Knowledge is power, wisdom is a plan...

Gayle first read the Covenant with some care but began to skim the boring parts as he went along. It all seemed pretty standard except a paragraph had been added for male residents at the end, specifying that they had an 8 p.m. curfew, Monday to Thursday, which could turn into a pain. Weekend curfew would be 11 p.m. which could be a bother too.

If I stay out late, maybe I can sleep on someone’s couch, he thought. Or if I get a girlfriend…. He left that part unvoiced, even to himself. He hadn’t ever had a girlfriend that would have let him sleep over, but college girls might be different.

Another added paragraph said he was forbidden to date members of the sorority but could attend public functions if accompanied by two or more of the girls. Protecting their reputation, he supposed. Well, the girls he’d met so far, Ash, Stella and Bunny, were delightful but it was a big campus.

Miz Frankie called them all into dinner just then, and he left the Covenant on the buffet, unsigned so far. This would be his first meeting with the whole sorority, and he didn’t want to be distracted.

“Hey!” said one girl as he entered. “It’s the designated jar-opener!” Almost all the girls laughed and Gayle did, too.

“Don’t mind Charlie,” said a tall brunette, “she’s a joker.” Which got more laughter, including from the blonde identified as Charlie.

The brunette, who had a touch of red in her hair, was called Bailey. Gayle got introductions to all of the girls but wasn’t able to keep who went with which name straight. For one thing, several girls seemed to go by more than one name like Mallory/Bunny and, it turned out, Estel/Stella. So that didn’t help at all.

But the food was good, the company enjoyable and Gayle had a good time getting acquainted. Being in the same room with nine beautiful young women was certainly no hardship, he reflected. Two of the girls weren’t at dinner, he was told, Hillary and Jayne had gone out with friends. More names to remember, thought Gayle.

After the meal, two of the girls helped clean the table and washed dishes with Miz Frankie in the kitchen while everyone else went their own way. Ash stopped by the buffet and picked up the Covenant. “Have you signed this yet?” she asked Gayle.

“No,” he said. “Let me do that.” He’d read enough, despite some antique phrasing in a few places, it seemed a pretty standard rental contract with the added stipulations to protect the girl reputation.

Ash handed him a fountain pen and held the papers open at the appropriate spot. Some of the names on the page he recognized as belonging to girls he had just met. Mallory and Charlie were the names just above the line Ash indicated he should sign on. The dates next to their names would have been in the early spring.

“Huh,” said Gayle, beginning to write his name. “This pen writes brown ink. In fact, this whole Covenant thing is in brown ink.” 

“It’s craft ink,” said Ash. “Miz Frankie makes it right here in the House.”

“Oh, that’s kind of cool,” he commented as he finished, dating his own signature.

Ash, Bunny and Stella beamed at him and he smiled back.

“Well,” he said. “I guess my curfew kicks in, since this is Tuesday night. But I’ve got plenty to do, getting things arranged downstairs.” He headed toward the door to the basement. “I’ll be in my suite if I’m needed to open any jars or reach a high shelf.”

The girls giggled. “Jayne is going to be happy, she’s the tall one,” said Stella. She looked at her own hands. “But I’m a farm girl, I’ve been the one who had to open jars.” More giggles.

“Spiders,” said Ash with a shudder. “We need a spider killer, too. Gayle, you’re not afraid of spiders are you?”

“Uh, no,” he admitted. “I don’t like to kill them, though. I usually scoop them up on a piece of paper and carry them outside. Except for black widows, those I will kill.” He glanced at the door to the basement. “Uh, there aren’t any black widows down there, are there?”

“Who knows?” said Ash callously.

“There weren’t when Charlie and I were sleeping down there last year,” Bunny put in. “We moved upstairs in June when two other girls graduated.”

“So, it’s been empty over the summer?” 

The girls nodded.

