"Becky!" came a sharp voice from outside, and the door rattled.
"Please, Audrey!" Becky retorted, her fingers touching the window latch. She gritted her teeth, then threw it open. A blast of chilly December night air blew into her face and she shivered. She couldn't go out there nude. Desperately she looked around the bathroom for anything she could use to cover herself. There was a large towel hanging on the rack, and she seized it with the hope of the suddenly-reprieved.
Becky stood on the bathtub, put a foot on the bowl of the sink, and hoisted herself to the small window. It was going to be a tight squeeze, but thank God she was slimly built. Marjie could never have gotten her overly voluptuous frame out such a narrow opening.
Towel in hand, Becky perched on the window, her skin going goose pimpled in the cold breeze. She brought her legs up, squatted in the window frame, and thought of what might happen to her. If she missed in her leap, she might fall to the ground, two stories below, and possibly break her neck. If she went back now, back into the bedroom with the suddenly treacherous Audrey, there were still three guys left for her to fuck. On the other band, if she could jump to the tree, she would be safe. She could wrap herself in the towel, run like a scared deer to the haven of Bentley Hall, and be in danger of no more than catching a mild chill. Oh, Jesus, she prayed, let me make it! She pressed her lips together tightly and bounded forward.
The limb upon which she cast herself was strong. It bowed and bent as she clung to it, but it held her. She slithered along it, hugged gratefully the body of the tree, and began to descend it to the ground. Light bathed her suddenly, and she looked over her shoulder to see that she was in full view of the picture window in the dining room. Several of the actives were sitting in chairs, drinks in hand, talking cheerfully, and their eyes fell upon her nude form, towel clenched in one hand. She saw them jump to their feet in surprise, saw one run out of the room.
Becky was only four or five feet from the ground. She jumped, heels drawn up to help break her fall, and landed hard. She sucked back a gasp, stood up, wrapped the pitifully thin towel around her frame, and broke into a shuddering, panting run.
"Come back, Becky!" came a voice behind her, and she stopped with a grunt to look back at the sorority house, looming in the dankness like one of those sinister castles in the Gothic novels so popular among the dorm girls. Audrey was standing on the porch of the Sig Alph house, the Zeta Rho boys at her side.
"Fuck you!" Becky shrieked. "Fuck you! Fuck you!" Her words shrilled in the still night like a sudden police siren and she was startled at their fierceness. The boys were starting off the porch after her and she gave a desperate heave of breast and set out for safety.
She bounded across the street, her lungs burning and fit to burst asunder, the towel knot slipping as she moved. Becky felt the covering start to drop away from her, and she reached in desperation to catch it, gathering it up to cover at least the front of her body. The night air was frigid upon her unwrapped ass as her bare feet smacked against the hand pavement.
The houses around were dark. She scooted between two of them, came out on the far side of the block, square into the Campus Green. On the other end of the Green rose the tall facade of Bentley Hall, into which she knew they dared not chase her.
Her heart was jumping into her throat each time her frozen bare foot touched down. The footsteps behind her, the racing pad of male feet, were growing closer and closer. Becky sped across the Green, trying to lose them. She raced in a zigzag pattern, first here, next there, trying to confuse her pursuers.
Suddenly they were out of sight. Still clutching the towel to her breasts, she made for a small hedge beside a park-type bench, crouched trembling in the shadows it afforded. If only she could catch a breath, then elude them for just a few minutes longer, she could reach safety.
Footsteps sounded. Her breath froze as she raised her eyes slowly, very slowly, fearing to see who was drawing near. It was a man. And it wasn't one of the Zeta Rho boys! He was wearing a long coat and he was coming from the library, so brightly-lit in the dankness of the campus at night.
Becky's heart gave a quick leap of hope. She jumped to her feet and ran toward the man. "Oh, God," she shrilled, "you've got to help me! Please!"
"I'm very sorry," said a voice at his ear. "Smoking is not allowed in the library."
Dave looked up with a startled face. "Lord," he sighed, "I'm the one who should be sorry." He stuck the pipe hastily in his coat pocket.
"Please observe library regulations," said the young student assistant librarian who had interrupted his musings.
Dave got up, red-faced, and walked around the stacks. He pulled a book off the shelves here and there, purely at random, replaced it, and picked up another. Oh, the hell with it! he thought. He wasn't getting any work done at all. Why had he chosen a seat that looked out on Becky Ryan's sorority house, anyway? Because that seat had a view of Becky Ryan's sorority house. Snake swallowing its tail. Everything was a vicious circle. He forced himself not to look out the window as he picked up his notebook, donned his long overcoat, and departed his fruitless vigil in the library.
He left the library, after the security man on duty had checked his books to make sure he wasn't stealing anything, and started across the spacious Green toward the parking place where he had left his Volkswagen.
Dave Shearing's mind was idle as he strode through the chill night air, his feet clicking on the brick walkway the University had laid through the grass. Words, desperate words intruded upon his consciousness, and he looked up in surprise to see a figure approaching him. The figure of a tall young girl-blonde, pretty, he could tell in the lunar glow, and apparently clad only in a towel draped in front of her body.
His eyes opened wider when he got a clear look at her face. What was she saying? "Please help me"?
"Ill met by moonlight, proud Rebecca," he paraphrased the Band of Avon, although those words occurred in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and not in anything that had to do with the current frigidity of winter. "What are you doing?" he added. "Are you streaking in weather like this?"
