Murder on K Street - Margaret Truman [29]
There had also been a woman back in Batavia, a waitress ten years older than he was, with whom he’d ended up in bed—twice. These brief encounters happened one week apart while he was home on the Christmas break during his junior year. She provided protection, and told him after their second experience that she was going back to her husband. Her decision made him happy.
None of these encounters was particularly memorable; nor had they piqued his masculine interests the way Jeannette did. When attending one of two political science classes he’d enrolled in early in his senior year, he often found himself tuning out the lecturer and looking at Jeannette, who sat one row in front and to his left. Objectively, she wasn’t any prettier than many other young women at the university, but there was something different about her, an intangible quality that tripped his male synapses and caused warm feelings from head to toe. They barely spoke in that classroom, nothing more than pleasant greetings and farewells.
Their first real conversation occurred in the coffee shop of the school’s Student Union. He was sitting alone at a booth studying for an English lit exam when she suddenly appeared at his side.
“Hi, Phil. Mind if I join you?”
“What? Oh, sure. Please do.”
“Studying?” she asked.
“Yeah. English lit.”
“Can I help? That’s my major.”
“It is? Thanks, but I don’t think so. Just have to finish this assigned reading and—”
“I saw the game last night. You were terrific.”
“Thanks. We almost lost it.”
“You scored the winning basket.”
“I got lucky.”
“You’re too modest. Where are you from?”
“Upstate New York. A small town called Batavia.”
“I know it.”
Her perfume was intoxicating. So was her smile. It was that smile that he’d first noticed in class, wide and genuine and full of life. She wore a powder-blue sweater over a white blouse, a simple gold chain, and gold earrings in the shape of tiny birds. Her large, hazel eyes said she was thinking of nothing but him.
“You do? Where are you from?”
“Greenwich, Connecticut.”
“Oh.” He’d heard that Greenwich was a wealthy place. “Connecticut’s pretty, huh?”
“It is. I like it.”
“Why did you decide to come to school out here?”
“My father thought it would be good for me to see another part of the country. I’m glad I did.” She moved as though she was about to leave. “I’ll leave you alone with your book,” she said.
“No, no, that’s okay. Want a cup of coffee or something?”
That smile. “I’d love it,” she said.
They spent the next half hour learning a little about each other. When she announced she had to leave, he stood.
“That’s so nice,” she said.
“What is?”
“That you stood. It’s so—so old-fashioned.” She sensed he might have taken it as a criticism and quickly added, touching his hand, “I like the old-fashioned way. There isn’t enough of it these days.”
“I’ll walk you home,” he said.
As they stood in front of the Alpha Phi house, he said, “We’re having a party Friday night at the fraternity house. I was wondering whether you’d like to go.”
“I’d like that very much, Philip. See you in class.”
She was gone, but only physically. The vision of her, her voice, her scent lingered far into the night as he sat in his room at the fraternity house and tried to finish the book he’d been assigned. It was after midnight when his roommate arrived.
“There you go again,” Simmons said, “hunched over a book. All work and no play—”
“I am doing some playing,” Rotondi said, allowing a sly smile to emerge.
“You are?” Simmons said, exaggerating how impressed he was. “A girl?”
“Yeah, a girl. Now shut up and let me finish before I flunk the exam tomorrow.”
Simmons laughed. His roommate was always expressing concern that he would do poorly on exams, but seemed never to receive anything but straight A’s.
The Friday-night party at the Kappa Phi Kappa house turned boisterous, as such parties often did. Beer flowed freely from a keg in the basement rec room, and there