“Okay. Then fuck you, I hope you break your leg on the way down the porch.”

“That’s better.” He stood there another moment, solid as the rising light. The sarcasm softened out of his face as he stood there. Anybody could see he wanted to stay. He said, “You got your wish though. Tonight. Right?” He chuckled, and slid out the window, needing no answer at all. Ronny watched as he crept down the roof and over the edge. Streetlight caught him at the curb, turning back, hands shoved in his pockets. He looked back, stood there a moment. Then he started a dogtrot down the street, stride after stride, so easy, the way he ran, as if he could go forever.

Odd Job

WHEN HE FELL NEARLY TO SLEEP a part of him would think, but Ben was here, but Ben was on top of me, surrounding me, and he said this, and this, and this. Ronny lingered over each word, each tone of voice, each change of expression. There was too much intoxication in the room for rest. So he lay there with his eyes open and his brain in a long monologue of memory, one image of Ben followed by another, one ache of longing and desire followed by another, as the morning came and the day brightened. As if he had to catalogue each moment, sort it all, to make sure he remembered.

There was a vibration inside him, a warmth, like a throb or a cooing, as though a peaceful bird had nested there, and it occurred to him how close this feeling was to the fear he felt at times that also settled in his belly and hung there, palpable. The same bird, only anxious and fluttery.

He dozed even so, off and on, until near noon he realized he had things to do and should stop pretending to rest. Behind all the happiness a part of him was fretted with his situation, the fact that he had twenty-odd dollars in the bank and needed to look for a job. He had promised to call Tate about the paper but no longer had a telephone. Mrs. Delacy had made it clear that she did not allow the boys to use her phone. So he rolled into his jeans and sweatshirt, bought cheap coffee at a convenience store near the stone church with its neat hedges on Franklin Street. He was headed across campus to the student union to use the phones in the Daily Tar Heel office; the walk through North Campus struck him fiercely, as if he were seeing it new. This was the oldest part of the university, scattered with trees, neatly mowed grass, haphazard plantings, buildings of different styles, ages, shapes, grouped roughly around McCorkle Place, where stood the Davie Poplar, a hoary bole said to hold the fate of the campus in its roots. Sacred space to alumni, the Old Well, subject of postcards and Polaroids, sat in its circle of shrubbery and bricks. People fought to live in the dorms on either side because they were among the oldest buildings on campus. Chapel Hill was like that—puffed up about its age, self-important as a city of bankers—but it was a lovable place. That morning it all struck him as fresh and clean and unfathomably wonderful.