and luxuriously, “Yes.”
They gazed at each other for what seemed a very long time—a tortuous time for Charlie and an exultant one for Laura. And then he let her go suddenly and turned back to the wheel and put his arms across it with his head down on his arms. Laura hoped he would cry. For a few minutes they sat in utter silence, with only April noises to disturb them.
Laura put her head back on the seat and gloated over the handsome broad-shouldered boy beside her, thinking how charming he was, how pleasant, how cock-sure. She let herself feel sorry for him, and her pity threatened to exhilarate her uncontrollably. This was her irresistible rival, a desirable man. And Laura, a plain girl, had vanquished him. She smiled again.
At length, Charlie straightened up. “I could never have believed it,” he said quietly. “I thought of everything, but some things you just don’t believe.”
He started the car without looking at her, without saying anything more. They pulled back onto the road and headed for the sorority house. Laura watched him, but his face was set and blank; not the least tremor, not the palest line betrayed the tumult inside him. She said nothing, respecting his unuttered wish for silence.
Five minutes later they pulled up in front of the house. Charlie stopped the car and turned to look at her. She gathered up her books and opened the door, and then she looked back at him; she couldn’t help herself.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he answered. His voice was deep and quiet. She admired his control.
She got out and went up the walk to the front door and opened it and went into the house, knowing that he was sitting in the car watching her, never moving. When she was inside she rushed up the stairs to the first landing and pushed the heavy drapes carefully aside to peek out and see him start the car up and move down the street. He was driving in the direction of Maxie’s. He’s going to get drunk, Laura thought jubilantly, he’s going to get drunk because he can’t take it!
Charlie’s first thought was to go to Maxie’s and drink himself insensible. But he dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came to him. This time he needed a clear mind, uncluttered with alcoholic confusion. He turned the car around and drove slowly in the opposite direction. He was thinking, concentrating intensely in an effort to keep his emotions at bay. “A clear mind,” he thought over and over. It occurred to him to go to the library. He hadn’t any specific idea why. The library was a temple of learning, of wisdom. He would go there and soak it up. He would find a good sensible book and discover what made Beth and Laura want each other. He would understand.
But he no sooner parked his car by the library and started walking toward the big building than he knew how futile it was. He would be unable to read a single line of print. He paused uncertainly on the steps, looking into the great dark hall beyond the doors, and then he turned around. He didn’t know what to do.
He sat down finally in the
