An Accidental Interception
of Fate:  Saving Cats
Minisinoo

Guilt on three fronts made Jean Grey sullen.  First, there was simple guilt arising from the fact that she was at a party when she still had one-and-a-half manuscripts-worth of corrections, from two different professors, to enter into her dissertation before she could turn in the defense draft to her committee.  And one of those sets of corrections involved serious questions of her data, with her defense only six weeks away.  She'd been locking herself in the mansion's lab, writing, editing, and re-running her stats, emerging only to sleep and eat, both of which she did rather fitfully.  Now, she'd been dragged out to this utterly useless party at Ted's insistence.  

Second, she felt guilty because she was here with Ted, although a month had passed since her conversation with Scott at Christmas, about breaking up with him.  As she'd told Scott then, she was a wimp, and working on her dissertation had made an excellent excuse to avoid the matter.  She didn't want to end the affair until after her defense, simply because she had too many other serious matters on her mind to deal with a moping Ted Roberts.  

Last, she felt guilty for the simple reason that she'd just managed to spill salmon-cheese dip on the nice, cream tablecloth, and then had followed it up (in an effort to catch the dip) by spilling wine on the carpet.  "God, I am such a fucking klutz!" she muttered now, near tears as she tried futilely to soak red wine out of gray carpet with a handful of napkins.  

"Jean, honey, it's okay," Ted was saying, trying to help her.  

"It is not okay," she snapped, shoving his hands away in frustrated rage.  "I ruined their carpet."  

That she barely knew the host made it that much worse.  This was a party to which Ted had invited her, and the host -- a medical resident rather than a doctoral candidate -- was a friend of his.  She approached now to kneel down and whisper to Jean, "Don't worry about it.  I have an infant, so I have a carpet with Stain Guard."

And Jean laughed because she was relieved and embarrassed and grateful all at once, and she silently blessed those who knew just what to say.  Letting Ted lead her away and sit her down on a sofa, she told him, "I'm sorry for snapping at you."

"It's okay."  He brushed hair back from her cheek with a forefinger.  His touch was always gentle.  "I know you've been uptight, and McMasters is being a bastard at the eighteenth hole."  One of her committee members -- and not Banner, the director -- had taken a sudden dislike to some parameters in her experiments, and was trying to insist that she rerun them with different types of controls.  Banner and Hank were both livid.  Ted was worried.  And Jean was ready to tear out her hair or burst into tears every time she looked at McMasters' comments on her draft.  If he balked too much and refused to sign off on the dissertation, she wouldn't graduate.  All those years, and all that work, and it hung on the whim of a sixty-five-year-old department divo who was jealous of Banner and taking it out on Banner's students.  Academic politics at their finest.  

"I wish you'd move in with me and let me take care of you," Ted said now.  

"Ted, don't . . . ."  

"Okay, okay."  Frowning, he turned his attention to his finger food.  

And now, Jean felt guilty for a fourth reason.  He just wanted to take care of her, but the longer she stayed with him, the more she realized that he wasn't the one she wanted to be taken care of by -- or to care for -- for the rest of her life, and she wondered why.  He was kind, he was thoughtful, and he was interested in the same things she was.  Why couldn't she love him?

But she didn't.  She got more excitement from an email of Scott's than from seeing Ted, and if her friends interested her more than her boyfriend, there was something wrong with that picture.  

"She's nice," Jean said now, to make conversation.  

"Who?"

"The host.  Barb . . . what's her name?"

"Clark.  Barb and Randy Clark."  But he was frowning.  

"What is it?" she asked.  

He looked around to judge who was sitting near, then glanced almost involuntarily at a big man in the corner, younger than most of them, and attractive in an excitable Saint Bernard way.  "That's Randy over there."  

"Yeah?  He's tall."  

"He's five years younger than Barb."  

Jean blinked, not quite sure that she followed his reasoning.  "So?"

"Well, don't you think that's a little weird?"

"Why?"

"He's five years younger!" Ted hissed again, as if the answer should be obvious.  "He's not a med student.  He's a banker.  Or something like that.  He's going into bank management.  I mean, what have they got in common?"

"A kid and a mortgage, apparently," Jean replied.  

"Honey, be serious."  

"I am!"  She set down her plate and stared at the side of his face.  He could be so understanding and solicitous of her, then would come out with the oddest prejudices.  "What is the big deal?"

"That she's twenty-nine and he's twenty-four?   She married him when he was barely out of college.  Don't you think it's a little strange if a woman in her mid-twenties dates a kid who's barely old enough to drink?"

"You're a year younger than me," Jean pointed out, amused.  

"That's just a year.  Big deal."  

"Exactly.  A year.  Five years.  Big deal.  Now, if she were ten years older than him, maybe it'd be weird.  But five?   So what?  And even if she were ten years older, how do you know it wouldn't be a perfect match?  You told me on the way over here that you know Barb, but not her husband.  You're not exactly in a position to judge.  Do you even know how they met?  And what if -- just for the sake of argument -- I were dating Hank instead of you?"

"Hank?"  Ted was trying very hard not to laugh.  

"For the sake of argument.  Hank's five years older than me.  Would that bother you?"

"Well, ah, it's a little different," he temporized.  

"How?  Because the guy's allowed to be older?"

"No, not that . . . " But he didn't elaborate immediately, and abruptly disgusted, she stood to walk away, ostensibly to refill her wine glass.  

As it turned out, the hostess was standing nearby, and Jean made a point of stopping to apologize again for the carpet.  "Really, don't worry about it, darlin'" Barb told her.  She was a smallish woman with curly blond hair and a face that was earnest rather than pretty.  "Wine is no worse than orange carrot mush."  

Jean smiled, both at the carrot mush and at being called 'darling' by a contemporary.  Barb had a Southern accent as heavy as Ted's, but broader.  "Can I ask a nosey question?" Jean said.  

"Sure."  

"How did you have a baby and survive residency?"

And the other woman broke up laughing.  "I don't know!  I ask myself that all the time.  But you do what you have to do, and really, I just carried Becky.  Randy's the saint who covered most of the child care."  Jean watched her turn to shoot her husband a fond grin.  He was aware of it but only vaguely, in that way of someone hears his name in another conversation, but doesn't want to leave the one he's in, to investigate.  "His employer actually gives paternity leave.  Imagine that?"

And Barb's quip gave Jean a perfect, if unexpected, entry point to satisfy her own curiosity, after what Ted had said.  "How did you and Randy meet?"

"Rescuing cats."  

"Excuse me?"

Barb was grinning.  It must have been her natural expression -- as opposed to Jean's habitual frown -- because she had the beginnings of crows' feet in the corners of her eyes, and brackets around her mouth.  "Rescuing cats," she reiterated.  "Randy went to college at Mary Washington, and was involved with the Siamese Rescue Organization.  It's like a humane society for siamese and part siamese."  

"And that's why . . . "

"We have a house full of cats, yes."  

Jean had counted four, so far.  

"Anyway, I was Randy's New York City contact.  I'd collect cats here, then drive down with them to the center in Virginia.  Or I'd bring back cats from the center to place with families in this region."  She shrugged, artlessly.  "We did a lot of talking, both long-distance and in person.  Eventually, we started dating, and when he graduated, he moved up here with me.  It was hard, because he was leaving his babies."  

