After dark he returned to the boardinghouse. He brushed his teeth and settled down for the evening with his book. The conversation with Ben replayed itself in his head, Ben saying this, Ben saying that, the intensity of the feeling, the wish for something he, Ronny, was too cautious to name.

About ten o’clock he heard a pounding on the door downstairs and he felt a sinking in himself, a fear. When the knocking sounded again, he went to the banister. Mrs. Delacy was peering out her door. “I thought I heard something. Did you?”

“It’s somebody at the door,” Ronny said.

She was tugging at the collar of her housecoat, hair done up in small rollers, peering up at him in some measure of appeal. “I don’t think anybody else is home right now, and I can’t go to the door.”

“I’ll find out who it is, Mrs. Delacy.”

“Who would be coming here making such a racket so late?” Squinting toward the front of the house, soft upper arms deeply creased with wrinkles, the flesh so light.

Ronny thought he knew who it was, or who it might be, but that was only a hope, wasn’t it? He hurried down the stairs with that feeling of sinking and rising and expanding in his middle, too many feelings all at once, his heart making a little thunder. At the front door stood Ben.

“It’s all right,” Ronny said, turning to her. “He’s a friend of mine.”

But Mrs. Delacy had already gone into her room and closed her door again, as though she had forgotten the commotion.

Ronny walked through the parlor wanting to stick his hands in his pockets or smooth down his hair or straighten his collar. It was as if he might suddenly fly away unless he carried himself just so. He was watching the carpet at first, then made himself look up. Ben scowled through the glass, brows furrowed together. “Open the door,” he said.

Heart Line

AUGUST

How it had all happened: August of his junior year he had moved into the dorm on a steamy afternoon, his mother pulling into the parking lot at the back of the ground floor, sitting there with the engine running while he unloaded his bags and typewriter and carried them up to the room, two trips, while she listened to country music on the radio. She appeared a bit nervous at the sight of the six floors of Ehringhaus looming over her, tapping a finger on the steering wheel, pulling out a Barbara Cartland paperback to read while she waited, glancing at him when he trundled to the car in the wet. “You don’t want to come inside for a minute?” he asked.

“Do you need me to?”

“I just thought you might want a pee break or something.”

“Don’t use that word to your mother, it’s not nice. Say ‘use the bathroom.’ ”

“It’s what you call it.”

“I’m an adult, I can talk like I want. It’s not respectful when you do it.” Her voice was raspy, her face looked washed out—she had not put on makeup, not even lipstick. No need to waste makeup on an occasion when she would barely step out of the car. “No, I don’t want to go in there. I don’t want to use a boys’ bathroom, they’re always dirty.”