Campus Tramp

by Lawrence Block

  “Right.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Guess.”

  Ruth thought for a minute. “Must have been that guy you’ve been dating. What was his name—Joe Gunsway?”

  She shook her head.

  “Wasn’t that his name?”

  “That was his name, but he wasn’t the one.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “Nope.”

  Ruth shrugged. “Better tell me then. I’m all out of guesses.”

  “It was Don Gibbs.”

  Ruth’s eyes went wide. “Honey—”

  “He’s just wonderful, Ruth. I’ve never met anybody like him before. He’s sweet and polished and—”

  Ruth took a breath. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe he’s Central Ohio’s answer to Marlon Brando. Maybe what I’ve heard about him is a lot of crap—I don’t know. But you better be careful, honey.”

  “What … what did you hear?”

  Ruth took a second or two before replying, choosing her words carefully.

  “I’ve heard,” she said at length, “that he breaks girls’ hearts for the sheer hell of it.”

  Joe turned out to be somewhat harder to tell. The big thing with him, of course, was not to tell him that she was no longer a virgin, but to clue him in on the fact that she didn’t want to date him any more. For a little while she considered just turning him down when he asked her out and letting him figure things out for himself, but this didn’t seem to be the right way to go about it. Even if Joe wasn’t the man for her, it was only fair to be decent to him. He was a nice enough guy, even if he wasn’t her stick of tea.

  She didn’t even wait for him to call her. Instead she called him at his dorm, waiting impatiently while one of the other boys in the dormitory called him to the phone. The fact that he lived with others in a dormitory while Don had an off-campus apartment to himself seemed to her to sum up the difference between the two of them.

  “Joe,” she said right away, “I’m afraid I won’t be able to see you any more.”

  There was a long, stunned silence. When he finally spoke he sounded as though someone had hit him over the head with a sledgehammer.

  “Why?” he said.

  “There’s someone else,” she said, feeling like a character in a bad movie.

  “But I don’t understand, Linda. I’ve been seeing you all the time. How could there be somebody else?”

  “There is, Joe. And I’ll be seeing him regularly from now on.”

  “But … how long have you known him?”

  “Just one day.”

  “One day? Why, I saw you yesterday, and—”

  “I saw him after you left last night, Joe.”

  Silence.

  “Linda, if you’ve only known him one day you can’t be sure he’s the right guy for you. You’re only a freshman, for God’s sake. You ought to be dating a lot of guys so you can take time and make up your mind.”

  She felt like telling him that she knew Don Gibbs better after one night than she could know him if they went together for twenty years.

  “Linda—” his voice was strained “—just tell me who it is, will you?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Just humor me,” she said, trying to make it sound light. “I think I’ve got a right to find out who beat my time.”

  “All right,” she said. “It’s Don Gibbs.”

  “You must be kidding!”

  She assured him that she wasn’t.

  “Linda, that guy’s poison! Why, he’ll try to … he’ll be trying to—”

  “To what?”

  He didn’t answer, and she decided that he was not only behaving like a child but making something of a pest out of himself. So she decided to get rid of him once and for all.

  “To seduce me, Joe?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “For your information,” she told him, “he already has. And it was wonderful!”

  She put the receiver back on the hook before he could say a word.

  Time seemed to fly by at the speed of light. For all practical purposes she moved in with Don at his apartment. Much as she would have liked to pack her clothes and move in completely and permanently, the administration of Clifton College would have looked askance at such an arrangement. Instead she had to be hypocritical about it, which was something he hated. She kept almost all her clothes and books at the room she had been sharing with Ruth and went to her dorm to change and to keep up appearances. But she spent her nights at Don’s place and spent her free time wherever he was.

  Friday she had awakened just about the time that Don returned to the apartment with a copy of the newspaper in one hand. She oohed and ahhed over the paper, proud of it and proud of him for having gotten it out on time. Then she wanted to make love and cook breakfast—in that order—but Don turned out to be too tired for the first and not hungry enough for the second. Instead he went to sleep and she went back to her room to tell Ruth. Then for the next week it seemed as though Don was with her all the time. Over the weekend and on through the early part of the week he didn’t have much to do—the real work on the Record came Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, and until then all he had to do was his classwork, which he seemed to get through with his eyes closed. The rest of the time he would lounge around on campus or sit in the Record office or spend drinking innumerable cups of coffee at the Landmine.

  Linda spent her time with him. She wanted to be with him every minute of every hour and she didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t. They were in love, she told herself, and there was nothing more natural than that she should be with him as much as she possibly could.

  He cut his classes; therefore so did she. He slept days and stayed up nights; to be with him she did the same. She missed the weekly quiz in Spanish Monday morning and cut an important English class Tuesday, but this didn’t seem to matter at all. Don got by without attending classes—he didn’t seem to study at all, either—and if she was going to be his woman she could manage to do the same.

