Campus Tramp

Chapter Four

“Linda Shepard from Cleveland,” he said. “For a while I didn’t think you were going to come.”

“I did.”

“So I see.” He stood up and walked around the desk until he was standing just a few feet from her. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and looked down into her eyes. His mouth was serious but his eyes were smiling.

“Well,” he said, “what can you do besides look pretty?”

She was flustered.

“This afternoon you said you could spell. Can you still spell?”

She nodded.

He turned around and picked up a batch of sheets of paper over two feet long and four or five inches wide. He handed them to her without comment and she looked at them.

“These are galleys,” he said. “Galley proofs.”

She nodded, her eyes on the top galley. The print on the paper was set up like newsprint in a single column two inches wide.

“Here’s how it goes,” he explained. “When a reporter types up a story it goes in my IN box. I check it, rewrite it when it stinks, correct the grammar and punctuation and toss it in the OUT box. Then it goes down to the printers.

“The linotype operator gets it next,” he went on. “He punches keys and presses levers and it winds up on a batch of little pieces of lead called slugs. He puts the slugs in a tray, and when he’s got about sixteen inches of copy set he runs off a galley print, an impression of the type that he’s got set. The guy downtown gives me two sets of galleys. I use one when I make up the papers and I proofread the other and send it back to him.”

“I see.”

He smiled. “Do you? That’s impressive. It took me months to understand what the hell they do down there. Great business, newspapering.”

He paused and sucked on the cigarette. He drew the smoke into his lungs and let the butt drop to the floor, squashing it absently with one foot. Then he looked at her again.

“What I want you to do,” he said, “is proofread the copy. I’d do it myself except I’ve read all this copy a good ten times already and I wouldn’t be able to spot any typographical errors. Besides, at this hour my eyes don’t work any more and typos would go right by me anyway. Read the stuff slowly and carefully and make the corrections with a copy pencil. The outer office is lousy with copy pencils.”

“How do I make the corrections?”

He groaned. “I forgot — you don’t know proofreader’s marks. There’s a sheet outside on the bulletin board, plus a style sheet to show you what gets capitalized and what doesn’t. Better check them.”

“All right,” she said. “How long will it take me?”

He scratched his head. “Hard to say, but it shouldn’t take more than an hour tops, even if this is your first time at it. There’s about six or seven galleys there — you should be done by 1:30 or so.”

“When will you be done?”

He looked at her. “I won’t.”

“Huh?”

“I never sleep Thursday nights. It’s part of the job. As soon as I get the whole issue made up with the dummies down to the news and all the copy finished I can knock off, but by then it’s usually time to race down to Fairborn and pick up the engravings. And by then the first page proofs are ready at the printer’s and I have to read them. With one thing or another the rest of the morning gets shot to hell and the afternoon with it, and then I take the papers and haul them over to the caf so the idiots will have something to read with their dinner. I’ll get to sleep about seven or eight tomorrow evening.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Precisely. Great business, newspapering.”

“But—”

“Every editor does it,” he said. “I was managing editor under Phil Stag last year and he went through the same kind of hell. You can live through it.”

“Can’t anybody else do the work?”

“Not really. I’ve got a managing editor and a bunch of people who write bad news copy, but there’s nobody who knows enough about the technical side of it or who has enough time to spare to make much difference. I wouldn’t trust anybody else on make-up or head-writing, and I can’t get around the job of being down at the print-shop Friday. So there’s not much chance of sleeping for a while.”

He straightened up. “Look,” he said, “get to work on proofing those galleys. Give a yell if you need me, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t because I’ll be going quietly nuts in here as it is. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Come back with them when you’re done. And don’t mind me if I scream or throw ashtrays against the wall or anything like that. Okay?’”

She nodded and turned away, walking out of the office. She found the style sheet and the sheet with proofreader’s marks on the bulletin board and took them with the galleys to one of the wooden tables. She studied both sheets of paper for several minutes until she managed to figure out what in the world they were about. Then she got down to the laborious business of proofreading the galleys.

It was a quarter after one when she walked back into Don’s office, holding the batch of corrected galleys in front of her like a pagan making an offering to a god. He took them from her, glanced at them and tossed them into the OUT box.

