AFTER FRIDAY night, Martin began to feel better, realizing that Jean was just a silly little bitch who would sooner or later learn a few things. By Wednesday, he was himself again. He was in such good spirits that his biology instructor had promised to throw him out of the lab the next time he started singing. Undaunted, Martin hummed as he prepared and set aside test tubes of coagulated and precipitated proteins.

He saw her elbow gliding along toward his test tube rack, but there was nothing he could do about it. He watched as the rack and eighteen test tubes of proteins went into the air and hit the floor. It had seemed so inevitable, even if only for an instant, that he wondered why the girl was all upset. She was almost hysterical:

"Oh, I'm so sorry! Here you've worked three hours on these proteins, and I've destroyed them! Completely! I... I don't know what to say! Do you want to share my results? Oh, I just don't know how I could have done that... a whole lab, ruined..."

Martin could see that she was about to cry, so he spoke sharply: "Girl-what's your name?"

Astonished, the girl stepped away involuntarily. (At least she wasn't crying. Martin remembered her now, from the Radcliffe Register: Susan Something, from somewhere in Connecticut.)

"You won't tell me? Well, I already know. Susan, this is a hard thing to say-but you're going to have to pay for this."

Her jaw dropped, along with the test tubes she was carrying. Martin summoned up the dopeyest basset hound-Pat Paulsen deadpan he could imagine until she finally realized he was kidding (Thank God! Man, what a sober little babe!) and began to laugh. So did Martin and, to his discomfort, the entire biology lab.

After everyone shut up and went back to work, Susan looked up from the floor where she was wiping up proteins and asked, "Martin... umh... what is my punishment?"

Martin didn't even look at her. "A date with me on Saturday night."

This time Susan managed to swallow her surprise and squeaked out, just audibly, "Okay." Martin grinned at her, and, averting her eyes, she smiled back.

That, however, was one of the last times they smiled at each other, for as it turned out, Martin could not have sentenced her to a worse punishment than a date with him that Saturday night.

IT WAS FUNNY, the way Martin talked himself out of having a good time on that date. Delighted with himself, he had gone back to his room and had plopped into the armchair, all set to fantasize endlessly about this new girl. Susan. There was no doubt about it: she was tough. Short, slender, pretty, and so serious she was funny. Yeah, and probably popular too. Martin wondered if she had dated a lot. Probably. No reason why not. Hmm, probably some upperclassmen too, damn them-that biology lecture was filled with nothing but juniors and seniors.

But Susan seemed so sober and serious and responsible-she'd never do anything underhanded like what Jean did. But, hell, Jean did it, and she seemed to be a really fine girl herself! Damn, could they all be bitches? What if Susan didn't like the way he talked, or what he said, or what he wore, or what he looked like? What if he did something stupid? She'd pull the same damn trick!... noh, probably not, she was too sober to have developed that kind of thing to the art that Jean had-she'd probably come up with some ridiculous bullshit that Martin would see through immediately! And what would he do then? Yeah, what would he do then?! He couldn't just take it again! He'd have to let her have it! Tell her what to do, where to get off, and how to get off. No doubt about it.

Now Martin was an effective defeatist when he wanted to be, and he ran that Saturday date pretty much the way he thought it would run itself. He and Susan had one strained laugh-no, two-over the incident in the lab, and then both of them clammed up for the rest of the night. Martin was inhibited, constrained-he was afraid to say anything for fear of what she might think of him, so he just didn't talk. Susan, of course, didn't know what to think of him-a a wit on Wednesday and a stone wall on Saturday night.

SO WHEN they arrived at the door of her dorm, Martin guessed correctly that Susan had had enough punishment. Nevertheless, he knew that they could have a good time together if he could only be himself; hope sprang forth, and he asked her out for the next Saturday.