I was hanging around the kitchen of my apartment, making one more pass through the summer-school papers I'd graded, when the phone range and gave me a welcome distraction. Claire. An old high-school girlfriend, in law school on the East Coast.
"Hey!" she said brightly. "How's grad school?"
"Less lucrative than law school! Come out and buy me dinner!"
"Maybe over the summer. But here's a deal. Julie starts school there in August and she's moving there in two weeks. Show her around? I'll make it worth your while..."
"Ha! Sure, seriously, not a problem." I tried to remember the age gap between my friend and her sister. "She's coming in as a freshman? Is that right?"
"Yeah, but she took a year off. She's still too young for you and if you touch her I'll skin you slowly, alive."
"If I
don't
touch her, you'll hurt me? That's an odd request."
"You heard me...see you over Christmas, maybe." And she hung up, laughing.
I forgot the conversation, except for some warm thoughts about Claire and her parent's pool house that I had over the next month or so.
Summer school ended, I managed to get some research done, and then the rampup to the academic year began.
I went to my office and found a note in my cubby. Little-girl script, an invitation to meet at the coffee shop across Hilgard from campus at 5, signed Julie. It took me a minute and then I remembered the conversation. "Ah, damn, can't make it." She'd left a number, and I explained to her answering machine that I had meetings until 7. But if she wanted to connect later, I'd buy her dinner. I left my office and home phones (this was back before cells...).
Finished the meeting and dropped my books in my office. The light on my phone was blinking - thinking it was the smoking hot redhead from my linear math course, I grabbed them. A young voice announced herself as Julie and invited to me dinner. She had moved into an empty sorority until school actually started, so was right off campus.
I walked by and found her building. I recognized her right away. She was sitting on the stairs, chatting with another young girl, but saw me as I approached and stood up. Same straight auburn hair, same roundish face, same big smile - but now atop a somewhat well-filled but definitely round in the right places body. She wasn't tall, but was vibrant. Her friend stood up as well. She was in many ways her opposite. Slender, olive skin, black hair, serious mouth. Where Julie was all Northern California joyfulness, her friend - Leah - was darker in mood, and somehow all the more attractive for it.
Then I caught myself. C'mon, this is Claire's baby sister and her friend. Kids, I thought.
"Hey guys! Want to go get some dinner?"
Leah had a date, and Julie was ravenous so we split up and Julie and went and grabbed a meal at Monty's, the steak house on top of a local office building. Even back then, it was old-fashioned.
We chatted over dinner, she filled me on her year after high school (Eurailpass, backpack) and what she wanted to do here at UCLA (prelaw, like her sister).
Then I walked her around the Village, and up onto campus as we angled over toward her sorority building.
As we got there, she invited me up to smoke a joint. I laughed and said I didn't think I could come into a sorority and go upstairs.
"No, it's totally cool; it's not the sorority yet, it's like a boarding house for another week. There are just four of us here tonight; we have to be out Friday. Come on up, I'll tell you all about what Claire's up to..."
I laughed and said sure, figuring it'd be fun to be a grad student who got tossed from a sorority.
We walked into the dim living room, and then up stairs. We went into another living/sitting room and then into her room, which was stacked with boxes and suitcases.
She grabbed a few things, and then we went back to the sitting room, looking out over Hilgard and campus.
She pulled a joint from a baggie and lit it. She took a big drag and handed it to me.
