“Oh, he is not. I’ve known Hank for, just for years, and he isn’t fond of me or any other girl. Not really, I mean. I mean, he’s so square all of the time with the football games and the basketball games and being president . . . I haven’t ever seen him like this.”

It was true. Now that the anger was wearing off, the embarrassed fury, she realized that she hadn’t ever seen Hank this way.

“I like him,” Adam Cramer said.

“What?”

“I said, I like him.”

Ella shook her head. “Then maybe you are a little nuts. There hasn’t ever been anyone as rude and impolite and nasty as he was to you just then. He acted just like a . . . an animal, or something.”

“Well, that’s the way it is when you’re in love.”

“He isn’t in love. For gosh sakes, can’t you get that? He doesn’t know what it is. He never even heard of it. Hank!” Ella felt frightened now that Adam would forget that she was desirable and pretty and, above all, a woman, that he would class her with Hank and those kids with the pimples in Rusty’s.

Adam Cramer laughed softly. “Forget it, anyway,” he said. “If I can, you ought to be able to.”

“But the way he acted—”

“Forget it. Hank’s an intelligent boy, and he’s got a strong mind.”

“I’ll say. Strong as an ox or something. He’s supposed to be the smartest boy in school—but he certainly didn’t get very far when he tried to argue with you.”

“You’ve got to remember, Ella,” Adam Cramer said, “that Hank is—how old is he?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen. He’s still a kid. And for a kid, he did very well.”

“I suppose that means you think I’m a kid, too.”

“Not at all,” he said. He kept the car at an even fifty down the dark, narrow road. “Physically and mentally you’re grown. I wasn’t speaking of chronology. I know some thirty-year-old women who are still in their early teens.”

He paused to remove a cigarette, punch the lighter, suck smoke slowly into his lungs.

Ella felt the early fear replaced by a better one, the one she had come to thrill at in the minutes before sleep each night. “Well, anyway, I want to apologize for him. Hank and I haven’t been what you’d call close for a long time, he’s not my boy friend and I’m not his girl friend, or anything—but even so, I apologize.”

“Accepted. Now will you stop huddling over there in the corner? I don’t bite or pinch.”

Ella moved over and allowed his arm to slip around her shoulder. His fingers touched the flesh of her arm beneath the short-sleeved sweater.

“Can you drive?” he asked.

“Sure, a little.”

“Then you shift for me.”