"It looks like you brought some of them with you."  

"Well, six of them, although we ended up having to give away one when the baby was born -- which is exactly the kind of thing the Rescue doesn't want to happen.  But when it's a choice between your child and your cat, that's not a choice.  So we found her a good home."  

"And now you have five."  

"Now we have five."  

Later, when Ted was driving her back to Westchester, Jean said, "They rescue cats."  

"What?"

"They rescue cats.  Barb and Randy.  That's how they met.  Rescuing cats."  She paused, then added, "They have something together, something that binds them.  A mission.  I think that's important."  

He appeared thoughtful, but said only, "I guess." 
 
 
 
 

"It's going to be okay."  

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know . . .   Oh, God, I'm never going to get this done!"

"Jean, stop it."  Hank slipped big arms around her, pulling her in close to hug her tight, and hold her still so she'd quit wringing her hands and panicking.  "Listen to me.  Bruce is going to talk to McMasters.  He won't let the bastard ruin this for you.  Bruce and I have both double-checked your parameters and results, and we have no problems with them."

In fact, Bruce had told Hank privately that he'd do whatever it took to make McMasters sign off on Jean's dissertation.  It infuriated him to have a colleague take a personal quarrel into the arena of teaching; McMasters wanted to force the younger but more celebrated Banner to owe him a favor.  Hank himself hadn't been required to deal with McMasters, as his own work lay in the direction of biochemistry and molecular genetics, but Jean's interest in multigenic inheritance mapping had left her with few choices to fill out her defense committee.  Hank himself could serve only as an external expert since he wasn't on the Columbia faculty.  From the department, she needed Bruce Banner, the new guy Phil Lacey, and Professor Emeritus Jonathan McMasters, with his Scottish accent, love of golf, Cambridge airs, and over two hundred articles in refereed journals.  And an attitude as deep as Loch Ness.

Pushing free after a minute, Jean turned around once in the space of her little office in the mansion basement, as if she weren't quite sure where she was.  Books were strewn everywhere, and computer paper, and copies of her manuscript.  "A multifactorial inheritance hypothesis for the etiology of Homo superior: the genetic/environmental interactions leading to the activation of the x factor gene."  There must be a rule somewhere, Hank thought, that dissertations in the hard sciences required a least twenty-word titles.  His own had been just as bad.  The desk held her laptop, her notebook, a calculator, stray slides, three coffee mugs, a plate with left over crumbs, a staple-gun, tape, an incense burner and incense, a stack of CDs, and a small ghetto blaster from which strains of Sheryl Crow drifted.  Blunt, hard music.

We got loud guitars and big suspicions, great big guns and small ambitions, and we still argue over who is God.  And I say, 'Hey there, Miscreation, bring a flower, time is wasting.' It's hard to make a stand, it's hard to make a stand . . . .

"Has Scott sent any more limericks?" Hank asked her.  Scott and his roommate had been writing alternately morbid or lewd limericks about Jonathan McMasters every few days.

Now, she turned to look at him.  Her hair was falling out of its clip, scraggly about her face, and she was too pale.  But the question made her smile.  "Yeah, he sent another last night.  He and EJ are so wicked."

"But funny."  And good for her, he thought.  

She just grinned.  

Later that afternoon, Banner called Hank McCoy to tell him that McMasters had agreed to sign the dissertation, but how Banner had obtained that promise, he wouldn't say.  "It wasn't much."  Hank doubted that.  In any case, Jean finished up her final version and sent out copies, and the evening before the defense, Banner asked her, Ted, Hank and Phil Lacey over to dinner.  As they sat about the dining table after the meal, plates bearing the remains of pasta pushed aside, they polished off three bottles of wine and talked.  "I can't guarantee he won't grill you," Banner told Jean.  "Hank, Phil and I have all agreed to tell you one question each that we'll ask tomorrow, so not everything will come as a surprise.  And I can tell you to be prepared to field more questions from Jonathan about the controls you set for examining environmental triggers."

"He thinks most of it's bogus," Jean said, torn between bitterness and a gut-clenching fear that made her want to start hyperventilating.  She took a long drink of wine.  The wine was welcome, though she'd barely been able to touch her dinner.  With her fingers, she pinched wrinkles in the tablecloth and didn't look at the rest of the men.

"If he goes after you too unfairly, Jean, be sure I'll put a stop to it," Banner told her.  "This is my committee, not his."

She nodded.  But when she got home, and despite all the wine they'd made her consume, she didn't sleep well.  Three times, she rose to pad around the mansion halls aimlessly, her mind going over and over questions she might be asked, and how she would reply.  At one's defense, one was supposed to be the expert of the day, but she knew all too well how much they could bring up that she couldn't answer.

On her third perambulation, she wandered into the den and sat down on the sofa, pulled an afghan over her legs to put off the chill, and tried distracting herself with television.  She was still there at four, when the professor motored in.  He wore a dressing gown and had two cups of tea on a tray.  Smiling, she helped him move out of his chair to a place beside her on the couch, and he put an arm about her so she could lay her head on his bony shoulder, just as she had used to do when she'd been a young, coltish teen, new to her powers.  He said nothing, not even in her mind, just patted her arm and drank his tea.  After a while, she sat up and drank hers as well.  The warmth settled in her belly and made her sleepy, and she stretched out on the couch, her head on a pillow in his lap.  He stroked her hair until she fell asleep, and even she, with her latent telepathy, never felt the tiny tendrils slip into her mind, triggering the neurotransmitters in her brain to send her down into dreamland.  When Ororo woke with the dawn as she usually did, she found them both in the den still -- Jean with her head resting in the professor's lap, and Xavier leaning back against the couch top, snoring lightly.  Shutting the door, she let them be, but kept an eye on the clock, to be sure that Jean woke in time to make her defense.
 
 
 
 

The hallway smelled wet from all the melting winter slush tracked in, even sixteen stories up in the Hammer Center, and somewhere, a fluorescent light buzzed like an angry fly.  The voices of secretaries could be heard when the main office door to the genetics department opened and closed, but Jean's attention was fixed on a different door, leading into the conference room.  

They were in there, the four of them, debating the rest of her career.  They'd been in there twenty minutes already.  

Dropping her head, her hair fell in front of her face, and she sighed.  Ted shifted on the bench beside her.  He'd stopped trying to cheer or distract her ten minutes ago.  Now, his face was pulled into lines of mixed anger and concern as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, one foot jiggling nervously.  He glanced at his watch again; he'd been doing so every other minute.  "It didn't go bad," he said now.  "What's taking so fucking long?"

She didn't reply.  He was right.  It hadn't gone badly, but it hadn't gone as well as it might have.  Just having McMasters in the room had thrown her off her stride, and she'd fumbled questions she wouldn't have otherwise.  After an hour and a half, Banner had called a halt and sent her out with Ted, to wait while the committee deliberated.  

"They're not going to turn you down, honey," Ted said.  He'd said it at least six times already.  "Banner-man wouldn't have let you walk in there if you weren't going to pass."  

