"I was just faking it, Kittredge!" she yelled at him. "I was just acting--we both were!" she shouted.
"It didn't sound like acting--not entirely," he said to her. "You have to be careful who you pretend to be, Nymph," Kittredge said to me, but he kept looking at Elaine as if he were alone with her.
"Well, if you'll excuse me, Kittredge, I should find my bra and put it on before my parents come home--you should go, too, Billy," Elaine said to me, but she never took her eyes off Kittredge. Neither of them looked at me.
It was not yet eleven o'clock when Kittredge and I stepped into the fifth-floor hall of the dorm; the Bancroft boys who were loitering in the hall, or gawking at Kittredge from the open doorways of their rooms, were clearly shocked to see him. "Did you win again?" some kid asked him. Kittredge just nodded.
"I heard the wrestling team lost," another boy said.
"I'm not the team," Kittredge told him. "I can only win my weight-class."
We went down the stairwell to the third floor, where I said good night to him. Dorm check-in--even for seniors, on a Saturday night--was at eleven.
"I suppose Richard and your mom are out with the Hadleys," Kittredge said, matter-of-factly.
"Yes, there's a foreign film in Ezra Falls," I told him.
"Humping in French, Italian, or Swedish," Kittredge said. I laughed, but he wasn't trying to be funny. "You know, Nymph--you're not in France, Italy, or Sweden. You've got to be more careful with that girl you're humping, or not humping."
At the moment, I wondered if Kittredge might be genuinely concerned for Elaine's "reputation," as he'd referred to it, but you could never tell with Kittredge; you often didn't see where he was going with what he said.
"I would never do anything to hurt Elaine," I told him.
"Listen, Nymph," he said. "You can hurt people by having sex with them and by not having sex with them."
"I guess that's true," I said cautiously.
"Does your mom sleep naked, or does she wear something?" Kittredge asked me, as if he hadn't suddenly changed the subject.
"She wears something," I told him.
"Well, that's mothers for you," he said. "Most mothers, anyway," he added.
"It's almost eleven," I warned him. "You don't want to be late for check-in."
"Does Elaine sleep naked?" Kittredge asked me.
Of course, what I should have told him was that my desire never to do anything to hurt Elaine prevented me from telling the likes of Kittredge whether she slept naked or not, but in truth I didn't know if Elaine slept naked. I thought it would be perfectly mysterious to say to Kittredge, which I did, "When Elaine's with me, she's not asleep."
To which Kittredge simply said: "You're a mystery, aren't you, Nymph? I just don't know about you, but I'll figure you out one day--I really will."
"You're going to be late for check-in," I told him.
"I'm going to the infirmary--I'm going to get this mat burn checked out," he said, pointing to his cheek. It wasn't much of a mat burn, in my opinion, but Kittredge said, "I like the weekend nurse at the infirmary--the mat burn's just an excuse to see her. Saturday night is a good night to stay in the infirmary," he told me.
On that provocative note, he left me--that was Kittredge. If he was still figuring me out, I hadn't yet figured him out. Was there really a "weekend nurse" at the Favorite River infirmary? Did Kittredge have an older-woman thing going? Or was he acting, as Elaine and I had been? Was he just faking it?
I HADN'T BEEN BACK in our dormitory apartment for very long, not more than a couple of minutes, before my mom and Richard came home from the movie. I'd barely had time to take Elaine's padded bra from my Jockey briefs. (I'd no sooner put the bra under my pillow when Elaine phoned me.)
"You have my bra, don't you?" she asked me.
"What happens to the duck?" I asked her, but she wasn't in the mood for it.
"Do you have my bra, Billy?"
"Yes," I said. "It was a spur-of-the-moment thing."
"That's okay," she said. "I want you to have it." I didn't tell her that Kittredge had asked me if she slept naked.