“Shit,” he said, closing the door shut. “Now I gotta go play Army with those other guys. Or prison, and I don’t want that.”

Like Vester, I said to myself. Vester who saw us and wanted some for himself. He worked in the campus stationery store and changed his voice every semester to hide his Mississippi accent. He said things like “Gosh” and “Wow-ee” and pretended to be from Scarsdale where people used words like “indubitably.” He used to say how he could have gone to Harvard but chose Wesman instead. Once I heard him tell someone from White Plains that he was an abandoned child and was raised by wealthy foster parents in Scarsdale. The family car this year, he said, would be a Seville. Once he saw Metro and me together, he tried to pretend he was from New York City. He asked me to his room once for smoke and drinks. While we were listening to music and getting drunk, he pressed my hand to his groin. I took it away.

“Did I do that?” he said the next day. “Really?”

“Really,” I said.

“Gosh, I mean, how could I do something like that. I’m shocked!”

“I’m not,” I said, standing in the doorway to his room. People from other rooms down the hall must have heard us.

“Indubitably,” he said.

Two days later in the campus dining hall he told me the truth. Metro was with me but was as uncertain as I was about Vester’s intentions. You could never tell what Vester was actually thinking or what he would do.

“Well, yes, I should tell you,” Vester said, cutting his roast beef into neat thin strips. “To be honest. Really,” he added, stretching both vowels and consonants in another voice. He chewed a small cube slowly as if to find his words in the meat. His voice assumed an artificial dignity, a pose, munching each word. “You see, Jesse. And your friend there, too.” He poured gravy over the potatoes and mixed it in.

“Me?” said Metro.

“Yes, you.” Vester wouldn’t call his name, or look directly at him. But his eyes tried to hold mine. I turned away.

“You see, Jesse. I never get so drunk or so high that I don’t know what’s happening around me.” He paused, the meat tiny in his mouth. “Or what I’m doing.”

Metro’s back stiffened instantly. I could feel his heat and mine.

“And remember afterwards, too. Everything,” Vester continued, more sure of himself with the action of the knife and teeth on meat. “I guess in the long run, I’m immune to most herb or alcohol. I’ve been smoking much longer than you have. You see, Jesse, people have been asking me about you. They’ve been curious. But not just about you. Your friend, too.” He still never said Metro’s name. “But I couldn’t tell them because I wasn’t quite sure myself. You can’t be sure just because someone walks or talks a certain way. So I said I honestly didn’t know. But they thought that since we lived in the same dorm last year, and for the whole year, I would most certainly know. But to be quite honest, I didn’t know.”