“Cheap?”

“No. But pathetic. Homely and kind of lost-looking. And very young. Some of them must still be in high school.”

“Maybe he’s a counselor or something.”

“Yeah, and I’m Greta Garbo going to college. Listen, Tom Ken­nard’s apartment is right next to his and he hears everything through the wall. He says there’s always a lot of crying.”

“Crying?”

“I’m telling you, he is weird. Even the guys in this building think so.”

I laughed. “Oh, well, then, that should settle it!”

I didn’t see him again for over a month. I had six dates with a basketball player who at any other time would have been just the nourishment my ego delighted in. He was considerate, affectionate, very sexually interested, but gentleman enough to take no for an answer and still keep calling, and he wanted to read some of the authors I said were my favorites so we could discuss them. He even wanted to take me home with him over Memorial Day weekend to meet his parents. For a while, he balanced the scales of my indecisiveness perfectly. On the one hand, he was kind and sensitive; on the other, dull and persistent. The only way my conscience would let me unload him was by lying. I told him I had rekindled an old flame and there was no future in our continuing to see each other. He took it with the kind of graciousness that made me want to slug myself.

Spring term ended, and I signed up for two classes over the summer. I moved out of the dormitory and in with Gloria. She was short on money and took a part-time job in a travel agency, so that three days a week I had the apartment to myself. During the first week I saw nothing of Frank, and I thought maybe he had gone away for the summer even though his name remained on the mailbox. With too much time on my hands, I became friendly with Tom Kennard, a likable bore, and his girlfriend, Janet, a harmless twit whose most memorable features were a sorority pin and a lisp. The three of us spent several afternoons drinking beer in Tom’s apartment, and I sometimes turned the topic of conversation to “the weirdo” living next door to him.

Frank, they said, was something of a prodigy, having finished his master’s at twenty-one and now, at twenty-five, nearly through with his doctoral dissertation. His area of concentration was Asian-African Studies (“Very faddish,” affirmed Janet, puckering the f), which probably accounted for the sparseness of his living conditions. Tom had been in Frank’s apartment only once, and according to him, once was enough. Old cushions and pillows substituted for furniture, the walls were absolutely barren, and except for one study lamp and the fluorescent tubes in the kitchen and bathroom, the entire place was lighted by candles. The living room, said Tom, looked more like a hut than a home.

“What about those girls who come to see him?” I asked.