She didn’t want to go to sleep that night. But she didn’t want anything else, either.
She knocked herself cold with four sleeping pills and slept through all her classes the next morning.
Joe Gunsway called her the next day. She went to the phone convinced that the call was from Don even though she knew he would never call her, went to the phone on the run and grabbed the receiver and held it to her ear, saying Hello right away and praying that Don’s voice would come to her over the wire.
But the voice was Joe’s.
“I wanted to get in touch with you,” he said. “I... heard that you and Don broke up.”
“That’s right,” she said, amazed how calm she sounded to herself. “We broke up.”
“I... well, I wondered if I could see you this evening.”
At first she didn’t answer and he repeated what he had said, thinking that she hadn’t understood him. But she had understood him, all right.
And she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less than go out with Joe Gunsway.
“No,” she said. That was all — just the one word. She wasn’t in the mood to go into details.
“Linda—”
He stopped. She waited for him to go on.
“Linda, why not?”
A logical question, she thought. It deserved an equally logical answer.
So she said: “I don’t want to see you.”
“But why?”
Because you’re too good for me, she wanted to say. Because I’m Don Gibbs’ cast-off whore and nothing more than that. Because I’m a lousy little tramp and you’re a nice square guy and you can do better than me.
But she didn’t say that. Instead she said: “I just don’t, Joe. Please don’t call me any more.”
And she put the receiver back on the hook. He called again, of course, as she must have known he would. This time she didn’t talk to him at all. As soon as she knew that it was him again on the phone she replaced the receiver and broke the connection again.
He didn’t call any more after that.
For the next week she didn’t do anything.
It is not easy to do nothing at all. As a matter of fact, it takes either a great deal of concentration or a great deal of lack of interest in the world. Linda didn’t have a great deal of concentration — concentration in general was too much for her just then. But she possessed an enormous capacity for lacking interest in the world.
Nothing mattered any more. It was as simple as that.
There were quite a few things she did not do. She did not go to classes. She did not open a book. She did not even read the Record when Don deposited a stack of copies on the table in the caf Friday night.
She ate, but only when she was starving and then only enough to keep her alive. She slept, but only when she was so exhausted that she couldn’t stay awake any more. She woke up, but only when she had slept as long as she possibly could.
She didn’t speak to people if she could possibly avoid it. She didn’t go for walks or look at the scenery. In short, she did as close to nothing as she possibly could while still eating and breathing and sleeping enough to keep alive.
She would sit in her room for hours on end, just staring at the wall like a schizophrenic or looking out the window without seeing anything on the outside. She would lounge on the steps of the Union building along with the other people in the group, but she would sit there for hours on end without exchanging a word with one of them, without listening to what they said, without doing anything in particular.
During that week she hardly even thought about anything.
That was funny, in a cockeyed sort of away. Every once in a while her mind would start on one cycle of thought or another, but before long she would be thinking about Don again and she would get all fouled up. It was easier not to think than to think about Don.
So she quit thinking.
Ruth tried to pull her out of her depression. Ruth wasn’t around the room much — she was spending more and more time up at Sheila Ashley’s room — but still she talked to Linda whenever she saw her and tried valiantly to cheer her up.
Needless to say, it didn’t work.
Nothing worked.
The trouble, she decided, was that she no longer seemed to want anything. She wanted Don, of course, but wanting Don was like wishing for wings. If she had wanted anything in particular she might have been able to shake the mood of depression that nestled around her neck like a black albatross.
As it was, she didn’t want a thing in the world. And that was worse than wanting something she could never have.
Finally — and it took over a week — she found something she could want.
A man.
It wasn’t quite that simple. She was standing nude in her room again before her mirror, looking at her body, touching herself and remembering Don’s touch. It occurred to her that her body was a very good body, a body that men ought to want. And it also occurred to her that even if Don no longer wanted her body, somebody else might want it.
It wasn’t Don’s private property any more, that body of hers. If it no longer belonged to Don, there wasn’t much sense in keeping it out of circulation until the end of time. Why not let somebody else have a crack at it? Don had told her to go back to her room and find herself a candle. But another man would do her a lot more good than a candle, that was certain.
She gave the matter a lot of concentrated thought while she stood nude before her mirror and gazed upon the reflected breasts and belly and thighs. She imagined a man with a blank face, a shapeless nonentity, a man who would touch her and arouse her and take his pleasure with her and ultimately satisfy her, and her mind made itself up after a while.
She got dressed. She put on the white sweater she had worn to the Record office that first time, but now she omitted the bra. She would make things easier for whoever she selected as her human candle.
She slipped a skirt on without bothering with panties underneath it. The skirt was a dark green and it contrasted nicely with her blonde hair and with the white sweater. She didn’t bother with socks but pulled a pair of dirty white tennis shoes onto her feet and tied them quickly.
Then she left the dormitory. She wandered aimlessly around campus for about half an hour, not knowing who or what she was looking for, not knowing where to search for the man who would serve as Lover Number Two. For a moment she considered hunting up Joe Gunsway — he certainly wanted her, and he’d be more than grateful for a chance to maneuver her into a horizontal position. But she decided that she didn’t want Joe. Joe represented a potential emotional involvement, on his part if not on hers, and she didn’t want to find anybody who would fall in love with her. She just wanted somebody to take her to bed.
It was cold out — in a week or so it would probably be snowing, but now the ground was blanketed with covered leaves and the night air was clear and cool and quiet. She wandered around, getting halfway into town at one point before she turned and headed back toward the campus.
She was looking for a man. And, ultimately, she found a man.
His name was Jim Patterson.
He was a junior, she knew, and he was majoring in economics. She knew him enough to say hello to — he was one of the vague members of the Group — the gang of boys and girls that Don hung around with. He was short and wiry, with a goatee that was always neatly trimmed and eyes that seemed to look through a person.