Campus Tramp by Lawrence Block Page B

slept as long as she possibly could.
    She didn’t speak to people if she could possibly avoid it. She didn’t go for walks or look at the scenery. In short, she did as close to nothing as she possibly could while still eating and breathing and sleeping enough to keep alive.
    She would sit in her room for hours on end, just staring at the wall like a schizophrenic or looking out the window without seeing anything on the outside. She would lounge on the steps of the Union building along with the other people in the group, but she would sit there for hours on end without exchanging a word with one of them, without listening to what they said, without doing anything in particular.
    During that week she hardly even thought about anything.
    That was funny, in a cockeyed sort of away. Every once in a while her mind would start on one cycle of thought or another, but before long she would be thinking about Don again and she would get all fouled up. It was easier not to think than to think about Don.
    So she quit thinking.
    Ruth tried to pull her out of her depression. Ruth wasn’t around the room much—she was spending more and more time up at Sheila Ashley’s room—but still she talked to Linda whenever she saw her and tried valiantly to cheer her up.
    Needless to say, it didn’t work.
    Nothing worked.
    The trouble, she decided, was that she no longer seemed to want anything. She wanted Don, of course, but wanting Don was like wishing for wings. If she had wanted anything in particular she might have been able to shake the mood of depression that nestled around her neck like a black albatross.
    As it was, she didn’t want a thing in the world. And that was worse than wanting something she could never have.
    Finally—and it took over a week—she found something she could want.
    A man.
    It wasn’t quite that simple. She was standing nude in her room again before her mirror, looking at her body, touching herself and remembering Don’s touch. It occurred to her that her body was a very good body, a body that men ought to want. And it also occurred to her that even if Don no longer wanted her body, somebody else might want it.
    It wasn’t Don’s private property any more, that body of hers. If it no longer belonged to Don, there wasn’t much sense in keeping it out of circulation until the end of time. Why not let somebody else have a crack at it? Don had told her to go back to her room and find herself a candle. But another man would do her a lot more good than a candle, that was certain.
    She gave the matter a lot of concentrated thought while she stood nude before her mirror and gazed upon the reflected breasts and belly and thighs. She imagined a man with a blank face, a shapeless nonentity, a man who would touch her and arouse her and take his pleasure with her and ultimately satisfy her, and her mind made itself up after a while.
    She got dressed. She put on the white sweater she had worn to the Record office that first time, but now she omitted the bra. She would make things easier for whoever she selected as her human candle.
    She slipped a skirt on without bothering with panties underneath it. The skirt was a dark green and it contrasted nicely with her blonde hair and with the white sweater. She didn’t bother with socks but pulled a pair of dirty white tennis shoes onto her feet and tied them quickly.
    Then she left the dormitory. She wandered aimlessly around campus for about half an hour, not knowing who or what she was looking for, not knowing where to search for the man who would serve as Lover Number Two. For a moment she considered hunting up Joe Gunsway—he certainly wanted her, and he’d be more than grateful for a chance to maneuver her into a horizontal position. But she decided that she didn’t want Joe. Joe represented a potential emotional involvement, on his part if not on hers, and she didn’t want to find anybody who would fall in love with her. She just wanted somebody to take her to