Tonight’s date had taken us to a small rally on the back steps of the Presbyterian church. There were maybe thirty people sweating it out in the eighty-five-degree dusk. Three speakers had preceded the present one. They were as sweaty as rock singers after an hour on stage. But they were only opening acts for the star.

I suppose I had to consider the possibility that I disliked Harrison Doran because I was jealous of him. For one thing, he was not stuck on the lower floors of life’s elevator. He was six-two to my five-six. He had also, though not necessarily in this order, appeared on stage with his good friend Joan Baez at her anti-war concert; spoken at the demonstration in Washington, D.C., in front of 25,000 people; and shared a radio interview with his close friend Norman Mailer. Doran was also due, at age twenty-five, to inherit somewhere in the vicinity of ten million dollars from his father. He had become a star in our little community. Girls trailed him everywhere.

So why would I be jealous? Me? Sam McCain?

The people in the front row held lighted candles in the vermilion moments before full darkness; the people in the second row held bobbing signs.

With his long blond locks and beard and his quarterback size, Doran did have a certain theatrical style, the kind of cavalier who also had a doctorate from Yale. Oh, yes, the town ladies loved him, though after a month of being dazzled some of them were starting to find his narcissism overwhelming. Not Molly. Molly had once dragged me to a dinner in his honor and we’d had the misfortune of sitting near him. I should say I had the misfortune. Molly was transfixed. That she had a crush on him was easy to see.

The speech droned on. I was thinking about the double feature at the drive-in, two Hammer films both with Peter Cushing. They’d be starting in half an hour. I was hoping we’d be there in time. I hated being late to a movie and as much as I was against the war, She and The Evil of Frankenstein sounded a lot better than sweating it out here.