“What?”
“She’s always looking around. You know.”
“Yes,” Mitch said, not knowing at all.
“Drink some more of that beer,” he said. “We’re wasting good iced beer.”
“You know, I like beer OK now,” Mitch said with a frail semblance of excitement. “It’s not bad at all.”
“Good. Here—rest your head.”
He raised himself to a sitting position and spread his legs apart. He patted his chest lightly and said, “Here, baby—rest your head here. We’ll talk.”
Mitch moved over and put her head on his chest, a hand resting on either knee.
“I’m glad you’re so tall,” she confided. “I’m so tall myself.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re a long-legged gal, all right.”
“Why didn’t you talk coming up in the car? I was afraid you’d lost your tongue.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I just wanted to think.”
“About what?” Mitch began to feel comfortable and easy with him. “What did you think about?”
His hands reached up and cupped her breasts quickly, and his knees held her in. “About this,” he said, reaching one hand up to the blouse and down to her slip and inside touching her flesh. He began to rub her breasts as she wiggled to be free.
Mitch whimpered slowly and softly and she could feel him moving around and forcing her back on the blanket and the tears came fast then. She was dizzy and exhausted and she could not pull herself up. Fighting desperately with him, she could not stop his hands from pulling her skirt up. A thin wail escaped from her mouth and she began to heighten it to a loud moaning sound.
“Shut up,” he snapped. “Shut up!”
Her moaning increased and some of the lost strength returned so that she kicked him and sent him back away from her. He stood up and glared down. “Mamma tell you not to?” he said angrily. “Mamma tell you sex is dirty?”
She began to cry hard, and sitting there sobbing, she did not listen to his words. For a long time she stayed like that, listening to him take the caps off the bottles, light cigarettes, and mumble dull words to her. She could hear him say that he was sorry and she had better not cry because Jake and Leda would be back, and then she could hear him curse and swallow the beer and whistle the way he whistled.
There were voices in the distance, ringing laughter, and the sound of them coming. She put her coat on and got up while Bud began folding the blanket.
Leda came down the fields ahead of Jake, running happily while he followed. “Mitch and Bud,” she shouted, “how goes the mad twosome?”
Mitch said, “Hi, Leda.”
Bud reverted to his old mood of sullen silence as he loaded the blankets in the car and gathered the empty bottles together. Jake helped him and Leda jumped in the front seat, yawning and saying sleepily, “Better hurry. We’ll be out after hours.”
On the way home, after they had come off the dirt road and gone onto the highway, Jake stopped the car. Leda stood beside Mitch while she vomited.
“You’ll be OK,” she promised. “I used to get sick on beer myself. You’ll get used to it, honey.”
The next morning, after breakfast, Mitch waited for Marsha Holmes, as she had been told to do. The president’s suite consisted of three rooms. There was the bedroom, the study room, and the meeting room, all of them attractively furnished with low couches and triangular lamps and small square tables. Mitch sat in the meeting room, thumbing through the magazines on the table in front of her. She stopped at one titled “The Epsilon.” Inside, the columns were devoted to news from chapters of Tri Epsilon throughout the country. Mitch’s eye caught the printing, “Gamma Pi Chapter, Cranston University.”
Gamma Pi Tri Eps are looking forward to a year bustling with excitement. Last year, you remember, they received many honors. For the second year in a row, glamorous Leda Taylor, a Tri Epsilon junior, was voted campus queen. Good luck this year, Leda, and may you cap all awards again for the name of Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon.
“No one can deny it,” a voice said behind Mitch, “Leda is a beautiful girl.”
Mitch turned and faced Marsha. “A very beautiful girl,” Marsha continued. “Do you like rooming with her, Mitch?”
“Yes, I do. She’s been swell to me.”
“Did you have a good time last night? You went out with Bud Roberts, didn’t you? And Leda and Jake?”
“Yes, I did. I’m sorry we were late. It was my fault.”
“Your fault, Mitch?”
“Yes, I got sick coming back. We had to stop.”
“I see.” Marsha thought for a moment, her hands folded demurely, and then she sat down beside Mitch. “Look, Susan, I hate to be the bossy president that starts right in advising pledges, but remember something for me, will you?”
“Certainly, Marsha.”
“Leda has many ideas that some of us—that I don’t agree with. If there are any that you don’t agree with, will you come and talk to me about them?”
“Yes, I will. I didn’t like my date too well, but I shouldn’t have had all that beer. I guess I’m old enough to take care of myself.”
“I won’t say any more, Mitch. I just want you to know that I’m here to help the pledges. I don’t think Leda was wise to have you date Bud Roberts during blind date week. You see, Kitten, our social chairman, tries very hard to arrange a suitable date for each pledge. Someone your own age—usually a fraternity pledge who is as new to college as you are.”
“Oh,” Mitch said. “I didn’t understand. Leda said it would be all right so long as Bud was a fraternity man.”
“You will go along on a blind date tonight, won’t you, Mitch? One of Kitten’s. All the other pledges are enjoying it tremendously.”
“Yes,” Mitch answered, “I will. I’m sorry about last night.”
Mitch wandered out of the suite down the stairs to the porch, where some of the girls were playing bridge. She recognized a few of them as pledges, because they wore the pink and blue ribbons too, but she did not know them.
“… and so I told him,” a short girl with jewel-studded rims on her large-framed glasses was saying, “that as far as I was concerned, he was the blindest date I’d ever had.”
“Robin!” Marybell Van Casey looked horrified. “He was an Omega Phi. They’re a big fraternity, sweetie, and Tri Ep can’t afford to run around insulting their pledges. You be careful.”
“Well, I don’t care. I hate those big oafs that maul you around as though you were a punching bag. I just won’t take it.”
There was a tense silence. Marybell looked across the table significantly at Kitten Clark. Robin was due for a conference with the social chairman.
Mitch sat next to Robin Maurer at the pledge meeting that afternoon. Jane Bell was the pledge director. She had an extensive background in directing and leading and counseling. In grammar school she had been the monitor in the cloakroom, and later, a junior counselor at a summer camp for girls. She was a Texan and an Army brat, and her speech was peppered with such phrases as “team spirit,” “pulling together,” “giving it all we’ve got,” and “sticking in there.” Whenever a date gave Jane trouble toward the end of an evening, Jane always looked him squarely in the eye and said, “Now, look—don’t get out of line,