Free One Good Turn by Judith Arnold

Dupont Circle. Her theater-major roommate Sybil knew somebody affiliated with the theater, and Sybil had attended an earlier performance of the play and told Jenny it was worth seeing.
    The play had been well-acted but depressing. The plot had revolved around the fleecing of an elderly widow by a cabal of selfish, money-mad young people. Yet Jenny liked the show—and Luke was coming to realize that he liked anything and everything he did in her company.
    Last night he’d taken her out for pizza, and afterward they’d returned to her apartment to watch TV. They’d caught a rerun of some show she’d already seen, but that didn’t bother her. She and Sibyl and her two other roommates had all laughed and groaned and guessed what the next scene was going to be before it unfolded on the screen. They’d devoured a ton of popcorn and enough diet soda to float a navy, and they’d voted —with Luke abstaining—on who was the best-looking actor in the show.
    It had been fun sitting on the lumpy old sofa in the living room, surrounded by four cute college girls yet feeling no compulsion to be cool or suave or seductive. Jenny’s apartment-mates had interrogated him on what it was like working for a senator—like Jenny, they were all summer-temp staff workers in assorted federal departments and agencies. Sybil had inquired as to whether during his three years at Princeton Luke might have come across one “Stephen Ray Fontiere, a renegade cousin of mine who chose to attend that Yankee school of yours,” and Fran had politely requested some assistance in changing the ceiling lightbulb in the kitchen, which none of the four girls was tall enough to change without balancing precariously on a chair placed on top of the kitchen table.
    They were a terrific group of women. Sybil was deliciously sultry, Kate was as perky as a cheerleader on speed, and Fran was quiet and scholarly, almost Talmudic as she analyzed the television show.
    In Luke’s eyes, though, Jenny outshined the others. Maybe Kate was prettier in a classic sort of way, and Sybil was more voluptuous, and Fran’s soft-spoken reflectiveness appealed to Luke’s intellect. But Jenny...Jenny glowed. She exuded affection and trust. To be with her was to get caught up in her optimism, to experience an incomprehensible sense of well-being.
    He felt comfortable with her in a way he rarely felt comfortable with anyone—let alone someone of the opposite sex. When he’d teased her about how she seemed to have the TV show memorized she’d poked him in the ribs, and when he’d extended his arm along the back of the sofa she’d promptly cuddled against him so there would be room for Sybil to squeeze onto the cushions next to her. There had been nothing overtly romantic in her nearness—what with three chaperons in the room, Luke wasn’t about to get hot and heavy with her. The fact was, he hadn’t wanted to. He’d been content simply to have her next to him, leaning into him, behaving as if this cozy evening of popcorn and TV was nothing out of the ordinary.
    That was the way it was with Jenny. Her closeness—both physical and emotional—seemed natural and right. When he walked with her down Church Street tonight, they held hands, and it meant nothing—and everything. He was still occasionally distracted by thoughts of making love to her, but more often his fantasies centered on simply being with her, talking to her, knowing he could tell her whatever was on his mind or in his heart and she would assure him that it was okay, that he was good, that he had nothing to fear.
    “Don’t you see?” she explained, ambling down the street with him, her program clutched in her free hand. “All those nasty characters—they didn’t really want to be the way they were. You could sense the moral struggle in them. They were searching for a way to let their goodness rise to the surface.”
    Luke grinned. How typical of her to put a positive spin on such a grim, cynical theater