Chapter 7B

The guy she was talking about soon appeared to my left. He was tall and brawny, well over six feet, with shoulders to match. He had a bellowing, gruff voice and wore a blue and white wool athletic jacket whose padded shoulders made him look gigantic. He approached our table and called out a hefty, "Hi, Janie, you gorgeous heifer, you!" He lifted one large thigh and planted a foot on the opposite side of the table, then lifted the other big leg to stand beside Martha Jane.

"Hello, Frank," Martha Jane said politely.

With sweeping, commanding, swaggering movements, Frank grabbed a chair and sat backwards on it, huge legs spread and massive arms draped across the chair's metal backplate.

"Hiya doin, cutie?" he bantered. He nodded toward me. "Hey, Janie, who's yer friend?"

"That's Steven," Martha Jane said. I immediately realized that she had not introduced me as "Speedy." and I gave her a half hidden Groucho Marx raised eyebrow in return. She winked.

"Steven, huh? Hiya, big guy. You look like you're new here this year."

Before I could answer, Martha Jane told him that I was her "prize student" who was checking out the campus. Frank continued to make small talk with her, his speech as swaggering and masculine as the rest of him. Finally he asked her, "So, you goin' to the big Homecomin'? Ain't goin' by yourself are ya?"

Martha Jane told him she was swamped with work.

Frank shook his head. "Damn, Janie, you are the workin'-est heifer I ever saw. C'mon, now, you ain't accepted my invitation for three months." He looked directly at me and winked, "Is she always this hard to get, fella?"

"She's a busy girl," I answered, trying to deepen my young voice as best I could.

He made another attempt or two at getting a date with Martha Jane, persisting in calling her Janie, and Martha Jane remained politely adamant and told him that her Homecoming weekend would be spent trying to finish her final papers before the semester piled up on her. Eventually he stood up to leave.

He joked, "You sure you wanna pass up a big Homecomin' date?"

"It's tempting, Frank," she flirted, "and I'm sure I'll regret it for the rest of my days. But, really, I have a lot of work to do."

"Still doin' that student teaching, huh?"

"Yes, it's a back breaker."

"Well, that's OK, it'll get you a nice job after graduation. But a gal like you, you won't have to put up with that teachin' racket for long, some guy'll snatch you right up before you know what happened."

"Yeah right, Frank, happens every day."

"Well, see ya, then. You, too, fella."

After he was out of hearing range Martha Jane heaved a long, relieved sigh. "See what I mean? Pride of the campus, that big ox. We could sure use all that muscle to help us move... but it's not worth it."

"He seemed nice enough," I remarked.

"Speedy, he's not nice. He tried to fuck me on the first date, strictly on the dubious merit of his membership on the football team, without so much as a word about how I might feel about it. He was so surprised when I said no! As if it's the first time in his life a girl didn't undress the minute he walked in!" She shook her head. "I hate the name Janie. And I don't like being called a 'cutie' or a 'heifer' as a sign of affection, by some good ol' boy from Arkansas who can't talk about anything but beer, football, and his daddy's money. I should have known better than to go out with him in the first place, but somebody fixed me up and I was in desperate need of a night out." Again, she winked at me. "So don't think you're going to be some kind of dummy the first day you start taking classes here, because most of your mental competition is in the form of that big palooka."

We finished our coffee and headed across the campus toward Martha Jane's apartment a few blocks away. Martha Jane said there was no big hurry; she'd spent two weeks packing and she didn't have that much gear to move. The sun was sinking near the rooftops by then, the late afternoon sky beginning to deepen in color. We strolled, and she lit a cigarette and talked. She was in her last undergraduate year now, and had spent most of it struggling to make it through in three years and qualifying for an award that might get her a Master's, and the rest of the time warding off the good ol' boys whom she described as "so eager to get me in bed you can smell the lust a mile off."

I told her, "It's because you really are very pretty, Martha Jane."

