Finally, Larry said he had to be getting back to the dorm. Boldly, I told Frank I wanted to go along for the ride. He nodded and smiled, but even in the candlelight I could see him coloring.

Before he got out of the car, Larry asked if he could feel our faces. He did Frank’s first. When it came my turn, I expected his hands to be as clammy as his eyes looked. They weren’t. As a matter of fact, there was something comforting in the touch, as though I were being examined by an old family doctor. When he finished, he said we made a nice-looking couple. Frank was clearly embarrassed, and I was ashamed at having said practi­cally nothing to Larry all evening.

Riding back home, I tried to think of anything except where we were heading. Inviting myself along to the dorm was one thing; I could not suggest that he invite me back up to his apartment. I looked over at his white, white legs as we passed under a streetlamp.

“Do you ever go out in the sun?” I asked.

“You mean lie in it?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have the patience for it.”

“Really? You strike me as the very essence of patience.”

No response.

“Besides the sun,” I said, “what else are you impatient with?”

He smiled. “Other people’s impatience, I guess.”

“Ohhh, impatient with impatience. Very Philosophy 101. Shall we go on to falling in love with love and I hate to hate? Anything else you’re impatient with?”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“What about . . . aggressive girls?”

“They make me nervous.”

“Why is that?”

“They usually have too many expectations. They want soft bells and sirens and violins and calliopes all at the same time.”

“I see. Tone deaf emotionally. Your, uh, little girlfriend with the groceries—she’s very retiring, I suppose.”

“Yes.” It was a “yes” that meant “Back Off: Dead End.”

“The aggressive girls—how do you handle them?”

“Would you like to get some ice cream?”

The thought of taking it back to his apartment squelched my objection to the evasion. “Anything but strawberry.”

For the first time, he took his eyes off the road and looked at me. “That’s how I handle aggressive girls.” He smiled.

“Very cute. You are smug.”

“Oh, no.” He chuckled. “When it comes to smugness, you’ve got the market cornered.”

We pulled up to a small grocery store, and he went in.

I was not aware of any hidden chord in me aching to be plucked. Yet as I sat there staring through double glass—the wind­shield and the store window—I was determined to make him want me. He stood at the counter talking to the clerk, a middle-aged man whose face and manner were so thoroughly bland that his conversation just had to match. The man propped his arms on top of the cash register as if his listener were going to stay for a while. Frank smiled, then laughed. I saw him laugh, but I had never heard him laugh—not in the open, forthright way he seemed to be doing it now. A storekeeper, not clever Irene Rutledge, caused him to laugh. It didn’t make sense.