Matters of Honor by Louis Begley

simple, Henry said, she’s exactly the sort of girl they all want to take out, those men at the party, and George is exactly the sort of man she thinks should take her out. Maybe she even expects someone even fancier. I don’t qualify. On the other hand, she told me that she hasn’t got much to say to them, not that they would necessarily want to listen. So we can talk to each other. That’s my role—she made it very clear.
    I wouldn’t have predicted for Henry a role as Margot’s confidant. In all other respects, that was also my assessment. It led me to think that he should stop wasting time on his Jazz Age Penthesilea and also on the dogs he had been consoling himself with. There were lots of attractive girls at Radcliffe who would be happy to have him. Some might even be Jewish. Of course, I didn’t tell him any of that. Instead I complimented him on his realism and willingness to accept the situation with good cheer.
    Good cheer? he answered. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been dealt a lousy hand. I know it, and I don’t find anything in it to be cheerful about. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not giving up on Margot. This is a tactical retreat in a long campaign. For now, my plan is to be her friend. Whatever happens and whatever she does with the others, I’ll bide my time.
    That statement didn’t reassure me. I had taken a good look at Margot and the other girls at Mario’s. If he really thought that in time he would be able to get Margot away from the Georges and Marios of this world, he was only setting himself up for more disappointments. I knew I was changing my tune, but that couldn’t be helped. In fact, I was beginning to think that perhaps Archie and I had made a mistake arranging the chance encounter at Mario’s as though it were just another undergraduate lark. At the same time, something made me go on; I couldn’t stop meddling. I asked whether he shouldn’t put the matter to a test by asking her for a date.
    She’d send me packing, he said. That would spoil everything.
    Why? Do you think that she is an anti-Semite? I asked him point-blank. Is that the problem? Because if she is, what would make her change?
    Isn’t everybody? he fired back.
    I don’t think so, I replied. I’m not, Archie isn’t, there are lots of people who don’t care whether you’re Jewish.
    I’m not so sure, Henry said. Anyway, you haven’t been put to any test. Sure, you and Archie don’t seem to mind having had a Jew foisted on you. But in other contexts, who is to say? You seem positively fixated on the Jewish question. In changed circumstances it might turn out that you care a lot. Anyway, I do know that there are Jews and Jews, and that some Jews are acceptable for most purposes, except to real nuts, and others aren’t. Margot’s father and Margot are class A Jews. I’m class B—for the time being. I want to move to A.
    Though a bit put off by his hostility, I wished him luck.
    In the meantime, I watched him go about being Margot’s best friend and must say I admired his eerie efficiency. I doubt that a single day went by without their meeting for coffee or tea at Hayes-Bickford between morning classes as well as in the afternoon, after leaving the library. He avoided Leavitt & Pierce’s because there you had to sit at the counter, so that real privacy was excluded. Besides, it was where “they” hung out, the golden lads and lassies. Most days, Margot and he read side by side at the Widener. When she had to use the Radcliffe library, needing a book on reserve there, he would wait outside and walk her back to her dormitory. Occasionally, they went to the movies. George wasn’t much of a cinema buff and, what with crew training and homework—he was a diligent student who read slowly, took careful notes on what he read, and fretted about deadlines for handing in papers—he was usually pressed for time. Margot, I gathered, worked quickly but without much application. According to Henry, she had been