“You’ll find a way to use her,” Leda said. “I’m not worried about that.”
After she said it, she bit hard into the bread and the layers of butter. Casey’s eyes flashed and she spurted out angry words. “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “Since when have you cared a damn whether a girl got an even break in this sorority? You throw a blackball around at the drop of a hat, and all of a sudden you’re so damned self-righteous. This is a new twist.”
Leda knew it. She pushed her plate away and stood up. “Must be the heat,” she said. “I don’t care a hoot about Mitchell. She can go back to Seedmore for all I care. Right now, lover boy is waiting.”
She ran to the side door, to the tall brown-haired boy with the pipe jutting from his jaw, and the sweater that said Sigma Delta, and she murmured, “Jakie,” and moved close to him.
“You finished fast,” he said. “Wanna walk?”
“Yes, Jake-O.”
“We can pick up some beer in Campus Town. Then wanna walk back out—to the stadium?”
“You know I do.”
“You always do. That’s why you’re my baby. Because you always do.”
“Let’s hurry, Jake.”
The long red car waited at the corner for the light to be green, and Mitch sat behind the wheel with Fredna Loughead in the front seat beside her. She had met Fredna at the hotel. Fredna was trying to convince her that Delta Rho was a better house than Tri Ep.
“They liked you too, Mitch,” she said, “and I know they’ll ask me. Why don’t you join with me?”
“I don’t know. I can’t make up my mind. All of them were so wonderful to me.”
“The Delta Rhos aren’t snobs, either.”
The light went green and Mitch saw them. They were standing at the curb waiting. Leda Taylor looked up. There was a brief flicker of recognition, a half-smile. Mitch grinned broadly this time and waved, but Leda took the boy’s arm and turned to talk with him. The car moved away and Mitch watched them as long as she could through her mirror.
“Some buggy,” Jake said. “Rushee?”
“A potential Tri Ep. Father’s a millionaire.”
“She gonna be your roommate?”
“My roommate?”
“Well, you gals have to room with a pledge. I just thought you might pick a pledge with a nice red convertible.”
Leda laughed. She said, “Maybe that’s an idea.”
Back in the hotel room, Mitch finished unpacking some of her clothes. She hung them up and brushed them off, and when she was through, she slipped into her blue-striped pajamas and sat on the bed hugging her knees. She said, “Tri Epsilon,” aloud, and then, “Delta Rho.” She reached over to the night table, where the leather-bound books rested. On the cover of one, there was a picture of the huge house with the six white columns and the marble steps leading up to the door. The words underneath read simply: “Tri Epsilon is a friendly house.”
For a moment she stared at it dreamily, and then, turning the page, she saw the clear full-length picture of Leda Taylor in the black dress wearing the crested crown, smiling. Mitch’s fingers moved delicately down the picture as though she were touching a live object, and they stopped there at the words printed in bold blue letters. They said: “Where every girl’s a queen.”
“PUT YOUR STUFF IN THE TOP DRAWERS,” Leda told Mitch. “I don’t mind bending down to get mine.”
Mitch was used to new roommates and new surroundings and the strange formalities attached to this form of orientation. For six years she had attended boarding schools, and each year it was smoother and less uncomfortable. The first year she had hovered behind a closet door, too shy to undress in front of the girl with whom she shared the room. She had bolted the bathroom doors, and picked odd hours to do her grooming. Even her underclothes had been a source of embarrassment, and she had brought them to her room wet from their washing in the dorm sink, and hung them surreptitiously along the radiator near her bed. In time she had developed an unabashed nonchalance toward these matters and they no longer concerned her. But now, in Leda’s presence, the casualness fell away, and Mitch found the old inhibitions again. She found that it was hard to talk to Leda, too, because she wanted to so badly. She wanted to remember the glib, natural responses that came so readily with others, but she could not.
“Tonight the pledges are supposed to go on blind dates,” Leda said. “You know that?”
“Yes.”
“Want to get out of it?”
“How?”
“By going out with a friend of Jake’s. He’s a fraternity brother. We’d double-date. It’s OK with Kitten so long as you’re with a fraternity man.”
Mitch said, “I’d like that, I guess.”
She knew what it would be like if Leda were along. She knew that she would forget how to act and what to say and that she would laugh too loud and too often. But she did not want to go on a date alone with a stranger, either.
“Like men, Mitch?”
“Sure, they’re all right.”
“I mean, really like them?”
Mitch’s lips were tired from the painful grins she had been stretching them into all day. Leda laughed. “Never mind,” she said. “You’ll learn. I used to think you just had to lie there and that was it. Then I learned better.”
Mitch pulled nervously at the string of pearls around her neck. Her face flushed scarlet. Leda noticed. “You’ll have to get used to me, Mitch. I believe in being frank.”
“I don’t mind,” Mitch answered. “I guess I’m kind of dumb.”
“We’re all dumb at first. But don’t get fooled by some of them that play dumb. My God, to listen to this bunch, you’d think they were all virgins. But take it from me, most of them have had it. You ever fool around?”
“I—I don’t know too many fellows.”
“Ever been kissed—hard?”
“A few times, I guess.” The pearls snapped then and rolled onto the floor. Mitch jumped down to chase them and Leda stopped one with her foot. “Couple of them under the desk,” she said. “God! Never been kissed more than a few times. I started when I was six. Then I used to play doctor out in back of my house. God!”
Mitch did not answer. Her hands felt huge as she groped for the tiny, round pearls, and bending down there before Leda, she felt like an immense malformed giant. She was remembering how many other times she had heard references to sex, behind locked bedroom doors in boarding school, interspersed with thick laughter and raised eyebrows, and hands held at the mouth in gestures of awe and excitement. But now …
“You’ll grow up in college,” her father had said. “You’ll be a real lady when you come home.” She wondered vaguely what her mother had been like, and if she were a real lady, and how she would have told her about men and women and the things they did together. She thought of Billy Erickson—the day in the bushes when he had showed it to her. The snake, she had called it to herself. The snake that men have.
“You’ll have fun tonight,” Leda said. “You’ll like Bud Roberts. That’s Jake’s friend.”
Mitch put the pearls in a box and sat awkwardly on the bed beside Leda. “I hope