dormitory sits like a giant rectangular ghost behind it.
I can’t quite believe what I’ve just heard. I sift through the words again, piecing them apart and then back together.
He clears his throat. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m not trying to … All I mean is that she’s very pretty, yes, in the same way all girls like her are pretty, skin and hair and smart clothes. They’re all alike. There’s nothing special there, nothing interesting.” He pauses. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“Not really. All the boys like Budgie. There must be something there.”
He laughs out loud, heartily. “Oh, there’s something, all right. I’m sure they like her plenty, or most of them. But I guess I’m different.” He pauses and says, under his breath, so I almost miss the words: “Nothing new there.”
“Well, I like different.”
“I know you do. Oh, look. I’m sorry. You’re frozen.” He starts to take off his jacket.
“No, it’s all right,” I say, but he settles it over my shoulders anyway, heavy and shimmering with the heat of his enormous body. The silk lining slides like liquid against my neck.
I know you do, he said. What does that mean?
“I’m warm enough,” he says. “So tell me, Lily Dane, what you do when you’re not out traipsing around after Budgie Byrne to football games.”
I laugh. I like that he uses words like traipsing. “Study, mostly. Reading, writing. I want to become a journalist.”
“Good for you. Lots of women doing that these days.”
“And you? You’ll be graduating soon.”
He scuffs the grass with his heel. “I’ll be starting work at my father’s firm.”
“Your father owns a history company?” I say teasingly.
Nick laughs. “No. Everyone on Wall Street has a history degree, though you’d never know it, the way they keep making the same mistakes, crash after crash.”
“Hmm. So is that why you’re studying architecture, too? Find a way to rebuild it all with a sounder foundation?”
“No.” The amusement drains from his voice. “I just love architecture, that’s all.”
“Then why don’t you become an architect, instead?”
“Because my father wants me to join his firm.”
“And do you always do what your father tells you to do?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Do you always do what your parents tell you?”
I pull the ends of his jacket close to my chest. A warm scent drifts up from the wool: cedar closets and shaving soap, reassuring, extraordinarily intimate. This is how men smell, I think. “I guess I do. Of course, Mother thinks I’m only getting a job to find a husband.”
“Are you?”
“No. I want to …” My breath dissolves in the air.
He nudges me with his shoulder. “You can tell me. I’m just some stranger. I don’t even know your parents.”
“I don’t know. Travel. Write about what I see.” I hesitate again, embarrassed, because I haven’t really put it all into words before. The dream is just an image in my head, a vision, a yearning for something else, something more, something sublime and brilliant. I am sitting at a desk somewhere, typewriter before me, in a room on a high floor, with some foreign scene—Paris or Venice or Delhi—framed in the sun-flooded window.
“Then you should go out there and do it,” says Nick Greenwald, with passion. “Now, before some husband ties you down with housework and kids. Go out there and do it, Lily, before it’s too late.”
We fall silent, watching the Ford. I wonder what’s going on in there. Probably not just talking, I realize with a jolt. Graham kissing Budgie, Budgie kissing him back. Embracing each other, his hand wound in her hair. Like the movies, like Clark Gable and Joan Crawford.
My face grows hot and tight.
Nick looks at his watch, shakes it, holds it up to catch the sliver of moonlight. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to sound so vehement.”
Vehement. “No, you were right. You are right. It’s very kind of you to take such an interest.” I am warm underneath Nick’s jacket, and yet I can’t stop shaking. His words keep repeating themselves in my head. He is so solid and massive next to me, so vital. I think of his expression as he stood with Graham in his dark green jersey, the relentlessness of his eyes, the lightning snap of his arm as it sent the ball down the field. I can’t quite comprehend that all that power and determination is packed within the laconic human shape stretching out its wounded plaster leg beside mine. If I were brave enough, if I were brazen and confident of success like Budgie, I could simply lift my fingers a few inches and lay my hand atop his. What would it feel like? Calloused, probably, like his leather football. Strong and calloused and firm. It could probably snap my fingers like chicken bones, if it wanted.
The back door of the Ford juts open, and Graham raises himself awkwardly, raking his hands through his hair, hitching his trousers. Budgie’s head emerges above the roof, on the other side, and bobs to the front door.
“Why do they call her Budgie, anyway?” Nick asks. He makes no move to get up.
I think back. “Well, you know, she was blond as a child. A towhead, if you can believe it. Talking all the time. Her father used to say she was like a bright yellow parakeet. That’s the family story, anyway.”
“What’s her real name?”
“Helen. Like her mother.”
“And is Lily your real name, or some ridiculous pet name?”
From the wide arc of the Ford’s headlamps, Graham peers through the darkness and waves to us.
“My real name.”
Nick heaves himself up from the bench and offers me his hand. “I’m glad.”
“But you think it’s ridiculous,” I say, taking his hand and rising.
“Only if it were a pet name. Otherwise, it’s lovely.” He’s still holding my hand. His palm is softer than I imagined, gentle. We stand there, poised, not quite looking at each other. Graham hollers something through the clear air. Nick lets go of my hand and reaches for the crutches.
“Let me help you.”
“No, I’ve got it.” He positions himself expertly above the crutches, and it occurs to me that he must have had another pair, at some point, for some other injury. “Nick is short for Nicholson, by the way. My mother’s maiden name.”
“Nicholson Greenwald. Terribly distinguished.”
“I urge you forcefully to call me Nick.”
Oh, God, I like him. I really do.
Graham is leaning against the passenger door, legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded. He winks at Nick. “About time. Did the two of you get lost?”
Nick holds up a crutch. “I can’t exactly sprint with these.”
Budgie toots the horn.
“We should go,” I say. “We’ll probably miss curfew as it is.”
“We can’t have that.” Graham opens the door with a flourish.
I climb inside, and Graham closes the door behind me. The air in the car is close, humid, earthy. I roll down the window. “Good-bye. A pleasure meeting you both.”
“Good-bye, darlings!” Budgie calls, leaning across my chest