  “Kitten,” he told her, “you’re going to bust out if you don’t start getting to classes. Admittedly the academic standards aren’t sky-high around this emporium of learning, but they do flunk people out from time to time. Don’t you think you ought to get to bed now so you’ll be able to get up tomorrow morning?”

  They were sitting over coffee at the Landmine. Linda picked up her cup and took a sip of it. Then she set it down in its saucer and grinned at him.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “You don’t?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re awake.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “When you sleep, I sleep. When you stay awake, I stay awake.”

  “Then how do you pass your courses?”

  “Same way you pass yours.”

  “I get lucky.”

  “So I’ll get lucky.”

  His face grew serious. “Linda,” he said, “I’m not going to act like an angry parent, and after I finish saying this I’m not going to bring the subject up again. What I want to say first is that you stand a good chance of getting the boot from Clifton if you don’t watch out. If they don’t boot you for academic failure they might boot you for shacking up with me. Whether or not you get booted is your business and not mine, but I want you to know the score.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re a big girl now,” he said. “You have a right to make your own decisions and I’m not going to try to make them for you. As long as you know how things stand, what you do is your own business.”

  “Okay.”

  He finished his coffee. “I’m sick of this place,” he said. “Want to get some air?”

  “What time is it?”

  He craned his neck and looked at the clock on the wall. “4:28 on the button,” he said. “If the birds hadn’t headed south for the winter they’d be chirping in a minute
and a half. It might interest you to know that the birds at Clifton invariably begin chirping at 4:29_ in the morning.”

  “Always?”

  “Always.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s when the sun begins to think about shining. But this is all conjecture, you see, because there are no birds around right now. But we could go for a walk.”

  “We could,” she said.

  “Let’s.”

  She got up and waited while he paid their checks. On the way out she slipped her hand into his and an automatic smile came to her face as his fingers tightened around her palm. She wanted to lean over and give him a quick kiss but she didn’t, knowing that he didn’t like her to display her affection in public.

  They headed south on the main street of town. The air was crisp and cool and her legs were free and easy as she walked.

  “Know what I feel like doing?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Drinking,” he said.

  “Drinking?”

  He nodded. “There’s a whole quart of wine back at the apartment. The two of us ought to be able to empty it in a fairly short amount of time. It’s not the world’s greatest wine—in fact it tastes a little like goat-urine.”

  “How do you know what goat-urine tastes like?”

  “It undoubtedly tastes like this wine. But there’s enough there to get the two of us stoned.”

  “At this hour?”

  “At any hour. It’s powerful wine.”

  “I mean … it’s kind of a nutty time to drink.”

  “It’s a nutty time to be awake, for that matter. C’mon—let’s go get drunk.”

  She let him lead her off in the direction of his apartment. Then he remembered that the car was parked in front of the Landmine and they turned back to get it. She held his hand tightly as they walked along.

  When they got to the car she sat next to him on the seat while he turned the key in the ignition and got the car started. She wondered dizzily what it would be like to drink wine while they watched the sun come up.

  “Don—do you know what I’d like to do?”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to make love.”

  “Believe it or not,” he said, “it’s possible to drink wine and make love. Not simultaneously, of course. It gets a little sloppy. First you drink the wine and then you make love. And then you drink more wine and then you make more love. And then you drink more wine and then you make more love, and—”

  “What happens when you get tired?”

  “Then you go to sleep,” he said. “But I’m not tired yet.”

  “Neither am I,” she said happily. “The way I feel now I could do it forever.”

  “Drink wine and make love?”

  “Not both of them forever,” she said. “After awhile I’d get tired of drinking all that wine.”

  The wine was as bad as he had said it was, if not worse, and although she had never partaken of the urine of a goat it seemed logical that what they were drinking wasn’t far removed from it in taste. But the wine accomplished its intended objective. While its effect on Don wasn’t noticeable, it got her higher than a space platform.

  It was funny, she thought, the way the room was spinning so strangely. It was just a little after five in the morning and the sun wasn’t up yet, and that was one hell of an hour for the room to be spinning.

  “Hell of an hour for room-spinning,” she warbled.

  Don put down the bottle and kissed her.

  “We should drink out of glasses,” she said after the kiss ended, which wasn’t right away.

  “Why?”

  “More civilized.”

  “Who wants to be civilized? We’re pagans.”

  “Pagans?”

  “Mad foolish pagans waiting for the sun to come up so we can worship it in the proper manner. Put down the bottle and kiss me, pagan.”

  She put down the bottle and kissed him. Her head was spinning like a top.

  “Stand up, pagan.”

  When she stood up she had to lean against him for support. She clutched him and her mouth reached up for his. Her tongue darted at once into his mouth and his arms went around her to hold her.

