‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Skip said to me that Friday night. ‘I’m buckling down, Peter. I don’t give a shit about being a college man or having a diploma to hang over the mantel in my rumpus room, but I’ll be fucked if I want to go back to Dexter and hang around fuckin Bowlorama with the rest of the retards until Uncle Sam calls me.’
He was sitting on Nate’s bed. Nate was across the way at the Palace on the Plains, chowing down on Friday-night fish. It was nice to know somebody on Chamberlain Three had an appetite. This was a conversation we couldn’t have around Nate in any case; my country-mouse roommate thought he’d done pretty well on the latest round of prelims, all C’s and B’s.
He wouldn’t have said anything if he’d heard us talking, but would have looked at us in a way that said we lacked gumption. That, although it might not be our fault, we were morally weak.
‘I’m with you,’ I said, and then, from down the hall, came an agonized cry (‘ Ohhhhhh . . .
FUCK M E! ‘) that we recognized instantly: someone had just taken The Bitch. Our eyes met. I can’t say about Skip, not for sure (even though he was my best friend in college), but I was still thinking that there was time . . . and why wouldn’t I think that? For me there always had been.
Skip began to grin. I began to grin. Skip began to giggle. I began to giggle right along with him.
‘What the fuck,’ he said.
‘Just tonight,’ I said. ‘We’ll go over to the library together tomorrow.’
‘Hit the books.’
‘All day. But right now . . . ‘
He stood up. ‘Let’s go Bitch-hunting.’
We did. And we weren’t the only ones. That’s no explanation, I know; it’s only what happened.
At breakfast the next morning, as we worked side by side on the dishline, Carol said: ‘I’m hearing there’s some kind of big card-game going on in your dorm. Is that true?’
‘I guess it is,’ I said.
She looked at me over her shoulder, giving me that smile — the one I always thought about when I thought about Carol. The one I think about still. ‘Hearts? Hunting The Bitch?’
‘Hearts,’ I agreed. ‘Hunting The Bitch.’
‘I heard that some of the guys are getting in over their heads. Getting in grades trouble.’
‘I guess that might be,’ I said. Nothing was coming down the conveyor belt, not so much as
a single tray. There’s never a rush when you need one, I’ve noticed.
‘How are your grades?’ she asked. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but I want — ‘
‘Information, yeah, I know. I’m doing okay. Besides, I’m getting out of the game.’
She just gave me the smile, and sure I still think about it sometimes; you would, too. The dimples, the slightly curved lower lip that knew so many nice things about kissing, the dancing blue eyes. Those were days when no girl saw further into a boys’ dorm than the lobby
. . . and vice-versa, of course. Still, I have an idea that for a little while in October and November of 1966 Carol saw plenty, more than I did. But of course, she wasn’t insane — at least not then. The war in Vietnam became her insanity. Mine as well. And Skip’s. And Nate’s. Hearts were nothing, really, only a few tremors in the earth, the kind that flap the screen door on its hinges and rattle the glasses on the shelves. The killer earthquake, the apocalyptic continent-drowner, was still on its way.
17
Barry Margeaux and Brad Witherspoon both got the Deny News delivered to their rooms, and the two copies had usually made the rounds of the third floor by the end of the day — we’d find the remnants in the lounge when we took our seats for the evening session of Hearts, the pages torn and out of order, the crossword filled in by three or four different hands. There would be mustaches inked on the photodot faces of Lyndon Johnson and Ramsey Clark and Martin Luther King (someone, I never found out who, would invariably put large smoking horns on Vice President Humphrey and print HUBERT THE DEVIL underneath in tiny anal capital letters). The News was hawkish on the war, putting the most positive spin on each day’s military events and relegating any protest news to the depths . . . usually beneath the Community Calendar.