But Carol isn't about to give up smoking. Because smoking Gauloises lit by Cricket lighters is part of her life here. It is essential to her existence-as essential as her Espresso coffee pot, her subscription to the New Yorker, her four rings, her Marimekko clothing, and the lonely preppies who offer her weekend trips to the Caribbean.

I don't know Carol particularly well, but she is always eager to tell me what's going on "Maybe I should go with Paul," she said "He needs someone-he's really mixed up-and a few days of sun might be nice"

"So why don't you go?" I asked.

"I don't know. It might be fun. It just doesn't seem right, that's all." She will let Paul take her to dinner at Locke-Ober's instead.

"You know," she went on, "it's a new term and it just doesn't feel any different from the last one. I don't know what I did last term. Classes, of course, all that. But what else? I sat around Lehman Hall and waited for something to happen. I tried out for a part at the Loeb, and I made call backs, but that was it... Maybe I'll write a novel."

"About what?"

"Everything that's happened."

She reached for a cigarette at last and let me light it with a match. A sad-eyed boy came over.

"Hi, Carol."

"Bill," she said very loudly and happily, "How are you?"

"Okay. Not bad. Okay." He sat down.

"What have you been doing?"

"Working on a movie at the VAC mainly, Hanging in there."

"Well, is there a part in it for me?" Carol asked, all tease.

Bill paused, then said much more earnestly than the situation seemed to call for: "Actually, there is. I had been meaning to call you. If you want it, it's yours."