Nickwen Street

The all-campus party wasn't to start for another hour or so, but half a dozen or so of Robbie's floormates were already congregating in the hallway when he emerged from his room.

"Hey Robbie, what are you going as?" called out Sam, who was dressed in black leather pants and a vest with nothing underneath.

"A jaded senior," Robbie quipped with a quick look down at his jeans and beat up sweatshirt from a faraway state university. He'd never bothered dressing up for the previous three Halloween parties and, with two papers coming up next week, he didn't even plan to go this time.

But his joke brought on a round of laughs, and Spiderman handed him a beer. "No time for studying, man," came Martin's voice from behind the mask.

"Guys, Robbie doesn't like dressing up," said Clara, his freshman-year crush, who was sporting a homemade angel costume. Robbie could see in her eyes that she was hoping he wouldn't take the beer; his drinking was one reason why they had never happened as a couple.

A touch out of spite for her, but mostly because he couldn't face another round with his econ text, Robbie took the beer. "Thanks, Spidey," he said. "She's right, though, I haven't bothered with a costume since I don't even know when."

"Where's your school spirit, man?" Sam asked.

Robbie hadn't noticed Sandra, their resident freshman know-it-all and his current crush despite that, was even there until she spoke up. "Sam, 'school spirit' is a patriarchal and racist construct..."

As usual, she was drowned out in a chorus of groans. "Racist, really?" asked Patty, one of two Black students on their floor and the only one present at the moment.

"Well, a case could be made, given how most public schools got their lines drawn," Robbie allowed with a conciliatory smile at Sandra, who was looking as cute as ever although she was also not in costume; he'd found himself looking that way at her a lot lately. She did not, though, look the least bit impressed with his partial agreement. Robbie nodded at her with what he hoped was a tender look in his eyes anyway.

"Guys, not tonight!" Martin said. "Don't make my Spidey senses tingle with political bullshit!"

As the conversation turned back into waters less treacherous, Patty sidled up beside Robbie. "I agree with you," she said quietly. "It's just, doesn't she think we've got bigger problems than that?"

"Thanks," Robbie said. "Nice dress, by the way," he added; Patty was dressed as a flamenco dancer.

"Oh, thanks!" Patty said. "Listen, are you sure you don't want to --"

Her voice broke off as a collective shriek went up. "Cameron!" yelped two or three of Robbie's friends in unison.

Robbie whipped around to see his fellow senior, Cameron, wearing nothing but a strategically placed slice of pizza. "Cheapest costume I ever had," he said with the goofy grin that was rarely off his face.

"Oh my God, Cameron, you've inspired me!" proclaimed Tammy, the hall social coordinator. She reached under her toga and pulled her panties off. "I'm going commando now!"

Robbie instinctively looked away and caught Clara's eye. She was red in the face and grinning in disbelief, and he enjoyed a beautiful flashback to their chats about sex freshman year. He'd been a virgin then, and he happened to know Clara still was. He felt like shielding her eyes. But Clara proved more than capable of averting her gaze diplomatically once the shock had passed.

All the women on their floor had become quite practiced at that thanks to Cameron.

Sam chucked Robbie on the shoulder. "C'mon, man, you don't want to miss how that goes over at the party, do you?"

"Got a feeling I'll hear about it tomorrow anyway," Robbie said between sips of beer. "We'll be hearing about all up and down Nickwen Street!"

"Just what would Nicholas Wendover have to say about that anyway?" wondered Martin. Nicholas Wendover Street -- nearly always abbreviated to Nickwen by students and townies alike -- was the street that ran behind Claxton College's east-side dorms, where all the campus hippies lived.

And a few stubborn squares like Robbie, who at that moment was wishing he could have taught himself to prefer the jocks on the west-side.

"Don't you guys know who Nicholas Wendover was?" Cameron asked.

"Heard he was an anti-slavery crusader back in the eighteen-somethings," Sam said.

"No, he gave Claxton a bunch of money but they didn't have a new building to name after him," said Tammy.

"Wrong and wrong," declared Cameron. "I can't believe we haven't been talking about him all week, since it's Halloween. Everybody grab another beer and I'll tell you the real story. Then you'll see why no one at Poirier will care about my costume."

"You gonna tell us who Poirier was, too?" Sam asked. "And what he did to deserve to have such an ugly building named after him?"