"Maybe," she said.  But it wasn't his career on the line.  Her own hands were clasped between her knees, skin winter pale in sharp contrast to the navy blue pantyhose she wore, to match her navy suit.  She was fighting a compulsion to tap her heels together, like Dorothy.  "There's no place like home, there's no place like home . . ."  

The door opened and she almost jumped out of her skin, popping to her feet so fast she felt like a jill-in-the-box.  

Bruce stood in the entrance with Hank behind him, and if Bruce's expression was schooled to neutral professionalism, Hank's grin told her the results.  Banner held out a hand.  "Congratulations, Ms. Grey," was all he said.  

"Yeehaw!" Ted shouted behind her in an uncharacteristically exuberant explosion as Jean took Bruce Banner's hand in both hers.  

"Thank you," she said, earnestly.  "Thank you so much."  

"You earned it, my dear.  We don't give away doctorates here." 
 
 
 
 

"To Doctor Jean Grey!" Warren shouted, raising a glass of 18-year scotch.  

Jean blushed.  "I'm not a doctor, yet, War.  Not till I actually graduate.  And I've got thirteen months of internship rotation hell to live through first."  

"Don't argue with us, woman," Ted said, grinning at her from the seat beside hers and nudging her fondly.  "Shut up and drink your liquor."  

Smiling, she did as he ordered, and Warren poured her another.  She'd been smiling since she'd been walked through the door, in fact, Ted's hands over her eyes as he'd guided her from behind to keep her from tripping.  It was a small, exclusive Members-Only lounge not far from Warren's family penthouse, the sort of place that didn't card because anyone entering was either already well known there, or the guest of a member.  The bar was to the immediate left behind highly polished wood and overhung with every size and shape of glass imaginable, and the room's decor included impressionistic paintings and plush seats in muted blues and maroons.  In the back were two larger tables that Warren had reserved to throw Jean a party.  Even underage Ororo and Frank were there, and little Bobby, having arrived with Warren and the professor to hang streamers and set up the cake.  Angel Food.  Warren's little joke.  "Heaven after hell."  Congratulations, Dr. Grey, had been written across the top.  

What they would have done, had Jean failed to pass, no one had even discussed.  But Hank did phone them immediately after, to inform them that all had gone well and Ted would be arriving with Jean shortly.  Bruce Banner, Hank and Phil Lacey arrived by another car.  No one had invited McMasters.  

The party was both a celebration, and a bit of not-so-subtle strategy.  They'd plotted to take Jean out, get her good and drunk, drive her home afterward, put her to bed and let her sleep off months of pent-up anxiety.  But first there was cake to eat and toasts to make, and an extra surprise all the way from California.  

Ororo was cutting cake.  They'd forgotten to bring plastic forks, and tipsy from the scotch, Jean had started in on the cake with her fingers before Bobby could get back from the bar with utensils.  Icing smeared her mouth and Warren snapped a picture while Frank set up a mini-TV with an internal VCR on a table end.  He said, "Please direct your attentions to the silver screen . . ."  Turning on the TV, he popped in a video.  

It was black at first, then there commenced several seconds of camera shaking before the picture stabilized to show a lighted bar stage -- but a very different kind of bar from the one they currently inhabited.  This had a barely raised platform covered in cheap green Astroturf, brick walls behind, and a black-painted ceiling with playing cards stuck to it in random patterns.  Scott and EJ's band had set up on the stage, Scott at the center and pacing around as he was wont to do.  He'd finally splurged on a headphone unit so he wasn't trapped in one place, as he couldn't both play and hold a mic at once.  That night, he was dressed all in white:  white pants, white tanktop, and a white fedora on his head.  "Mr. Snazzy," Ororo said, and Jean grinned.  

"And now," he began in his best announcer voice.  "I want to make a long-distance dedication.  Think Casey Kasem here.  Awaaaay off, in freezing cold New York, a good friend of mine is defending her dissertation in a week."  

Jean put a hand over her face, shocked and embarrassed and pinkly-pleased all at once.  This was obviously a real concert -- he was sweating from the lights and the effort of previous performance -- and he was talking to a live audience, a bunch of total stranger . . . about her.  

"Now," Scott said, "she thinks she's going to blow it.  But I know she's not.  What d'you think?"

Drunk and cheerful, the Berkeley audience was happy to roar and clap for someone they didn't know, and around the table in the Fifth Avenue lounge, there was laugher and a few good-natured shoves at Jean.  

"Anyway, this next song is for her.  'Closer to Fine.' EJ's gonna help me out on vocals and we'll be the Indigo Boys."  

I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white.  The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all.  

Well, darkness has a hunger that's insatiable,
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear.  I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it; I'm crawling on your shore.  

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains,
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain.
There's more than one answer to these questions, pointing me in a crooked line.
The less I seek my source for some definitive the closer I am to fine ....

I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee.
He never did marry, or see a B-grade movie.  He graded my performance, he said he could see through me.
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free....

"I thought he had a girlfriend," he muttered now beneath his breath.  "Doesn't she care that he's singing songs to another woman?"

Jean glanced at him.  "I don't think Clarice is that petty."  The comment was pointed.  "Besides, she's EJ's sister."  

"You mean the guy he was singing with -- "

"Yes."  Jean's eyes held his, daring him to comment on the color difference.  He didn't.  He just took a sip of scotch.  She ought to know him better than to think he'd be racist just because he was from the South, and it depressed him that, after a year, she still would make that assumption.  Couldn't he be surprised by the uncommon without it mattering beyond that?  

Warren fed Jean five more shots of scotch, and by the time she left, she was giggling like a schoolgirl, her hair down and curled about her flushed face.  Ted half-carried her to his car and put her in the passenger seat, buckling her seatbelt and debating with himself.  The original plan had been to take her back to the mansion, but God knew, he hadn't seen much of her since before Christmas.  He didn't resent that; next year, it would be him.  But he'd missed her all the same, and he'd begun to ask himself some uncomfortable questions, too, about where this relationship was headed.  Walking around the car front, he got behind the wheel and put his keys in the ignition.  "Honey, let's go back to my place.  Just for tonight."  

At that, she sat up and blinked dimly, wiping hair out of her face.  "Ted, I don't know.  I'm so tired."  

Bending across the space between them, he kissed her.  They'd parked in a little garage not far from the lounge, and there was no one else around to see.  She accepted the kiss more than participated, and he pulled back.  "What is it?"

"Nothing."  But she couldn't look him in the eye.  She was staring out her window.  

"Jean -- "

"Ted, don't.  I'm tired.  And pretty damn drunk."  Her inebriated giggling had been replaced by a doe-eyed sadness made slightly vague from alcohol.  "Too drunk for sex.  Please take me home."  

Clenching his jaw, he gripped the steering wheel and stared at it.  He himself felt stone cold sober.  He'd had one shot to toast her, but mindful of the fact that he had to drive her home, he'd passed on anything else.  "We don't have to do anything tonight," he said softly, needing some kind of resolution, and he was still smarting a bit -- though he disliked admitting it -- over her reaction to that video.  "I just want to wake up next to you.  We haven't done that in months . . . "

"I know."  But that was all she said.  

"And?" He was starting to get angry.  

