Pearls and walruses...

Gayle went over his schedule again. Turned out he couldn’t take Astronomy to fulfill his Math requirements, after all. And with his test results, he was going to have to take one of the remedial Math courses. The counselors had basically ripped up his plans and put together their own idea of what he should be studying.

At least he would still have his co-ed volleyball, MW at 2.p.m. In fact, it was a great schedule in many ways, no eight a.m. classes, nothing after four, and on Friday, nothing in the afternoon at all. Couldn’t be better, really.

Sitting in the student union after visiting all his classrooms and locating them on the map, he sipped coffee and took time to admire the classic old building he was in. 

The ceiling was made of hammered tin tiles, and the walls were decorated with ornamental flourishes, fake columns made of plaster and wood in some places. Little cherubim on the columns here and there often looked crosseyed or were falling through instead of climbing up the fake ivy. Architecture with a sense of humor, who could have thought of that?

Tall windows between the fake columns on one wall looked out over the Campus Green toward the Haiyakoosie River and the foothills of the Arkoona Mountains beyond. 

He could even see the peak of Mt. Blount, a purple majesty if ever there was one, though the name of the mountain always made him smile. The limp outline it made against the sky had earned it the nickname of Old Blunt locally which was also worth a giggle.

The young man sitting at the long table across from him looked up, smiling a little crookedly. “What’s funny?” he asked.

Gayle shook his head and looked back at his paperwork. Had he laughed out loud? Was he blushing? Was the guy still looking at him? He glanced up to see that the other student seemed to be gazing out the window, too, now.

A sizable specimen, Gayle noted. Probably an athlete. Firm manly jaw, craggy eyebrows, large rough-looking hands; almost surely a jock. The man wore a light, open, denim shirt over a cotton tee so tight that the outline of his pecs was clearly visible. Gayle could even see the circles of masculine nipples poking out.

He blinked. Was he staring?

The man stood, well over six feet Gayle noted, then he left with only a nod in Gayle’s direction. Handsome guy, thought Gayle. Wonder if I have any classes with him?

*

Later, Gayle wandered back over to the sorority house. Classes wouldn’t start until Monday so there was, in effect, a long weekend ahead.

“Hey, Gayle,” Charlie called to him as he entered. She was sitting at the square table in the parlor (there was a round one, too), and she appeared to be doing some paperwork. “Whatcha doin’ with the weekend? Huh?” Charlie was from somewhere out west and often affected an exaggeratedly casual style, like someone from a sitcom. It sounded a bit off to a Midwesterner like Gayle, but Charlie made it work.

“Hadn’t planned anything,” Gayle admitted. Oh, right, he did need to get some polish removal, since his toenails were still pink but he wasn’t going to mention that.

“Well, we’re kinda having a party tomorrow, Friday afternoon. Just those of us who live here. We usually do this every Friday and get dinner for everyone who isn’t going on a date or something,” she explained.

“Oh? So, should I -uh- clear out?”

“No! Course not.” Charlie explained, “Just letting you know, you signed the Covenant, you’re a member of the household. We’ll have snacks and play records and dance and do each other’s hair—you don’t have to do that.” She laughed. “We have a good time.”

“Uh?” Gayle wasn’t sure. But being the only guy at a party of as many as eleven girls had an appeal. “I guess I’ll be there.” He shrugged. “I don’t have anything else to do, and it’s too far for me to be able to go home for a weekend.”

“Great!” said Charlie. “We’ll make it special, just for you.” She added a giggle and a movement of her body that got Gayle’s attention.

Wow, he thought, Charlie is really a hot chick. But no, trying to date one of the sorority would be a bad idea. He laughed out loud to defuse the situation. “Now I really want to be there,” he said.

*

Discussion at dinner that night centered around the Friday Pre-Date Party as everyone called it. Already an ongoing tradition, several of the older girls had some stories about goings-on at previous parties, years back.

“It was the first party in my second semester, late January that year,” Hillary said, tossing back her mane of intensely red hair. “And really, my first date in college was that night. A hunky Russian guy from the polo team — yeah, polo. The school used to be nationally ranked in polo and Pyotr Tergenev was a big reason why. Pete, we called him.”

Bunny asked, “Polo? With ponies?”

“No,” said Dana. “It was water polo—they all rode walruses.”

