Night Shift

I know what you need.

Like the voice of a submarine captain tolling off fathoms, the words he had greeted her with followed her down to sleep.

He didn't come to the tiny Augusta airport to see her off, and waiting for the plane, she was surprised by her own disappointment. She was thinking about how quietly you could grow to depend on a person, almost like a junkie with a habit. The hype fools himself that he can take this stuff or leave it, when really -'Elizabeth Rogan,' the PA blared. 'Please pick up the white courtesy phone.'

She hurried to it. And Ed's voice said, 'Beth?'

'Ed! It's good to hear you. I thought maybe .

'That I'd meet you?' He laughed. 'You don't need me for that. You're a big strong girl. Beautiful, too. You can handle this. Will I see you at school?'

'I... yes, I think so.'

'Good.' There was a moment of silence. Then he said, 'Because I love you. I have from the first time I saw you.'

Her tongue was locked. She couldn't speak. A thousand thoughts whirled through her mind.

He laughed again, gently. 'No, don't say anything. Not now. I'll see you. There'll be time then. All the time in the world. Good trip, Beth. Goodbye.'

And he was gone, leaving her with a white phone in her hand and her own chaotic thoughts and questions.

September.

Elizabeth picked up the old pattern of school and classes like a woman who has been interrupted at knitting. She was rooming with Alice again, of course; they had been roomies since freshman year, when they had been thrown together by the housing-department computer. They had always got along well, despite differing interests and personalities. Alice was the studious one, a chemistry major with a 3.6 average. Elizabeth was more social, less bookish, with a split major in education and math.

They still got on well, but a faint coolness seemed to have grown up between them over the summer. Elizabeth chalked it up to the difference of opinion over the sociology final, and didn't mention it.

The events of the summer began to seem dreamlike. In a funny way it sometimes seemed that Tony might have been a boy she had known in high school. It still hurt to think about him, and she avoided the subject with Alice, but the hurt was an old-bruise throb and not the bright pain of an open wound.

What hurt more was Ed Hamner's failure to call.

A week passed, then two, then it was October. She got a student directory from the Union and looked up his name. It was no help; after his name were only the words 'Mill St'. And Mill was a very long street indeed. And so she waited, and when she was called for dates - which was often - she turned them down. Alice raised her eyebrows but said nothing; she was buried alive in a six-week biochem project and spent most of her evenings at the library. Elizabeth noticed the long white envelopes that her room-mate was receiving once or twice a week in the mail - since she was usually back from class first but thought nothing of them. The private detective agency was discreet; it did not print its return address on its envelopes.

When the intercom buzzed, Alice was studying. 'You get it, Liz. Probably for you anyway.'

Elizabeth went to the intercom. 'Yes?'

'Gentleman door-caller, Liz.'

Oh, Lord.

'Who is it?' she asked, annoyed, and ran through her tattered stack of excuses. Migraine headache. She hadn't used that one this week.

The desk girl said, amused, 'His name is Edward Jackson Hamner. Junior, no less.' Her voice lowered. 'His socks don't match.'

Elizabeth's hand flew to the collar of her robe. 'Oh, God.

Tell him I'll be right down. No, tell him it will be just a minute. No, a couple of minutes, okay?'

'Sure,' the voice said dubiously. 'Don't have a haemorrhage.'

Elizabeth took a pair of slacks out of her closet. Took out a short denim skirt. Felt the curlers in her hair and groaned. Began to yank them out.

Alice watched all this calmly, without speaking, but she looked speculatively at the door for a long time after Elizabeth had left.

He looked just the same; he hadn't changed at all. He was wearing his green fatigue jacket, and it still looked at least two sizes too big. One of the bows of his horn-rimmed glasses had been mended with electrician's tape. His jeans looked new and stiff, miles from the soft and faded 'in' look that Tony had achieved effortlessly. He was wearing one green sock, one brown sock.

And she knew she loved him.

'Why didn't you call before?' she asked, going to him.

He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket and grinned shyly. 'I thought I'd give you some time to date around. Meet some guys. Figure out what you want.

'I think I know that.'

'Good. Would you like to go to a movie?'

'Anything,' she said. 'Anything at all.'