Alan Foster - The Metrognome and Other Stories

She smiled apologetically, shook her head. "Sorry. I don't go out."

"Someone as pretty as you? Come on!" He had a sudden inspiration. "I know what it is. You're from a foreign country, right? You're not sure how to act, how to react to our peculiar American customs. Don't let that, make you a shut-in. Half the time us natives are just as confused about how to act. Just relax. You can't do anything to embarrass me. I don't embarrass. And I won't push you into anything that makes you nervous. I just think you'd enjoy my company. I know I'd enjoy yours. How about it?"

"You're right, Mr. Brevard. I am from a foreign country."

"Just Troy, please. What do I call you?"

"My real name's a bit longer than you'd find comfortable. I use Eula for short."

Eula. That was no help. "Ethiopia? Somewhere in the Caribbean, maybe? Jamaica?"

She shook her head, showing a shy, reluctant smile

"Too close."

"India, then?"

"I won't tell you, Troy. Let me hold on to some secrets."

"You seem to be all secrets, Eula, but okay. See, I said I wouldn't push."

"I don't think you will." Oh, those eyes.

"I think I will go out with you Friday night. Yes, I think I will. It should be educational."

"Real dedicated student, aren't you? Intense observer of local culture."

"I have to be dedicated, Troy. I'm going to graduate this June."

"Me, too. Going to grad school?"

"Yes, but not here."

"Whereabouts?"

"Back home."

"Which is where?"

She wagged a warning finger at him, and it was his turn to grin.

"Okay." He raised both hands. "Guilty. I won't do it again." Maybe she was a refugee from one of the several minor wars that always seemed to be going in the Third World. He could see where that might embarrass her. Time enough to find out.

She wasn't the usual date, but he'd expected as much. Quiet, watching everything and everyone no matter where they went. As he slowly won her confidence she let him take her anywhere, except for parties. She absolutely refused to go partying.

"I don't like them," she told him frankly. "The people are noisy, they drink too much, and then they get silly and out of sorts. You can't learn anything from people in that state. They all act like preadolescents."

"Not like us mature folks, hmm?"

He was joking, but she wasn't.

"We're not mature, Troy. We're both still adolescents."

"Maybe you think of yourself that way, Eula, but I don't. I'm twenty-three."

He could not interpret the look she gave him. Finally she said, "Each of us has an image of ourselves, Troy. I know what I am. I won't be an adult until I graduate. Until I go home."

He shrugged it off. "Hey, I really don't much care for loud parties myself. I just thought it was something you might find educational."

Her smile returned. "I probably would, but not enough to overcome my distaste. Let's go somewhere else tonight." She softened her criticism by moving close to him. It was a first, of sorts. He put his arm around her, no easy task. At six feet, he was a foot taller than she was.

Two months, he thought, enjoying the warmth of her lithe body. Two months to warm her up this much. Yet the old sense of thrust and parry, of chase and conquest, had left him weeks ago. This girl was not just another mark. She was special, unique, and he'd been more deeply affected by her than he'd realized at first. Her quiet sincerity, her honest shyness had reached something deep inside him, had struck something dormant and now slowly awakening.

To his great surprise, he understood that he was falling in love.

Shelby had noticed it, too.

"You're really hung up on this chick, aren't you, man?"

"Yeah, aren't I, lowlife? And don't refer to her as a chick, please."

Shelby put up both hands defensively. "Excuuuse me! Well, it's your life, Troy. Just don't let her run it."

Troy glanced up from the history text he was perusing. It hurt to know that Eula was only a short elevator ride away. But she insisted on separate study time as well as on her privacy. She refused to let him monopolize her.

"I won't. She doesn't want to."

"She still doesn't intimidate you?"

Troy shook his head.

"Well, she would me, man. When I saw that first blank stare on you, I thought I'd better do a little checking, since you were obviously too far gone to care. I mean, we've shared this dump for three years now. You're a good buddy, Troy . I wouldn't want you to get into something over your head."

"What the hell are you talking about?" He closed the book, shoved the snake-necked Tensor light aside.

Shelby studied the fingernails on his right hand. "Just that she's the hidden wonder of the senior class. You ever ask her what she's majoring in, how many units she taking?"

Troy shook his head. "She likes her privacy, remember. I think she's some kind of general major."

His roommate laughed. "You're right there. I guess when you're taking everything, that qualifies you as some kind of general major. She's a regular Einstein. She's carrying three majors: world history, anthropology, and botany. Seventy-six units. What's more, she's doing each curriculum under a different name, and none of 'em are Eula or anything like it."

Troy struggled to digest his friend's information. He could not conceive of any human being carrying that many units. Of course, he didn't really know much about her school hours. He rarely saw her during the day.

"That's physically as well as mentally impossible."

"That's what I thought, man, but she's doing it. I wonder why the three aliases."

Troy thought furiously. "You said it yourself. She's shy, private. If what she's doing got out on campus, she'd have her picture plastered over every paper in town."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess she would. And when the two of you are out together, she doesn't make you feel inferior?"

"No, never."

"Sparing your male ego, I bet."

"No. That's not like her, Shelby. She's not like that. For all her intelligence; she's still unsure of herself. She's got to be at least twenty, yet she always refers to herself as an adolescent."

He kept his friend's information to himself, afraid to reveal what he'd learned to Eula. He didn't want her to think he'd set Shelby to spying on her. He hadn't, but convincing her of that might be difficult.

"After graduation," he told her one night as they sat parked on Camelback Mountain overlooking the lights of Phoenix below, "maybe we can take a vacation together. Nothing intimate," he added quickly. "Just a trip to enjoy each other's company."

"I have to go home, Troy," she told him sadly. "I'm graduating. You know that."

"Yeah, I know. I'm graduating, too, remember? Surely you can take a week off. As hard as you've worked, you deserve a real vacation." He let his excitement spill out. "My folks have money, Eula. Old money. We can go anywhere, anywhere you want to. Africa. Europe. The Seychelles. Frog hunting up the Amazon."

She laughed at that, filling the night with beauty. "You know me a little, Troy. More than anyone else I've met during my schooling.. Yes, I'd like to go looking for frogs up the Amazon. But I can't. I have to go home. I have to graduate. It's not something I could avoid even if I wanted to. And Troy . . ." She hesitated, looked away from him. There was a vast sorrow in her. "You might not like me anymore after I graduate."

He frowned uncertainly. "That's a hell of a thing to say. What difference does graduation make? I'm going to get a master's. We're graduating together."

"No, Troy. We're not. Where I come from graduation means something more than it does for you. I'm graduating out of adolescence as well as school. It's a big change."

"Well, change, then, but don't worry about me still liking you afterward." He couldn't hold it back any longer. It seemed time was running out on him. On them. "Don't worry about me still loving you afterward."