“That was fast,” he told her. “Think you did a good job?”

“If there are any mistakes there you can shoot me.”

He laughed, but the laughter was strained and she knew how tired he was. “There’ll be mistakes,” he said. “I’ll catch some of them on page proof and the others’ll wind up in the paper. They always do.”

“Always?”

He nodded. “We get them all the time. Nothing worth sending into the New Yorker, but we get some honeys. The best one that I can remember was when we were running this story about a wooded region that was partly private and partly open to the public. We had something about the public area, only we dropped one letter out of public and—”

She felt herself blushing.

“Well,” he said, “thanks a hell of a lot for coming in and helping me out. You’ve saved me a good bit of work and I appreciate it. Any time you feel like dropping in, the office is always open and I can always find something for you to do.”

“Do you want me to go now?”

“Don’t you want to get to sleep? It’s late.”

“I’m not tired.”

“But you’ve got classes tomorrow—”

“I can cut them. I’d like to stay around.”

“Well—”

She grinned. “You just said that the office was always open and there would always be something for me to do.”

“What could you do now?”

“Anything. The office is messy — I could clean it up for you.”

“The janitor does that in the morning.”

“You could find something for me to do. Couldn’t you?”

“I suppose so.” He butted the cigarette he was holding in the ashtray and looked at her again. “Are you sure you don’t want to get to sleep?”

“Positive.”

“Cutting classes is a bad habit to get into.”

“Don’t you cut classes?”

“I’ve cut most of my classes since the second semester of my freshman year,” he admitted. “I go to about one class out of every five.”

“So?”

“That just shows what a bad habit it is. I got into the habit and I’ve been at it ever since:”

They were both smiling now. He stood up and walked out from behind the desk. “Tell you what,” he began. “I guess I’m not going to be able to get rid of you for a while so I might as well make the most of it. Let’s take a run down to the Landmine and grab some coffee.”

“Landmine? What’s that?”

“The Landmark Grill — only place in town that stays open all night. I call it the Landmine.”

“I don’t want to keep you from your work. You’ll be up all night as it is.”

“It’ll only be for a few minutes.”

“Honest,” she said, “when I asked to stick around I didn’t mean to get in the way.”

“You’re not in the way. I need a coffee break anyway, and it’ll give me the chance to run the rest of the copy down to the printer at the same time. Besides, with you around I’ll probably get done quicker than I would otherwise. You already saved me a good half-hour reading proof.”

“All right,” she said. “I’d like some coffee.”

She waited while he scooped up the contents of the OUT box, turned off the lights in the inner office and locked the door. Then he took a soiled trench coat from a hook near the door and put it on. The coat, which looked as though it had been slept in for at least a month, made him look a little more like the stereotype of the average newspaperman. All he needed now was a crushed fedora with a press card stuck in the band. But, she reflected, the beard and crew cut just didn’t fit in with the stereotype.

He flicked a switch and turned off the lights in the outer office but didn’t lock the door, explaining that it was left open twenty-four hours a day in case some staff member got an inspiration and wanted to pound a typewriter. Then they walked down the hallway and down the flight of stairs and through the building and out of the door, with the building seeming even emptier and larger than it had when she first entered it.

His car was parked around the corner, a broken-down blue Chevrolet nine years old with one windshield-wiper missing and one fender badly crushed. He walked around the car and got in on the driver’s side without opening the door for her, but she didn’t feel slighted or ignored. He was treating her as a person, an equal, and that made more sense to her than an outdated code of chivalry. She got into the car and rolled down her window, relaxing into the seat.

“I hope the car starts,” he said, fishing in his pocket for the key.

“Doesn’t it usually start?”

“It always starts. But with a car like this I hate to take anything on faith.”

He fitted the key in the ignition, turned it and pressed the starter button. The engine gave a startled cough, as if it was outraged at being requested to perform at such an absurd hour of the morning, and turned over. Don pulled away from the curb and drove off toward the center of town.

For a few minutes he didn’t say anything, driving slowly and concentrating on his driving. She felt as though she ought to make conversation, but at the same time she felt that making conversation wasn’t necessary with Don. If he had something to say he would say it, and if she had something to say she would say it. The two of them didn’t have to go through the rigmarole that other people went through.

