Alma Mater

by Rita Mae Brown

  "Oh, the phone. I want face-to-face, baby." He slapped her butt. "I thought maybe I could talk you out of this. I don't mind taking my licks."

  "There's absolutely no point. None."

  "What if I go to Dean Hansen and confess? Then we both get the proverbial boot. We'll be together."

  "No."

  "Or I could march in there and say you were covering my ass."

  "Forget it. No one wants you out of William and Mary, including Dean Hansen. Why do you think Coach went to so much trouble? Just finish up. Then if you get drafted into the pros—"

  "First of all, I'd be a last pick. This isn't a football powerhouse." "But you are."

  "Thanks." He paused. "I'll end up a stock broker. No one's going to draft me."

  "Law school?"

  "There are too many lawyers in the world." He laughed. "Actually I'm pretty psyched about learning the stock market."

  She reached for his hand. "Don't rule anything out. It's a long way from here to graduation. And you will get drafted. Scouts have come to see you play. You know Coach has had calls. Just wait. You don't have to take any job offered you, but wouldn't it be fun to know? Just for the hell of it?"

  He pulled her hand to his lips, kissing the cool flesh. "And what if I said yes, and got drafted by, urn, Green Bay? Would you live in the frozen tundra?"

  She swallowed hard. "It's not about what I want, it's about chances that come to few people. The stock market will always be there. You can study the market—maybe even work at a brokerage house in the off season. You can make a lot of money in football, a lot of money to invest."

  "I'll make money no matter what I do." He grinned, exuding self-confidence.

  "I've never heard you say that before."

  "Money is the last thing people should talk about."

  "Well . . . I guess if you have enough, it's not such a sore subject. I think Mom only talked about it to me because she was still pretty beat up by everything."

  "I didn't mean that, honey."

  "Oh, I know. I'm thinking out loud. I probably shouldn't. I do talk about money more than I should. It's been on my mind."

  "You'll never have to work. You'll never have to worry about money. I promise."

  "Charly, I want to work."

  "Sure. I know you can't just sit around, but you will never, ever have to worry. I'll take care of everything." He put his arms around her.

  She hugged him then, her arms around his waist. How was she ever going to let him go? Couldn't they stay close but forget marriage? She wondered if she was selfish in being able to enjoy them both physically or if it was just human. Love is love, sexual pleasure is sexual pleasure, she told herself. You're going to be dead a long time, so get a lot of both while you can.

  "If I confessed and got thrown out with you, we could get married right away." His eyes sparkled.

  Thinking fast, Vic replied, "And your mother and father would hate me. I'd much rather have them on my side than against me. Why make things difficult?"

  "They'd get over it." But he knew she was right.

  "Fat chance. I'd have to present them with four of the most perfect blond children in the world for them to forgive me."

  "Blond?"

  "Right. And they'd have to have names like Nigel and Clarissa." Vic burst out laughing—she couldn't help it. She didn't dislike Charly's parents, but they could be such awfully squeaky WASPs. Not that she wasn't a WASP, but the Savedges set less stock in it.

  He laughed, too. "Dad would love it even more than Mom." He

  stopped, reached for her hand, and kissed her. "Vic, let's go back to your place."

  She wanted to make love to him. Even though she knew it was good-bye to that part of them, she wanted to make him happy one more time.

  Vic drove them to Jinx's knowing she would be in class. Charly didn't ask any questions. Vic said this would be exciting, since it was kind of forbidden.

  She pulled off his sweatshirt and then the T-shirt underneath. She ran her tongue from the waist of his sweatpants, up between his pecs, up to his Adam's apple, and to his lips.

  She put her hands around his tight rear end, feeling the muscles, feeling him get very hard, very fast, next to her. She kept kissing him as she slid her left hand around and rested it on his jock strap, letting the heat from her hand make him crazy. Then she stripped off his sweatpants and jockstrap in one clean motion. She felt the smooth skin of his penis, the heat, the head. He kissed her forehead, her nose, her lips.

  They launched themselves onto Jinx's unmade bed, coupled in seconds, came in minutes.

  Charly rested on his elbows, over her, breathing hard. His penis softened for a moment and then stiffened again.

  "Can men have multiple orgasms?" he whispered, quite thrilled with the possibility.

  "Why not?" She moved herself under him. This time it took longer but was no less pleasurable.

  Afterward, he rolled over on his side.

  "For my first million, I'll write a book about multiorgasmic men." He stroked her stomach. He loved her washboard abs. "All they need is you."

  They showered. Vic left Jinx a note, said she'd explain everything and that she owed her a dinner and a clean set of sheets. She did strip the bed and put on new sheets with Charly's help. She dropped him off at the dorm so he could change for class.

  She drove out to the discount stores and bought a new set of white cotton sheets for Jinx and a reduced maroon blanket for herself.

