"Sure."

"What took you so long?"

"I had to walk my bike down from the road."

"You should get one like mine, sweetie."

"Maybe I will. Maybe I will."

She had bought the breakfast at a fast-food place beyond the motels. Two quart cardboard containers of some kind of reconstituted orange drink. There were eight honey buns, which seemed to be some dark sweet stickiness speckled with pecan parts, spread on bread dough containing the occasional raisin, and a stubby thermos filled with acid coffee laced with artificial cream and too much sugar. She laid the breakfast out on the blanket and, with a certain ceremony, handed him his 2-77 paper napkin and empty foam coffee cup with plastic spoon.

Doreen sat cross-legged, beamed at him, ate hungrily and said, "Eerie ice ear."

"What's that?"

She swallowed.

"It's really nice here. With the sun slanting in like now."

"Really nice," he agreed. His honey bun had turned into a glutinous paste and he could not swallow it down without the help of some of the simulated orange-type drink. As soon as it was down, he realized a sharp crumb of pecan had worked its way under the partial bridge on the right upper side of his mouth. He managed to sluice it out with some of the sugary coffee. He refused a third sticky bun. She ate it and the rest of them and finished off his orange drink and what was left of the coffee.

With speed and efficiency of movement she bundled the trash into the paper bag the juice had been in, and strapped it and the coffee thermos to the carrier on her new bike. She came back and, grinning down at him sitting there on the blanket, she quickly slipped the white shorts down and off, pulled her halter off and fell upon him, working at the buttons of his damp shirt, wearing a pretty frown of concentration, breathing through her open mouth.

When the morning sun was an hour higher, she lay beside him, her breathing slow and deep. Her left leg lay slack across his naked waist, and it felt uncommonly heavy. Her eyes were closed, the white curling lashes so close to him that he could not focus on them. They were a pale blur. Her mouth lay half open, the lips puffed. He could see the amber speckling of faint freckles against the golden tan of her left shoulder. Her head lay heavy on his left arm, numbing his fingers. Her face was the face of a child in sleep. The honey buns and orange drink were a leaden mass in his belly. He had not removed all of the pecan from under the partial bridge. The pain that had alarmed him when he was cycling hard to catch her had come back again fleetingly in the midst of lovemaking, giving him a momentary feeling of impending doom, quickly lost amid her dauntless energies.

He turned his head slightly and looked up through the pine boughs at patches of pale blue morning sky. A scouting patrol of crows came wheeling through the pines, cawing about successful raids. A blue jay stood on a low branch, tilting its head from side to side. He could hear the murmurous sound of the creek, and the cawing in the far distance, and the sound of a jet somewhere. The morning seemed uncommonly drab to him, as if all his senses had become dulled, faded by overuse, a morning of postcard scenes thumbed through too often.

The left calf was beginning to cramp again. She made a small buzzing snoring sound and he felt her breath against his chin and throat. With his passions spent he could look upon her asleep and see her as a vital, healthy, boring child. There was a certain grossness to the appetites he had helped her develop.

Six months from now she would be recovering nicely from the physical infatuation she had thought deathless love. And six years from now she would have to stop and think to remember very much about him or their affair.

God help me! The three words appeared in his mind so suddenly and unexpectedly he thought for a moment he had heard someone else speak them. But with his voice.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I want to stop this. It demeans me. It makes me feel small and dirty and wicked and cruel. Or perhaps, pointless. Maybe that is the worst of it. To feel that one's life has no meaning other than pleasurable sensation. A manipulation of nerve ends, achieved through lies and deceit. A strange thing happened to me when this girl's mother prayed...

And it happened again, just as quickly. As if a curtain had been pulled aside and then closed, giving him a glimpse of some wonder beyond his ability to comprehend. It made his eyes fill again. Vision. Revelation. But without body or substance.

She woke with a start, sat up quickly and slapped her thigh.

"Darn fire ant," she said.

"And here's another. And there's one on your ankle, Joe."

They killed the ants and got dressed. She put on the other clothing she had brought, clothing suitable for going back through the campus gate a gray skirt and a short-sleeved white blouse. She shook the blanket out and folded her shorts and halter into it and placed the bundle under the rubber straps on her carrier.

They both wheeled their bicycles up the curving narrow path toward the road. She was in the lead.

2-79 Turning her head halfway around to speak back to him behind her, she said, "This guy named Roger something smuggled a recording of the sound track of Flashdance into the dorm. We're not supposed to have music from any movie that isn't on the list, you know?"

"No, I didn't know."

"So Bobby made cassettes from the record, and he gave one to Lolly. She came sneaking into my room last night with that Walkman she has with the two sets of ear things, and we listened with the volume turned high until we like to freaked out, you know?"

"You can injure your hearing doing that, Doric."

"So back there when we were doing it, that music was jumping around in my head, right to the same beat and everything. Joe, honey, could you get me a Walkman like Lolly has? I mean, get one for us, because if we were both hearing that same music at the same time, it would be fantastic, I think.

I mean, it would be so much better and louder than those funny old records you play. That music from last night is still going on in my head."

'"Funny old records"?"

"You know. Like classical. Like in church almost."

He shut his jaw hard and winced with the pain under his partial bridge. His left calf was so knotted he limped badly. He felt as if he might throw up his orange drink and sticky buns.

His body was wet with a cold and oily perspiration.

They had reached the road. She turned to him and said, "You sure don't have very much to say this morning, Joe honey. You know, you look a little weird. You're kind of a funny color."

"I'm fine, really."

"Look, what about the Walkman? Will you get us a Walkman with two ear things? There's two holes on the top you plug into, so we both will be hearing the same music."

"I'll think about it."

"I can tell you don't like the idea. You've got that look. How do you know you won't like it unless we get one and try?"

He sighed audibly.

"Where do you get them?"

She grinned at him.

"Hey, that's wonderful. They got them at the Music Box in the Mall, like for ninety-nine fifty for the best one." She frowned at him.

"You act real down. Is anything wrong?"

"I guess I'm thinking about how much work I have to do. I've gotten a little behind."

"Would that be my little behind?"

"For God's sake! Don't be so goddamn coarse!"

"So pardon me for living! You've got no sense of humor today, Joe. You're kind of boring."

"That feeling could be mutual."

She stared at him, her face immobilized by shock and hurt.