She told herself that she was building sandcastles. She had no right to think that anything existed or would exist between herself and Don. He was just taking her to the Landmine to be decent, in return for the work she was doing. He probably couldn’t waste his time on a freshman girl anyhow, and he certainly wouldn’t waste it on her. Still, she couldn’t help hoping that something might eventually develop between the two of them.

Don pulled the car up in front of an unprepossessing white frame building on the main street of town. “Back in a minute,” he said, and she waited in the car, watching him walk to the side door of the print shop, his long legs covering the ground quickly in determined strides. He unlocked the door and disappeared; moments later he came out, closing the door behind him and returning to the car.

“That takes care of the copy,” he said. “Now let’s get something to eat.”

He started the car again, parking in the lot next door to the Old Landmark Grill. The place was almost empty, with two students whom she vaguely remembered seeing around campus playing chess in a corner booth and another seated at the counter, reading a book and scribbling furiously on a pad of lined note-paper.

The waitress who brought them cups of bitter black coffee and orders of scrambled eggs had permanent circles under her eyes and frizzly black hair. She recognized Don and smiled at him, a tired smile that barely got the corners of her mouth lifted before the smile was over. One of the chess players waved lazily to him and the scribbler at the counter gave him a nod.

“Everybody knows you,” Linda told him.

“I’m regular here,” he said.

“It’s a nice place.”

“It’s a horrible place. But it’s open. The only game in town.”

She looked blank.

“The only game in town,” he repeated. “An ancient joke and also the title of an excellent novel by Charles Einstein. Remember the joke now?”

She told him she didn’t.

“Well, there was this faro player. Ever play faro?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think anybody ever did. I don’t even know how the devil you play the game, but that’s how the joke goes. There’s this faro player, and he plays at this one game, and it’s crooked. So a friend comes up to him and says, ‘Why do you play here? Don’t you know the game is crooked?’ And the guy gets very indignant and says, ‘Of course I know it. What the hell do you think I am?’ ‘Then why are you here?” the friend asks. And the guy answers, ‘Cause it’s the only game in town.’”

“Oh,” she said.

“And that’s about the only reason in the world to eat here.”

She sipped at her bitter coffee and wrinkled her nose, agreeing with him.

“Clifton,” he said, “is the only college in town.”

“That’s not much of a compliment to it.”

“It’s not much of a school.”

They talked — about the school, about her, about him, about the Record, about a good many things. Not much time passed, about twenty minutes or so, and they each had a second and a third cup of the bitter coffee. From the conversation she felt he knew quite a bit about her, but she still knew that she didn’t know him at all. There were so many sides to him, so many aspects. All she really knew was that she wanted to know him better and that she liked him very much.

And that she was attracted to him. Strongly attracted to him.

“Let’s get back,” he said finally. They stood up and he put on his coat and paid the check. They walked outside and it was colder out now, and she walked very close to him, hoping he would put his arm around her. But he didn’t, and again he let her open the door for herself while he walked to his side of the car.

They were sitting in the car and he had the key in the ignition. He was about to turn it when he stopped and turned to her instead. He looked at her — a long, intense look, and she returned his stare without saying a word.

“Linda,” he said. Just her name.

She didn’t say anything.

“Linda — would you like to sleep with me?”

It was very strange, she thought. The question came as a complete surprise, but at the same time she was neither shocked nor startled. She was in fact very calm, and she was not blushing for a change. He continued to look at her and she kept on looking back at him, and for several seconds neither of them said a word.

Then, very softly and very honestly, she said: “I don’t know.”

He waited for her to go on.

“I like you,” she said. “I like you very much and I’m very strongly attracted to you. Is that enough?”

“Enough for what?”

“Enough for me to sleep with you.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s something you have to decide for yourself.”

She nodded, understanding. “I’m glad you asked me this way,” she said. “Just simple and straightforward, without kissing me or anything like that. It makes more sense this way.”

“I don’t like to play games. Back-seat seductions are all right in high school but they get boring after awhile. As well as uncomfortable.” He said the last sentence with a grin, and she returned it.

“I’m... a virgin,” she said. “Does that matter?”