  She wasn't going to tell Chris. It would serve no purpose other than to hurt her. She probably should have ended it with Charly this morning, but she couldn't quite bring herself to say the words. Still, she knew that as good as sex with Charly felt, Chris's love was like a firebomb. Maybe she had needed one last time with Charly to be sure of where she stood.

  She told herself it was nobody's business but her own, but a wave of guilt and confusion washed over her. She felt guilty because she had betrayed Chris, guilty because she was going to hurt Charly, guilty because she was going to let her parents down.

  She fought back tears. Maybe the only way anyone learns anything is to make a mess, she thought. Well, she'd made quite a mess.

  T

  he monsignor, at first suspicious of Vic's confession as relayed by Dean Hansen, soon seized upon it with enthusiasm. Punishing a beautiful woman somehow provided more of an emo-

  tional reward than punishing a man.

  Monsignor Whitby had graciously offered sherry to Dean Hansen and the two other college officials accompanying him.

  The first step the monsignor wanted to take was to call a newspaper reporter with the story. Dean Hansen suggested that enough negative publicity for the college had been generated this year. Better to forgive and forget.

  The monsignor resisted. Young people needed to be held accountable for their misdeeds.

  As the discussion rolled into a monologue from the monsignor, the dean and his colleagues realized the only way to satisfy him while protecting the college would be to punish Victoria Savedge. Though none of them especially wishedto do this since her record was spotless and her grades high, the needs of the whole had to take precedence over any of its parts.

  After two hours of reaching for the decanter by the monsignor, the meeting concluded. The clergyman agreed not to call the local newspaper, radio, or TV stations with the story or tell anyone Vic's name. Dean Hansen would expel her from William and Mary. Of course, the

  Cardinal Newman group on campus would be honored to receive a lecture from the monsignor on the Scripture mandates concerning relationships between men and women. The monsignor felt the college Catholic group had been avoiding him. He was assured that the campus church groups were all very busy. No slight was intended. The semester passes in the blink of an eye.

  A mollified monsignor, all smiles, closed the doors to his office. The three less-than-thrilled university administration members walked back to the campus. Their compromise was that the school would not cite this on Vic'
s record. She would have to leave the college, but there would be no mention of it in her file.

  When Dean Hansen called Vic into his office late Wednesday morning, he was impressed with her calm. But then, he'd been impressed when she'd confessed to the prank in the first place. She thanked him for keeping her record clean.

  She asked if she would lose the work she'd completed to date, which would mean that wherever she'd transfer she'd have to complete one year instead of one semester. He said unfortunately she would lose the work she had completed to date; there was no other way since she couldn't take final exams.

  Vic asked the dean to wait until Friday to call her parents. She wanted to go home and talk to them herself.

  He agreed.

  Vic shook his hand, walked out, and took a deep breath of clear, fall air. A profound sense of resolution filled her. She didn't exactly know why she felt so good, but she did.

  She left a note at the dorm for Charly, promising to call him that night, telling him she'd be going home to break the news to her Mom and Dad tomorrow.

  Jinx was in class so Vic walked to her house and left her a similar note.

  She walked back through campus and noticed how the symmetry of the elegant brick buildings suggested order. And conformity. Rigidity. She felt as if she were seeing William and Mary, her Alma Mater, in a new way for the first time.

  Chris discovered Vic waiting in the hall outside her American poetry seminar. "Hello."

  "Hello."

  They walked silently down the steps and out onto the grass. "You look happy, Vic."

  "I am. I'm a free woman," Vic said with a quiet smile.

  "Oh, no." Chris didn't share Vic's happiness. She was afraid that in a year or two, Vic would regret this. Even more, she felt guilty that she didn't confess, too.

  "I feel . . . clean."

  "I feel kind of bad that I didn't own up to it."

  "You need to get your degree and I don't. Anyway, it was my idea." "I went along with it."

  "Oh, you sound just like Charly."

  "He's right." Chris always felt a pang of fear when Charly's name was mentioned.

  "I know what I'm doing. Now let's go home and celebrate." She whispered in her ear. "I'm going to make you so hot you'll beg me for it."

  Chris blushed. "Vic, just seeing you makes me hot."

  "Even hotter, then." Vic wanted to kiss her ear. "Let's make love and make love and make love. Then I've got to go home and get it over with." She sighed.

  "Tonight?"

  Vic paused. "Tomorrow morning. But you might have to tie me up to keep me tonight." She winked.

  "How do you think of these things?" Chris marveled at Vic's indefatigable sexual energy and imagination.

  "I don't know. But I never thought of them until I met you."

  W

  hitecaps frothed the top of the James due to a stiff wind blowing up from the southeast, not the usual direction. Small-craft warning flags flapped in the wind at boathouses

  and yacht clubs up and down the river, the metal bits on the ropes clanging insistently against the flag poles.

  Charly borrowed a buddy's car to get to his appointment with Mr. Savedge. As the Jamestown ferry docked at Scotland Wharf, he was heartened as always at how agricultural Surry County remained. Southside Virginia existed in a time apart from the rest of the state. He liked that.

