We came up the wide staircase side by side and step by step, but I didn’t say anything else until we stepped onto the second floor landing and then all I said before she turned left to go into the main reading room was, Well, good luck, and I hope you like it here enough to stick around.
And she said she already liked it very much and when I said, So we’ll be seeing you around, meanwhile, best wishes, she said, Thank you again. So far everybody has been very understanding and very helpful, especially when they find out that I’m not a freshman.
That was all that happened. And I came on into the reference room and checked out the books I wanted from the special reserve list shelf and it was not until I sat down to open the first book that I realized that I had not asked her name and I had not given her mine. That was how it all began for me, because even as I realized that I could go into the main reading room and find her, I also realized that all I could do was just sit there with my fingers crossed and hope that she had not been on her way to join somebody. Maybe even somebody she had transferred from State Normal to join—or even more probably, someone she had met since arriving on the campus.
Which is why for the next week every time I went into the dining hall I crossed my fingers hoping that I would not see what I did not want to see. I came through the same side entrance that I always used because it was the one you came to first when you came along Campus Avenue from the dormitories on the upper end of the campus or across from the quadrangle, which included the library, the main academic building in those days, and the gymnasium, which included the main entertainment auditorium, beyond which were the tennis courts and the campus bowl. But instead of scanning the tables to locate who was already there and sitting with whom and where, I headed straight to and through the serving line and onto an empty table all the way at the back of the hall near a window through which you could look down the slope to the campus power plant and campus laundry area. And when I finished I left through the exit nearest that part of the building, which was also the shortest route back to Atelier 359.
So I didn’t see what I didn’t want to see and after four days I realized I hadn’t seen what I really wanted to see either. And then I also realized that I was crossing my fingers again, not only because I wanted to see her all by herself again, but also because I was hoping that she had not decided to go back to State Normal or had transferred to Talladega or Fisk or Spelman. Or maybe she didn’t eat in the cafeteria because she didn’t live on campus. Maybe she had relatives or family friends with whom she was boarding on or off campus. Or maybe she was living off campus because she was married to somebody who already lived off campus and that was why she had transferred from State Normal in the first place!
Not that I was any more able to begin a steady on-campus relationship than I had been during my freshman or sophomore years. I could spare enough cash for an off-campus caper now and then, and I could also manage to keep enough petty cash on hand to go out to listen to the best of the topflight dance and variety orchestras when they included a one-night stand at the Dolomite on their annual coast-to-coast and border-to-border bus tour schedules.
So far this had happened only several times each year. But it was something I didn’t intend to miss. Because although I never had any urge to become a musician myself, old Luzana Cholly and his twelve-string guitar, and old Stagolee Dupas fils and his honky-tonk gut bucket and patent leather avenue stride time piano and the sound of Bessie, Mamie, and Trixie Smith and also old Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver and Louis Armstrong on Miss Blue Eula Bacoat’s gramophone over in Gin’s Alley were already indispensable parts of what having a good time was all about that many years before I was to become the schoolboy that Miss Lexine Metcalf and Mr. B. Franklin Fisher wanted me to be.
So I felt the way I felt about the Dolomite because out there not only could you finally hear the actual bands playing the music they had made famous on recordings and radio, you could also get into personal contact with the musicians themselves.
So far, so good, I remember thinking as I moved along in the registration line for junior-year students that third September. So far, so very good. So far, so very, very good. I had not been able to go back home since I arrived on campus, but by taking a full-time on-campus job during the Christmas holidays and the summer vacation months I had been able to supplement my scholarship grant budget and provide myself with basic incidentals with just enough left over to get by on if you pinch pennies.
Indeed so far, better than ever because not only was I halfway to graduation but I was also enjoying the highest standard of living I had ever had access to. Nothing was hand-me-down or makeshift. On the contrary, dormitories were inspected daily and there were also summer entertainment features and campus recreational facilities plus the library and all that freedom from class assignment time for the extracurricular reading I had come to realize I needed to do.
