Campus Tramp by Lawrence Block Page A

that matter?”
    “Not to me. It might to you.”
    “I’m not sure whether it does or not. I didn’t plan on waiting until I got married or anything like that, Don. I came here and decided before I got here that the first man I wanted to sleep with would be the first man I would sleep with. I don’t like to play games either.”
    “It’s up to you,” he said. “I like you and I want you very much. You’re a very beautiful girl.”
    “Do you think so?”
    “Of course. You should wear your hair loose, though, and get rid of that pony tail. Your hair is lovely. It shouldn’t be all bound up like that.”
    She pulled her pony tail around and removed the rubber band. Then she fluffed her hair back in place.
    “Is it better this way?”
    “Much,” he said, reaching out a hand to stroke her hair. It was the first time he had touched her since he placed his hands on her shoulders in the office, and now a little shiver went through her.
    “Don,” she said, haltingly, “if … if we made love, where would we go?”
    “I have an apartment off-campus. I don’t have a roommate and it’s completely private. No one would bother us.”
    That was the way she wanted it, of course. No quick tumble in the back seat of a car, no furtive fumbling in a dormitory room where you had to hurry because somebody might come in, where you had to be very quiet because somebody might hear you through the thin walls. It shouldn’t be that way, not the first time. It should be free and easy, with plenty of room and plenty of time.
    And he would know what he was doing. He would be sure of himself, very sure, and he would know how to make love to her properly.
    “I probably won’t even know what to do,” she said, but she had already decided what she was going to do. “I probably wouldn’t be much good at all, Don. Are you sure you want me?”
    He smiled. “You’ll learn.”
    “Will you be … gentle with me?”
    He pulled her close to him and kissed her twice, first her lips and then the tip of her nose.
    “You’ll be gentle,” she said. “I know you will. I … I want you to make love to me, Don. I want it very much.”
    He kissed her again, a soft kiss, a gentle kiss. Then he turned the key in the ignition and pushed the starter button and backed the car out of the parking lot. She moved closer to him on the seat and their bodies were touching as he drove, more quickly this time, to the house where he lived.
    His apartment was off on the other side of town, a ground-floor apartment in a brick building on Nemo Street. It was small—one room with a private bathroom—and it was only slightly less disordered than the Record office. Discarded clothing carpeted the floor and there were books everywhere, overflowing the bookcase and covering the top of the cigarette-scarred dresser. There were empty beer cans piled in an incongruously neat pile in one corner of the room.
    She heard him close the door and bolt it and she turned to him. “Here we are,” she said.
    He walked to her. He took her in his arms and kissed her, and this time the kiss was not like the gentle pecks in the car. His lips came down on hers like a hawk on a field mouse and he crushed her tight against him so that her breasts were pressed against his chest. He twined his fingers in her long blonde hair and parted her lips with his tongue, exciting her more with the kiss than anything had ever excited her before. She clung to him and returned the kiss, touching his tongue with hers, moving her hands over his back, pulling him close to her.
    When they parted he walked to the bathroom and turned on the light. Then he came back and turned off the overhead light so that only the soft, indirect light from the bathroom illuminated the room. He came to her and took each of her hands in one of his and looked into her eyes. She thought that it was clever of him to turn on the bathroom light and she wondered how often he had done it in the past, how many other girls he