More figures appeared from the shadows surrounding them. They approached Becky, and as she caught the sound of their feet she scampered toward Dave; By God, she was naked except for that towel.
"Come on," one of the figures said, in a deep masculine voice. "You'll catch your death of cold out here, Becky."
"No!" she whispered. "No!"
A man came closer, his hand outstretched. Becky saw the gesture, melted against Dave. The history instructor could look down her bare back and enjoy the sight of Miss Ryan's very bare, very pretty young ass.
"Look," Dave said in a pleasant, resonating voice. "I don't think the young lady wants to join you."
"Don't get involved," said another voice, and Dave looked round. He could tell that there were four guys here now, and there was an approaching shadow in the semi-moonlit darkness that seemed to be a tall girl in a long dress.
"Why don't you fellows go play somewhere else?" Dave suggested with just the slightest trace of insolence in his cheery tones. "The young lady doesn't seem interested."
"I told you to keep out of this," said one of the voices.
"I'm afraid I'm involved," Dave smiled. "Come on, Becky," he said, touching her arm. He slipped out of his heavy coat. "Wrap this around you," he suggested to the trembling girl at his elbow. "It's pretty cold for attire like yours. I do like it, though," he added.
She took his coat, slipped it over her shoulders, her fingers holding it shut in front. The night comers still stood menacing in the shadows, and their female companion drew nearer. Her voice came clear through the cold air.
"Becky is coming with us," she told Dave. "Aren't you, love?"
"No!" Becky screamed, agony dripping from her throat. "I'm never coming with you!"
"That settles it, then," Dave declared. "Come on, Becky. My car is just over there."
The four boys came nearer and nearer. Dave raised a hand in warning. "Don't try anything foolish," he said softly. "It may be unpleasant."
One of them made a lunge for Becky, grabbing at her arm. Dave's fist flew like a dart of lightning, contacted alongside the boy's chin, and he fell Like a shot. Another stepped in and Dave leaped high, his feet striking out and hitting home. When he came down Dave lunged for the other two, his furious hands chopping and slashing. Becky watched in astonishment as the burly Zeta Rho men dropped.
"What was that?" she asked breathlessly.
"Haven't you ever seen a Bruce Lee film?" Dave replied. "Or David Carradine on television? I used to be fairly good at that, but I smoke too much nowadays. It's called kung fu."
Audrey appeared in the moonlit patch of Green, her face wreathed in sinister shadows. "Becky," she said, "I'm very disappointed in you." On the ground the four Zeta Rhos were picking themselves up, feeling to see if they had any broken bones. Their discovery of relative good health coincided with their decision to get the fuck away from the madman they had tangled with, and they vanished unobtrusively.
Audrey looked after their departing forms, disgust on her face. "I guess you realize that you're finished in Sigma Alpha," she observed.
"Fuck Sigma Alpha," Becky retorted angrily. "And fuck you tool"
"If that's how you feel, then." And Audrey was gone as well.
Dave put his arm around Becky. "What was that all about?" he asked.
"Don't talk about it," she said. "It's over and I'm through with it. So let's let it die."
He shrugged. "If you want. Now. Where shall I escort you? To your dorm?"
Becky reflected for a moment. She couldn't bear the thought of returning now to that empty room, the room from which her sexual advances had driven Marjie weeks before. Tonight it would be more lonely than ever, and she knew that if she had to endure a long darkness by herself, it would drive her to the very edges of her sanity.
Dave spoke while she was trying to reach a decision. "You told me a long time ago that you wouldn't have anything more to do with me even if I took my cock out in the middle of the Green and begged you for it." His hand flew to the zipper of his pants. "I think this is the middle of the Green. If it isn't, it's close enough, at least." He reached inside his trousers and brought his penis into the moonlight. "I still want you, Becky," he said softly. "I love you very much. I've tried to tell you in every way I could."
She smiled at him, touched his cock, so warm in the chili night air. "Can I go home with you, Dave?" she asked. "But you've got to understand this. I won't go to bed with you. It's just that I have to have some company while I get my life straightened out. Okay?"
"Anything you say." He took her hand and they started across the darkened lawn toward his waiting Volkswagen.
Changes, changes! Becky thought as they approached his car. How her life had changed since the day she and Ted had come to terms about the future of their relationship. The love she had felt for Audrey had disappeared forever, and she knew now, in the aftermath, that the final truth she had seemingly discovered in Sapphic love was only a way station on her path to happiness. It wasn't the ultimate answer. Perhaps there were no ultimate answers.
She knew as she walked with him, hand in hand, that she would fuck Dave tonight, and she knew that she would enjoy it. He would reawaken the heterosexual impulses that had lain dormant in her since her first evening with Audrey. Funny. He had told her that he loved her. The same hopeless passion she had known for her almost-sorority sister. She couldn't tell him she loved him, because she didn't. She doubted that she could ever know true, selfless, all-consuming love with anyone, but she intended to keep on looking.
The Dave Shearing phase of her life was just beginning and she knew it would be as evanescent as the glow of a firefly in the night, but there was no reason not to try it on for size. After all, her heart sang in her ears, "Your God-given body is your own." It was hers to keep, hers to give away, hers to enjoy. Maybe there was nothing more in life than the realization of that single, important truth. And she had so much more living to do!