"I just don't want to, Ted.  I want to go home and sleep."  

"You could sleep at my place as long as you want.  I wouldn't wake you."  

"I don't have a change of clothes."  

"You could borrow something from me -- a sweatshirt and pants."  

"Goddammit!" she yelled suddenly, taking him entirely by surprise.  "You always have to push, don't you?  You always fucking push.  You can't take 'no' for an answer!  You want the truth?  All right -- I don't want to go back to your place.  I don't want to sleep with you.  I don't want to wake up next to you.  And I fucking do not want to fuck you!  Are we clear?"

Then immediately horrified by what she'd just said, she slapped a hand over her mouth, staring at him in surprise as he tried to shut his gaping mouth.  Turning, she jerked at her door handle and unbuckled her seatbelt at once.  Getting the door open, she swung it into the side of the car parked beside theirs -- hard -- and stumbled out, falling to her knees on concrete.  Her purse slid from her grip, skidding halfway beneath the other car.  "What are you doing?" he asked, but his heart wasn't in it.  His heart was shrinking in on itself, folding up like a flower at dusk.  

She was crying and fumbling awkwardly for her purse.  "I'm sorry," she said over and over.  "I'm sorry.  This wasn't how I meant to do it.  It wasn't.  I'm such a bitch.  You've been nothing but kind to me, but I don't love you, Ted.  I don't love you and I'm not going to love you and I'm a bitch to have kept you this long.  I'm so sorry.  I'm so, so sorry."  

It was a drunken ramble but the meaning was clear enough.  She was breaking up with him.  Intellectually, he recognized it, even while he couldn't quite feel it yet.  She was doing enough crying for them both, but he thought it more for guilt than sorrow.  "I'm too drunk," she said, having retrieved her purse.  "I guess I had to be drunk, though, to get it out.  I don't know why I can't love you, Ted.  I don't know if I can love anyone.  It's all up in my brain.  I think everything to death.  I'm not a woman.  I'm just a big, fat, walking brain."  He'd rarely heard her sound so furious, but it wasn't directed at him.  Sobbing now, she began to assault his car door, kicking it in fury.  For someone who claimed not to feel, she was pitching an astonishing temper tantrum.  "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!  I hate how I am!"

Then she slammed the door and stalked off, weaving across the parking lot, and he didn't know what to do.  Get out and follow the person who'd just stomped on his heart with her size-nine high-heeled shoe, or leave her to todder about a New York City parking garage, drunk and alone?  Even on Fifth Avenue, that wasn't safe.  Reaching into his suit jacket, he pulled out his cell phone and exited the car, calling Hank even as he followed her across the lot, not trying to catch up to her, just keeping an eye out.  He told Hank where they were, and asked if he had room in his car to come get her.  When Hank asked what had happened, Ted replied, "I don't want to talk about it.  Just come get her before she gets herself mugged."  

She finally came to a halt against a concrete piling and sat down on the dusty floor.  He stood at a distance and watched, frozen cold inside.  She didn't look beautiful or classy now.  She looked like what she was -- a crying drunk, pale skin splotchy, hair a mess, her makeup smeared.  Rather pathetic, really.  He knew that thought was cruel, but couldn't help it.  She'd sliced him deeply, and like a fresh cut from any sharp blade, he didn't feel it yet, but knew that when he did, it would ache like hell.  

Hank mustn't have driven far, as he arrived back at the garage less than ten minutes after Ted had phoned.  Pulling up beside Jean, he and Bruce Banner got out to lift her off the concrete and put her in the back seat.  Hank glanced once at Ted, but seeing Jean taken care of, Ted had turned on his heel.  Without acknowledgment, he walked back to his car.  

Jean sobbed all the way back to Columbia, where Hank let out Bruce.  Phil Lacey had returned in another vehicle, and Jean was grateful that he wasn't present to see the self-destruction of the grad student whose dissertation he'd just passed.  Banner leaned in to peer at her where she was stretched out across the rear seat.  "Jean -- ?"

"I'll be okay.  It's not me you should worry about."  She couldn't look at him.  

"I'll take care of her," she heard Hank say, and then the slam of the door, and the car was moving again.  Silence reigned for a few minutes, but Jean knew Hank could never leave it alone.  "You want to talk about it?"

"No."  

"I take it you broke up with Ted?"

"Yes."  

Silence for a good dozen streets.  "Was it planned?  I mean, to break up with him tonight?"

Furious again, but more at herself than at him, she pushed herself up.  "No, Hank!  It was not planned for me to break up with the guy who's been as patient as Job while I finished this goddamn dissertation, on the very night that I defended it!  But that's what everyone will see and think, isn't it?  Jean the bitch!  Jean the user!"  She sank back against the seat.  "Maybe they're right.  Scott was right.  I should have broken up with him back in January."  

Politely, Hank refrained from agreeing.  There was no use in shutting the barn door once the cows had escaped.  "So how did it happen?"

"He wanted me to go back to his place.  I didn't want to, and I'm just . . . too far gone tonight to pretend.  I was afraid I'd say something that gave me away."  Then she began to laugh.  "And I did, didn't I?  But God, he just kept pushing and pushing, and I got angry because he wouldn't leave it alone.  He said that he only wanted to wake up next to me but I know he'd want more than that, and -- " She stopped abruptly, not wanting to discuss her sex life -- or lack of sex life -- with Henry McCoy.  She and Ted had, eventually, gotten past fumbling under clothes in back rooms, but their sex had never been good.  At least not for her.  She'd always found foreplay more satisfying than sex, and had looked for as many excuses as possible to bring Ted to climax early.  When that had failed, she'd gritted her teeth and thought of England, or at least of how nice he was to her, and how very, very different he was from the men she'd known at Vanderbilt.  

"What's wrong with me," she asked Hank now, her voice small and quiet and slurred, "that I couldn't love him?  He was never unkind.  I enjoyed being with him, mostly.  Especially at first."  

Henry McCoy was silent a long while as he considered that.  Now that she was no longer with Ted Roberts, he could be more gracious.  "Love isn't something you can make happen, Jean.  Or shut off, either.  Sometimes it's there, sometimes not, but it doesn't necessarily make sense.  You cared about him."  

She nodded.  "Yes, I cared about him, but I let it get out of hand.  Because I was a coward.  It's funny.  You wind up hurting someone by trying not to hurt them.  I did the same thing to Scott."  

He looked in the rearview mirror at her.  They were passing Trinity Cemetery with its great oaks and elms and neatly trimmed walkways, a green jewel set amid concrete and steel.  "Scott recovered," Hank said.  "He has a girlfriend, and it seems serious.  Ted will recover, too."  

"Scott was nineteen, Hank -- too young for me, and he knew it.  I never encouraged him, much less dated him.  Ted's a little older, and I went out with him for a year."  

"Did you give him any promises?"

"No.  Never."  She hadn't even said the L-word, but she wondered what was wrong with her, that she couldn't love a good man who loved her.  Was she the Tinwoman?  "I still hurt them both."  Hank didn't reply to that.  
 

