Back to school

But when I arrived back home--that is, when I had called my mother, blushed into the phone as I recounted the story, and asked sheepishly if she could come up and get me--there was only one thing on my mind.

That was nothing new, of course. But things had changed.

'I'm going to get into Stanford,' I announced to my father and Mona as we sat around the dinner table.

'You only have a 3.1, and you've participated in no extracurricular activities,' my dad observed.

'I don't care,' I said. 'I'm getting in.'

I studied for five hours that evening, and did not think about beautiful women, or flowing hair, or bra straps showing. I thought about The Individual and Society--only The Individual and Society.

How not to date

I'd always been partial to the siren song of attractive women. It was just part of being Alfie Norton, I thought. And I'd never been able to resist it, until that talk in my hotel room with Ratione.

That night, as I looked back over the years and examined my romantic past, I realized that I always seemed to fall in with odious women. I began to think I might be masochistic.

Years later, I said to a girlfriend of mine, 'I'm dating you because I hate how happiness feels.' She gasped, and promptly slapped me.

(Her sister was an ever less sympathetic character than she, and so, needless to say, several weeks afterward I promptly began dating her.)

You mean she was you?

'Ratione?' said I.

'That's right,' averrèd he. 'I said my name was Victoria a bit earlier, but I lied.'

I stood stunned for a moment. 'So she was you?'

'That's right, sport.'

I said, 'Well, that was a rotten thing to do.'

Ratione's eyes sparkled and he let out a musty chuckle. 'I know how it may seem, Alfie. I knew you wouldn't like it, especially at first. But I had to.'

I looked bewildered at him. 'What?'

'I wanted to help you,' Ratione said. 'But before I did, I had to take on the only form you would understand.'

I furrowed my brow again, scratched my head. 'Um, how do you mean, sir?'

'Let's put it this way,' Ratione said. 'If I had come up to you in the lobby looking like this and said, "Excuse me, young man," what do you think you would have done?'

I looked at Ratione again, noted with a more critical glance the grizzled face, the fedora, the dusty suit. 'Probably gone to sleep,' I said, laughing for the first time that evening.

Ratione

When I regained consciousness, Victoria suggested that I come to her room at midnight. In the meantime, I could feel free to use the pool and treadmills, or pilfer yogurt and biscuits from the lounge.

But when I knocked on the door to her room at the stroke of twelve, Victoria did not answer the door. It swung open--slowly, of course--to reveal a weather-worn, stately figure.

I stepped into the dark room. The man was six feet tall, with hair greying at the fringes; he was clad in a dusty old business suit, held a fedora in his left hand, and wore a rugged visage bearing a crop of three-day grizzle. A vague, almost ethereal, air clung about him.

'Hello, Alfie,' said he.

'Uh. . .hello,' said I.

'You may be wondering who I am.'

I nodded. It had been a bit of a letdown to be greeted by this grizzled apparition, rather than by the comparatively comely young Victoria. I was wondering when she'd burst into the room in scanty lingerie.

'You should also have been wondering how I knew your name,' continued he. 'You were, however, much too busy picturing a certain "Victoria" prancing around the room in scanty lingerie.'

'How in God's name would you know, you intrusive septuagenarian?'

'It is really quite simple,' he said calmly. 'I am Ratione.'

No cause for concern

'I don't know, Victoria. I mean, are we talking about separate beds here?'

Victoria laughed. 'Oh, don't worry, Alfie. There's only one, of course. You don't have to be concerned about that.'

'What do you think I was concerned about?'

She laughed again: a pleasing cascade of giggly femininity.

'I'm on the pill,' said she. 'And I'm a virgin. . .you can even check.'

I eyed her skeptically. 'An attractive virgin, on the pill, who proposes sleeping with me (of all people) on the night we meet?'

'That's right,' she said.

'Are you sure you're not just a figment of my imagination?' said I.

A fire seemed to come into Victoria's previously calm brown eyes. 'Would a figment of your imagination kiss you like this?'

After the kiss, I said weakly:

'Why would a virgin have to be on the pill, anyway?'

Then I dropped to the floor.

Imagine that

'I propose,' she crooned--and I could feel her warm breath against my face--'that you stay with me in my room, tonight.'

I don't know, I thought to myself. This seems a bit promiscuous. Is she 'of loose morals'? Might she have a disease? Is she desperate?

. . .Am I?

I gently pried her fingers from my collar, tucked her hair back behind her ears, and tapped my fingers against the desk.

A pleasing proposition

'Let's put it this way,' said she. 'I'm someone who knows your situation. . .'

'Yes. . .'

'. . .and can do something about it.'

'Really?' said I. 'And what, exactly, would give you the power to remedy this predicament?'

Victoria ran a hand through her hair. 'You see, Alfie, my parents own this hotel.'

'Really? Well, I'm impressed. It's an excellent hotel. Four-star, well kept-up, nice jacuzzis--'

'And you're cute,' Victoria said. She grabbed a hold of the collar of my shirt and brought my face within an inch of hers.

I should have been used to this treatment. But no: my heart rate quickened; my veins dilated as usual; I felt a strong desire to increase our proximity still further. Outside, I said (with the glib air of a well-spoken board member in the midst of calm discourse):

'What solution, then, do you propose?'