They passed the bookstore and the crazy green fountain. Jimmy crooked his elbow for her to take his arm. She liked touching him. He was tall but not towering. He wore a nondescript brown duffel coat, a blue Oxford shirt, and twill khakis with an ink stain on one knee. His clothes seemed to be an undergraduate wardrobe he hadn’t worn out yet.
She liked his long, messy hair and the unselfconscious way he walked, a walk that meant confidence. And he wasn’t toplofty, like so many Stanford boys.
Her car was in the parking area below Tresidder Union. When they reached her car, he handed over her books. “I’m going the other way,” he said. “See you in class.”
He waved a little goodbye.
Ann was stunned. She felt as though an actor had stepped off the screen and taken her for a vigorous stroll through a make-believe El Dorado before slipping back into the celluloid. What movie? What actor? Actors were all suave, with molded hair. Jimmy was something new.
She bought an ashtray in case he ever came to her apartment.
Would he really wear that old duffel coat? It is seventy-one degrees and sunny in Palo Alto.
SHE READ “ODE to a Nightingale” carefully and tried to think up something interesting to say. Frank the psychologist had warned against shoptalk, but she fancied that she and Jimmy shared a sense of irony and a willing flippancy about their reading. She hardly ate. She wanted to touch Jimmy again. She wanted to play footsie with him under the seminar table. She imagined walking with him under one umbrella, with his arm around her, pulling her out of the rain. That was at least one half-remembered movie ending.
WHEN SHE SAID in class that Keats’s nightingale made her think of a drugged banshee—a tamed, benign counterpoint to the Irish banshee, the horrifying scream in the night—she could sense Jimmy’s amusement.
“Banshee?” he said afterwards. “It was all I could do to keep from whooping out! Man, what a thought.” He laughed. “Come on, my little banshee. I mean nightingale. Sing to me over coffee. We’ll have coffee and you can chirp to me.”
Ovid again! His chirpless Philomela turned into a nightingale. Ann felt tongue-tied.
They sat outside Tresidder, on the plaza, an area where affinity groups often showed up to fulminate or perform. A student was yelling his head off about Robert McNamara, and a group of girls in leotards was performing silent ballet-like exercises. The table was shaded by a canopy that resembled a hovering flying saucer. Jimmy smoked Marlboros and drank his coffee black. Ann had hers with milk and two sugars. While she fiddled with the sugar packet, a bit nervously, he was observing her intently. Her heart was not jumping enough to show through her sweater.
“Do you have banshees in Kentucky?” he asked.
“My mother thinks we do!”
Laughing at herself, she told him about the worm in the Blake poem and the Wordsworth sunset. “The other students were so high and mighty!”
“They’re just polishing apples, you know,” Jimmy said.
“Thank you.”
He reached over and lifted her chin with his fingertip. “I like that way you have of lowering your head and mumbling.”
“Do I do that? That’s terrible.”
“It’s nice. It’s humble.”
“Oh, I should be more direct.”
“But you are, in your own way.” He stubbed his cigarette out. “Do you want some more coffee?”
“No, thank you. I mostly drink it to write papers. Coffee helps me focus.”
“You’ve got an unusual kind of mind.” He moved his cup around on the table.
“Really?”
“Want to walk?”
She had to go to the restroom first but didn’t want to say, then realized she had to say it even though it was awkward. She left her books with him, and when she returned, he slid them into his book bag and they set off. She was wearing Capezio lace-ups instead of ballet flats today.
The day was soft, mizzly. They ambled through the campus, between the library and Hoover Tower. The grandeur of the campus was still stupefying. The giant oak by the library seemed like an ancient ruler, an ultimate authority. They didn’t speak for a while. As they were passing a parking lot on Galvez Street, near the stadium, Jimmy stopped suddenly.
“This is my car,” he said. “Want to go for a ride?”
The car was a sleek blue Mustang.
“Neat!” She was surprised.
“My dad gave it to me for graduation, but I’m embarrassed by it.”
“Why? It’s nice.”
“I like the color, but what a crock. He didn’t even let me pick it out. He just had an idea of the image he wanted for me.”
“Why would your dad want you be a wild horse?”
“He was a big fraternity man, and he believes in levels—that is, you stay in your social class, and you meet the right sort of chicks if you drive the right car or wear the right thing. I wouldn’t even join a fraternity in college.” Jimmy laughed. “If the war keeps up, I’ll wind up in the Mekong Delta frat.”
“I hope not!” She laughed, but that wasn’t funny.
“He thought I’d be a doctor like him. He’s a proctologist. Imagine, poking your finger up men’s asses all day for a living.”
Ann couldn’t imagine that.
He opened the passenger door for her, then tossed a worn Chaucer paperback into the back. The car had bucket seats, like chairs.
“Where to?” he asked, starting the engine.
On an impulse, she said, “The park by San Francisquito Creek. There’s something there I want to see.”
“I’m all yours,” he said.
The car was like a wild horse, the way it seemed so alive, kicking into gear.
The park entrance was not obvious, and Jimmy had to backtrack and turn a few times to cross the railroad tracks by the deep, barren creek. They left the car on Alma Street and headed into the park.
“What are we looking for?”
“Surprise. Follow me.”
They walked some distance without speaking. Then she could see the sequoia ahead.
“That’s the tree Palo Alto is named for. El Palo Alto—the tall tree.”
“It’s magnelephant!” cried Jimmy, his arms wide, head cranked back.
“My freshman English teacher wanted me to find it, but I’ve never been over here.”
The tree was scruffy with a thin topknot.
“It’s seen better days,” Jimmy said, picking at the bark. “Why did he want you to see this?”
“He wanted me to know about the history of the settlement of this place by Portola, the Spanish explorer.”
They found the plaque and Jimmy read it aloud.
“‘Under this giant redwood, the Palo Alto, November 6–11, 1769, camped Portola and his band on the expedition that discovered San Francisco Bay.’”
“Far out,” said Jimmy.
“The year,” Ann said. “It’s the same year Daniel Boone explored Kentucky for the first time. That’s important to my teacher. He was out here on a Stegner, and now he teaches in Kentucky.”
“I’ve never been to Kentucky. I bet you come from a beautiful place.”
“It’s a small farm. My dad grows a little of everything. Cows.”