LITMIR.BIZ

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plumbing and a nice kitchen, and air conditioning.”

      “I want to live simply.”

      “But you’ll keep your sports car?”

      He shrugged her off.

      “And Transcendental Meditation? It’s a fad, Dave, nothing more.” Her eyes lost their sympathy. “It might even be dangerous.”

      “Zen,” Dave corrected, “not TM. And there’s nothing dangerous about it.”

      Carol ignored his remark. “All these self-styled gurus—they’re just publicity seekers, it’s theater, acting…”

      “Like the demonstrators in Peace Park. Half those people you’re haranguing are just there to ‘make the scene.’ It’s political theater. To change the world, we need to change ourselves. That’s what Buddha said. And that’s what Dubcek should be doing, not getting a bunch of people killed throwing rocks at Soviet tanks.”

      Dave knew Dubcek and Prague Spring were Carol’s hot buttons. “Freedom is precious and he’s willing to fight for it,” she snapped back. “He’s a Slovak and a lifelong communist party member. He was legally elected and now he’s making significant improvements in Czechoslovakia. Freedom of the press, improvements in the agricultural economy…”

      “Jesus, you have to tell everybody everything you know,” Dave snapped.

      She threw up her hands theatrically. “Well…I’m going. Good luck in your new life.” She picked up her purse, shook her head, and was gone.

      After the door closed and silence had settled for a time, Dave finished packing a box. “Well, that’s that,” he said to himself. In twenty minutes he had all his things packed. “…sparkling blue eyes, perfect blonde hair, elegant body,” he heard himself muttering. “Always smarter than anybody else in the room, and always seems to have to show it. She’s smart, she’s effective, but she irritates people. Her family has wealth and position, she moves through campus society effortlessly, admired and respected. Officer of one of the premier sororities on campus, an honor student every semester. Her good looks turn heads everywhere she goes.”

      He took his sports jackets and slacks out of his closet and laid them across the couch. “Yeah, beautiful Carol.” He carefully slid his Getz, Coltrane, and Brubeck records into a box, packed towels around them, and carried them to his car. With the top down, he could move everything in two trips.

      * * *

      Dave parked his black TR3 in the gravel lot behind the old house and clomped up the narrow stairs to his room on the third floor. The one room apartment had a sloped ceiling on one side, and a view of the gravel parking lot and an old oak tree. He unrolled the futon, threw the sheets and blanket on it, set up the brick and board bookcase and stacked his books on it, then set up the record player near the window and arranged his row of records. He opened a Busch and leaned against the window frame looking at the oak leaves, still in the evening gloom. The streetlight came on. He clicked on a light and rearranged the paperbacks, glancing in Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen. He drew a deep breath, listening to the sounds around him, and sat down cross-legged on the mattress. Long slow breaths—susoku. The great way is comparable to water. It enriches the world without being attached to anything.

      When his meditation was over, Dave stood up on stiff legs, glanced fondly at his records and row of books, then out the window at his black TR3 parked in the weedy parking lot behind the house. Liberated from attachment to things? “Well, not yet,” he whispered to himself with a grin. He showered in the grungy bathroom down the hall and dressed in slacks, a pressed white shirt, and a corduroy sports jacket, then headed over to the mixer at Stephens College. He ignored the dull headache that had been throbbing since his second trip up the stairs.

      * * *

      Her nametag said Susan. She was a buxom girl with short blonde hair, dressed in a beautifully tailored pants suit. A sophomore from Webster Groves, majoring in drama, Jeff thought she’d said. Jeff steered her out onto the terrace away from the music, while couples drifted in and out of the French doors opened to the mild evening.

      A haze of cigarette smoke soon hovered in the still air. Couples stood in the dim light talking and laughing with the nervous tones and gestures of those who have just met.

      “So,” Jeff said, lighting Susan’s Pall Mall, “what brought you to Stephens College?”

      “Originally the drama department...”

      “Going to be an actress?”

      “Not any more. Two semesters was enough of that. But I was also working in the wardrobe department and found I really enjoyed costume design, fashion design. That’s my major now.” She tapped her cigarette artfully into a stone planter box of phlox, trying not to think of her boyfriend, recently departed. Jeff smiled at the gesture.

      “What are you smiling at?” she said.

      “You may have left the stage behind, but you still know how to act.” He touched her arm. “I mean that as a compliment. Acting isn’t just artifice, it’s good communication.”

      That’s not what Allen used to tell me, she thought. She put an engaging smile on her face, a hand on Jeff’s arm, and pulled him into conversation about himself to suppress her recriminations and regrets. Unaware of being maneuvered, Jeff gave this interesting girl a lengthy explanation of electrical engineering as a major and his growing dissatisfaction with it. When he wound down, much more relaxed and confident in himself, she maneuvered the conversation to music.

      “Janis Ian?” Jeff said cautiously. “She’s…alright. But most folk music is just crap.”

      “Janis Ian is great,” Susan corrected him. “Beautiful voice, good guitar, and lyrics that actually have something to say, not just ‘do-wah-diddy’…and most folk music is not crap.”

      “Well, yes, you’re right,” Jeff back-pedaled. “I just meant the stuff you hear on the radio…Janis Ian is a good singer, but once you’ve got the message of “Society’s Child,” how many more times are you going to listen to it? Same with all the message songs, whether it’s folk or rock. The protest stuff is the worst. I sympathize with César Chávez and the migrant workers, but get really tired of hearing ‘We Shall Overcome.’” Susan continued to smile, but Jeff could tell he was offending her. He looked this way and that for a new topic, finding none. From inside the amplifiers bleeped and squealed and the band swung into something meant to be the Classics I.V.’s “Stormy.”

      “Let’s dance,” Jeff said. Susan took his arm and they disappeared in the crowd on the dance floor.

      * * *

      Monday, the first day of class, Mark felt great. He had not read any of his assignments, but liked the feeling of talking about the courses, and the fact that no homework was due and no exams were imminent. His Machine Design course looked great, so did his Electronics and Materials lab course. But Thermodynamics—it was going to be a bitch. He spent forty minutes of agony frantically scribbling down the spew of derived equations that Professor Bradley was writing on the board. He’d fill the board, erase it, and fill it again. When class ended, Mark staggered out into sunshine on the quad and made a beeline for the Heidelberg. Thermo was going to be bad. But, the weather was beautiful, classes were over for the week, and happy hour awaited him.

      * * *

      Mark slid in through the Friday afternoon crowd at the door of the Heidelberg Bar and Restaurant. Happy hour and the place was packed. “Hey, Mark!” Jeff waved from the crowd. Mark slid his books onto the table, sat down, and helped himself to one of the five glasses of draft beer on the table.

      “Want to double date tonight?” Jeff said.

      “I have to study tonight,” Mark said. He took another long drink of flat beer.

      “Look at those two,” Jeff said. Two girls trailing a wake of male stares made their way through the

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