We collected the luggage and piled it into Charles William’s car. Two of my suitcases had to go in the backseat. Because of that I ended up riding into Atlanta on Malcolm’s lap. Talk about libido. Talk about desire. I didn’t understand what we were into but I guess he did since he had been raised on a cattle farm. “You sure do smell good,” he said at one point. “That’s nice perfume.” More profound, Anna said she should have written. And much, much older.

“It’s Nuit de Noël. My mother always wears it on her furs.”

“Dee,” Charles William was saying. “Did you bring the green dress? I can’t wait for you to see this record shop. The owner is a friend of mine. He’s dying to meet you. Malcolm, you’re going to have to give her to me for a while. I have a surprise for her.” Irise leaned into his arm, happy that he loved me too. What a strange and gentle girl she was and without jealousy. A girl who could believe that she was loved.

We drove down into the neighborhoods near the Georgia Tech campus. The fraternity houses were decorated and boys and girls were in the yards drinking beer and putting the finishing touches on the Wrecks.

“What are they about?” I asked. “What do they have to do?”

“They have to run.” Malcolm laughed and moved me from one side of his knees to the other. I was sweating in my wool suit. My body was suffused with heat and I squirmed around and pulled off my jacket. The smell of the starch in his shirt, the smell of shaving lotion and the fine hard line of his head beneath his crew cut. His green eyes and thick lips so near to me I could hear him breathing. “What are you going to do with all those suitcases?” he said. “What do you have in all of them?”

“We have to have them.” Irise turned around on the seat and smiled her bright freckled smile. “Wait till you see this green dress. Then you won’t mind carrying them for her.”