“I was about to wake you up.”

“I know. Oh, man.” He shook his face hard and blew out a breath.

“No more exams after today?”

“This is it. I’m headed out right after. I put some money on that desk last night for the phone. I wrote down my number at home so call me when you get it.”

“I have your number at home right here.” Ronny pointed at his head.

Ben grinned, looking more awake. “You’re going to the phone company today, right?”

“It’s Friday. They’re not going to turn it on the same day I put down a deposit.”

“Go right now,” Ben said. “Maybe they will. You can at least try.”

Ronny got out of bed, hearing the tone in Ben’s voice, the strain and the thoughts of his mother. That was when Ronny reached in the closet for a shirt and spotted an old phone on the shelf. He pulled it down and showed it to Ben.

“All right. Mother fuck, would you look at that.”

“Write down this number,” Ronny said. “Maybe it’s like the dorm phone and I just get the number turned on or something.”

Ben scratched it on paper torn out of Ronny’s notebook and shoved it in his back pocket. “It would shit be nice if it was that easy.”

“You want to take Tate his paper?”

“You mind if I don’t?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to tell him anything if I don’t have to. He don’t need to know where I been all night. I need to stay cool for my exam.”

“What class?”

“Geology. That’s why I made you review my rocks last night.” He was awake now and enjoyed his joke. At the door he said, “The taste of my mouth sucks, you might want to stay away from me.”

Ronny kissed him on the mouth and he shut up. He tasted fine. Maybe at first a little sour from overnight, but that passed. The kiss went on too long and started again and Ben said, “Maybe we shouldn’t have done this,” pulling Ronny against him.

They were quick, though, and quiet, and then Ben was gone.

Brainhead

HE WALKED TO THE PHONE COMPANY office on Franklin Street carrying Ben’s cash in his pocket, the morning air thick with moisture, clouds overhead growing heavier, the weight of a flood on his shoulders. He sat in the hard wooden chair to which he was directed, filled out the proper forms using a pen that had an untidy tip, blotching stains of ink on the paper, and carried the result to a woman with a name tag that read Hollenholler, a thickset person with bright skin and large, mournful eyes, dressed severely in black, buttoned to the neck, two white round earbobs on her ears. She smelled of roses and lime or something like that, pleasant, and when she talked to him she had the aspect of a religious acolyte, the sister of an order of helpful nuns. She asked why he was staying in Chapel Hill for the summer and whether he had a job. He answered yes, meaning his job at The Daily Tar Heel, which he did have, in a technical sense. At any rate she was not very curious.