Done with her dissertation and lab research, there was no cause for Jean to see Ted Roberts, and ashamed, she avoided him.  Once, she plucked up courage enough to call him when she knew he'd be out, leaving a message on his answering machine to apologize in circular sentences full of discursive phrases, for how it had ended.  "I know it sounds like a bad line," she finished, "but you deserve better than me, Ted.  You deserve someone who's not emotionally crippled."  And she hung up.  Maybe he'd listen to it, or maybe he'd erase it at the first sound of her voice, but at least she'd done something.  

Thus marginally eased in conscience, she embarked on the final stage of her student career before graduation and residency -- her thirteen-month clinical rotations.  Only one week into them, Frank phoned her from the mansion to say that Scott's girl had broken up with him.  Still smarting from her own newly defunct relationship, she called California as soon as she could get a break in her daily schedule.  

"Hey, Boy-o," she said when he answered.  "I heard what happened with Clarice.  You okay?"

"I guess.  As okay as can be expected.  I'm not thinking about slitting my wrists or anything, if that's what you mean."  

"Well, I should hope not!"

Then she winced.  She shouldn't make light of it, even if he was trying to.  He'd been devoted to this girl.  Warren had said, "When we were at the mall before Christmas, he was looking at rings in jewelry-store windows."  It didn't get much more serious than that.  

Now, she said softly into the phone, "Can I do anything?"  And she listened to his breath sigh out, then hitch once, twice.  He was crying.  "Oh, Scott . . ."  

"Sorry, I didn't mean -- "

"Don't be."  And a sudden rush of anger replaced her discomfort.  "She is . . . incredibly stupid . . . for letting you go."  

"Jean, please.  Don't be mad at Clarice.  It hurts like hell, but the breakup was pretty much mutual.  It wasn't working and we both knew it.  I just didn't want to see it."  

"What wasn't working about it?  Do you want to talk?"

She could hear him draw in breath as if to refuse automatically, then he paused and finally said, "It wasn't that we didn't love each other.  But what she wants to do with her life, what she needs to do, and what I need, don't mesh well.  And it was getting too intense to keep going like it was.  Sometimes you date someone because you enjoy her company, but you know it won't ever be more than that.  But sometimes, you think it might be the real thing.  I thought this might be the real thing."  His voice trembled and he paused, then said, "Shit.  I've been like this since Friday.  I've gotta get a grip.  I can't study, I can't concentrate on class or papers.  I'm a mess.  She's no better."  

"You're talking to her?"  Jean was astonished.  

"A little.  Like I said, it hurts like hell, but we both knew it was coming."  

"Scott, you told me once that you were just a guy, not a gentleman, and couldn't always control how you felt -- and sometimes you felt angry.  That was honest.  I confess, it hurt at the time, but I understood.  Now I hear you playing the gentleman again."  

"Stop it!" he snapped.  "Just stop, dammit.  Don't psychoanalyze me."  She could hear him breathing, then he said, "Look, I'm trying incredibly hard not to hate her.  It would be so easy.  And it'd be wrong.  Right now, I need to be a gentleman, okay?   Just to keep my head together and to keep from acting like an asshole.  We're still in love with each other, but it's not going to work.  Sometimes it doesn't.  And that just . . . really, really hurts.  It hurts so bad . . ."  He stopped again because he'd lost his voice.  "She's hurting, too," he whispered finally.  "When we broke up . . . when she left the apartment after . . . she was crying so hard she almost fell down the goddamn stairs.  I had to call DeeDee to come get her, to drive her home.  That was Friday, this is Monday, and Dee told me she didn't even get to class today.  At least I made it to class.  She's not the bitch here, okay?  She's just the one who actually had the guts to sing us Taps."  

And Jean had no idea how to respond to that.  Her feelings for Ted had never come close to this magnitude of intensity, and she was struck by the enormous difference between how Scott was reacting to losing Clarice, and how he'd reacted a year before, to her dating Ted.  He didn't sound like a boy anymore, or like a mockery of a gentleman.  He sounded like a man who was in pain, yet who'd grown up enough to realize that someone else was hurting, too.  

"I'm sorry," she said, again.  "You're right.  It's easy to blame.  It's just that you're my friend and I've never met Clarice, and when I know you're hurting this badly, it makes me want to go after the person who did it to you."  

That got a little laugh, and a "Thanks" amid covert sniffles.  

"Speaking of people caught in the middle," she said, "How's EJ.  How is this affecting you two?"

"We're okay.  He's seen the whole thing go down, and he and DeeDee have sorta been running interference, and Lee, too, for that matter.  Clarice and Lee got to be friends.  Like I said, we're not mad at each other, Clarie and I.  I want to know how she is, and the reverse, even if we're not ready to see each other yet.  We'll all live through it, I think.  It'll just take time.  It's probably good the summer is coming, so we can be away from each other a little.  I think we'll be okay by fall.  We can be friends again."  

"Are you sure that's going to work?   That you can be friends?"

"I don't know, but we'll try.  We've got too many people in common, and hey, it worked with you and me, didn't it?  Not that we were dating, but ­-- "

"Scott, that's just it.  We weren't dating.  How are you going to deal with it, when she starts seeing someone else?  Or how will she feel when you do?"

"I don't know."  The words were sharp.  "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  I'm not even up to thinking about dating, and neither is she."  He sighed.  "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap."  

"It's all right.  I just don't want to see you play the martyr, or suppress what you're feeling because you think you ought to.  You were right, to tell me you were angry a year ago."  

He laughed at that.  "I've got to suppress some of it, just so I can function.  I don't have time to fall apart.  It's the end of the semester and we've both got these terrible course loads.  I'm managing, but I'm more worried about her, right now."  

"Okay."  She paused, racking her brain, but couldn't think of more to say.  She wished she could be there with him, just to sit with him as the professor had sat with her before her defense, but he was three-thousand miles away, not downstairs, and even if Warren could fly her out there, taking a day or two off right now just wasn't feasible.  She'd consigned herself to the fact that she'd eat, sleep and breathe the hospital for the next year, and could forget about a social life of any kind.  Even now, she was due back in orthopedics in ten minutes.  He didn't sound as if he were falling apart, so she said, "Listen, I have to go, but you call me if you need me -- even if you just need to talk to someone who isn't in the middle out there, and who won't have to pick a side.  I'm already on a side.  Yours."  

"Okay.  Thanks."  She could almost hear the smile in his voice.  Even if he didn't want to speak against Clarice, she was sure that it helped him to know that he had a friend who wouldn't be emotionally torn if he wanted to gripe.  

She hung up then and dumped the paper left on her tray into the trash bin before heading back to the ward.  In the hallways, she brushed by people without quite seeing them -- visitors, medical personnel, secretaries, support staff.  In the elevator, she crossed her arms and leaned up against the steel wall, handrail pressing hard into the small of her back.  She was getting angry again, just thinking about it -- how dare Clarice Haight break up with Scott?  

Then she shook her head at herself.  She could hardly question the girl.  She'd turned Scott down herself.  But that had been different.  He was eight years younger than she, yet she wondered what might have happened if he hadn't been?  The question haunted her for the rest of the day.  
 

