“What.”
Paul shook his head. “Another one bites the dust.”
“What?” She turned to look at him, her eyes slow to focus.
“Never mind,” he said. Then, “Come on. Russian lit in fifteen minutes.”
And from then on, for the rest of her life, Rachel would not be able to eat ham loaf without thinking of Harry Gallagher.
Three weeks later, when she discovered that Harry had joined Paul’s fraternity, Rachel wasted no time. There was to be a party at the house Saturday night. She hated frat parties. She had been to a few, for reasons she could no longer fathom, and had gone home feeling soiled and frightened. That Paul belonged to a fraternity confused her, for he was her friend and, in her experience, a decent person. But, since she found most young men confusing in one way or another, Rachel gave Paul the benefit of the doubt and believed him when he said that they were not all wild and amoral. She trusted Paul. So it was to him that she turned for help.
“I want you to introduce us, casually, if we run into him. Don’t embarrass me. Don’t make a big deal out of it. I’ve seen him a lot lately. We even danced a dance the other night in the Blue Room. But it was so noisy that we didn’t say anything, really. Just danced. I want to meet him properly, that’s all.”
It was one of the last warm nights for months to come, and they were sitting on the statue of Walt Whitman that pegged the campus green. Paul wore a pair of crumpled red boxer shorts, dirty white sneakers without any laces, a backward ball cap, and a pair of sunglasses. No shirt. His chest was peeling from too much sun. He had a plain face, pale eyes, no accent, hair the color of mud. He was whip thin. He often wished he’d been born a more colorful, robust boy. But he was a good sport with a quirky sense of humor, and Rachel had never felt threatened by him in any way.
“I’m surprised at you,” Paul said.
“What’s so surprising? Why shouldn’t I want to meet him?”
Paul didn’t answer her right away. For the thousandth time, he studied the way her hair matched her eyes, as if a painter had trailed his brush through a loamy brown, auburn, and ginger and used the same rich skein to color them both.
“You’re right,” he finally said. “What’s it to me if you end up with some brain-dead jock? See if I care.”
They didn’t talk for a while. Rachel watched the stars and thought briefly about Belle Haven. Paul watched Rachel and slowly became convinced that it was time to take back his heart.
Then, “All right.” He sighed. “I’ll introduce you if that’s what you want, but I think you’re being foolish.”
“I thought you liked Harry.”
“I do,” he said mildly.
“You just called him a brain-dead jock.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t like him. Some of my best friends are brain-dead jocks.” He squinted at the stars. “But he’s not right for you.”
“And if I decide to prove you wrong?”
He shook his head. “Don’t come crying to me.”
“I wouldn’t do that. If you’re right about Harry, he’ll be my mistake.”
“I am,” Paul said quietly. “He will. Mark my words.”
The night that Rachel Hearn met Harry Gallagher began well enough. True, the party was stupidly crowded, as such parties are. The floor was awash with beer from a leaky keg, the bathrooms unspeakable, the music hurtful, the boys predatory, the girls undone by the humiliating hope that they might be the ones to save these boys from each other and from themselves.
But it was hard to see such things from their midst. Excitement has a way of gilding filth. And there was, in truth, an element of purity even at the evening’s lowest ebb, for many of the people in the fraternity house that night were there almost against their will and had no intention of pursuing or becoming prey.
“It looks like The Rape of the Sabine Women,” Rachel said to Paul as they sat at the top of the stairs and watched the crowd boil below.
“No horses,” he pointed out.
“True, though there is a cow tethered out front. I’ve been trying to figure out why—beyond the obvious link between livestock and frat boys—but I think I give up.”
“It’s White Russian night,” he replied.
“I see. And that’s the czar out there tied to a tree?”
“Cream,” he said impatiently. “Vodka, Kahlúa, and cream. White Russians.”
“Ah,” Rachel said, shaking her head. “Frat humor. I might have known.”
For a while she and Paul sat on the steps, watching halfheartedly for Harry Gallagher, and chided each other gently. They drank their White Russians too quickly, linked their arms and told secrets, and finally decided to call it a night.
“I feel like a lamb escaping the slaughter,” she said, laughing as Paul walked her back to her dorm. It was one of those cold and clear October nights, fancy with stars and plumes of chimney smoke. The cold cleared Rachel’s head a bit, but her lips and cheeks were still numb from the vodka and she felt sleepy as a child. She let her feet shuffle through the dying leaves that lay upon the sidewalk and gave little thought to the dangers of walking abroad so late at night, regardless of escort. Even the sudden appearance of Harry Gallagher at the curb ahead, splendid in his trademark Camaro, failed to alarm her.
What will be will be, she thought lazily. And gave herself up to fate.
It might have been the ice cream, drowned in banana liqueur, that Harry fed her when the three of them reached his apartment. Or perhaps the shock of having so many unexpected things happen to her, one after the next, for hours on end. Whatever the cause, Rachel
