College-Cut Kill

He was giving me the inch-by-inch survey — and I knew right then that it was a political house. By that I mean one with cliques, possibly two strong ones. Bradley was trying to decide whether I’d be any addition to his clique, or whether I might be permitted to join the other as dead weight. We were like a couple of dogs that circle each other, stiff-legged.

I sighed inwardly. The next move was too obvious. “I put my wagon in the parking area. Hope it’s all right there.” I took out a pack and offered him a cigarette. Siminik refused it. I lighted Bradley Carroll’s with a gold lighter, wide-ribbed, a thing I would never buy for myself, but something that a girl named Ann thought I ought to have.

“You drove down?” he asked politely. “Where from?” is what he was trying to say.

“From New York. Three days on the road.”

“Oh, you live in New York?”

“No, I just took a place there for the summer. Everybody says it’s a hell of a place to spend a summer. Not me.”

He was still wary, but warmer. “Say, we’re being pretty inhospitable, Arlin. Come on back to my room.”

It was an exceedingly pleasant room. The bottle on the coffee table was the very best bourbon. Siminik wasn’t drinking. Carroll mixed me a stiff one. He kept his good-looking slightly bovine eyes on me during our casual talk. I let him know without saying as much that I had no financial worries, that I was neither an athlete nor a bookworm, that I intended to sandwich a very good series of very good times in between the necessary study.

We went through the slightly oriental ceremonies until it was time to come to the point. “Would you recommend living in the house?” I asked.

He hadn’t expected the question that way. “It’s... very pleasant. The food is good.” He suddenly realized that he was on the defensive, an unthinkable position. “But of course,” he said quickly, “I can’t say whether there’d be room for you. I mean a private room, of course.”

“The house is too small?”

“Not that. Seniors are entitled to private rooms if they wish to live in the house. Juniors go two to a room and sophomores bunk in the dorm. There are only eight private rooms and all those are spoken for this semester.”

Siminik said, “Brad, the room that Flynn was going to—”

Brad Carroll said hastily, “Quent is taking that one, Al. I thought you knew.”

“Somebody drop out?” I asked very casually.

“No,” Siminik said, “he—”

“—won’t be here this year,” Carroll said.

I let it go. No point in pushing.

“You’ll have to see Arthur Marris anyway,” Brad Carroll said. “He’s house president and he handles the quarters problem. You might care to bunk with one of the juniors. That’s been done before and I think there’s one vacancy.”

I yawned. “I don’t know as I want to stay in the house anyway. I want to look around first. Maybe I can get some sort of a layout on the beach.”

“On the beach,” said Al Siminik, “it costs like there’s a river of oil under the land.”

Brad looked at him as though he had made a rude noise in public. He gave me an apologetic glance that said, “What else can you expect from knuckled-headed athletes?”

As I was leaving, promising to be back for dinner, I met two more of the brethren, one a shy, blond likeable sophomore named Ben Charity with a Georgia accent, the other a lean, hot-eyed, dark-haired, less-likeable junior named Bill Armand. I got over to the beach part of Sandson at about three-thirty. I found a small rental office inhabited by a vast, saggy female with an acid tongue.

“How much can you go for?” she said without hesitation. “If you want it through the winter it’ll come high. From now until Christmas I can find you something for peanuts.”

We went in my car to three places. I went back and took the second one, mostly because of its isolation. Bedroom, bath and kitchen made one side of an L and the living room made the other side. The L enclosed a small stone patio overlooking the gulf. It was sparkling new, completely furnished, and though the gulf front lot was small, a high thick hedge on either side kept the neighbors out. The car port was at the rear and it was ample protection against salt mist off the gulf. Two-eighty a month until the end of December. Four hundred after that.

I paid my two months in advance, unpacked, raided a package store for all the necessary, bought a typing table and still had time for a dip in the warm gulf before dressing to run back over to dine amid the brethren.

The house was noisy when I went in. In the lounge somebody had racked a bunch of very poor bop on the machine. There was laughing and shouting going on back in the bedroom wing. Suitcases were stacked in the hall. Through the doorway to the dining room I could see the waiters setting the big table in the middle, the smaller tables around the walls.

A little redheaded sophomore with the face of an angel collared me. “Are you Brother Arlin? Come on with me. Brother Carroll said to wait for you and take you back to his room.”