Night Shift(90)

'And even if this is like the exam, do you think it's exactly ethical?'

Anger surprised her and ran away with her tongue before she could hold it. 'That's great for you, sure. Dean's List every semester and your folks paying your way. You aren't

Hey, I'm sorry. There was no call for that.'

Alice shrugged and opened 0 again, her face carefully neutral. 'No, you're right. Not my business. But why don't you study the book, too. . . just to be safe?'

'Of course I will.'

But mostly she studied the exam notes provided by Edward Jackson Hamner, Jr.

When she came out of the lecture hall after the exam he was sitting in the lobby, floating in his green army fatigue coat. He smiled tentatively at her and stood up. 'How'd it go?'

Impulsively, she kissed his cheek. She could not remember such a blessed feeling of relief. 'I think I aced it.,

'Really? That's great. Like a burger?'

'Love one,' she said absently. Her mind was still on the exam. It was the one Ed had given her, almost word for word, and she had sailed through.

Over hamburgers, she asked him how his own finals were going.

'Don't have any. I'm in Honours, and you don't take them unless you want to. I was doing okay, so I didn't.'

'Then why are you still here?'

'I had to see how you did, didn't I?'

'Ed, you didn't. That's sweet, but -, The naked look in his eyes troubled her. She had seen it before. She was a pretty girl.

'Yes,' he said softly. 'Yes, I did.'

'Ed, I'm grateful. I think you saved my scholarship. I really do. But I have a boy4riend, you know.'

'Serious?' he asked, with a poor attempt to speak lightly.

'Very,' she said, matching his tone. 'Almost engaged.'

'Does he know he's lucky? Does he know how lucky?'

'I'm lucky, too,' she said, thinking of Tony Lombard.

'Beth,' he said suddenly.

'What?' she asked, startled.

'Nobody calls you that, do they?'

'Why. . . no. No, they don't.'

'Not even this guy?'

'No -' Tony called her Liz. Sometimes Lizzie, which was even worse.

He leaned forward. 'But Beth is what you like best, isn't it?'

She laughed to cover her confusion. 'Whatever in the world -'

'Never mind.' He grinned his gamin grin. 'I'll call you Beth. That's better. Now eat your hamburger.'

Then her junior year was over, and she was saying goodbye to Alice. They were a little stiff together, and Elizabeth was sorry. She supposed it was her own fault; she had crowed a little loudly about her sociology final when grades were posted. She had scored a ninety-seven - highest in the division.

Well, she told herself as she waited at the airport for her flight to be called, it wasn't any more unethical than the cramming she had been resigned to in that third-floor carrel. Cramming wasn't real studying at all; just rote memorization that faded away to nothing as soon as the exam was over.

She fingered the envelope that poked out of her purse. Notice of her scholarship-loan package for her senior year-two thousand dollars. She and Tony would be working together in Boothbay, Maine, this summer, and the money she would earn there would put her over the top. And thanks to Ed Hamner, it was going to be a beautiful summer. Clear sailing all the way.

But it was the most miserable summer of her life.

June was rainy, the gas shortage depressed the tourist trade, and her tips at the Boothbay Inn were mediocre. Even worse, Tony was pressing her on the subject of marriage. He could get a job on or near campus, he said, and with her Student Aid grant, she could get her degree in style. She was surprised to find that the idea scared rather than pleased her.

Something was wrong.

She didn't know what, but something was missing, out of whack, out of kilter. One night late in July she frightened herself by going on a hysterical crying jag in her apartment. The only good thing about it was that her room-mate, a mousy little girl named Sandra Ackerman, was out on a date.

The nightmare came in early August. She was lying in the bottom of an open grave, unable to move. Rain fell from a white sky on to her upturned face. Then Tony was standing over her, wearing his yellow high-impact construction helmet.

'Marry me, Liz,' he said, looking down at her expressionlessly. 'Marry me or else.'

She tried to speak, to agree; she would do anything if only he would take her out of this dreadful muddy hole. But she was paralyzed.

'All right,' he said. 'It's or else, then.'

He went away. She struggled to break out of her paralysis and couldn't.

Then she heard the bulldozer.

A moment later she saw it, a high yellow monster, pushing a mound of wet earth in front of the blade. Tony's merciless face looked down from the open cab.

He was going to bury her alive.

Trapped in her motionless, voiceless body, she could only watch in dumb horror. Trickles of dirt began to run down the sides of the hole -A familiar voice cried, 'Go! Leave her now! Go!'

Tony stumbled down from the bulldozer and ran.

Huge relief swept her. She would have cried had she been able. And her saviour appeared, standing at the foot of the open grave like a sexton. It was Ed Hamner, floating in his green fatigue jacket, his hair awry, his horn-rims slipped down to the small bulge at the end of his nose. He held his hand out to her.