12

By the end of the week, despite what anyone said to him, Eric still had not snapped out of it. He was a pale, blond freshman with a weak chin, inexperienced and insecure. Little things got to him, and the accident was a very big thing. Late Friday afternoon, as Mike was leaving the theater for the hospital, he heard talking in Mr. Cherry’s office. He listened. What he heard was Mr. Cherry’s voice—that rustle that sounded as if he were stepping delicately, one teensy foot at a time, across lily pads or into the empty papers in Kathy’s box of kosher chocolates. Mike also recognized Eric’s voice.

“I just feel so rotten,” he was saying.

Mr. Cherry’s reply to this was indistinct.

Mike heard Eric say, “I can’t concentrate on the books or anything.”

This time Mr. Cherry’s reply was clearly audible.

“Eric, I think you have a thing or two to learn about yourself. Perhaps I shall be the one to teach you these things.”

Mike wanted to kick in Mr. Cherry’s door and yell at Eric, “Don’t you know what he’s after?”

Then he thought, But what am I after?

And he slowly walked away.

The following Monday morning, Mike tried to look the other way when he saw Mr. Cherry’s old, derby-shaped Peugeot pulling into the theater’s parking lot. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw something that made him stare in spite of himself. Mr. Cherry was not driving the car.

Eric was.

By Tuesday, when Kathy was released from the hospital, everyone but she knew. And she found out about it at the little homecoming party that Melanie and Paula threw for her at the Greek bar and grill.

One of the first things Kathy said was, “Is Eric still depressed about what happened?”

“It seems that Mr. Cherry has taken Eric under his wing, Kath,” Melanie replied.

“That’s one way to put it,” Paula said. “The fact is, the kid’s letting himself be carted around like a kitten in a little girl’s baby carriage.”

“I heard Riddiford say that Cherry might take this offer he got from someplace up in Vermont,” David said.

“Why not?” said Melanie. “Now that he’s got Eric to take along as a souvenir of this place.”

“Riddiford would probably like to take off somewhere himself,” David said. “With Lauren.”

“Oh, it’s all so sordid,” Melanie sighed. “And in such a small-town way. All these student-faculty affairs…I wish I’d skipped mine. There’s so much arrested development that has to go into them. I remember when I was growing up, there was this kid on our block. He sort of looked like Goofy, you know, in Mickey Mouse. He was around fourteen when I was around ten. And he liked playing with the ten-year-old set. Everybody’s mother thought he was a little retarded. Ha.”

“Did he ever try to do anything to you?” Paula asked.

“Yeah,” Melanie replied. “And I hit him in the face with a great big piece of raw rhubarb. If the mothers in the neighborhood had ever found out, I think they would have been proud to know that I defended my honor with something that came from one of their vegetable gardens.”

“Was he ever arrested?” Kathy asked.

“No,” Melanie said. “As a matter of fact, last Christmas vacation I heard from one of my friends that he just got his doctorate. In medieval literature. Somebody ought to tell him that there’s a place up in Vermont that’s hiring.”

Paula made a face at her beer mug and said, “Yuck.” She continued, “I wonder if they think you don’t notice them trying to look up your dress while they’re delivering their lectures.”

“I think it stinks,” Mike said softly. “I think it all just stinks.”

“Gee,” said Kathy, “I’m having such a nice time I wish I’d get kneed in the head more often.”

“Sorry, Kath,” Mike said. “Maybe I should have stayed home. I’m tired. And I always get in a bad mood when I’m tired.”

David signaled for a second pitcher.

Four pitchers later, the party was over.

David said he was going to meet his girlfriend at her sorority house.

“Don’t keep her waiting any longer,” Melanie advised.

“Someone in that sorority was kept waiting too long last week, and she died from brushing her hair.”

Mike said that he was going on to another place.

Melanie and Paula walked Kathy back to her dorm. On the way, Paula said, “Mike’s going to some gay bar, isn’t he?”

“Yup,” said Melanie.

“Our company is never enough for him,” Paula said. “His evening’s never complete without…”

“The sad part of it,” Melanie put in, “is that he never has an evening in a gay bar that’s complete either.”

“Oh, I’m just glad to be me,” Kathy sighed. “Whatever the knocks may be that I’ll have to take.”

After her friends left her in her room, Kathy undressed and put on the blue terry bathrobe that her mother had brought her to help speed her recovery, the way she had by buying her pink flannel pajamas when she was sick with the measles as a child.

Paula returned to her room and opened a fresh carton of Parliaments.

Melanie went to her room, changed her clothes, and went out again.