From the end of the bar a pompous surgeon I knew just well enough to dislike was pushing toward me. Turning to escape, I nearly bumped the fortyish blonde they called West Lounge Winnie, sipping a fresh martini as her restless eyes searched over the rim for a man. For the five years since her husband had died she would arrive at parties in one-strap gowns and an intricate bouffant hairdo and then drink until gin had dulled her features and unwound her hair and psyche, so that by one o’clock she was talking about sex, to no one. Ardrey Carr thought she was very funny.

He was watching Kris Ann as the group talked back and forth. But then most men did. Even me.

It had first happened in a dingy apartment crammed with law students, beer cans, Salvation Army furniture, back copies of Esquire, and cigarette smoke that seeped through the screens of the open windows. A paunchy classmate was shouting with a Temptations album in a Mississippi accent, trying to sound black. It was hot and too close and the fall crispness of late afternoon kept looking better. I was about to slide out the door when I saw her.

She was watching the singer from a corner of the room, looking disdainful and a little amused as two first-year law students hovered near her, trying to think what to say. Even at a distance she had an energy of beauty like no one I’d ever seen. Above the chiseled nose and high, strong cheekbones her eyes were wide and black and lambent. Long black hair fell away straight on both sides of her face, and her mouth, full and regular, set off a clean, delicate chin. It was as though the strength in her face had been sculpted to the point of losing that for beauty, but not quite. I took in the cool, easy tilt of the beer to her lips until she ran through me. I went over without thinking.

For an instant her face clouded, as if I had frightened her. But when I introduced myself she mustered a lingering hint of amusement. She was Kris Ann Cade, she told me, a senior and just watching after that rotten game. “This is terrific anthropology. You’ve got primitive mating rituals and what with two men to every woman, there’s some absolutely vicious social Darwinism.”

“Beats football,” I agreed. “Vanderbilt may win some year but it’ll take legislation.”

The animal white smile came and went so fast it seemed almost a trick. She nodded toward the white soul singer. “God, he’s awful, though.” Her voice was at once smoky and metallic. “You know, I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Are you a recluse?”

“Almost. I go to law school and work twenty hours a week, so nights and weekends I study.”

She sounded mildly surprised. “Why do you do all that?”