if what?" she asked a bit coyly. "If there was somebody special?"
"Probably so," I admitted having no idea where this conversation was going. Was she coming onto me?
"So currently just sort of exploring," Ellen said, making it a statement.
"How about you?" I countered. "Anybody special?"
"Oh I think we're all special," Ellen temporized. "Don't you?"
"I imagine," I said.
"Imagination is important," Ellen quipped.
"You've got a room mate," I said, meaning it as a joke.
"Don't you?" Ellen asked.
"Yeah."
"Is he nice?"
"I really don't know yet," I told her. "We just met this evening."
"Oh, what's his name?"
"Duncan," I sold her.
"Duncan," she said. "Did he live over in Haggett Hall?"
"I don't know," I admitted.
"What does he look like?" Ellen began then cut herself off with a self-conscious titter. "I'm sorry, how could you know? You couldn't, could you?"
"No."
"Well," Ellen used that sweet tone I'd heard when we had first met. "You never know."
I didn't respond to that.
I sprung for two more cokes then it was time to collect the drying.
"Mind waiting while I fold?" Ellen asked.
"No."
"I'll just borrow this laundry basket and bring it back down later."
"Need help folding?" I offered.
"I've got it," she said. She turned and doing so brushed lightly against me. She made no comment. Neither did I. Was I expected to respond in some way or was this just an accident?
"Whups," Ellen said, bending, to retrieve something from the floor. "Here," she placed something silky and still warm in my hand. "See if you can fold these."
I nearly dropped the pair of underwear on the floor from whence they'd been retrieved. I folded them as precisely as I could and extended the little square to her.
"You can keep them," she said, "to remember me by. Besides, you might need them when you go exploring?" Her amusement sounded quite genuine.
I'd thought she was only joking with me but Ellen was clearly preparing to depart so I stuck the panties into my pocket and "Let me carry your basket for you," I offered, taking it from her and cradling it in my left arm, managing to keep my cane ahead of me.
With Ellen acting as if nothing had happened and perhaps to her nothing really had, we went back up toward our rooms, I leading the way this time.
"Goodnight," Ellen said, taking her basket and patting my arm.
"Goodnight."
Finding my abode still devoid of roommate, I went to the bathroom, washed up, returning to peel down to my shorts and tee-shirt for exercises then climbed into bed.
"Good morning," Duncan said sleepily as I slid off the elevated bed platform and began the 110 push-ups to which I'd built since the previous summer when I'd discovered I was woefully out of shape.
"Good--morning" I panted back. "I didn't hear you come in last night."
"You do push-ups every morning?" he inquired.
"Yeah."
"That's admirable," Duncan said. "I don't think I have that kind of ambition."
I accepted the admiration as droplets of my hard-earned perspiration plopped on the bare tiled floor. I took a dip in the shower and returned with a towel wrapped kilt-fashion, finished drying and got into yesterday's clothes.
A few minutes later Duncan returned from his shower. "I'm going to open the window," he announced. "This deodorant is really strong." He demonstrated by overwhelming the room with an acrid cloud. "It's probably a women's deodorant," he added. "My mother gave it to me."
"Oh," I said, made able to breathe again by a sudden breeze wafting through the window.
"Are you ready to go down to breakfast?" Duncan asked.
"Yes," I said, glad he'd brought it up I'd have asked if I had to but it's nice to be invited.
"Just a minute," he returned. "I've got to put my contacts in." He said the phrase 'put my contacts in,' with sort of a breathy rush which made 'contacts' sound like 'kotex.' (There, that was an image.)
"Were you in Haggett last year?" I inquired, remembering as we stepped out into the dining level Ellen's question last night.
"I was, Fall Quarter," Duncan said. "Then I moved over to Lander. Why?"
"Oh," I said, "I met a woman last night who thought she might have known you over there."
"Lots of people did probably," Duncan said with a breezy air.
Breakfast was varied and reasonably plentiful. Scrambled eggs, Pershing rolls, sausage patties, fruit cocktail and several kinds of juice. We loaded trays and Duncan showed us to a table which disappointingly appeared to harbor only other young men.
"Hi Duncan!" a pair of boys across the table from us hailed my roommate. "Which floor are you on?"
"Third North," Duncan said, not introducing me, but chattering away with his friends about others not present and various activities in buildings I seldom if ever visited.
A guy with a central european-sounding accent seemed to have said something upsetting to his neighbor or roommate and quelled an angry retort with "That's your problem." Duncan continued animatedly until after I'd been finished for five minutes or so and finally said "Well I've got to go. You ready yet, Dave?" I got up without comment, holding my tray in one arm, taking Duncan's elbow with the other hand.
"Good-bye," the foreign-sounding guy said.
I smiled in his direction. "Have a good day."
***
I made a bad start by being late to my first class, an Electrical Engineering 306 lab. Fortunately, timing wasn't paramount in this more or less self-paced summer session course offering for non-majors. My lab partner Jack and I would watch fairly brief video-recorded lectures from a professor named Potter who never put in an appearance, and on the basis of these and the text book, we'd attempt a series of experiments. The first lecture was on electrical and magnetic fields. Electrical fields emanate from stationary or "static" charges, magnetic fields from charges in motion. We then measured electric and magnetic field intensities first from charged plates then from an electromagnet.
My next class was Social Psychology. In this first session we discussed the fact that we'd be going into more depth regarding some of the things we'd learned in the intro 101 course. We'd focus on the research techniques used to study group behavior and their results so far as could be interpreted. This class had a double purpose for me: I was studying journalism as well as engineering and needed twenty credits in one social science as a prerequisite for this. My engineering studies were intended to address issues of human beings working with and living within technological systems and I felt a grounding in psychology would also be pertinent here. My next class would start at 1:30 in the afternoon.
I made it back to the dorm for an early lunch. My meal card allowed me 19 meals, so I could have lunch five days a week and let the remaining four punches see me through the weekend.
I was eating alone when a familiar voice addressed me from across the table and two chairs pulled out more or less simultaneously. "Hello," Ellen said. "Have you done your laundry yet?" (A little giggle.)
"Most of it," I said straight-faced.
"Goood," she enthused. "Meet Janice, my roomie."
"Hi,"