She flicked her cigarette and sent a smooth stream of smoke into the chilly air. "You have a nice way of saying that, but... in Memphis, being pretty just means you're like prey, you're some kind of prize that guys just want to show off and get their cookies with. Have their babies and cook. I don't like being so pretty sometimes. I wish I were more average... or more cosmopolitan, you know -- chic, I guess, like my sister Evelyn. She looks so sophisticated, a guy looks at her and knows he has to take his time. But for some reason they see me as a sex kitten who's just waiting to get pounced upon, and I'm supposed to show my thanks by giving up everything I've worked for and sit at home continually getting pregnant out of love for their 'Prince Charming' complex... No. No, I sometimes wish I were not as pretty as they think. I'm being interviewed for teaching jobs, and the men who interview me -- well, what they're thinking is written all over their faces, they're so patronizing. They see how I look, that's all. Other than that, I'm just another new special education major, nothing special, nothing unique. And not a word about the work I've done and the research I did, not a minute spent talking about new methods or the problems with abused or precocious kids or any of that. It's just 'Hi, what a pretty girl.' And it never goes beyond that."

The place she was moving from was in a small two bedroom, typical modern apartment building with thin carpets and thinner walls. Her former roommates had been evicted, leaving only a mattress in one of the bedrooms and a painted wooden chair in the living room. All the rest of it -- some bundled clothes, an old trunk, and a few dozen boxes of books -- belonged to Martha Jane.

Puffing and heaving, we began loading Evelyn's borrowed Pontiac. Martha Jane was right: those boxed books were *really* heavy. But I was up to the task, exhilarated at finally being able to move and fling some weight around after so much torpor in the suburbs. It wasn't long before we had the car filled with a little more than half of the full load and were on our way in the car to Martha Jane's new place, several blocks away on the other side of the campus in an older part of the neighborhood.

Martha Jane drove to an old, well kept dark red two story house with white shutters. It stood in the middle of a deep lawn amid many large oak and birch trees. Her apartment was in back, atop the twocar garage behind the house. As I carried the first boxes up the creaky wooden stairway at the side of the garage and entered the front door, I was immediately struck by the serenity and homeliness of the interior. It had a tiny kitchen, a small but ample bedroom in the rear, and a spacious living room. The many curtained windows looked out over the main house, the trees, and the rest of the neighborhood.

"Beautiful!" I whispered as I set the box on the floor and looked around. "This is cute!"

It was furnished with keepsakes, most of it simple early American gear having a basic, useful look. One wall had a painted wood bookshelf, another a long ancient sofa with fairly new, flowered upholstery in good shape, a big fluffy easy chair covered with the same fabric as the sofa, and an ancient writing desk with a rollup top. The carpet had seen better days and was seamed together from several smaller pieces; but it did have a certain bohemian character that fit the circumstances.

Her brow dotted with sweat even though the air was cold, Martha Jane followed me inside and dropped the box she carried onto the floor with a thud, and the weight of it pushed her across the room and into my arms. I caught her, and she stopped to give me a hug.

"Whew! Damn, where did I get all these BOOKS!?!" She stood still and relaxed against me, catching her breath. "Speedy, you're hardly out of breath! How do you do it? Whew!"

I held her lightly, wanting to simply crush her against me. She was wearing a turtleneck sweater and jeans and loafers. The sweater clung to her light frame and slim shoulders; outwardly she appeared dainty, but my hands felt the lithe and solid body under her flesh, and the warmth and feel of her seemed to seep into every pore of my body. Her sweaty cheek was against mine, my lips near her long and elegant neck. Embarrassed by a sudden wave of affection and passion, I pulled back from her and said, "You rest, I'll go get the other stuff."

"Oh, I will not!" she protested, leaning into me and still looking for her second wind. "I can carry my own weight in this job, mister. Whew! As soon as I get my breath!" She kissed my cheek and hugged me. "I'm so glad you're helping. You've grown an inch taller, haven't you?"

"I have a long way to go before I can compete with guys like that Frank fella."

"Don't you *dare* become... whew!... another one of those bullnecked, overgrown jocks." She moved away from me and collapsed onto the sofa. "Thank goodness *everybody* isn't like him! Whew! How did I get so old so fast?"

I headed for the front door. "You stay there and I'll bring up some more stuff."