At dinner they laughed a great deal, and Raphael could see others in the restaurant glancing at them with eyebrows raised speculatively. Isabel was wearing a low-cut black cocktail dress that set off the satiny white sheen of her skin, and her hair, dark as night, was caught in a loose roll at the back of her neck. As Raphael continued to order more drinks he saw that there was about her an air of enormous sophistication that made him feel very proud just to be seen with her.
As the evening wore on and they lingered over cocktails, Raphael became increasingly convinced that everyone else in the room was covertly watching them, and he periodically forced his laughter and assumed an expression of supercilious boredom.
They had a couple more drinks, and then Raphael knocked over a water glass while he was attempting to light Isabels cigarette. He was filled with mortification and apologized profusely, noticing as he did that his words were beginning to slur. Isabel laughed and laid her white hand on his sleeve.
Then Flood was gone. Raphael could not remember when he had left. He forced his eyes to focus on Isabel, seeing the opulent rising mounds of creamy white flesh pressing out from the top of her dress and the enigmatic smile on her full lips.
Id better catch the check, he slurred, fumbling for his wallet.
Its already been taken care of, she assured him, still smiling and once again laying her hand lingeringly on his arm. Shall we go? She rose to her feet before he could clamber out of his seat to hold her chair.
He offered his arm, and laughing, she took it. They went outside. Once out in the cool night air, Raphael breathed deeply several times. Thats better, he said. Stuffy in there. He looked around. Where the hell is Damon?
Junior? She was unlocking her car. He wanted to take a look around town. Hell be along later.
They climbed into the car and drove in silence back toward Isabels house. The night seemed very dark outside the car, and Raphael leaned his head back on the seat.
He awoke with a start when they pulled up in the drive.
They got out of the car and went into the house. He stumbled once on the steps, but caught himself in time.
Isabel turned on a dim light in one corner of the living room, then she stood looking at him, the strange smile still on her face. Quite deliberately she reached back and loosened her hair. It tumbled down her back, and she shook her head to free it. She looked at him, still smiling, and her eyes seemed to glow.
She extended her hand to him. Shall we go up now? she said.
v
The autumn proceeded. The leaves turned, the nights grew chill, and Raphael settled into the routine of his studies. The library became his sanctuary, a place to hide from the continuing distraction of Roods endless conversation.
It was not that he disliked Damon Flood, but rather that he found the lure of that sardonic flow of elaborate and rather stilted speech too great. It was too easy to lay aside his book and to allow himself to be swept along by the unending talk and the sheer force of Floods personality. And when he was not talking, Flood was singing. It was not the music itself that was so distracting, though Flood had an excellent singing voice. Rather it was the often obscene and always outrageous lyrics he composed, seemingly on the spur of the moment. Flood had a natural gift for parody, and his twisting of the content of the most familiar songs inevitably pulled Raphaels attention from his book and usually prostrated him with helpless laughter. It was, in short, almost impossible to study while his roommate was around.
And so, more often than not, Raphael crossed the dark lawn in the evenings to the soaring cathedral that was the library; and there, in a pool of light from the study lamp, he bent to his books in the vast main hall beneath the high vault of the ceiling.
And sometimes he saw in another pool of light the intent face of the girl whose voice had so stirred him during his first few weeks on campus. They spoke once in a while, usually of material for the class they both attended, but it was all quite casual at first. The vibrant sound of her voice still struck him, but not as much as it had before he had met Isabel Drake.
If his weeks were consumed with study, his weekends were devoted to what he chose to feel was debauchery. Isabel Drake proved to be a woman of infinite variety and insatiable appetite. She seemed to delight in instructing and guiding him in what, a few months earlier, he would have considered perversion. He did not delude himself into believing that it was love. She was charmed by his innocence and took joy in his youthful vigor and stamina. It was so far from being love that sometimes on Sunday nights as he drove back to Portland, physically wrung out and even sore from his exertions, he felt that he had somehow been violated.
For the first few weekends Flood had accompanied him, delivering him, as it were, into Isabels hands. Then, almost as if he had assured himself that Raphael would continue the visits without him, he stopped going down to the lake. Without Floods presence, his knowing, sardonic eyes always watching, Isabels demeanor changed. She became more dominant, more demanding. Raphael sometimes had nightmares about her during the week, vivid, disconnected dreams of being suffocated by the warm, perfumed pillows of her breasts or crushed between the powerful white columns of her thighs. He began to dread the weekends, but the lure of her was too strong, and helplessly he delivered himself each Friday evening to her perfumed lair by the shores of the lake, where she waitedsometimes, he almost felt, lurkedin heavy-lidded anticipation.
Have you read the Karpinsky book yet? It was the girl, Marilyn Hamilton, and she spoke to him as they came out of the library one evening after it closed.
Im nearly finished with it, he replied.
I dont know, she said, falling into step beside him, but it seemed to me that he evades the issue.
He does seem a little too pat, Raphael agreed.
Glib. Like someone who talks very fast so you dont have time to spot the holes in his argument.
They had stopped near the center of the broad lawn in front of Eliot Hall.
Pardee seems to think a lot of him, Raphael said.
Oh yes, the girl said, laughing slightly. The vibrance of her voice pierced him. Mr. Pardee studied under Karpinsky at Columbia.
I didnt know that.
My sister found out. She took the course a couple years ago. Mr. Pardee wont mention it in class, of course, but its a good thing to know. She suddenly mimicked their instructors gruff voice and deliberately antigrammatical usage. Since he aint about to accept no disrespect.
Raphael laughed, charmed by her.
She hesitated and then spoke without looking at him. I saw you play in that game last month, she told him quietly.
Oh, he said, that. It wasnt much of a game, really.
Not the way you played, it wasnt. You destroyed them.
You think I overemphasized? he asked, grinning.
Im trying to pay you a compliment, dammit. Then she grinned back.
Thank you.
Im making a fool of myself, right? No, not really.
Anyway, I thought it was really spectacularand I dont like football very much.
Its only a game. He shrugged. Its more fun to play than it is to watch.