  Her blood was pounding and she felt as though she was coming apart at the seams. The wine was having a definite effect on her and it was doing more than making her dizzy. Her whole body seemed to be alive, alive and demanding, and she wanted him with a desperate passion.

  “Don—”

  “Take off your clothes.”

  He let go of her and with some effort she managed to remain on her feet. He was undressing quickly and deliberately, letting his clothes fall wherever they landed. He didn’t look at her while he undressed.

  She began taking off her own clothing. It was great fun, she discovered, to take off a blouse and just throw it on the floor instead of hanging it up. It was even more fun to do the same thing with a skirt.

  And with a bra.

  And with panties.

  “Don,” she said happily, “I’m naked.”

  “So you are,” he agreed. “So am I.”

  She looked at him from head to toe. “Yes,” she said. “I guess you are.”

  He was about three feet away from her but he made no move toward her. His eyes caressed her as efficiently and as effectively as hands could have and under his gaze she began to grow hot and passionate, aching with desire for him.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “Hurry up.”

  He leaned over and picked up the wine bottle. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “There’s still some left. I thought we killed the bottle.”

  “Who cares?” she demanded. “Forget the wine.”

  “Can’t forget the wine.”

  Her passion mounted and she rubbed her thighs together, impatient, wanting him.

  “Lie down on the bed,” he ordered. “On your back.”

  She did as he told her. He walked over to the side of the bed, the wine bottle in his hand.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to drink the wine,” he said gravely.

  “Later—”

  “I’m going to drink the wine in a new and improved fashion,” he said. “You shall be the glass.”

  Before she could ask him what he meant by that he had tilted the bottle and the wine spilled onto her body. Most of it splashed on her breasts but some of it trickled down over her stomach and below. It was very cold and the sudden contact served only to excite her still more.

  “You make a lovely wine glass,” he told her.

  Then he was beside her on the bed. Now she saw what he meant about drinking the wine with her for the glass. His tongue began to lick up the wine from her body, starting just below her throat. The effect of the wine on her brain and his tongue on her smooth skin was enough to drive her wild from the first second, and when he reached her breasts it was more than she could bear.

  Some wine had spilled lower.

  On her stomach.

  Below her stomach.

  He didn’t miss a drop.

  Then, when her passion was higher than it had ever been before, he took her quickly and savagely and exquisitely, tormenting her with the sheer beauty of his love, thrusting her higher and higher to the very pinnacle of love until she had to cry out at the moment of fulfillment.

  Then her arms tightened around him and they slept like twin corpses.

  She was happier than she had ever been, happier, she felt, than she had any right to be. When she was with Don nothing mattered, nothing seemed important. It wasn’t just their lovemaking, though that was something that seemed to be better every single time. It was everything that passed between them. Walking down the street, sitting over coffee, proofreading copy for him while he worked on the tiresome business of editing the paper—everything was equally exciting to her. It was as though she had stepped into a new and different world, the world Don lived in. It was a world of hard drinking and hard living and hard loving, a w
orld where the moment was vitally important and tomorrow could watch out for itself.

  She couldn’t help worrying about Don some of the time. He didn’t seem to have any plans, didn’t seem to know what he would be doing after he graduated. He didn’t have to worry about the army; a trick knee that he referred to as a million-dollar wound would keep him 4-F. But he didn’t plan on going to graduate school and he didn’t seem to have the slightest idea where he would go or how he would go about earning a living.

  “Maybe I’ll grab a newspaper job,” he said once. “I was glancing through a copy of E & P—you know, Editor and Publisher—and there are jobs all over the damned place.”

  But when she would try to get him to talk about a newspaper job he would shift the subject.

  “Hell, who wants to write news-copy for a lifetime? Boring goddamned job, Linda. Maybe I’ll try free-lancing or something. Or publishing work—go to New York and hunt up some kind of editorial assistant work. That might not be bad.”

  What it boiled down to, she knew, was that Don didn’t want to do much of anything. He refused to make plans for the future and he refused to worry about it, and this attitude didn’t make her any too happy.

  For one thing, she had a feeling that whatever plans Don had didn’t include her. Time and time again she told him how much she loved him, and although he didn’t exactly dodge the issue she knew that he had never told her that he was in love with her. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t, but he didn’t say anything to her one way or the other.

  It wasn’t hard for her to tell that he meant more to her than she meant to him. She tried to tell herself that this was natural—that she had never had a lover before while Don had had many women. But she couldn’t help feeling there was more to it than that.

  And it scared her. If anything happened between the two of them, if suddenly he didn’t want her any more, she didn’t know what she would do. He was her whole life—nothing else mattered to her, and not only didn’t she see how she could live without him but she had trouble remembering how she had managed to live before the two of them were together. She couldn’t imagine sleeping without him sleeping at her side, couldn’t imagine living through an entire day without seeing him and talking to him. And she knew that this was dangerous.