“What?” Bunny asked amid general laughter. Gayle put a hand over his mouth to hide his grin.

“Anyway, Pete was going to pick me up at six, and I wanted to make a supergood impression on him since I was just eighteen and really inexperienced.” Hilly rolled her eyes to emphasize how inexperienced she was. “And polo players have to be rich, ‘cause you have to have your own mounts, at least two of them.”

“Wow,” said Bunny. “How much does a walrus cost?”

Hilly ignored her and talked over the giggles. “I wanted to go all out, hair, nails, clothes, shoes, everything had to be perfect. I even borrowed a necklace from…” she looked at Isadore, “Who was the French girl, a senior that year?”

“She wasn’t French, just her name. Brie,” said Izzy. “Spelled like the cheese. We called her Breezy. Short for Breezy-Cheesy.”

“Yeah,” agreed Hilly. “Breezy loaned me this necklace; her dad owned a department store or something. No, he ran the jewelry department of a chain of stores. Yeah. She had the necklace, like, as a permanent loan from her dad. It was gorgeous. Pearls and crystals of different sizes alternating on three strands. Real pearls and the crystals were -uh- leaded glass that looked like diamonds and were heavier than rocks would have been.”

“Ooo,” said several of the girls and even Gayle was impressed.

“So there I was, the sisters had jumped in, and I was done to the nines. New lingerie, a bullet bra out to here,” she gestured at her chest, and everyone laughed again. “French nails, silk hose, a black dress with lavender checks at the hem and cuffs, hair piled up on my head, earrings, bangles, the works. And this $500 necklace, I shit you not, that’s what it cost.”

Someone passed the cuss jar for Hilly having said ‘shit’ at the table, and she put a dime in from the little heap she kept in front of her at every meal. Half the money in the jar was usually from her, and she always tried to recoup her losses when the money was cashed in on pizza or take-out Chinese.

Hilly continued her story while the table giggled at her paying her latest fine so nonchalantly. “I’m standing at the top of the stairs above the parlor, waiting for Pete to arrive so I can make an entrance,” she waved a hand in self-mockery. “And I’m clutching my pearls because I’m nervous….” She paused dramatically, holding a fist clutched under her chin.

Everyone looked expectantly at her. “The doorbell rang, and I spasmed, my arm jerked down….” Again she paused. “I broke the chain, all three of them, actually.” Gasps. “Almost sixty pearls and a couple hundred crystals fell to the top of the stairs and bounced down them and over the sides and all over the parlor.” 

Hilly rolled her eyes as the room exploded in laughter. When it had quieted a bit, she went on. “Everyone in the house ran in to see what I was shrieking about and started trying to catch the pearls and crystals and…. No one got the door until Pete rang the bell the third time, and Jan,” she looked toward Izzy. “Remember, Jan? Tall blonde from Minnie-Soda? Jan finally let him in.”

Gayle almost choked, imagining being the man at the door.

“So Pete comes in, and here are eight or ten of us, crawling around on the floor, picking up pearls and crystals, and I’m in this gorgeous gown, crying my eyes out, and some of the other girls were all dressed up for dates, too.” She had to talk louder at the end to overcome the volume of laughter at the table.

She looked directly at Gayle, grinning. “And that’s why we have our Friday Pre-Date Party, to get ready for the next embarrassing disaster!”

When the laughter subsided, someone asked, “Did you find all the pieces?”

Hilly nodded. “All but one pearl and dozen or so of the crystals, which may have got crushed, but it cost us forty dollars to get it restrung. Everyone chipped in, and Pete paid half. And we found that last pearl a year later.”

Gayle had enjoyed the story and told Charlie so. “Hilly is so gorgeous, but now I know she’s human.”

Charlie nodded. “Yeah, so you’re going to be here Friday afternoon?”

“Sure,” Gayle said. “It’ll be fun.”

Bunny leaned into the conversation. “We always have fun. And I figured the water polo thing out….”

They looked at her.

She explained, “Pete had to be rich ‘cause it’s not buying the walruses that costs so much, it’s keeping them in a stable when you’re not playing the game.” 

They all laughed at the cockeyed logic of it, but Gayle noted that Bunny had a twinkle in her eye when she delivered the punchline.

*

Later, Bunny asked Charlie, “Did you tell him that everyone comes to the party barefoot?”

“He’ll find out,” Charlie assured her.