If you are just standing there and a girl, a college girl, who seems to know so much more than you about things that count, isn’t protesting that two men are touching her with increasing intimacy, is it up to you to tell her she should be? Is it up to you to ask if she is all right when she isn’t saying anything about the one man’s hands down the top of her dress and the other man’s up the bottom of it?

Was it enough for me to be on alert in case she got hurt?

Peter’s hands went under her buttocks, lifted her up, and came out from under her dress with her panties, black silk underwear with a filigree front on which was embroidered an intertwined set of vines. I didn’t know that detail when he took them off her, when he tossed them back over his shoulder. I knew only that the panties were black. And small. With a front panel that you appeared to be able to see through.

I waited for her to say something. She didn’t. I didn’t.

Peter took a red candle out of a brass candlestick.

She didn’t say anything and I didn’t.

His blazer came off. His pants and boxers went below his knees. He took her legs and put them on either side of his waist. He held the candle in front of him and moved forward, grinning at Jamie. And Jamie grinned back.

She didn’t say anything and neither did I.

It was only later, when he dropped the candle and I realized what he meant to do with the brass candlestick, that I acted.

“Hey, that’s not cool,” I said, putting one hand on Peter’s shoulder. I was still holding what was left of my drink in my other hand.

Peter twisted his head predatorily, looked at me as if my opinion meant nothing. How did I know what was cool? He had gone all his life without taking advice from me, or the likes of me. Who was I to tell him what was cool in his family’s house?

I squeezed his shoulder, tugged on his striped shirt.

Peter was big, but he wasn’t strong. I squeezed harder, pulled more. My fingers were digging deep into his flesh.

He could have swung the candlestick at me, but Peter was not interested in fighting. He just kept looking at me, his pink-and-white face slightly flabby and dissolute, his pale blue eyes seeming not quite to recognize me or understand my message.

I was trying to smile while I squeezed. It wasn’t a real smile, my lips never opened, but it served its purpose. I was telling him it wasn’t my house. Not my party. The girl wasn’t my friend. But guys don’t do this sort of thing.

I just wanted him to stop, that was all.

3

.

THE PLACE I LIVED MY SENIOR YEAR AT PENN WAS FOUR BLOCKS from campus. It was a house with antique oak floors, built-in bookcases, a leaded glass front window with a window seat, three bedrooms and a bath on the second story, another bedroom and a bath in the basement. It was trashed most of the time. McFetridge wouldn’t wash dishes or put food away. Ellis took a vow that he would not do McFetridge’s cleanup for him. Tuttle was oblivious.

On any given day, pizza boxes, beer cans, soda cans, and newspapers covered the chairs, the couch, the coffee table, the dining room table, the kitchen table. If we needed the space, if we wanted to sit down, we pushed the clutter aside.

One problem with throwing out boxes or cans or containers was that any one of them could be a repository of scraps and butts of marijuana, and there were times when those roaches had to be stripped down and consolidated into re-rolled joints. These times usually occurred around 10:00 p.m., when someone made a hoagie run. It was spring of senior year and the only one who was still studying was Ellis. He was hoping to become a doctor.

It was not likely that anybody would ring our doorbell at 9:30 in the morning, but there it was. Ellis was off at class; McFetridge was out; Tuttle wasn’t going to get up for anything or anyone. The bell rang and rang until I had to come down from the second floor to get it. I did not even brush my teeth. I should have at least done that.

A grown man was standing on our front porch. He wore a plaid shirt, jeans, running shoes, a gray jacket that was unzipped. Could have been a neighborhood guy, come to complain about the music, the junk in the yard, the lights that stayed on all night. Except he had an air of authority about him. If he had flashed a badge, I wouldn’t have questioned it. But what he showed instead was a cardboard tray holding two coffees, a couple of small containers of cream, stir sticks, and half a dozen packets of sugar.

“You George Becket?” he wanted to know.

I told him no.

Very slowly, a smile spread across the man’s mouth. It was not a wide mouth and the smile did not have far to go, but it was there. “I’m not a bill collector, kid,” he said.

I figured he wasn’t a coffee delivery guy, either. He was probably five-feet-ten, but looked taller, just by the way he carried himself. His hair was dark, cut short around the ears, combed carefully from left to right on top of his head. His eyes were as dark as his hair, his features narrow. There was, from what I could see, not an ounce of fat on him. Indeed, he seemed almost spring-loaded, as though he could bounce up and hit his head on the ceiling of the porch, come back down and not spill a drop of the coffee.

The longer we stood there the more sure he became that I was George Becket. Perhaps he had seen a picture. Perhaps it took him a while to realize that the tousle-haired, sleepy-eyed guy in front of him was, in fact, the same person who had appeared in a coat and tie for a fraternity or graduation photo.

“I’ve got a little something to talk to you about, Georgie,” he said. He gestured to the porch, where perhaps he expected there to be chairs. He recovered fast enough to keep his hand moving until it ended at the top step. “We can do it out here.”

I could have, I suppose, simply closed the door in his face. But I was not thinking clearly. I moved to the top step and sat down. I had nothing on but jeans and a gray athletic department T-shirt that had the number 46 on its chest. I shivered in the morning air and tried to place myself in as much sunshine as possible.

The man handed me one of the coffees, let me take a cream and a sugar and a wooden stir stick, and waited until I had mixed and stirred and sipped.

“My name is Roland Andrews,” he said. “I work for a man named Josh David Powell.” He let the name sink in before he continued. He wanted to see what kind of effect it would have. “I believe you know his daughter. Kendrick.”

I gave a lot of thought to my next move. I, of course, had no idea what Mr. Andrews did for Mr. Powell, but I had my suspicions.

“She said you were very nice to her.”

Nice. I helped clean her up. I walked her out of the party. Put her in her car. Kept her panties in my pocket.

I sipped my coffee and tried to buy time. How much time can you buy when a man on a mission is sitting right next to you, watching every breath you take, every flick of your eyes, every twitch of your face?

“She said you were there when she was raped by Peter Gregory Martin.”

Raped. It was a word I had been thinking about for two weeks straight, ever since we returned from Florida. I had even looked it up. “Illicit sexual intercourse without the consent of the woman and effected by force, duress, intimidation, or deception as to the nature of the act.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. I had carried that definition around with me for a few days, telling myself it did not apply to what Peter and Jamie had done. There had been no force, duress, intimidation, deception.

“I don’t exactly remember it that way,” I said.