THE CITY OF Port Oriskany was so large, the university campus so sprawled and confusing, Emmett himself became intimidated. He was forced to stop at gas stations and ask directions: Marya saw that he was badly discomfited, having to ask directions. But he managed to make his way along the hilly one-way streets, stopping at houses that advertised rooms, boarding, rates-for-students, until Marya found something that was suitable (her first question was invariably, How much?); he managed to cheer her up when she became, by early afternoon, inexplicably depressed (“Come on, this isn’t anything, you should have seen what they did to me in the marines”). When Marya stood at a long dirt-encrusted counter in the university’s employment office filling out a job application, she stopped midway and looked back at Emmett, slouched against the wall, smoking a cigarette, his hands in the pockets of his jeans—handsome Emmett Schroeder, the most remarkable of her prizes—and she had two thoughts simultaneously: the first, that she really should rip the application in two, and return to Innisfail, and marry Emmett (who, tired and sullen and faintly contemptuous, would brighten into a smile if he saw her watching him); the second, that she was through with Emmett, and when she signed her name at the bottom of the form she was signing herself away from him. There, she thought, signing Marya Knauer with unusual clarity, that’s done.

And then the ride back home. In the dark, in the slow drizzling rain. Stopping again for supper—spaghetti and meatballs, beer, black coffee; and, in the car, in the dim-lit parking lot, easing into their familiar embrace, not minding that Emmett’s hard mouth hurt hers, or that his fingers clutched impatiently, almost angrily, at her, working beneath her clothing as his breathing grew hoarse and tight. She told herself, All right. And tried not to resist. Except to stiffen involuntarily as she always did, when his breath was nearly a sob, and she felt he might break her neck or her backbone in his passion—it was so blunt, so direct, so desperate. All right, she whispered, her teeth nearly chattering with fear, I love you, Emmett I love you, though a part of her mind wanted to rear away and laugh contemptuously: Why are you doing this? Who do you think you’re deceiving?

Emmett sensed her apprehension, he might even have sensed that hard mocking voice. He moved away from her; though his face was slick with perspiration and there were grim lines running from his nostrils to the edges of his mouth, he looked down at her nevertheless with an expression of impenetrable dignity, and said, “All right then, you—go to hell.”