A FALSE NOTE
67
tragedy in the eyes-she constructed, as some pismire must pain–
stakingly construct the precarious home, the fragile illusion in her–
self, the thing she never believed that she would see. In the "Good
morning, ma'am," in the "Allow me this time to pay for the coffee,"
in the spontaneous laughter that she hoped punctuated her witticism
-is he kind to me, she would ask herself, is he merely pitying?-she
found something to give substance to her days, the days that pushed
her to what end, to what fruitless purpose.
In the mornings she went to the college cafeteria to seek him
out, skimming over other faces until she came to his. She sought ex–
cuses during the day to hover in the corridors when classes were
let out, swept up in the flux of students, scanning faces for his
face. In the evening she went to the college cafeteria for dinner
instead of the tea room, and she nurtured now the importunity, the
faint expectancy; or she walked the streets, searching, hoping. And
in the night, in the creaking quiet of her little apartment, she made
him a part of her, dreaming while awake a phantasmagoria of situa–
tions, incidents, episodes in which there was enacted that which she
had never permitted herself to acknowledge that she desired; and
now she permitted herself to desire.
And one night, as they walked up the street after a meeting at
the cafeteria, she asked him, "Don't you have anywhere to go? Don't
you have...?" She did not finish the question.
"Don't I have what?" he looked at her curiously.
."A girl friend? Don't you have a girl friend?"
"Back home," he said slowly. "I have a girl friend back home."
"Oh," she said. And then, "It must be lonely for you."
"Lonely?" He had a habit of repeating words, as though he
were mulling them over in
his
mind. "I never think about it," he
said.
"If
I am lonely, it is something I have got used to."
"You study hard," she said, "and then there's your athletics...
your basketball. I suppose that keeps you busy."
"Yes," he said. "They like me to play basketball. ...I play a
good game...but they don't really like me."
"Oh, you're too sensitive," she said. "You're much too sensi–
tive...." She hesitated. "I like you," she said.
She felt
his
eyes upon her, startled. "That's very kind of you," he
said.
And so it became a ritual almost, his walking with her in the