If Jean's summer sped by with her rotations, Scott's progressed quietly.  As in the previous summer, he concentrated on schoolwork, added air-time to his flying, and worked out.  He also kept up Mrs. Gale's yard.  There was more to do in the summer, and only himself to do it.  She fed him strawberry pie, iced tea, and kept an eye on him.  With time, she'd grown rather fond of her two young tenants, and EJ's sister as well; and whatever private reservations her age and upbringing might have engendered in her regarding bi-racial relationships, she was a romantic at heart, and now pitied Scott.  So she doted on him, hoping that enough grandmothering would ease his ache.  He minded neither the pie nor the attention.  

Thus, a flowered May tumbled into a sunlit June, followed by a heat-heavy July, and finally the slow crawl of August towards the beginning of the fall semester and Scott Summers' third year at Berkeley.  If he continued to carry a heavy course load, he'd graduate at the end of next August.  But what he'd do after that, he wasn't entirely sure.  Aside from his math courses, he spent that summer hanging around the anthropology department.  The previous spring, he'd made friends with the young professor who'd taught his introduction to cultural anthropology course, and that summer, he took The World of the Ancient Maya from the same man.  By the end, he'd reached a difficult cross-roads.  

Should he return to Westchester and become a math teacher for Xavier, because it might be needed in a future that hadn't arrived yet?  Or should he change his major to pursue his real love:  ancient engineering?  Duty pulled him one way, while his interests lured him in another.  So, torn, he rented a plane and made his first extended solo flight back to New York during the two-week break between summer and fall.  How easy it was to heed the siren call of a subject taught by an enthusiastic professor, but like a salmon swimming upstream, it was time to return home and remind himself who he was.  

His timing was unfortunate, however, and his mutant family scattered.  Warren had gone to Tokyo, apprenticing under his father before taking over as CEO of some of the smaller Worthington investment holdings.  Valeria and Francesco had returned to Geneva for August Holiday with Valeria's sister, and Ororo had gone with them.  Jean, of course, more or less lived at Columbia's teaching hospital, and even Bobby was back in Allentown for a quiet visit, now that all the hoopla surrounding his manifestation had died down.  

That left Scott, Hank and the professor.  Hank taught Scott how to use the new power training center in the sub-basement, which everyone had taken to calling just "the Danger Room," and Scott discovered that karate lessons weren't much use against some of Reed Richards' more vicious surprises.  Apart, he and Hank were vulnerable -- Hank, because his exceptional strength and agility could be used offensively only at close range, and Scott because he found targeting with his optic blasts far easier at a distance.  But when they combined their talents, they could sometimes defeat the room, rather than be spanked by it.  

"There are days," Hank said one afternoon as they were showering in the locker room after a particularly grueling session, "that I question the point of all this.  Despite what Frank has said, I have not, myself, observed the hostility towards mutants that he insists is just on the horizon.  There hasn't been a peep in the media about mutants since Christmas.  If the populace were indeed inclined towards paranoia, one would think some outcry would already be evident."  

After his own experiences at Berkeley, Scott was inclined to agree.  In the past year, he'd grown less cagey about the real reason he wore shades.  Later, he'd realize that much of the nonchalance he experienced there owed to a combination of the newness of mutations, the generally tolerant atmosphere at Berkeley, and the reactions of the first people he'd told.  Quite simply, EJ and his other friends had regarded his power as an interesting novelty, not a potential threat, and so when others were first informed of it, they copied that blasé attitude.  If no one else seemed concerned, why should they be?  

"I don't know what to think," he said now to Henry.  "I trust Frank.  But yeah -- if there's going to be trouble, I'm starting to think it won't happen for a while."  

Thus, Scott's original incentive for a quick return to Westchester after college, and the urgency instilled in them all by Frank's Cerebro vision, had begun to fade.  But he didn't speak to Xavier about his vocational doubts yet.  The professor knew of them, of course, but chose to let the matter lie.  Scott would speak when he was ready, and it was a decision that the boy had to make for himself.  Xavier wouldn't hold him in Westchester, if his path led elsewhere.  And so Scott returned for his third and final year as an undergrad with no more clarity of purpose than he'd had when he'd left.  If storm clouds were already brewing in boardrooms and private offices around the nation, they lay beyond his immediate horizon.  His greatest worry, as 1999 rolled into its final months, was personal:  his pending meeting with the girl who'd broken his heart.  If that wound had scabbed over, it was ugly still, and tender.  But he decided to make the best of it.  

Clarice felt the same, and their initial encounter, while awkward, was also blessedly unremarkable.  Clarice came to dinner with Diane, and Lee and Rick as well.  EJ cooked.  It made a large enough crowd that the former couple wasn't forced to rub constant elbows, but everyone present knew the details of the previous spring and no pretending was necessary.  After that, contact between them grew easier, though it would be some months before they were able to converse with ease.  

With the new school year, band practices started up again, and Soapbox's local reputation had grown sufficiently that they had gigs scheduled nearly every weekend.  They adopted signature Hawaiian shirts, and decided to cut a demo CD for marketing purposes.  They also had their own exclusive -- and occasionally importunate -- groupies.  

"Christ, if Tambourine Girl shows up again, I say we trip her on a guitar chord."  

"LeeLee could try hiding the damn tambourine."  

"I need it!"

"Well, lock it up until you need it!"

The four of them were eating grease from Taco Bell on the dock of Forrester's Boat Rentals before loading their equipment to make a Saturday night gig in late October.  Ever since Scott and EJ had vacated the dorms, practice sessions had been held at Lee's, in an old equipment shed.  It was dim, and poorly insulated, making it as cold as a witch's tit in winter, but there weren't any neighbors to complain about the noise, and rehearsing there meant that Lee didn't have to haul, set up, and take down her trap for every practice, as well as gigs.  

"I hate floor stages," Rick said.  "When you're on the floor, people just walk up and get in your face.  If the stage is raised a little, that don't happen."  

"As much," Scott qualified.  "But at least they don't try to take the mic out of your hands."  

"Oh, man!  That chick was just plain bad."  EJ wadded up his second burrito wrapper and dropped it in the trash bag.  "There's off-key and then there's completely atonal.  But let's roll, kids.  Time to go play for our supper."  

That night's gig was in a basement pub called Wicked Jig's, located beneath a package store.  It catered to a less upscale crowd, or college students out slumming.  The stage was raised, if not by much, yet the room was strangely configured -- long and narrow, with a row of dartboards at the back by the john, two pool tables under light fixtures advertising Budweiser, and a dance floor.  They'd played there twice before.  Scott despised the place.  "Check, check, check, check, check . . ."  he said into his headphone mic during set up, wincing in anticipation of the loud squeal of feedback he knew was coming.  EJ dove to adjust the soundboard as Scott ripped off the headmic, muttering, "I fucking hate this room."  

On the stage beside him, Rick had bent to set up his effects box, a row of six little stomp switches that modulated his sound from grunge to stereo phaser.  "Well, what d'you expect?  It's got low ceilings and the walls are concrete block.  You're the engineer-wannabe, man.  You figure it out."  

"I know.  And that's why I hate the room."  

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," Lee said from behind, as she set her sticks in easy reach on the top of the big bass drums, then tapped the peddle trigger for her tophat.  "They pay well."  Cymbals clapped once like a dull exclamation point.  "And it'll be better once there are some bodies in here."  