“Not to me. It might to you.”

“I’m not sure whether it does or not. I didn’t plan on waiting until I got married or anything like that, Don. I came here and decided before I got here that the first man I wanted to sleep with would be the first man I would sleep with. I don’t like to play games either.”

“It’s up to you,” he said. “I like you and I want you very much. You’re a very beautiful girl.”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course. You should wear your hair loose, though, and get rid of that pony tail. Your hair is lovely. It shouldn’t be all bound up like that.”

She pulled her pony tail around and removed the rubber band. Then she fluffed her hair back in place.

“Is it better this way?”

“Much,” he said, reaching out a hand to stroke her hair. It was the first time he had touched her since he placed his hands on her shoulders in the office, and now a little shiver went through her.

“Don,” she said, haltingly, “if... if we made love, where would we go?”

“I have an apartment off-campus. I don’t have a roommate and it’s completely private. No one would bother us.”

That was the way she wanted it, of course. No quick tumble in the back seat of a car, no furtive fumbling in a dormitory room where you had to hurry because somebody might come in, where you had to be very quiet because somebody might hear you through the thin walls. It shouldn’t be that way, not the first time. It should be free and easy, with plenty of room and plenty of time.

And he would know what he was doing. He would be sure of himself, very sure, and he would know how to make love to her properly.

“I probably won’t even know what to do,” she said, but she had already decided what she was going to do. “I probably wouldn’t be much good at all, Don. Are you sure you want me?”

He smiled. “You’ll learn.”

“Will you be... gentle with me?”

He pulled her close to him and kissed her twice, first her lips and then the tip of her nose.

“You’ll be gentle,” she said. “I know you will. I... I want you to make love to me, Don. I want it very much.”

He kissed her again, a soft kiss, a gentle kiss. Then he turned the key in the ignition and pushed the starter button and backed the car out of the parking lot. She moved closer to him on the seat and their bodies were touching as he drove, more quickly this time, to the house where he lived.

His apartment was off on the other side of town, a ground-floor apartment in a brick building on Nemo Street. It was small — one room with a private bathroom — and it was only slightly less disordered than the Record office. Discarded clothing carpeted the floor and there were books everywhere, overflowing the bookcase and covering the top of the cigarette-scarred dresser. There were empty beer cans piled in an incongruously neat pile in one corner of the room.

She heard him close the door and bolt it and she turned to him. “Here we are,” she said.

He walked to her. He took her in his arms and kissed her, and this time the kiss was not like the gentle pecks in the car. His lips came down on hers like a hawk on a field mouse and he crushed her tight against him so that her breasts were pressed against his chest. He twined his fingers in her long blonde hair and parted her lips with his tongue, exciting her more with the kiss than anything had ever excited her before. She clung to him and returned the kiss, touching his tongue with hers, moving her hands over his back, pulling him close to her.

When they parted he walked to the bathroom and turned on the light. Then he came back and turned off the overhead light so that only the soft, indirect light from the bathroom illuminated the room. He came to her and took each of her hands in one of his and looked into her eyes. She thought that it was clever of him to turn on the bathroom light and she wondered how often he had done it in the past, how many other girls he had made love to in that very room. She pushed the thought out of her mind; she didn’t want to know, not now.

“Now what?” she asked shakily, knowing she shouldn’t be talking or asking questions. “Do you want me to take off my clothes?”

He smiled softly. “Not now,” he said, and his voice was low and husky. “Not the first time. I want to undress you.”

He sat down on the bed and she sat down next to him. He held her close and their mouths fused together, their tongues working. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed and she followed suit, wondering if whoever lived upstairs would notice the four shoes dropping. Then he took her in his arms and she was taut against him from head to toe and the thought went out of her mind.

She closed her eyes. His hand touched her breast and she reached out a hand to touch him but he pushed her hand aside.

“Lie still,” he told her. “Lie very still.” She did as he told her and his hands were light and skillful, touching and stroking her breasts and working her into a quiet frenzy. His lips were busy planting small kisses on her eyelids and lips and ears. Then he unclasped and unzipped her black skirt and drew it down over her hips. She was wearing thin white silk panties and she wondered whether he could see her through them now, but she forced herself to remain motionless on her back, her eyes still closed, her arms still at her sides, her heart beating like a time bomb minutes away from a shattering explosion.

