“I have to take my iodine. I take it every eight hours. Two drops of iodine in a glass of milk. It makes you lose weight. I’m doing it to lose weight.”

“My God. That’s great. I never heard of that.” I had a vision of poison iodine dripping into milk. Huge globules of iodine falling, falling through the white silky milk.

“It burns the fat. It makes you burn the fat.”

“How long have you been doing it?”

“For two months. I lost nine pounds already.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “That’s really great.”

We began to walk at a faster rate. We left the brick wall that surrounded the Tri Delt house and began to walk in the direction of the school of architecture. It was the newest building on the campus, very modern, an icon from a bright new world we had only begun to hear of in Alabama. We walked past a row of maple trees and up a flight of stairs to an atrium with tall glass windows on three sides. May Garth seemed even taller here, surrounded by this vast, high-ceilinged room. Perhaps this symbol of a new world cast a spell on me, or, perhaps, up here I didn’t have to worry about being seen out walking with a six-foot freak. One way or the other, here, in this tall marble-floored temple of a room, I began to see May Garth in a different light, as a Valkyrie or Joan of Arc, a female warrior who at any moment would go back to the Tri Delt house and drink iodine in milk. I had been on every diet I had ever heard of, but even I was not prepared to drink iodine in milk.

“I lost twenty pounds this summer,” I said. “I got so fat they had to take me to a doctor. He gave me some pills. Then he took them away. I wanted to lose some more but they wouldn’t let me. I never eat now. I starve all the time.”

“So do I. I can’t eat a thing. I have a thyroid problem. I get bigger and bigger.” She hung her head. She stooped even more at the thought. Then she straightened up and the warrior appeared again. She squared her shoulders, determination reigned. She stared out the windows toward the west.

“Could I watch you take the iodine?” I asked. “I’d like to see you do it.”

“Sure. Come back to the house with me. I have an attic room. We play cards up there. You want to come sometime? Do you play cards?”

“Sure. I play bridge mostly, but I can play anything. Do you play bridge?”

“We play poker and we get drunk. We get drunk every Wednesday night. Oh, well.” She hung her head, half a stoop, almost a stoop. “I guess the Chi O’s don’t drink, do they? I heard they didn’t drink.”