They still got on well, but a faint coolness seemed to have grown up between them over the summer. Elizabeth chalked it up to the difference of opinion over the sociology final, and didn't mention it.
The events of the summer began to seem dreamlike. In a funny way it sometimes seemed that Tony might have been a boy she had known in high school. It still hurt to think about him, and she avoided the subject with Alice, but the hurt was an old-bruise throb and not the bright pain of an open wound.
What hurt more was Ed Hamner's failure to call.
A week passed, then two, then it was October. She got a student directory from the Union and looked up his name. It was no help; after his name were only the words 'Mill St'. And Mill was a very long street indeed. And so she waited, and when she was called for dates - which was often - she turned them down. Alice raised her eyebrows but said nothing; she was buried alive in a six-week biochem project and spent most of her evenings at the library. Elizabeth noticed the long white envelopes that her room-mate was receiving once or twice a week in the mail - since she was usually back from class first but thought nothing of them. The private detective agency was discreet; it did not print its return address on its envelopes.
When the intercom buzzed, Alice was studying. 'You get it, Liz. Probably for you anyway.'
Elizabeth went to the intercom. 'Yes?'
'Gentleman door-caller, Liz.'
Oh, Lord.
'Who is it?' she asked, annoyed, and ran through her tattered stack of excuses. Migraine headache. She hadn't used that one this week.
The desk girl said, amused, 'His name is Edward Jackson Hamner. Junior, no less.' Her voice lowered. 'His socks don't match.'
Elizabeth's hand flew to the collar of her robe. 'Oh, God.
Tell him I'll be right down. No, tell him it will be just a minute. No, a couple of minutes, okay?'
'Sure,' the voice said dubiously. 'Don't have a haemorrhage.'
Elizabeth took a pair of slacks out of her closet. Took out a short denim skirt. Felt the curlers in her hair and groaned. Began to yank them out.
Alice watched all this calmly, without speaking, but she looked speculatively at the door for a long time after Elizabeth had left.
He looked just the same; he hadn't changed at all. He was wearing his green fatigue jacket, and it still looked at least two sizes too big. One of the bows of his horn-rimmed glasses had been mended with electrician's tape. His jeans looked new and stiff, miles from the soft and faded 'in' look that Tony had achieved effortlessly. He was wearing one green sock, one brown sock.
And she knew she loved him.
'Why didn't you call before?' she asked, going to him.
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket and grinned shyly. 'I thought I'd give you some time to date around. Meet some guys. Figure out what you want.
'I think I know that.'
'Good. Would you like to go to a movie?'
'Anything,' she said. 'Anything at all.'
As the days passed it occurred to her that she had never met anyone, male or female, that seemed to understand her moods and needs so completely or so wordlessly. Their tastes coincided. While Tony had enjoyed violent movies of the Godfather type, Ed seemed more into comedy or non-violent dramas. He took her to the circus one night when she was feeling low and they had a hilariously wonderful time. Study dates were real study dates, not just an excuse to grope on the third floor of the Union. He took her to dances and seemed especially good at the old ones, which she loved. They won a fifties Stroll trophy at a Homecoming Nostalgia Dance. More important, he seemed to understand when she wanted to be passionate. He didn't force her or hurry her; she never got the feeling that she had with some of the other boys she had gone out with - that there was an inner timetable for sex, beginning with a kiss good night on Date 1 and ending with a night in some friend's borrowed apartment on Date 10. The Mill Street apartment was Ed's exclusively, a third-floor walkup. They went there often, and Elizabeth went without the feeling that she was walking into some minor-league Don Juan's passion pit. He didn't push. He honestly seemed to want what she wanted, when she wanted it. And things progressed.
When school reconvened following the semester break, Alice seemed strangely preoccupied. Several times that afternoon before Ed came to pick her up - they were going out to dinner - Elizabeth looked up to see her room-mate frowning down at a large manila envelope on her desk. Once Elizabeth almost asked about it, then decided not to. Some new project probably.
It was snowing hard when Ed brought her back to the dorm.
'Tomorrow?' he asked. 'My place?' 'Sure. I'll make some popcorn.'
'Great,' he said, and kissed her. 'I love you, Beth.'
'Love you, too.'
'Would you like to stay over?' Ed asked evenly. 'Tomorrow night?'
'All right, Ed.' She looked into his eyes. 'Whatever you want.'
'Good,' he said quietly. 'Sleep well, kid.'
'You, too.'
She expected that Alice would be asleep and entered the room quietly, but Alice was up and sitting at her desk.
'Alice, are you okay?'
'I have to talk to you, Liz. About Ed.'