In that living room again, Rose Helen and he were directed to seats on one of the leather sofas and offered coffee and cake by a waiter. (Druff recognized him. They lived in the same boardinghouse.) There was some general conversation. Then the waiter went around the room taking up their cups and saucers, their cake plates, their forks and spoons and paper napkins. One of the sorority sisters walked over to the piano and sat down at the piano bench. She was joined by the rest of the girls who ranked themselves about her in what even Druff recognized as a formation, a kind of musical battle stations.
“Oh no,” Rose Helen groaned.
“What?”
“Oh no.”
Two or three of the waiters had come in from the dining room and were leaning against a wall in the entrance hall.
The president of the sorority was speaking directly to Druff and Rose Helen on the sofa. “Robert,” she said, “the women of Chi Phi Kappa are proud of all their sisters. Rose Helen, however, whose maturity and unselfish generosity have been an inspiration to all of us, holds a special place in our hearts, and we do not wonder that she should have found one in yours. Now, Rose, in your honor, and in honor of your interesting new friend, the ladies of Chi Phi Kappa house are pleased to honor you this evening with a serenade, one of the most beautiful and cherished of our traditions.
“Your sisters smile on you tonight, Rose, and wish you all the happiness you could wish for yourself. We delight in your delight. We support you, we love you, we bless you.”
They sang the Chi Phi Kappa song. They sang the school fight song. They sang love songs. They sang “Rosie, You Are My Posy.” They sang “La Mer.”
Of course they were embarrassed, of course they were. All that drilled attention, it was like having the attention of a firing squad, a little like taking, at close range and at full force, a blast from a fire hose. Of course he felt patronized, of course he did. Nevertheless (maybe he was a politician, maybe he was; maybe at nineteen he was already developing the politician’s thick skin, or at least a willingness to deal, something quid pro quo in the nature; if they hadn’t actually given him a girlfriend, why at least they had endorsed him; and all he ever had to do for it was eat their dinner, submit to their questioning, good-sport his way through their silly patronage), he felt he had made a good impression.
He had, Rose Helen told him, he’d confirmed all their misgivings, was everything they thought an Independent would be.
“Didn’t you feel it?” she said. “Didn’t you feel any of it? Didn’t you? Don’t you know what that was?” They were in one of the small study rooms — two small typing tables, a couple of desk lamps, two chairs, a narrow cot — at the back of the sorority house. The door to the study room was open. Rose Helen was standing with her hand on the little shelf above her damaged left hip, the akimbo elbow and forward thrust of her body giving her her familiar, faintly bold air, and a suggestion about her mouth (though if this was there at all it was something Druff had penciled in himself) of the pursed pout of some saloon cupid.
“Rosie, you are my posy,” Druff said, reaching for her hand and lifting it from her hip to pull her gently toward the cot.
She held her ground. “If I scream they’ll come running.”
“Why would you scream?”
“Listen, it’s almost ten-thirty. Males have to be out of here by ten-thirty.”
“Why would you scream?”
“We came in here to study. We’re supposed to be studying.”
“Isn’t this the passion pit? Isn’t that what they call it?”
He stood up and kissed her.
“The door’s open.”
“I’ll close it.”
“It’s supposed to be open. You’re not allowed to close it.”
“The door across the hall is closed. That one over there is.”
“Girls are studying in those.”
“Sure,” he said.
“They are,” she said. Then she went over to the door and closed it herself. Druff stood waiting to embrace her. “They are,” she said, “but even if they’re not, even if they’re in there with boys, even if they’re slow dancing with their hands all over each other’s behinds, even if they’re French-kissing. Even if they’re quote doing it unquote, I wouldn’t let you touch me. I wouldn’t even let you hold my hand.”
“Why? My God, Rose Helen, why? They’re your sisters. They serenaded us. Isn’t that like piping us aboard? Didn’t they just practically marry us at sea?”
“Don’t you know what that was? Don’t you? They as good as made you their mascot. They brought the waiters up from downstairs as witnesses.”
“Come on,” Druff said, “I don’t care about them.”
“You don’t?”
“Listen, Miss Kitty, we’re like men without a country.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Well, we are,” he said, “just exactly like men without a country. Except for those coffeehouses, this is the first time we’ve been alone since we met.”
She was crying again, and Druff suddenly understood that that was why she’d closed the door, because she knew they were going to have this conversation. And why she’d extended their invitation in the first place, because it was exactly the conversation she’d wanted to have with him from the beginning. Understood she was permitting him something far more intimate than just the groping he had anticipated, showing him a glimpse of her turf, an unrestricted view of what her cards looked like on the table.
He tried to comfort her. “Oh, Rose Helen. Rose Helen, oh.”
“Don’t you?”
“Don’t I what?”
“That was it. That’s what they were saving. That’s what they were waiting for all along.”
“What are you talking about, Rose? What were they waiting for, what were they saving?”
“That was my hazing.”
“No,” he said, “you’ve got it wrong, Rose. They’re your sisters, they’re on our side. Really. All the happiness we could wish for ourselves, remember?” (Druff taking her in his arms — maybe he was political, maybe he was—and working his own agenda, wondering, marveling: Don’t they know? Don’t girls know it’s all a line? All of it? Don’t they see how it is with us? Don’t they know what we want to do to them, what we want them to do to us? Are they fools, or what?)
And astonished to be stroking her breasts beneath her sweater, to slip his hand up beneath her skirt, to negotiate the rind of stiff corset and feel the damp silk of her panties.
They were seated on the edge of the cot now. He tried to draw her down, to get her to lie beside him, but she resisted. She struggled to a sitting position and started to rise. “All right,” he said, “all right,” and she sat back down again. (Of course political. Political certainly. Bargaining actual territory, dividing physical spoils, making these Yalta arrangements, so that it was somehow agreed without one word passing between them that he could do this but not that, that but not this. Though he was not, for example, permitted to blow in her ear, he was allowed to feel her nipples. Though she would never hold his erection in her hand, she might touch it here and there through his trousers.)
Druff astonished, astounded, amazed now by her bizarre terms, terms, he realized, roughly equivalent to the restrictions imposed by the Hayes Office in regard to sexual conduct in films. (One foot had to be on the floor at all times. They could kiss with their mouths open, but only one of their tongues could be moving and, if it was his, he could touch her breasts but was not permitted to go under her dress.) It was to become the source of what weren’t so much arguments as vaguely legalistic, quickly abandoned disagreements, like appealed line-calls in tennis, say, or a batter’s brief, abrupt flash of temperament about an umpire’s questionable called strike. (“I don’t understand,” he might tell her, “I let you nibble my ear.” “You like it when I nibble your ear.” “Of course I do, the ear’s a very sensitive area. I’m surprised you don’t like it too.” She said she didn’t object to the feeling, it was the wetness she couldn’t stand.)