“Lamplight, for sure,” Ben said, and they all nodded. They’d grab a cab from in front of the gym after everyone had showered after practice. Ahmed was going into town with a couple kids from club soccer and he had asked Ben if he wanted to come, but Ben said he was going in with Hutch and those guys but thank you.

Ben spent all of soccer practice worrying how he was going to cover the cab there, and the meal, and the cab back. Hutch had said they were going to buy a handle of Jack Daniel’s somewhere, and even though Ben doubted they could pull it off, he had to have the money to contribute if they actually managed it.

And so Ben walked the slowest back from the field, and he took the longest shower, and after he dried off he waited in the little vestibule between the shower room and the main locker room until he didn’t hear anyone left. He waited there longer, and through the high windows he saw the bottom edge of the sun meet the tree line, and finally he put his face to the window in the gym door and saw no more taxis in the parking lot.

He walked out of the gym in the early dusk. He knew in the cab they were joking about the driver or someone’s early attempt at scoring a betty, already their togetherness was galvanizing, and his steps were slow as he approached the dorm.

The lights were off. He sat on the leather couch. What would “Decision-Making” say he should do now? He couldn’t bear to do more work, and so he went back outside. He started walking. Looking into the windows of the Den, he saw that a lot of the black and Hispanic kids were still on campus too. It was strange to see them in full possession of the pool tables and the stereo. They were playing the music that Ben only heard as background noise during the summer, and they looked easy with each other. They had lost the formality that they always seemed to carry.

What was Alice doing? What if the two of them could just sit alone?

Without student voices the campus was loud with the friction of the wind through the drying trees. He tried to savor the coming stars and the air and the streetlamps; he knew just what kind of impression this was all supposed to make on him. The carillon began playing, again that version of “Inspector Gadget,” and Ben hated whoever was playing it. He kept finding another route to take from one end of the campus to the other. Out near the hockey rink, fluorescent pink tape marked the trees to be cleared for the pool. The chapel bells rang the quarter hours. He walked around the track twice, feeling the springy give in the red shredded-rubber surface.

*  *  *