Chapter 2: The Tank Room

The following day was when the papers were due. I was already sitting there when Nora came bopping in. Later that year I would see Young Frankenstein, and how she had moved reminded me of Madeline Kahn’s entrance into a bedroom. That was the scene late in the film where Peter Boyle is trying to read The Wall Street Journal.

I thought, Nora, try to be a little more subtle.

She plopped into the seat right next to me – she had never done that before – and she started a faked coy simpering.

“Hi Paul, how are you are you today?” She pulled out her term paper. “This thing is so good. I really want to thank you for it.” I wondered if she had even attempted to read it. In any case, what I had gotten from her for it was way beyond merely adequate.

She batted her eyelashes at me. Sometimes she wasn’t a particularly good actress and I could analyze the show she was trying to put on. She continued, “You’re just such a sweetie-pie.”

I had only really been with her since the previous night, and I wasn’t quite sure how to handle her. A compliment seemed to be in order. “You’re pretty sweet too.”

She was wearing jeans today. From their dark blue color, I figured that they must be almost new. She turned sideways in her seat. I got the impression that she wanted me to notice her thighs. She was on the slender side, but not too much so, and her pants were rather tight.

Nora, play it straight; don’t mess around with me.

“I just know you’ll write more for me next semester.”

That was absolutely the wrong thing for her to say. Either she was my girlfriend or she was not. I wasn’t going to be her flunky just to get laid. She could write her own damn papers from now on.

It didn’t seem worth it to directly contradict her now. “All right, we’ll see how it goes.”

She pouted and puckered her lips as if in a kiss. That was irksome, and I tried to come up with some blatant statement that in turn would irk her. I couldn’t think of anything.

At the end of class, she came up to me at the front of the room. This sudden new bubbly version of herself, even though at least part of it was an act, had me off balance.

She went back to the same issue, “I did ask you about writing more papers for me next semester, right sweetheart?”

Sweetheart? I tried to keep it brief, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

She pouted at me, “Come on, you don’t have to trade it for something from me.” That had been a blowjob, but it soon turned into a lot more. She still had the coy/flirty thing going. “Except for my affection, of course.”

It was time to shoot this down. “I already know that. I think, in fact, that you are more than capable of writing your own papers.” She looked surprised. That may have been the first time someone had ever indicated that she had intellectual abilities.

I said, “Come on, let’s go to the West End and have a drink; let’s celebrate the end of the term. We can get a cab.” That was a bar and grill across the street from Columbia University.

She gave a scoffing motion with her hand, “Don’t bother with a cab. There’s a bus right here on Convent Avenue.”

“Well, if it’s good enough for you, then it’s good enough for me.”

I started toward the door and she fell in next to me. Once we were in the hallway, she still couldn’t control her bubbliness. She took my arm and led me, “So how did it feel to get your cherry busted last night?”

I tried to get clever, “What makes you think that happened?”

“Oh, come on, I had been ragging on you about it for a while and you never denied it. It was just so damn obvious with you; I said that before.”

I remembered how angry I had been with her. She had gone beyond mere teasing into humiliation. But in the end, she came through for me in a big way.

She seemed to be tongue-in-cheek as she wagged a finger at me, “Now, you’ll never forget your first girl, will you? Especially since I’m such a really bad girl and you know exactly why.”

“I know, it’s not just metaphorical.” You have to be a liberal arts student to throw the word metaphorical around in a conversation.

She said, “Well, I’m not going to be at it forever, you know. I mean my profession, you could call it.” I thought, yeah, I’ll believe that when I see it. She went on, “Besides if you merely wanted a nice girl, they’re a dime-a-dozen around here.”

That struck me as funny. Somehow, I had never landed one of those supposedly plentiful nice girls.

I think this Nora is going to be fun, but she can also be very high maintenance. I looked over at her, and she smiled at me. It wasn’t faked – I could recognize those. It was genuinely warm.

We got our papers back in in the last minutes of the last class of the semester. We were standing in the room looking at our papers when she quietly said, “I want to see you downstairs.” Then she left without me.

I found her standing in the driveway outside Wagner when I came down. She obviously was not happy.

“Look at this fucking thing! He only gave me a C on it.” She had it in her hand and she shook it at me. “What did you get?”

“Ah, a B.”

“What kind of jerk-ass stunt are you trying to pull? You think you didn’t have to put any effort into my paper?”

“Nora, simmer down. Let me see what he wrote on it.” After looking at hers, and then my own, I said, “I think the one I wrote for you is actually better than the one I did for myself. I don’t know what his issue is; sometimes it’s just arbitrary, I think.”

“What I think is that you stiffed me. I don’t think you lived up to your end of the bargain. I almost wish I could take back everything I gave you.” Maybe she was trying to be tongue-in-cheek, but she sounded mean and sour.

I gave myself a moment to consider how much leverage I had over her. We had sex only that one time. We were due for more went I went out to her house in Maspeth the next day. Her uncle would be at work.

By now I had figured out that I really had to push back against her, even though it wasn’t natural for me to do that. If didn’t, I’d have to get rid of her, or more likely she’d be the one to dump me.

I had my lines ready, “My end of the bargain? Nora, honey, if you’re going to look at this as just a business deal again, then well...” I pretended to look around. “Assuming that is the way you see it, then if there was a door here, I’d show it to you and tell you to go through it.”

That move had some risk in it. Our relationship was still very new, and it could easily end at any moment. Yet, I could tell from her expression that she was interested in how I’d handle this. I had one more thing, “Everything you gave to me? It’s everything I took from you.”