They sat at a table by the window, where a red neon sign flashed periodically on their faces, giving the whole atmosphere the feeling of a dream — which Ted still half-believed it was. While waiting for their pizza they each sipped a beer.
“I can’t understand why a girl like you would even dream of accepting a blind date,” said Ted.
“Well, it’s better than sitting home studying on a Saturday night, isn’t it?”
“But you must be besieged with offers. I mean, I always imagined you were booked up through 1958.”
“That’s one of the great Harvard myths, Ted. Half of Radcliffe sits around feeling miserable on Saturday night because everybody at Harvard just assumes somebody else has asked them out. Meanwhile, all the girls at Wellesley have roaring social lives.”
Ted was amazed. “I wish to hell I had known. I mean, you never mentioned …”
“Well, it’s not the sort of thing you bring up over Creek verbs and English muffins,” she replied, “although I sometimes wished I had.”
Ted was nearly bowled over.
“Do you know, Sara,” he confessed, “I’ve been dying to ask you out since the very first minute I saw you.”
She looked at him with sudden brightness in her eyes.
“Well, what the hell took you so long — am I that intimidating?” she asked.
“Not anymore.”
He parked the Chevy in front of Cabot Hall and walked her to the door. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes.
“Sara,” he said firmly, “I’ve waded through a year of English muffins for this.”
And he kissed her with the passion that he’d stored up in a million fantasies.
She responded with an equal fervor.
When at last he started home, he was so intoxicated that he barely felt his feet make contact with the ground. Then suddenly he stopped. Oh shit, he thought, I left the car in front of Cabot Hall! He dashed back to retrieve it, hoping Sara would not notice his idiotic error from her window.
But at that moment, Sara Harrison’s eyes were not focused on anything. She was simply sitting motionless on her bed, staring into space.
The final lyrics of Greek 2B were by an author not generally known for amorous verse — Plato.
“It’s ironic,” Professor Havelock remarked, “but the philosopher who banished poetry from his Ideal Republic was himself the author of perhaps the most perfect lyric ever written.” And he then read out in Greek one of the famous Aster epigrams.
Appropriately enough, the bells of Memorial Hall tolled the end of the class. As they walked out the door together, Ted whispered to Sara, “I wish I were the heavens.”
“Nothing doing,” she replied. “I want you right nearby.”
And they walked toward The Bick hand in band.
November is the cruelest month — at least for ten percent of the sophomore class. For it is then that the Final Clubs (so called because you can belong to only one) make their definitive selections. These eleven societies exist merely on the edge of Harvard life. But it is, one may say, the gilt edge.
A Final Club is an elite, if homogeneous, institution where rich preppies can go and have drinks with other rich preppies. These gentlemanly sodalities do not intrude on college life. Indeed, the majority of Harvard men barely know they exist.
But, needless to say, November was a busy month for Messrs. Eliot, Newall, and Wigglesworth. Their suite was a veritable mecca for tweedy pilgrims, flocking to implore them to join their order.
Like modern musketeers, the three decided they’d stick together. Though they got invited to punches for most of the clubs, it was pretty clear that they’d go to either the Porcellian, the AD, or the Fly.
In fact, if all got asked, they knew they’d join the Porc. If you’re going to bother with these things, it might as well be the undisputed number one, “the oldest men’s club in America.”
Having been included in the P.C.’s last-cut dinner, they assumed they were in.
Back at Eliot, they were still in their penguin suits, nursing a final digestif, when there was a sudden knock at the door.
Newall quipped that it might be some desperate emissary from another club — perhaps the AD, which took Franklin D. Roosevelt when the Porcellian blackballed him.
It turned out to be Jason Gilbert.
“Am I disturbing you guys?” he asked somberly.
“No, not at all,” Andrew responded. “Come in and join us for a brandy.”
“Thanks, but I never touch the stuff,” he replied.
His glance made them curiously self-conscious about their attire.
“The final dinner, huh?” he inquired. “Yeah,” Wig replied casually.
“The Porc?” he asked.
“Right the first time,” Newall sang out.
But neither Mike nor Dick sensed the tinge of bitterness in Jason’s voice.
“Was it a tough decision, guys?” he asked.
“Not really,” said Wig. “We had a couple of other options, but the P.C. seemed the most attractive.”
“Oh,” said Jason. “It must feel great to be wanted.”
“You ought to know,” Newall quipped. “Every lovely at The Cliffe burns incense to your picture.”
Jason didn’t smile. “That’s probably because they don’t realize I’m a leper.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Gilbert?” Andrew asked.
“I’m talking about the fact that while almost every guy I know got at least one invitation to the first punch of a club, I wasn’t even asked by the lowly BAT. I never realized I was such an asshole.”
“Come on, Jason,” Newall said reassuringly. “Final Clubs are a bunch of crap.”
“I’m sure they are,” he replied. “Which is why you guys are all thrilled to be joining one. I just thought that being tuned to the club mentality, you might have some notion as to what precisely they found so obnoxious about me.”
Newall, Wig, and Andrew looked uncomfortably at one another, wondering who would have to explain to Jason what they had assumed was obvious. Andrew could see that his roommates weren’t up to it. So he made a stab at the not-so-commendable facts of Harvard life.
“Hey, Jason,” he began. “Who are the guys that mostly get asked to the clubs?
Preppies from St. Paul’s, Mark’s, Groton. It’s kind of a common bond. You know, birds of a feather flocking together and so forth. You can see what I mean?”
“Sure,” Gilbert retorted ironically. “I just didn’t go to the right prep school, huh?”
“Yeah,” Wig quickly agreed. “Right on target.”
To which Jason replied, “Horseshit.”
There was a deathly silence in the room. Finally Newall grew annoyed that Jason had broken their mellow mood.
“For Christ’s sake, Gilbert, why the hell should a Final Club have to take Jews? I mean, would the Hillel Society want me?”
“That’s a religious organization, dammit! And they wouldn’t want me. I mean, I’m not even —”
He stopped, his sentence half-completed. For a moment, Andrew thought that Jason had been about to say he wasn’t Jewish. But that would be absurd. Could a Negro stand there and suggest he wasn’t black?