"Her," Tammy reminded Sam. "Renee Poirier, the internet millionaire."

"The English major who was smart enough to get a real job," quipped Martin, a computer science major.

"The straight-A student who ended up working for a C student," Robbie added. "Tom something. Why doesn't anyone including me remember his name?"

"Because he didn't give the college any money," Patty said. "A man after my own heart, that's for sure."

"Yeah, it's a wonder they didn't name the street after Renee Poirier and the building after Wendover," Cameron said, opening the beer Tammy had just handed him. "He was a jerk."

"Then why name anything after him?" Clara wondered.

"As a cautionary tale," Cameron said. "Especially at Halloween. It's easy to forget now, Claxton used to be pretty conservative back in the fifties. Nick Wendover was a student here then, you see, and back then where the student union is now...well, it was a student union, but back then it was an old farmhouse from before the college moved here, and the bedrooms on the second floor all had pianos for the students to practice on..."

***

The smell of burgers and fries and the sounds from the jukebox wafted up the stairs just enough for Nick Wendover to be aware of them as he attacked the piano again and again. He went at it as hard and fast as he could, spurred ever onward by a vision of himself surrounded by adoring girls and jealous guys at the west campus Halloween party.

Front and center among the adoring girls, of course, was Polly Johnson.

Dubbed the freshman heartbreaker of 1954 within weeks of her arrival on campus that fall, she still had half the guys on campus lusting after her two years later. Tall and voluptuous with a smile and a kind word for everyone including skinny little Nick, she'd always had her pick among the men of Claxton. Neither they nor the women who envied her were surprised when she'd ended up with Ronnie, then a promising freshman on the football team. Nor was anyone surprised that she remained with him and wore his pin now that he was the captain. Word had it among the men's dorms on west campus that Polly had even gone all the way with Ronnie at least once. The women of east campus were equally adamant that her virtue remained intact; jealous as they might be, they looked up to Polly and refused to believe she'd be a bad girl.

In Nick's imagination, of course, Polly was a very bad girl. Maybe even worse than Mary, the token female among his buddies, who had a bad reputation and enjoyed every furtive whisper about it from the more straight-laced girls. Nick lusted after Mary, but he loved Polly. He'd loved her ever since the French class they'd had together freshman year. It had still been fairly early in the semester when their paths had crossed outside class for the first time, still warm enough that she hadn't been wearing a coat over the beautiful plaid dress he'd taken note of in class. A few hours later, on his way home from a piano lesson, he'd walked around a corner outside the student union and nearly run into her.

To this day, he could only hope his nervous laughter at the near miss hadn't sounded as nervous to her as it had to him. Whether it had or not, though, Polly had shown no sign of caring. She'd grinned at him and cooed, "Ah, bonjour, Frankie!"

From that day to this, Nick had been utterly smitten. The fact that his name wasn't Frankie had never made a dime's worth of difference to him, nor had the rumors -- since proven true -- that she was going steady with Ronnie. He probably didn't know Nick's name either, but of course Nick knew his name. Joe College himself from the moment he'd set foot on campus, confidence itself on and off the football field...even the squares who loved to hate football knew who Ronnie was.

Naturally, in Nick's imagination as he hammered the piano, Ronnie was eating his heart out somewhere back in the audience. So, for the moment, was Polly just across the piano. Her big, dark eyes and her lush, curly, even darker hair shone in the dim light as she drank in the animal masculinity that oozed from Nick's performance. Though he had to focus on playing his song, Nick wished Polly would stand up and give him a better look at her cat costume. Remembering that it was his imagination and he could make her stand up, he did just that. Somehow he didn't miss a note as he admired Polly in her black leotard and tights, swaying hard and fast to the music and applauding lustily as he finished and their eyes met.

Back in reality, he played hard and fast as ever as he imagined Polly welcoming him into her room, which of course he'd never seen but he was certain it was a wonderland of chintz and lace. "Nice place," he heard himself saying in an agreeable baritone. "Hope you don't mind me invading your feminine sanctum."

