He serves in the National Guard. His favorite movie is High Noon. His favorite activity? Playing football in the snow with buddies from high school.
He asks if she plays golf. “No? Too bad,” he says. “Putting green underfoot is the best feeling on earth.”
She doesn’t see that they have anything in common and wonders why he hasn’t already ended the conversation.
“What’s your favorite food?” she asks, hating herself for the dumb question.
“Steak,” he says. “Sirloin, of course.”
“Of course,” she says.
“And yours?”
“Vanilla pudding.”
“Vanilla pudding?” He sounds amused. “Of all the food in the world, don’t you like anything better than that?”
Now she’s stupidly given him a clue about her life. Her vanilla life. “Well,” she hastens to add, “I mean, it’s white, and Norwegians eat a lot of white food and I’m Norwegian, second generation, or, I guess third . . . white potatoes, white gravy, creamed vegetables . . . and, of course, if you mix strawberries into the pudding . . . Doesn’t that sound good?”
“Mmm,” he says. “I’d rather have ice cream.”
“Vanilla?”
“Chocolate.”
“Of course.”
She avoids asking about his family for fear he’d ask about hers. She chatters on about being a small-town escapee who loves college and the big city and has never missed a performance of the university’s theater company. An ideal afternoon might be a walk in a park or exploring an art gallery. He says he likes those things too. How about a movie Friday night?
Suddenly she feels bold—how about the mixer at the union instead? No? Well, okay, movie it is.
Wearing a new red angora sweater and gray pleated skirt, Saffee goes to the dorm lobby at the appointed time. She looks for someone of football player girth. Didn’t Jack say that playing football is his favorite activity? But even with an overcoat, the dark-haired young man who approaches her appears to be slender. She doesn’t miss his look of approval as he helps her with her coat.
They head toward his Volkswagen and then decide instead to walk the four blocks to the Varsity theater. Speaking only when necessary, they crunch through an inch of new snow in winter night stillness. Saffee continues to size him up: nice-looking, well-groomed, and mannerly—intentional about walking on the street side of the sidewalk. Best of all, and most telling, he laughs easily, not nervously or inappropriately, but comfortably.
No sooner do they sit down in the darkness, popcorn in hand, than one of Jack’s new contact lenses pops out and falls somewhere at their feet. They spend ten minutes on hands and knees gingerly feeling the cement until they find the hard, no-longer-clean lens. He had not brought his glasses. Since Jack now has clear vision in only one eye and they’ve missed the beginning of the movie, they go to the box office and request a refund. Gone with the Wind. She quickly pushes the memory aside.
Jack seems to accept the awkward situation with aplomb; Saffee is impressed. They walk back toward campus under a cold, starry sky. He is witty, self-deprecating.
“‘My contacts fell out!’ Tom said ex-sightedly.”
“What?”
Jack repeats the pun. She still doesn’t get it.
“What are you talking about?”
“Haven’t you heard of Tom Swifties?”
“No. Who’s he?”
Jack laughs. “It’s a kind of joke that links an adverb to a quote in an unusual way.”
He tells her that Tom is a character in a book and that there is a Tom Swiftie contest running in the newspaper. He says he makes them up, even when he doesn’t want to.
Saffee tries to decide if this makes Jack wonderfully clever or a little strange. Whichever it is, for a date, she is uncharacteristically comfortable.
“So, you like living in the dorm?” He asks, as it turns out, not because he wants to know, but so he can follow her answer with: “I could never live in one. ‘I need accommodations that will accept Rover,’ Tom said dogmatically.”
She groans, but at the same time leans slightly toward clever.
The night is beautiful, the air is mild, tall lamps illumine the wide campus mall. When they reach the end, they decide to double back.
When he asks about her family, she tells him she has one sister named April and turns the inquiry onto him. He has a married older brother, Danny, who lives in Michigan with his wife and two children.
Jack tells her about his new job and offers opinions on sports and politics. It must be obvious she knows little about either one. He answers her questions, never giving her the idea that he finds her stupid. With his range of interests and knowledge, could he ever be interested in her? A nobody, from a strange family? Kathy seems to think so, but Saffee doesn’t dare hope.