Free Homecoming by Belva Plain Page B

school. He had come back that day on a visit. A group of five or six, Ellen’s roommate among them, was on its way to the coffee shop, and she went along. Beside Kevin there was one otherman, but he was uninteresting. It was Kevin, blue eyed and bold of feature, who held attention, not only the women’s, but even the men’s in the class.
    He had already entered the world, that world which often, at worst, appeared like a dangerous jungle, or at best, like a game of musical chairs, where everyone scrambled, knowing that there were not enough seats to go around and that somebody was bound to be left out. Looking at Kevin, you felt almost certain that he would not be one of those left out.
    Ellen had never expected to be noticed. She had indeed gone out a great deal with many differing types of men on the campus—fraternity men, athletes, and poetic loners—but they had all been her own age or close to it, so it was with a little well-hidden gasp of surprise when, under cover of some loud general conversation, she heard Kevin ask for her telephone number.
    Her roommate was equally surprised. Her quick, appraising glance at Ellen seemed to be saying: Why you? What is it about you that’s so special? She was, however, in possession of some interesting facts about Kevin, which she gave to Ellen. He came from an Ohio family that hadsomething to do with steel. In New York, where he lived alone, he had an apartment near the World Trade Center.
    “He will probably never call you,” the roommate predicted. “He’s too full of himself to bother with an undergraduate. You’re too young for him.”
    But he was not “full of himself”; he was, as it turned out, most modestly understated, and he did call. When the telephone rang a few days later, it was to ask her when she would be back in the city. For Christmas vacation, she told him, and gave him her number there. Her father noted with unusual approval that he did not “pick her up” in the lobby downstairs, but came straight to the apartment to introduce himself to her parents.
    “Which is what a man was always expected to do, you know.”
    Things moved with remarkable speed after that. On the first time they went to a Broadway show. On the second they danced in the Rainbow Room. On the third time they had dinner quite far downtown in one of the newest French restaurants that had gone to the top of the critics’ list. The lights were hazy, the murals transported you,depending on where you looked, to the shores of Brittany, or southward to the Alpilles, and the tables were far enough apart for intimate conversations to be held in private.
    It was not that their conversation was what you would necessarily call “intimate.” It was explanatory. Ellen learned that he was already fluent in three languages and was trying to find time for the study of Mandarin, because China, whether we liked it or not and he did not, was sure to become the dominant force on the planet. Kevin learned that she was hoping to get a wonderful position in a major museum of art somewhere, practically anywhere, because such jobs were hard to get. At any rate, she was bound to enter the world of art; she loved it ardently, and though really she had no talent to speak of, had even tried drawing and painting on the side. They had kindred interests and some acquaintances in common.
    All these things in an odd, vague way made him less a stranger, so that when they could no longer keep sitting at table drinking wine, of which Ellen was not particularly fond because it made her sleepy, followed by coffee, which wokeher up—when they positively had to leave to stand outdoors in a blast of icy wind and he suggested that they warm themselves in his apartment, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
    In those years, she often thought later after she was married, people had been amazingly casual about having sex. Quite simply, going to bed together after a few days’ acquaintance was expected, even