  Ever since the night he'd gone to bed with both Vic and Chris, he'd obsessively thought about them, alternating between heightened sexual desire, at the idea of the two women making love to one another, and terror. Women finding one another sexually desirable seemed reasonable to him. Women were sex, the center of all desire. He didn't think that he was sharing Vic with Chris. He thought of their relationship as a friendship with something extra.

  He wondered if he should talk to Vic about her friendship with Chris.

  He liked Chris. She was pleasant and pretty. Making love to her had been no chore, but he couldn't honestly say he was sexually

  attracted to her. Vic was always the center of his attention. He was like a tuning fork. When she came near him, he vibrated.

  Surely, she felt that way about him. Her kisses were passionate, her body turned hot under his touch, she wanted him inside her. They belonged together.

  The town of Surry came into view. He drove down Main Street, turned at the alley behind Frank's office, and parked. He stepped out into the wind, better than brisk, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply.

  Just as he reached the front door, Sissy Wallace opened it from the inside.

  "Why, I thought it was you. I haven't seen you for too long." Sissy beamed. She'd grown fond of Charly over the previous summer. "Hello, Miss Wallace. Good to see you."

  "You come on in here this minute. We're going to get a terrible blow. Maybe it will do some of my pruning for me. I have to do all the yard work now that Poppy's old and Georgia might break one of her precious nails." She closed the door behind him. "I was just leaving, you see. Frank's our lawyer, and I so enjoy talking to him, but today it was a business call, not social. Poppy has let Yolanda in the kitchen. She lives in the kitchen. This just won't do. Georgia indulges him. Says Yolanda makes him happy. Well, I say she's a cow and Poppy can find his happiness elsewhere."

  "Uh, I'm sorry to hear that, Miss Wallace," Charly replied, surprised that Sissy would call another woman a cow. Perhaps a few margaritas were behind her.

  "If I put up with her, I'll go mad. If I don't, he'll cut me out of the will again. It's tiresome." Her lower lip, bright red, jutted out petulantly. "'Course, Georgia will indulge him morning, noon, and night. She's banking on my losing my temper somewhere along the way so he'll tear up the will and me with it. I know how she thinks, the snake."

  "I'm sorry you're unhappy, Miss Wallace."

  Charly hoped Frank would come out of his office as they stood in the front hall. He didn't know if Frank's secretary had heard him, but he knew how Sissy could talk.

  "Well, I'm not wretchedly unhappy, Charly, not throw-myself-onthe-ground-and-eat-dirt kind of unhappy." She brightened. "A Cadil-

  lac would restore my spirits considerably, and you know, Bunny says she will help me get one wholesale. I want a cream-colored Cadillac with a sea foam interior, I do. I'll wear a scarf to match the interior . . . brings out the color of my eyes, although you're used to looking into Vic's eyes. Now aren't they the brightest green you've ever seen? Like a cat. Her mother, too. Maybe they're both cats. Graceful as cats. Land sakes, here I am talking about me and you played that wonderful football game, why, we are all so proud of you, Charly Harrison. Proud as punch."

  Finally, Frank's secretary, Mildred, appeared. She winked at Charly. "Mr. Savedge is expecting you."

  "Well, let me hurry before this storm breaks. I suppose I'll have to tolerate Yolanda. I can't turn her out in a hurricane." She laughed. "Maybe I could turn out Poppy instead." She opened the door, the wind pulling it closed with a bang.

  Frank walked out and shook Charly's hand. "Sorry, I didn't know Sissy Wallace had given you the benefit of her person."

  Frank's office was clean and spare. A threadbare dark blue Chinese rug covered the floor and two brown leather wing chairs, as worn as the rug, faced his desk.

  Frank sat in one and invited Charly to take the other.

  "Would you like a drink?"

  "No, sir, thank you."

  "I suppose you heard all about Yolanda."

  Charly laughed. "Poppy Wallace is really something, keeping a woman in the kitchen."

  "Actually Yolanda is a cow."

  Charly burst out laughing. "I thought Sissy was joking when she called Yolanda a cow."

  "No. Yolanda really is a cow. The last of his old Jersey herd and Edward decided she shouldn't live outside anymore. She can stay in the kitchen when the weather's bad. He says it's a linoleum floor and she won't hurt anything."

  "Is he . . . you know." Charly touched his temple with his forefinger. Frank leaned back in the chair, crossing
one leg over the other. "No, I don't think so. I think he's reached that age when anything or

  anyone that's still around from his glory days is now very dear to him. She's the last of that bloodline from his big herd. Each year he'd breed less and less. In his prime, he ran three successful businesses simultaneously. The dairy was just one. Had a lot of pride in that." Frank rolled a pencil to his telephone and then stopped it. "Well, I don't reckon you're here to talk about cattle and the Wallaces."

  "No, sir, although the Wallaces are unique."