The Unwitting Read Online Free PDF Page B

good. I wanted the real thing. By the time I went to his room, nothing short of a natural disaster could have kept me away.
    We were quick and furtive as cat burglars on the worn sloping stairs. By the time we reached his room, our breath was coming in gasps, partly from excitement, partly from the race up the steps. He opened the door, pushed me inside, and closed it behind us. We stood for a moment facing each other, just long enough for the potential disasters to begin going off in my head like fireworks. Expulsion. Pregnancy. Abandonment. Then he took a step toward me. I’d like to say that I met him halfway, but I have the feeling I went beyond that.
    THE NEXT MORNING , we sat across from each other at a table in Bickford’s, addled by physical proximity, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, gulping orange juice and coffee and downing eggs and bacon and toast. Sex had made us ravenous. Black smudges underlined hiseyes; secret glee was smeared on his mouth like jam. I wanted to lick it off.
    Now and then, I glanced around at the other people in the eye-achingly bright restaurant. Loners sat reading newspapers or staring morosely into stacks of pancakes. Couples carried on desultory conversations. My swollen heart ached for the whole benighted bunch of them. They knew nothing of joy. They were bereft of wonder.
    Nonetheless, I was determined to be responsible. I had not been irresponsible with Woody. If there was one thing you learned about in the military, it was condoms. The women weren’t bombarded with booklets, films, and kits as the men were—we were expected to be chaste; the men only had to be careful—but you couldn’t possibly live in that world without picking up some practical information. Nonetheless, the terror of that false alarm still haunted me. A few days after my first night with Charlie, who had been prepared, I made an appointment with a woman doctor in the Village. I had heard about her from another girl in the dorm, but unlike the other girl, I did not buy a dime store wedding band for my appointment. Even while I was acting responsibly, I could not stop thumbing my nose.
    When I left the doctor’s office, I went straight to the library. At that time of day Charlie would be in his usual carrel. He was so engrossed in his book that he didn’t notice me until I was standing beside him. Then he looked up.
    “I bought you a present,” I said and put the brown-paper-wrapped package down on the desk. “But I wouldn’t open it here if I were you.” My grin gave me away.
    We made it from the library to his room in record time.
    WE DID NOT always court danger in the rooming house. One weekend, an old Navy buddy lent Charlie his car and a shack on a lake in Connecticut. Nobody would have called the place romantic. EarlyMiss Havisham, we agreed, was a more accurate description. But the lake came almost to the door, and no other houses were in sight. On Friday night, we made a terrible racket on the springs of the old iron bed. On Saturday morning, we went skinny-dipping in a lake so icy it sent us back to bed to warm each other beneath the musty blankets.
    Twice more that spring, when he was feeling flush, we went away. The first time, we checked into the Marlton hotel on West Eighth Street on a Saturday afternoon and lived on room service and each other until checkout time on Sunday. That was the weekend of our perplexing conversation.
    We were sitting up in bed with the room service tray between us. A striped tie hung down his bare chest. I was wearing my imitation pearls, matching earrings, and nothing else. We had decided to dress for dinner.
    “Am I your current cause?” he asked as he poured the bottle of wine he’d brought because it would be cheaper than room service.
    “What do you mean?”
    “The first time I saw you, you were picketing with the NAACP.”
    I thought about that for a moment. By then I had picked up a few words from him.
    “I could ask you the same question. Am I your