I climbed back in the kitchen window and closed it and found a loaf of bread on a cabinet and some mayonnaise in a refrigerator and made a couple of mayonnaise sandwiches and ate them and then I drank some milk and then I went upstairs and got into Irise’s bed. “What happened?” she said. “I’ve been worried to death. I bet I hardly slept all night.”

“I wish you hadn’t introduced me to him. He thinks I’m weird. He got mad because I said we were going to get old some day. He always gets mad at things I say. He gets mad when we’re making love. What do you and Charles William do when you make love? What does he say to you?”

“I don’t know. He just tells me things. About things he’s interested in.”

“No, I mean when you make love to him. What do you do? What do you say? I have to talk to someone about it. I have to know what to do.”

“We just lie around and laugh about things and listen to music if we can be at his house alone. When Eula goes to play bridge. Then he just tells me things or I put on his kimonos and he ties them around my waist and we tell each other things. Maybe we can go to sleep now, Rhoda. Let’s go to sleep.” Her soft little hands patted my back. Her sweet voice soothed me and I slept.

The next day we went to a party at the Beta house and then to a football game and then to a party at the Kappa Sig house and then to a party at the SAE house and I got drunk and threw up for about an hour and went to sleep on a sofa. Somehow they got me home.

On Sunday morning Malcolm came over alone to the Chi O house to tell me goodbye. I felt so bad I could hardly get dressed and go downstairs to talk to him.

“I’m really sorry,” I kept saying. “I’m sorry it happened.”

“You aren’t the only one who got drunk. We all got drunk.”

“I thought you would give me your pin.”

“What?”

“I thought when you got here you would give me your pin. If you want to ever do it with me again you have to give me your pin.”

I was standing beside a brocade sofa in the living room. He was sitting on a chair. He was wearing a white oxford cloth shirt and a pair of khaki pants and a sweater. Monk, they called him at Darlington. He looked like a monkey to me at that moment, like a great beast or orangutan or chimpanzee. “Are you going to give it to me or not?”

“Not today. Not like this.”