"It still sucks eggs."  Scott put on the headmic to try again.  "Check, check, check . . ."  No feedback greeted him.  "Better, Eeej.  But can you still hear me well enough to make out words?"

"I think the mic'll be fine," EJ called from the board, "but play something, guys.  I ain't sure I got the bass track set high enough, and LeeLee is set way too high."  

"Nobody respects the drummer," Lee said, but the three of them started up a blues riff while EJ scooted back and forth, adjusting monitors and mics and soundboard settings.  Typically, Clarice ran the board, but she and Diane had a BBWS meeting that night, and she attended fewer gigs these days, in any case.  It wasn't, entirely, to avoid Scott, but it did leave the band on their own in bars without built-in sound systems.  Adjustments made, EJ went upstairs to talk to the manager, and when he came back, fifteen minutes later, they were still going on the riff.  

"Man, you guys are stuck in A-minor!  The Kings of Inertia."  He hopped up on the stage.  "Can we do something else?"

So Scott took off on a walking bass-line in C-minor.  Thump-da-da-dump, da-da-dump, da-da-dump.  Thump-da-da-dump, da-da-dump, da-da-dump.  Grinning, Rick picked up the lead and Lee followed him in.  When EJ rolled his eyes, Scott protested, "Hey!  It's not in A-minor!"   Then he sang, "Ooo, ooo, ooo - ooo.  Ooo, ooo, ooo - ooo.  I . . . think I'm gonna need my hat."  It made the other three laugh.  

"Black-and-orange stray cat sittin' on a fence,
Ain't got enough dough to pay the rent.  I'm flat broke -- but I don't care!  
I strut right by with my tail in the air.  

"Stray cat strut, I'm a ...  (ladies cat)
Feline Casanova ...  (hey, man, that's that)
Get a shoe thrown at me from a mean ole man
Get my dinner from a garbage can ... 

"Meow ..."

"Great," Scott muttered to Lee as he picked up his Steinberger from its stand and plopped his fedora (fetched from Lee's van) on his head.  "Hide the tambourine."  

They started with "Stray Cat Strut," then moved on to their own material; these days, they were popular enough to get away with only a few covers on the playlist.  The groupies stayed on the floor, and there were no tambourine wars.  Four girls were regulars, but on this particular night, there were nine altogether, the other five apparently friends.  From the dance floor, they flirted with Scott and EJ.  Rick had a girl, and Lee was a girl, so neither had ever encouraged the interest of the groupies, who focused their energy in the direction it was most likely to pay off.  

One of the girls seemed particularly interested in Scott, moving right up to the edge of the stage and watching him play and sing.  She wore low-slung jeans and a white silk tank under a shirt of some indeterminate shade -- blue or green or purple, he couldn't guess in the darkness.  When one of the overhead spots hit her just right, he could see a hint of dark nipples through white silk.  Her hair was dyed blond, which wasn't his preference, but it was nice hair, and she had a wide smile in a long face that might have been called horsy, if she'd been less attractive.  After the first set, he hung about the stage, fiddling with nothing, in case she approached -- which she didn't, at least, not until he went to the bar for some water.  Glass in hand, he turned only to find her right there, nose to nose, and it made him start and spill liquid on his hand.  He used wiping it off as an excuse to step back a bit, but she followed, as if personal space held no meaning in her vocabulary.  She smelled of perfume, alcohol, and cigarettes.  "You're good," she said.  "I'm Pam."  

"Thanks.  I'm Scott."  

"Yeah, I know."  

And she said nothing else, just stared at him expectantly.  He had no idea what she expected.  "You a student?" he asked, fishing.  

"Yeah.  But not at Berkeley."  

"Oh.  Where?"

"Samuel Merritt in Oakland."  A local nursing college.  

"Ah.  I'm a math major.  You know -- across the street."  He thumbed in the campus' direction.  

She didn't reply, just kept staring at him.  Bemused and growing increasingly uncomfortable, he scratched the bridge of his nose and gestured to the stage with his elbow.  "I, ah, better get back.  I was having some trouble with my equalizer.  I need to check it."  He was lying through his teeth.  

"Okay.  See you."  

"Later."  

He slipped away, and she didn't follow, but all through the second set, she stood in front of his position on the stage, dancing in an obviously provocative fashion.  He was half aroused and half put off, and in the second break, EJ said to him, "That chick has her sights set on you, Slimboy.  Be nice, and you might get some action.  I saw you talking to her after the first set."  

"Oh, yeah, she's just a scintillating conversationalist."  

EJ grinned.  "That sarcasm, I hear?"

"She either gives new meaning to 'dumb blonde' or all the lights are not on upstairs.  Or both.  She creeps me out."  He unslung the strap and set the bass in its stand.  "I'm going outside for some air.  The smoke's getting to my throat."  

"You hoping she will or won't follow?"

"Fuck you," Scott said, slapping at EJ in fun and exiting the stage on the opposite side of the girls' table.  Eeling his way through the packed, sweaty crowd, he headed for the stairs that led up into a cool October night.  The twenty-seventh, four days from his twenty-first birthday, though he disliked admitting that he'd been born on Halloween.  For a mutant, there was something too ironic in that.  Outside, packs of students ambled along Telegraph, some wearing costumes for weekend parties.  The Fruit-of-the-Loom Guys were the most original that he saw, one big red apple made from a box, and two sets of grapes swathed in masses of green or purple balloons.  

He considered going for a walk, but didn't feel up to it, so he headed for Lee's van and slipped into the back, flinging his hat on a rear seat and collapsing beside it, knees akimbo, eyes shut, and breath heavy.  He was tired, and maybe he dozed off for a moment because he didn't hear her approach, though the crunch of gravel under heels should've alerted him.  When she said, "Hi," at the van's still-open side door, he nearly jumped out of his skin.  

"Uh -- hi, Pam."  

"Can I come in?"

He shrugged and she took that for acquiescence, climbing inside.  Her hair was loose and brushed her shoulders, and she smiled as she sat down beside him on the bench seat.  He had to move his hat, to make room, and said, "I've gotta go back soon," not liking this feeling of being trapped.  

"Maybe I'll see you after?"

"Maybe."  Not, he finished silently.  

Still smiling, she leaned closer, as if trying to peer through the glasses and find his eyes, paralyzing him before striking, like a cobra.  Then she kissed him hard on the mouth.  It startled him, though perhaps it shouldn't have.  Her lips were soft and she was a good kisser, but this was all too forward for his tastes, and to shock him even further, her hand was busy between his legs.  He couldn't decide if the whole thing were funny, or merely surreal, but his body had taken an unseemly interest.  

"Look," he said, pushing her back.  "I've really got to get back in."  

"Uh-huh."  

She returned to kissing him and her hand hadn't stopped playing with his pants, until, with a deft twist and a yank, she got the fly open to worm her fingers inside the waistband of his briefs.  Annoyed, physically excited, and embarrassed all at once, he turned his head to the side and said, "Come on -- stop it!"  The overwhelming smell of her perfume was giving him a headache.  Some cheap, acidic musk.  