"You're not invading it if I invited you in!" he heard Polly saying. "And it's not all I'm inviting you into, you silly boy. Come here!" He saw her guiding his hands as they pulled her leotard straps down, then welcoming his caresses on her lush, creamy breasts while she kissed him lustily. He didn't see just what happened to her tights, but presently she was without them and lying spreadeagled on her bed, her jet-black pubic hair glistening in the candle shine, beckoning for his gentle touch, which somehow he just knew would be perfect -- not too gentle, not too hard at first, though another part of him was in fact very hard right then.

"Bring that over here, Nicholas." He could hear her cooing it as if she were in the room with him. As he went on attacking the piano lustily, he imagined he would burst any moment now.

Just as Polly was guiding him inside her, he did burst. Feeling the spurt in his jeans. Nick snapped back to the pale light of the otherwise-empty practice room, hit one last bad chord, and stopped. "Crud, not again," he muttered under his breath.

"You finished, Wendover?" came his buddy George's voice from the hall. Before Nick could do or say anything, the door opened. Nick pressed his legs together, doing his best to ignore the wetness between them and just what it meant, and turned to see not just George but the whole gang -- Stan, Miles and Mary -- waiting for him.

"Not yet," Nick said. "Still haven't quite nailed it. Maybe by Halloween?"

"No, pal, you're still not gonna be Little Richard by Halloween," Stan declared.

"And even he wouldn't steal Polly's heart away from Ronnie," added Miles. "Sorry."

Mary punched Miles in the arm. "That was uncalled for! He can't help the way he feels."

"Eh, maybe you're right," Nick said. "Believe me, I wish I could just decide to fall for someone else."

"We've got to get you laid, Nick," George declared. "Get her out of your system."

"Worth remembering even if Polly did fall in love with you, she still wouldn't go to bed with you," Stan pointed out.

"I don't know about that," Miles said. "I hear she and Ronnie are practically living together now in his room."

"You wish," Mary said. "For one thing, she'd miss bedcheck. And you don't even want to know what our housemother would do to her then."

"Come on, you miss bedcheck all the time, don't you?" Miles replied.

"Yeah, but I know how," Mary said. "I guarantee you Miss Polly Johnson doesn't know the first thing about that." To Nick she added, "Look, if you want a fling, I can ask around."

"I don't!" Nick realized a moment too late that he'd snapped at his friend. "Sorry, Mary, I appreciate it, but look, what I feel for Polly isn't like that. It's real love! Because..."

"Because Polly's a good girl who'd never let even Ronnie under those frilly dresses of hers." Mary chuckled. "Hate to break it to you, Nick, but we all smolder under our dresses just like you guys do in your shorts. I'm just more honest about it than most of them."

"I don't think I've ever even seen you in a dress," Stan said, as if reading Nick's mind.

"Not the point!" Mary said. "Although I'm thinking I might wear one for Halloween. It'd sure feel like a costume. Maybe I'll be Cinderella."

"Can I be your Prince Charming?" Nick had been stuck on what to do for Halloween, with barely a week to go before the big night.

"Nah, Nick's going as Little Richard, isn't that right, Nick?" George said. "All you need is about five more years of piano practice and a little burnt cork."

"George, that's disgusting!" Nick said. "Do I look like Pat Boone?"

"You sound way too much like him," Stan said.

"Fuck you, and let's get out of here." Nick stood up and snatched up his jacket from the wooden chair beside the piano. "Polly probably doesn't like rock and roll anyway." Some of the more conservative students on campus were indeed vocally opposed to the new music, though Nick couldn't actually recall Polly ever saying anything about being one of them. She did, though, certainly carry herself that way.

"Yeah, we're late for the party anyway," Miles said. "We don't want to keep Mary out past bedcheck."

"Like I care about that!" Mary said. As she and Nick found themselves bringing up the rear as usual on the walk downstairs, she hooked her arm through his and whispered in his ear, "Yes, you can be my Prince Charming!"

"Thanks." Once again Nick allowed himself to imagine things a great deal raunchier than he'd ever allow himself to think with Polly. He would never act on them, for both Stan and Miles claimed to have been with Mary and he didn't want to horn in on any lingering feelings she might have for either of them. But his mind ran wild all the same.

Mary seemed to know that, somehow, for she leaned in at his ear again. "And I really can see about getting you a girl to..."

"I couldn't ask you to do that!" Nick protested. "Besides I..." he gave his friend a sheepish grin. "I wouldn't know what to do anyway."

