“Should I have invited everyone in my class except Rick? Say, ‘Gee, Rick, we slept together so don’t bother showing up.’ You know how embarrassed I would’ve been? Don’t you care about that?”

“That’s better, Glenna. Be honest. At least now we know it was all about you.”

“You tell me, Gordon. What was I supposed to do?”

“You could’ve told me about him so I didn’t feel like the only jerk there who didn’t know you were screwing him.”

“If I told you, you would’ve freaked.”

I said, “Maybe you should’ve given me a chance.”

“Maybe I was trying not to hurt you by not mentioning Rick. And maybe you should trust me.”

“Maybe I did till you—”

“And maybe you’re a fucking bastard,” she said, then ripped her Indian-print quilt off the bed and stormed out.

Without bothering to undress, I stretched out on the mattress. A door opened and closed on the second floor. I hoped Glenna was going into Robin’s room, not Biff’s, and I would’ve gone down to check if I hadn’t been unconscious.

I AWOKE in the afternoon, my body aching from the strychnine in the acid. I went downstairs to shower, discovering that Glenna had relocated to Robin’s. I poked my head into the corner room, the sweep of windows and southern exposure providing the requisite sunlight for Robin to cultivate her marijuana plants. Robin and Glenna, their hair wet from the shower, were wearing terry-cloth robes, sipping Constant Comment tea, and sitting on Robin’s queen-size bed with medical texts scattered on the baby-blue satin comforter that Robin’s mother had recently shipped to her from Neiman Marcus.

“Studying?” I asked.

“Girl talk,” Robin answered.

“You’re not speaking to me?” I said to Glenna.

She stared down at an open textbook, and Robin said, “She’s not speaking to you.”

I said to Robin, “Then please ask Miss Rising if she’s coming back to her room.”

Robin asked her, and Glenna, without glancing up from her book, said, “Please ask Mr. Meyers if he’s double-jointed.”

I said, “Glenna, what the hell are you talking about?”

Glenna said, “Robin, if Mr. Meyers is double-jointed, please recommend that he go upstairs alone and fuck himself.”

Robin was beaming like a kid at the circus. Her envy of Glenna was understandable, but I regretted that it had a habit of poking me in the eye.

I said to Robin, “You like this little drama, hunh?”

“Lighten up, Meyers,” Robin said. “Glenna should’ve told you she dated Rick. And when you flipped out—which you definitely would have—she should’ve told you that Rick’s one of our nation’s foremost premature ejaculators. That way you both would’ve been happy. I only did what needed to be done.”

Still eyeing her book, Glenna said, “You did what you always do.”

“Bring some reality to the situation,” Robin said.

“No,” Glenna replied. “Stick your nose in my business.”

Robin said, “Everyone needs a hobby.”

“Nice poster,” I said to Robin.

Tacked to the wall above her bed was a blowup of Huey P. Newton, minister of defense of the Black Panther Party. Huey was as angelically handsome as the late soul crooner Sam Cooke, with the same little-boy-lost eyes that women reputedly find irresistible. In the blowup, Huey was perched on a peacock chair in his beret and leather jacket, holding a spear.