He began to stroke and caress her legs, starting at her ankles. He touched her knees, then her thighs, and it was with an effort that she kept herself from reaching for him and hauling him down on top of her. Every touch of his sure hands had the desired effect and excited her as she had never been excited before, and she wondered how a man could know so much about women, could be so certain of the ways to arouse her and work her into a frenzy.

When he took off her sweater she arched her back to help him and then raised her head. Her long hair got tangled up in the sweater for a second or two; then it was free and his hands were all over her, touching her. He removed her bra a second later and his hands on her bare breasts were fire upon silk. He held them and squeezed them, pinching the nipples until they were harder than they had ever been. His mouth kissed the hollow between her breasts and his cheeks burned against the sides of her twin globes of smooth flesh.

He kissed her breasts in turn, kissing with his lips and tongue, kissing and licking and sucking at her breasts and sending her pulse racing still faster. She couldn’t control her breathing any longer and she was panting audibly.

“Don!”

“Shhh. Lie still.”

Her panties slipped slowly over her hips and thighs and calves and the silk was smooth as a caress on her bare flesh. Now he was stroking her thighs again with one hand while he undressed himself with the other, but when she looked up and saw him lying naked beside her she was afraid again, afraid of being hurt, afraid of doing something she had never done before.

She stiffened, and he noticed it at once.

“Lie still,” he said again. He touched her all over with his hands — her face, her lips, her breasts, her stomach, her thighs and her knees. Then he touched her where he had never touched her before and she opened up to him, ready for him, needing him, wanting him, her whole body and being hungry for him.

The shock of the initial stab of pain was almost too much for her and she wanted to cry out. For a moment there was only the pain and then she wanted to scream because she didn’t know what to do but lie still like a corpse. Then the pain lessened and pleasure came to replace it, and her body moved instinctively with her hips rolling and her thighs churning in a slow and perfect rhythm.

Slow. Slow and gently, and almost too slow at first, agonizingly slow, with their bodies moving together and the pleasure flooding through her like water through a ruptured dam. Her hands held him to her and her fingernails dug into his back.

Faster.

His chest was crushing her breasts and her legs were like a vise around him. Her breath was so labored that breathing was an effort and she longed to stop breathing, to cease everything but lovemaking itself, to make love forever and to have forever the pleasure she felt now.

Faster.

Nothing had ever been like this, nothing she had ever experienced before. Nothing could be like this, nothing in the entire world; and if it didn’t stop she would go crazy, but she didn’t want it to stop, not yet, not ever, because God it was so good, so good and so wonderful and so unbelievable and so perfect, so wonderfully unbelievably perfectly good.

Faster.

Faster...

They ended together. It was so good that she couldn’t even stop to think how good it was, could only enjoy it and love it and feel it in every part of her body and mind. Soaring all the way to the highest peak in the world and then pure peace, with him soft and limp and exhausted in her arms and so wonderful to hold, so hard against her softness, and their sweat making their bodies slippery and the tiredness leaving her completely at rest, completely at ease.

It was so comfortable. It was so good, and that was the only word for it. Good. Good, and there was no better and no best.

Good.

She said Don very softly and very quietly, and she liked the way it sounded. Then she said Donald Gibbs just as softly and just as quietly, and she liked the way that sounded, too.

Good.

Very good.

After a few moments he started to raise himself from her but her arms held him in place. He tried again and once again she held him.

“Don’t,” she said.

“I must be hurting you.”

“You’re not.”

“Aren’t I heavy?”

“I don’t mind.”

They remained that way for a long time.

He was standing by the side of the bed buttoning the cuff of his shirt and she smiled up at him sleepily.

“I have to go now,” he said.

“Don’t go.”

“I have to put out a paper.”

She groaned.

“Great business, newspapering.”

She raised herself on one arm, ready to accompany him, but he pushed her back down on the bed and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

“Stay here,” he said. “Sleep here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She closed her eyes and her mind started to spin lazily. There was something she had to tell him, something very important, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

Then she remembered.

“I love you,” she said.

But he was already gone.