"Doesn't feel like you want me to stop."  She was laughing, her eyes heavy-lidded from alcohol and lust.  Gripping his cock, she pumped it as best she could, and he was so shocked by this whole turn of events that his mind stuttered about for a response while she slipped off the seat to wedge herself awkwardly between his knees, her back bumping the rear of the van seat in front of him.  "Here's a little taste of what I'll give you later, if you wait around for me."  Pushing him back with one hand and pulling his cock through the front of his skivvies with the other, she bent her bottle-blonde head over his lap to take him in her mouth.  

Holy Jesus, he thought, arching off the seat instinctively.  His body was reacting, but that was just a physiological response.  His mind had frozen into dumbfounded disbelief.  This sort of thing happened only in fantasies and boasts, yet here he was, being sucked off by a pretty girl in the back of Lee's van.  Had it been a fantasy, though, the van door wouldn't have been wide open to give a free show to anyone who happened by, and she'd be good with her mouth -- which she wasn't.  She drooled on him, leaving a wet spot on his briefs, and worse, the edge of her teeth kept dragging along the sensitive rim of his cock head, almost sending him through the van roof.  

"Good God!" he shouted finally, finding his voice and shoving her off while he backed away along the seat, one hand fumbling at his fly to tuck himself back in and zip up.  "What in hell are you doing?"  He didn't feel excited.  He felt incredibly disconcerted.  "Get out of here!  Just get the fuck out of here!"

Her long face fell and she seemed ready to cry as she wiped at her mouth.  Later, he'd recall that expression and feel badly for the harshness of his words, but in the midst of his agitation, he was too angry and distressed to think about why she might have thrown herself at him with such frenetic abandon.  "You don't want me to -- ?"

"No!  I barely know you!  Get out of the goddamn van and stay away from me!"

She slunk away while he sat there a moment, his back against the van's side, still trying to zip up his pants but unable to make his hands accomplish even that simple task.  Now that she was gone, he'd started to shake, and wasn't sure why.  He certainly hadn't been scared of her.  But unnerved?  Yes.  She'd unnerved him.  "Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick," he muttered to himself because his hands were still shaking and he had to go in there and finish the final set for the night.  But he finally got his shirt tucked in and his pants zipped up and did what he had to do.  The girl, Pam, was nowhere to be seen, thankfully.  He wasn't sure he could've managed to go on, if she had been, and while he supposed that someday he might look back on this experience and laugh at the total absurdity of it, just then, he wanted only to go home and take a long, hot shower.  

EJ picked up that something was wrong.  "You okay?" he asked, as he settled himself behind his keyboards.  

"Yeah," Scott said.  "Yeah."  

But EJ knew better; Scott's final performance was off.  While Scott made no glaring errors, it was clear that he was neither on top of his timing nor of his stage presentation, and after the set, while they broke down and packed up to leave, EJ tried to draw out Scott again -- to no avail.  

This, EJ thought, was the downside of having one's best friend date one's sister.  What he valued most about their friendship wasn't that they had self-revelatory conversations on a regular basis.  They had esoteric debates on a regular basis, but mostly, they just hung out.  What he valued most was the knowledge that they could have self-revelatory conversations on the rare occasions they needed to.  Or at least, they'd had them until Scott had begun seeing Clarie.  Then things had grown complicated.  That reticence had lifted somewhat after the breakup, but it was still there, and it kept EJ from pushing Scott for details, where once, he might have done so.  

And Scott said nothing because he couldn't pinpoint why he was so agitated.  Hours later, and back in the familiar environment of his own bedroom, he felt guilty for having been so rude to the girl, but he'd let his distress dictate his reaction.  And that very distress confused him.  Shouldn't he have leapt at a chance for unrestricted sex?  It wasn't as if he'd had any other outlet since the spring, and the memory of what had occurred in the van -- the intimate sensation of a woman's mouth on his penis -- now made him harder than he'd been at the time.  Before Clarice, he'd experienced fellatio only twice, and Clarice herself hadn't liked it for a variety of reasons, the concept being wrapped about with a different set of connotations for a black woman than a white man.  And while she'd granted it a time or two, he'd always been mindful of the concessive nature -- she'd done it for love, not interest -- and that had made it difficult for him to enjoy.  Or at least, it had made him feel guilty for enjoying it.  

Yet tonight, a complete stranger had been willing and eager.  And he'd sent her away.  It was only in retrospect -- the perversity of a mnemonic curiosity -- that it excited him.  At the time, he'd been repelled, in part because he'd felt so out of control.  And he didn't like that.  

After tossing and turning in bed almost until sunrise, he gave up and rose, padding out of his bedroom into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich.  He ate it, then crashed on the old velour couch to flip TV channels on the remote, a blanket thrown over his bare legs.  He'd been trying to be quiet, but his movements must have woken EJ anyway.  Opening the door to his own room, EJ stumbled out, still half asleep and rubbing his face.  He walked by the TV and hit the off switch manually, then dropped into the beanbag chair.  "Okay -- spill, Slim.  What went down tonight?"

Scott stared at his blanket-covered knees for a while, gathering his thoughts.  Like EJ, he, too, had been missing the closeness they'd had their first year, but hadn't been sure how to resuscitate it.  Still looking at the blanket, he said finally, "Would you believe me if I told you that blonde chick you saw me talking to at Wicked Jig's tried to blow me in Lee's van after the second set?"

Dead silence for two beats, then he heard the dry rustle of EJ's body sitting up straight on the beanbag.  "Whoa.  Just . . . whoa.  Are you shitting me?"

"Nope."  And Scott told him what had happened.  

"Seriously weird," EJ said when he was done.  "Seriously weird."  

Embarrassed, Scott laughed a little.  "Yeah, it's like something out of Spinal Tap.  I mean, that stuff doesn't really happen -- I don't think."  

EJ laughed.  "Not to most of us!  You got lucky, man!"

Scott rolled one shoulder in dubious agreement, then raised his eyes behind the shades.  "That's just it.  I mean, I could have gotten lucky.  But I told her to get lost."  He paused a beat.  "You think I was nuts to do that?"

"No."  The answer came unhesitatingly.  "I'd probably have done the same thing.  It's damn freaky."  

Scott nodded, accepting the gift of that personal disclosure.  "I was pretty rude to her, but like you said, it was freaky.  I have to wonder, though, about the way she put it -- that it was a taste of what she'd give me later if I waited for her.  That is so a crappy line, but it bugs me that she thought she had to give me sex to get me to go out with her.  I probably wouldn't have anyway -- she was a little too weird -- but it still bugs me.  I know girls do that, give out sex to get affection.  It's, like, classic."  With an internal wince, his mind brushed past the memory of Phoebe.  "But it was just so . . . blunt.  I shouldn't have been mean to her like that."  

"Hey," EJ said, and Scott looked up.  "It wasn't the best situation to keep a cool head."  

"Yeah."  

"Quit kicking yourself, man."  

"Okay."  

"Slim -- I mean it."  

Scott laughed.  "Okay, okay, already!"

"Go to bed.  So I can go to bed.  I'm fucking tired."  

"Yeah."  

Scott went to bed.  But he still wondered if he'd been sensible that night, or simply a nerd.  

Go on to Chapter 11, "Big Green"