Gayle sighed. “I’ll keep an eye out for creepy-crawlies,” he said and the girls giggled again. He put his hand on the door to the stairwell. He liked the girls, and this whole experience seemed to be worth a few spider hunts.

Ash added something. “Just as you’re not supposed to go upstairs without an invitation from three or more of us, we’re not supposed to go down to your quarters alone or without you inviting us.”

“Makes sense,” he said. “Consider yourselves invited.”

“No,” said Ash. “No blanket invites, but we might take you up on it some other time?” This time, only Stella and Bunny giggled.

“Do you have stuff to do in the morning?” Stella asked.

“I do,” he said. “Eight a.m. registration, in fact. I couldn’t register earlier because I didn’t have a residence.”

“Classes start week after next,” said Stella. “But Ash, Bunny, Keane, and Charlie are cheerleaders; they have practice tomorrow.”

Gayle smiled at Ash. “You look like a cheerleader, but I wouldn’t have guessed it.”

She snorted. “Because I seem to have more than half a brain, I bet. No, it’s great practice for gymnastics in the winter. Then I’ll do track and field in the spring. Huh?”

Mallory giggled. “She just wants to get out there and prance in front of the football teams.” She showed her dimples in a big grin. “That’s why I do it.”

Ash turned red but denied nothing, and everyone had another laugh.

Only a few minutes later, Ash commented that she needed to put the Covenant back in the safe in Miz Frankie’s office and reminded the other girls that they had a meeting of the Sorority Steering Committee at nine.

“It’s a committee of the whole, so we all have to be there,” she explained to Gayle. “Except you,” she added with a grin.

“Yeah, yeah, you girls have to have your secret meetings,” he allowed, grinning back. “But why on a Tuesday?”

“Because tomorrow is Wednesday, of course,” said Bunny.

Gayle chuckled, but the other girls only rolled their eyes.

“Seriously,” said Ash, “it’s the only night of the week, we can be nearly certain no one is doing anything away from the house.”

“Oh, yeah, huh?” Gayle nodded, seeing the logic. Mondays were often holidays and Wednesday to Friday nights often had school or social functions.

After that exchange, the girls finally escaped up the stairs, and Gayle could retire to his subterranean man-cave. That particular description made him smile as he negotiated the narrow stairs, pulling the chain for the large ceiling light as he descended.

At five-ten, Gayle was about average height for America in the 1950s, but he was a slender man with a lean body and a boniness to him that showed in his face, too. Prominent cheekbones, deeply set hazel eyes and a wide jaw combined with his neatly-trimmed mane of reddish-blond hair to make him handsome and his looks and easy grin gave him charm.

He sighed, though. The girls of the house certainly seemed interesting, and interested, but he’d read the Covenant carefully enough to know they were decidedly off-limits. His dating experiences in high school didn’t seem as relevant to college life—no sock hops, malt shops, or letter sweaters in evidence.

He set about distributing his belongings around his new space. Shirts, pants, and coats into the armoire; socks, underwear, and sweaters into drawers in the dresser. His toiletries he left in a leather bag near the tub where he could easily use them or carry them upstairs to the full bath. How odd to have a bathtub in his room but no sink or toilet bowl.

The bed had already been made, but he found the spare sheets and tore it apart to remake it, still a bit worried about the suggestion that there might be spiders about. It would be an odd basement that didn’t harbor a few, he thought.

He considered it lucky his mother had insisted he bring pajamas, since otherwise he would have had to plan on getting dressed to go up to the bathroom. Changing to his PJs, he sprawled across the bed and took out one of the books he had brought along. It was a curious book, two novels bound so that one book could be turned over to reveal the front cover of the other.

The books were by Andre Norton and Gordon Dickson, two science fiction writers he was familiar with already, and he looked forward to reading both books—a darn good value for just 35 cents. He could read a few hours before he needed to go to sleep.

*

Upstairs, the girls settled in for naps, since they would all be getting up later for their regular, weekly Wisdom’s Eve meeting—aka, the Steering Committee.