Reprisal by Mitchell Smith Page B

down. "I don't know how to begin with you,"
    he'd said. "I'm shy. Andwitha beautiful girl, I'm very shy."
    Charis had kept eating her egg-salad sandwich.
    "--But I've been watching you in The American Novel ... and I finally couldn't help myself."
    He was a nice-looking boy, maybe two years younger than she was. Tall, with pale-brown curly hair already hinting at receding. Soft blue eyes, almost a girl's eyes.
    Charis had finished her sandwich. "What's your name?"
    "Greg. Greg Ribideau."
    "Well, I'm shyer than you are," Charis had said, then stood, picked up her tray, and walked away. She'd tried being with boys ... with men, really. Just four of them in the seven years since Mr. Langenberg died. She hadn't enjoyed it.
    Then, when she'd been thinking of killing herself so as not to be so lonely, she'd gone to bed with a girl, Margaret Gowens--but also for a purpose, for information from the agency. That sex, with the softness and slipperiness and hugging, had just been unbearable.
    Charis lay back, lifted her knees, and was rough with herself down there. She was forceful with herself, but not enough so she bled.
    She used to imagine she was submerged in a tank filled with dark-green water--and was slowly rotting in there, crumbling, with little pieces of her breaking off and sifting away. Spoiling under dark water in a tank made of glass. ... Old glass, with dirt and streaks of green on it, so she could barely see people looking in, and they could barely see her.
    Charis felt something beginning to happen; she was so wet she could smell herself. And she tried to be gentler. It was foolish to be so rough, when it was only her and her.
    ... It had been one afternoon last summer--while she was working at Birch Lodge in the Shawangunks in New York--that she'd realized she was going to kill herself because of loneliness, would have to kill herself unless she went back to basics and started again from the beginning. Unless she did the work, all the research necessary to find out where the beginning was, and then put right what had been so wrong.
    ... And doing that, starting over, was already beginning to help. For example, it had helped with Greg. She felt absolutely comfortable meeting him on the library roof for brown-bag lunches or takeout dinner when he worked late, Tuesdays and Thursdays.--He was a part-time book stacker for the summer, a good on-campus job. They'd meet up there, afternoons or evenings, sometimes with other students working in the library, and sit on the flat, tarred roof in old worn-out deck chairs, looking out over the campus ... the hills.

    She was even interested, now and then, in what Greg had to say. ... So she was definitely getting better, socially.
    People--Rebecca, for example--thought she and Greg Ribideau were close.
    Probably thought they had sex, which they hadn't, not after that once. Even though there was only a two-year difference, Greg was too young for her. He was a really young nineteen, like Rebecca, a baby. In fact, it was Greg and Rebecca who should be together. Rebecca liked him ... did a little girl's restless got-to-pee dance when the three of them met on campus on the way to class. Rebecca, small, sort of cute but not beautiful, was a soft girl. A daddy's girl ... without her daddy, now.
    No more sex, no real sex, with Greg. It would be like being with a springer spaniel. Lots of whining and licking. There wasn't enough to Greg for anything serious. He wouldn't know what to do to her, whether she liked it or not. ...
    Charis turned on her side, and made a pressing fist between her legs. That was better. Something was happening.
    ... But still, she could date Greg sometimes, eat lunch with him and talk about their classes. He was in two of her classes, a regular student at the college, like Rebecca--in summer session to make up credits to save school time later. Greg wasn't stupid.
    They'd talked about their papers, Thursday. He was doing Willa Cather. Charis was doing James Gould