I protested, although Mary seemed to take it as no more than Betsy's normal flamboyance. We stood chatting, compulsive talkers all, until we remembered we were in a library. I was off on a walk around town with a wad of cash in my pocket, paying bills for my mother; it is hard to remember now a time when shop keepers appreciated cash in the till and there were no credit cards. Mary offered to accompany me, claiming, as I was to learn was typical of her, that she had "nothing to do." Betsy trotted off to class, and we began our ascent from the library near the river up the hill to the town itself on the far side of the campus where the shops were located. We never stopped talking even to get our breath as we moved along placidly on our walk, but raced from topic to topic, oh, Lord, there was no stopping us. First it was Homer and Greek tragedy. Mary had read the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" closely, although, as she claimed, she was much too immersed in English literature to find time to learn Greek. Still she knew the poems well; I was impressed. I, on the other hand, had nothing to say about English literature, having shunted it aside in my intense pursuit of the ancient stuff. Ah, well, we turned to Tolstoy, a favorite of both of us, whom I had read in high school before I got caught up in classics, so we could argue over the philosophical bits in "War and Peace" and whether they were all that necessary and proclaim our love of "Anna Karenina." And, oh, joy, we both had read lots and lots of Proust in high school as well; it took me all of my senior year. I was intoxicated by the endless stream of words pouring from both our mouths, spurred on to more and more outrageous word choices in response to Mary's vocabulary. At last, an hour later, all bills had been paid, and I had something left over to allow me to invite Mary for toast and tea at Whetstone Drugstore where back in the day one could get refreshments. It was now nine o'clock. I had known her for one hour; I was enchanted. We stopped talking to tend to the tea, and I looked across the booth at her and recollected what I had noticed on our walk. She was short, fleshy, there were pleasing curves to her hips -- pear-shaped, they used to call it -- in symmetry with her round full breasts that her sweater revealed. Her skin tones had a definite copper cast, which went with her thick strawberry blond hair, worn shoulder-length. She wore lipstick, and eye shadow, and penciled her eyebrows. She was definitely not an Iowa City High School girl.

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