“It’s Stanley Mabry, Rhoda. Donie said she told you about me.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, hello.”

“What are you doing?”

“Reading Shakespeare. I’m reading the king’s death scene from Henry the Fourth.”

“That’s boring.”

“No, it’s not. It’s beautiful. It’s poetry. It’s iambic pentameter. It’s wonderful. I could read it all night. I love poetry. I read it all the time.”

“Well, look. I wondered if I could come over and meet you.”

“Now?”

“Sure. Why not? Donie said you wanted to talk to me before we could go out.” It was a laconic voice, dark and full of sarcasm. Where had I heard a voice like that, dark and full of challenge? Why did I think I was about to hear a lecture?

“Okay, come on over. I’m not dressed. I’ll have to put on some clothes.”

“I’ve seen you. Do you know that? Guess where?”

“I don’t guess. Where did you see me? Either tell me or not.”

“I saw you in the bookstore at the Quonset hut. You were reading books and eating potato chips.”

“So what? When was that?”

“Last week. You looked so cute. You had some pink scarf around your coat.”

“Oh, yeah. My great-aunt made it for me. She knitted it. It has some gloves. Did I have on the gloves?”

“I don’t think so. You were eating potato chips. So you couldn’t very well have been wearing gloves.”

“So what? What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything was wrong with it.”

“Well, come on over if you want to. Are you coming now?”

“Yeah. Go down and wait for me. Be waiting at the door.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m asking. I’m not telling. Will you do it?”

“I guess I will. Okay. I will.”

I hung up and went back to my room and combed my hair and put on some pink lipstick and a pink blouse and a navy blue cardigan sweater. I wiped off my shoes. I combed my hair again and put on some L’Emeraude perfume I saved for special occasions. Then I went downstairs and began to wait at the door.

Forty minutes later he arrived from two blocks away. He came walking up the sidewalk dressed in a dark suit. He was large looking, not fat really, just large and soft. From way down the sidewalk he walked toward me. His soft laconic face, his fleshy cheeks, his spoiled bored eyes. I opened the door. He came into the house and we squared off and went into the living room to talk.

The living room of the Chi Omega house looked enough like my mother’s living room to be its twin. A rose-colored sofa sat against one wall, a brocade one against another. An oriental rug was on the floor, bookcases, windows with a window seat and long brocade drapes that puddled to the floor. There were brocade tie-backs on the drapes with golden fringe. Behind the drapes hung curtains of white Belgian lace. The afternoon light filtered down through the trees outside the windows, took a turn through the lace, ended on the floor, fell down through the woolen threads some Asian hands had woven God knows where, God knows when. It was all a piece. The world was one, but I did not know that yet and certainly Stanley Mabry didn’t know it.