Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald

good to stare at. Long black lashes and good brow and high cheekbones. Curiously harsh black hair. She wore a green nubby suit and a yellow blouse with meager ruffles at the throat. He thought forlornly of some of his more extroverted friends, and how blandly and confidently they could open a conversation. Soon she would finish her cheesecake and coffee and be gone, perhaps with another cold little glance. And he could sit alone and think of what he should have said.
    Suddenly he recognized the text she was reading. He had used it when he was an undergraduate. Durfey’s
Abnormal Psychology
. After several mute rehearsals, he said with the greatest possible casualness, “That course gave me a bad time.”
    She glanced over at him, as though surprised to find someone at the table. “Did it.” She looked back at her book. It was not a question. It was an end to all conversation.
    He floundered on, saying, “I … I objected to the vagueness of the field. They use labels, but they don’t seem to be able to measure … things.”
    She closed the book slowly, keeping her finger in it at her place. She stared at him and at his plate. He wished he hadordered something with more dignity than franks and beans.
    “Don’t you know the rules?” she asked frigidly.
    “What rules?”
    “The unwritten rules. You are not supposed to try to strike up a conversation with the coeds at this great university. We are drab, shabby, myopic little things you men students call bookbags. We’re all beneath your lordly notice. If a dear fraternity brother makes the social error of bringing a bookbag to a fraternity function, he is looked on with loathing. So suppose you whiz on out to Bryn Mawr and try your luck out there.”
    He felt his face turn sweaty red. She had opened her text again. His awkwardness turned slowly to anger. “All right. So I spoke to you. If you don’t want to talk, say so. But being pretty doesn’t give you any special right to be rude. I didn’t establish the unwritten rules. I don’t date the coeds here because it so happens that I’m engaged to a girl in New York.”
    There was no sign she had heard him. He stabbed at a frank and it jumped off the plate into his lap. As he replaced it she said, without looking up, “Then why try to pick me up?”
    “That’s pretty damn arrogant, isn’t it?”
    She stared at him and pursed her lips. He saw that her eyes were so dark a brown they were nearly black. “Is it?”
    “Arrogant and also self-conscious. I have no intention of picking you up. And if I did have, brother, I’m cured.”
    And she grinned at him, a wide gamin grin that mocked him. “See? You admit you had the idea.”
    “I did not!”
    “It’s almost impossible for most people in this world to be the least bit honest and candid. You certainly don’t look the type.”
    “I’m completely honest with myself.”
    “I doubt it. Let’s see if you can be. Imagine that when you came out with your forlorn little gambit, I’d risen like a hungry bass. And we have a real earnest talk about the course. Then you see I’m sort of toying with this cheesecake and then you go and get me some more coffee and I react as though you’d cut your way through a wall of human flesh to bring me emeralds. And then we leave together, and let’s say you have a two-o’clock class and we’ve dawdled around so long you only have five minutes to get there. Now be honest. We stand out in front. And I say, with a suggestion of a simper, it’s been so terribly interesting. This is your chance to be honest. Would you cut your two-o’clock just to walk me back to my sordid little dormitory?”
    “Certainly not.” She looked at him with that infuriating smile. He searched his own mind. He sighed.
    “Okay. Yes, I would. But there’s something inaccurate and unfair about this.”
    She put her hand out. “Congratulations. You are quasihonest. I’m Carol Whitney.” Her handshake was firm and she withdrew her hand