The Graduate by Charles Webb Page A

bought a package of cigarettes when he ordered his first drink and smoked several of them as he drank. He kept his face to the window, sometimes watching the reflection of people as they came in through the door of the bar and found tables, but usually looking ‘through the glass at the lighted walks and the trees and the shrubbery outside.
    After several drinks he gave the waitress a tip and left the bar for the telephone booths in the lobby. He looked up the Robinsons’ telephone number, memorized it and closed himself into a booth. For a long time he sat with the receiver in one hand and a coin in the other but without dropping it into the machine. Finally he returned the receiver to its hook and lighted another cigarette. He sat smokingit inside the closed booth and frowing down at one of the booth’s walls. Then he ground it out under his foot and walked out of the booth and into the one beside it to call Mrs. Robinson.
    “I don’t quite know how to put this,” he said when she answered the phone.

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    “Benjamin?”
    “I say I don’t quite know how to put this,” he said again, “but I’ve been thinking about that time after the party. After the graduation party.”
    “You have.”
    “Yes,” he said. “And I wondered—I wondered if I could buy you a drink or something.”
    A boy wearing a summer tuxedo closed himself into the booth beside Benjamin. Benjamin listened to him drop his coin into the telephone and dial.
    “Shall I meet you somewhere?” Mrs. Robinson said.
    “Well,” Benjamin said, “I don’t know. I mean I hope you don’t think I’m out of place or anything. Maybe I could—maybe I could buy you a drink and we could just talk. Maybe—”
    “Where are you,” she said.
    “The Taft Hotel.”
    “Do you have a room there?”
    “What?”
    “Did you get a room?”
    “Oh no,” Benjamin said. “No. I mean—look, don’t come if you—if you’re busy. I don’t want to—”
    “Will you give me an hour?”
    “What?”
    “An hour?”
    “Oh,” Benjamin said. “Well. I mean don’t feel you have to come if you don’t—in fact maybe some other—”
    “I’ll be there in an hour,” Mrs. Robinson said. She hung up the phone.
    Exactly an hour later she arrived. She had on a neat brown suit and white gloves and a small brown hat. Benjamin was sitting at the corner table looking out the window at the grounds of the hotel and didn’t see her until she was standing directly across the table from him.
    “Hello Benjamin.”

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    “Oh,” Benjamin said. He rose quickly from the chair, jarring the table with his leg. “Hello. Hello.”
    “May I sit down?”
    “Of course,” Benjamin said. He hurried around the table and held the chair for her as she sat.
    “Thank you.”
    Benjamin watched her remove the two white gloves and drop theminto a handbag she had set on the floor. Then he cleared his throat and returned to his chair.
    “How are you,” Mrs. Robinson said.
    “Very well. Thank you.” He looked down at a point in the center of the table.
    It was quiet for several moments.
    “May I have a drink?” Mrs. Robinson said.
    “A drink,” he said. “Of course.” He looked up for the waitress. She was on the other side of the room taking an order. Benjamin whistled softly and motioned to her but she turned and walked in the other direction. “She didn’t see me,” he said, rising from his chair and jarring the table. “I’ll—”
    Mrs. Robinson reached across the table and rested her hand on his wrist. “There’s time,” she said.
    Benjamin nodded and sat down. He kept his eyes on the waitress as she made her way to the bar and placed an order with the bartender.
    As she turned around and waited for him to fill it Benjamin waved his arm through the air.
    “She saw me,” he said.
    “Good,” Mrs. Robinson said.
    They drank quietly, Benjamin smoking cigarettes and looking out the window, sometimes drumming his fingers on the surface of