"Oh, Nick, that is so cute!" Mary tightened her grip on his arm. "Please, let me help you out with that! And, you know, I wish you'd forget about Polly. She's not the angel you think she is."

"You're probably right," Nick admitted. The other guys were several steps ahead as they stepped out into the October night. "I just, I guess I just really want somebody to think of me the way I think of her, you know? And the piano's my only chance at that."

"How do you figure?"

"Oh, I just had this image of me playing to a full house at the Halloween party, all the girls in sexy costumes cheering for me, you know." He sighed. "I think I'd sell my soul for that to come true!"

"Oh, Nick, don't be so dramatic! Plenty of girls would love you just for being you!" Mary was tempted to reveal that she was one of them. But Nick had never made a move on her in two years despite knowing all about her reputation; she figured she knew what that meant.

Their conversation turned to safer waters after that as they hurried to catch up with the other guys. Neither of them noticed the older man in the trench coat standing under the old oak tree, so he was free to watch them both as they rushed off to the party.

No one needed to remind Nick he wouldn't be seeing Polly at the party they were attending. The fact that it was at an off-campus house where a bunch of drama majors lived would have been enough to draw that conclusion, as would the fact that most of the women in attendance were more Mary's speed than Polly's.

But there was an even more obvious reason why Polly was otherwise engaged on that evening. The football team had played its first home game of the season that afternoon, and they and their dates had been welcomed to a banquet at the college president's mansion afterward. That they had clobbered their archrival team 21-7 had only been icing on the cake. But the president did like icing, and the team and their ladies had been compelled to linger in his opulent dining room until well after Nick and his friends had gone off to their party.

"Honestly, Ron, that was almost embarrassing!" Polly said on the walk home when at last they had made their escape. "I mean, I'm delighted you won the game, but it is only a game."

"You try telling Coach that when we lose," Ronnie said. "I'd like to see you do that!"

"Oh, I know how much it means to you," Polly reassured him. "It's just, we make so much of the football team, and aren't we here to learn?"

"A guy can do both," Ronnie said. "And you know how much I put into every game. Why shouldn't we celebrate when we win?"

Polly laughed. "Sorry, Ronnie, I'm just trying to imagine President Dolan fawning over my friends and me when we get an A on an exam! I got all A's and B-pluses last semester and it didn't earn me a steak and a speech from Dolan!"

"Yeah, well, I didn't get any A's or B-pluses," Ronnie pointed out. "So why can't you let me have this?"

"It's just that we are here to learn and to be tomorrow's leaders, and there are so many real problems out there! Sorry, but there's a lot that's more important than who won that football game."

"No need for you to worry about those problems," Ronnie told her. "My old man's got a job waiting for me in his office once we're out of here, and I'll make sure you never have to worry about anything but getting dinner on the table."

"Oh, not that again!" Polly said. "I love you, Ron, but what if I don't want to settle down and live like my mother did right away?"

"Polly, you're not Amelia Earhart, all right?" Ronnie patted her curls in just the right way that usually calmed her down. This time it didn't. "And I mean, look how she ended up! Is that what you want?"

"Sometimes I think it beats being tied down in the kitchen all day long," Polly said.

"You don't mean that!"

"No, I don't mean it literally," Polly admitted. As they turned the corner and the gates of campus came into view, she stopped and gathered his coat around her shoulders against the October chill. "But I mean, the world is changing, all right? If I wanted to go to law school now, I could, you know?"

"I ain't marryin' no lady lawyer, Polly," Ronnie said with a grin that belay his serious tone. "Come on, and you don't really want that life either. My pa had a couple ladies in his office who stayed on after the war, wouldn't give up their jobs to the men who should've had 'em all along, and you know how the other guys in the office treated them?"

"I can just imagine," Polly said. "But don't you want that to change?"

"Sure I do! I want their husbands to be able to get jobs to take good care of 'em like a man's supposed to do! And I want to do that for you and our kids, Polly!" Seeing she was far from convinced, he grinned again. "Look," he began...and then noticed something out of the corner of his eye.

It was three of the guys from his defensive line, who'd had the good sense to ditch their dates already. "Hey, Ron, hey, Polly!" called one of them whose name Polly couldn't recall offhand. Polly waved and gave them her cordial smile, then turned expectantly back to Ronnie.

But he wasn't looking at her. "Hey, boys!" he called out. "Where you off to?"