What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?
That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.
Once, when she specifically lumped me with those musical types, I asked her what the order was,
and she replied, smiling, 'Alphabetical.' At the time I smiled too. But now I sit and wonder whether
she was listing me by my first name - in which case I would trail Mozart - or by my last name, in
which case I would edge in there between Bach and the Beatles. Either way I don't come first, which
for some stupid reason bothers hell out of me, having grown up with the notion that I always had to
be number one. Family heritage, don't you know?
In the fall of my senior year, I got into the habit of studying at the Radcliffe library. Not just to eye
the cheese, although I admit that I liked to look. The place was quiet, nobody knew me, and the
reserve books were less in demand. The day before one of my history hour exams, I still hadn't
gotten around to reading the first book on the list, an endemic Harvard disease. I ambled over to the
reserve desk to get one of the tomes that would bail me out on the morrow. There were two girls
working there. One a tall tennis-anyone type, the other a bespectacled mouse type. I opted for Minnie
Four-Eyes.
'Do you have The Waning of the Middle Ages?'
She shot a glance up at me.
'Do you have your own library?' she asked.
'Listen, Harvard is allowed to use the Radcliffe library.'
'I'm not talking legality, Preppie, I'm taking ethics. You guys have five million books. We have a
few lousy thousand.'
Christ, a superior-being type! The kind who think since the ratio of Radcliffe to Harvard is five to
one, the girls must be five times as smart. I normally cut these types to ribbons, but just then I badly]
needed that goddamn book. '
'Listen, I need that goddamn book.'
'Wouldja please watch your profanity, Preppie?'
'What makes you so sure I went to prep school?'
'You look stupid and rich,' she said, removing her glasses.
'You're wrong,'' I protested. 'I'm actually smart and poor.'
'Oh, no, Preppie. I'm smart and poor.'
She was staring straight at me. Her eyes were brown. Okay, maybe I look rich, but I wouldn't let
some 'Cliffie - even one with pretty eyes - call me dumb.
'What the hell makes you so smart?' I asked.
'I wouldn't go for coffee with you,' she answered.
'Listen - I wouldn't ask you.'
'That,' she replied, 'is what makes you stupid.'
Let me explain why I took her for coffee. By shrewdly capitulating at the crucial moment - i.e., by
