Roo was his red flag, his declaration of independence-and in the beginning, the less comfortable his family and more conventional friends were with her, the better pleased he was. Now he feels shamed and enraged to realize that they had judged her more accurately than he. His father, for instance, held the unspoken but clearly evident opinion that Roo was not a lady. Once Fred would have indignantly denied this, or rather condemned the concept as outmoded and meaningless. Now he has to recognize its validity. Even if you suppose, just for the sake of argument, that Roo never slept with either of the two guys whose semi-erect cocks were featured in her show, those photos were pretty vulgar. And worse, she didn’t even know it. As Joe had put it, she wasn’t on the same wavelength; they weren’t, as Debby had said, “coming from the same place”-though in fact they had both grown up in university towns with fathers who were professors.

Possibly it was this similarity of background that had helped mislead him into assuming that Roo and he were, whatever her language and manners, essentially in cahoots. It wasn’t his fault; Debby had said so: “Anyone can make a mistake-even you.”

As Fred hears her remark again in his head, however, it begins to deconstruct, becoming condescending, chilly, and spiteful. It occurs to him for the first time that Debby does not like him, possibly has never liked him, that she is glad to see him depressed and discomfited. Why this should be so, however, he has no idea. He has known Debby even longer than he has known Joe, since their first year in graduate school, and has always thought of her as a friend, though not an intimate one.

As a matter of fact, though he doesn’t know it, Debby had originally liked Fred very much-too much for her peace of mind. When they met-almost daily, in class or at some lecture or party-or when they had lunch together, usually in a group but now and then alone, Fred remained unaware of her feelings.