style="font-size:15px;"> Thank you for sharing, now please go away, Karen wanted to say, but the team bus had just pulled in and the crowd was spilling outside to greet it. “They’re here,” she said, and pointed.
“Oh, yes!” yelped the girl, and then she juggled towards the bus, shaking her pompoms overhead while Karen leaned back with relief against the ticket counter.
There was a delay while coaches made announcements on the bus, and then the door opened and weary players came down the steps, smiling shyly at all the happy faces and wincing at the loud, brassy music of the band. She saw Arnie first, then Jack right behind him, elbowing their way through the crowd to where they knew she would be. Arnie came up to her with arms outstretched.
“Karen, baby, I couldn’t hold back. I had to tell Jack about our secret relationship.” He smothered her in a bear hug that made her grunt, then released her as Jack stopped and put down his duffle.
“How do you feel about that, Jack?” she asked.
“I think group sex is perverted,” he said, and pulled her to him as her arms went around his neck. Over his shoulder, she could see the tiny pompom girl watching them. Unable to resist the sudden impulse, she took his face in her hands and gave him a long open-mouthed kiss. Eat your heart out, she thought.
“Hey, cut that out! You’re making me horny,” said Arnie.
“You’re always horny, Arnie,” said Jack, and looked closely at Karen. “How’s my girl?” he whispered.
“She’s fine, now, thank you. I hear you guys were superstars tonight.”
“How’d you hear that? The game wasn’t even on radio.”
“Oh yes it was,” said Karen. “Kent Conrad went down there and did a play by play on his phone. He brought it back in his Camaro and had it all on the net at eleven.”
“There’s a crazy man for you,” said Arnie. “He must have averaged ninety coming back.”
“At least people are interested,” said Jack. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ve got studying to do in the morning.” He picked up his duffle and looked at Karen.
“I’m in the lot across the street,” she said.
The three of them left the station, crossed a quiet street to a parking lot crammed with compact cars and motorcycles. They stopped at a red Honda Civic, waited while Karen fumbled with a ring of keys.
“I just bet I get to sit in the back again,” grumbled Arnie.
“It’s either that or banging your knees on the dash,” said Jack. “These cars are built for normal humans, Arnie.”
Karen got the door open and Arnie squeezed in the back along with a duffle. Two more pieces of luggage went in the trunk and Jack sat in front with another smaller bag between his legs. Karen started the car, shifted gears and found her hand on Jack’s leg. She looked at him mischievously.
“It’s going to be painful when I go into second or fourth,” she said.
Jack rolled his eyes and gave her a lecherous grin. “But I do love you,” he said, and then moved his leg away from the gear shift.
They pulled out of the lot as people began leaving the bus station in pairs and groups, then drove down the empty main street of Simonsen Park towards the university campus dormitories just outside of town. A few homes for the four thousand-plus permanent residents of the university town were scattered along side streets. All were new, sprawling ranch-style homes with large lots surrounded by pine trees and short walls of yellow brick. The stores were new as well, since the entire town had been born with the university only a decade before: gas stations, two grocery stores, a couple of fast food chains and a single theatre currently featuring two old films titled Porky’s Place and Porky’s Revenge. They passed the only bar in town, The Plumbing Shop, quiet now, but soon to be noisy again when the bus station parking lot was emptied out. There was no off-sale liquor store in town, except at The Plumbing Shop. At the other edge of town, nestled in pines, was The Heidelberg, an A-frame chalet serving European foods with some class, but at prices even students could occasionally afford. With seven thousand students, a faculty of over three hundred at the university, and no other real restaurant within forty miles, business at The Heidelberg was brisk.
At the edge of town the road began to climb. Jack rolled down a window, and pine scent flooded the stuffy car. Ahead of them rose the dark silhouettes of brick dormitories, only a few windows showing lights, and then they were at the border of campus, a sprawling array of white granite buildings arranged in spokes radiating outwards from a seven story tower which was the administration building. Unseen were the underground tunnels connecting all buildings, with shops, cafeteria, book store, even a cabaret for the long winter nights. Nearby rose the dome of the nuclear power plant which provided energy for both the university and the town. It was a technological community, proud of itself and totally self-contained.
They stopped in front of a dormitory. Jack unloaded luggage while Arnie struggled to get out of the tiny car. “My legs are all weird,” he quipped. “Thanks a lot, Karen.”
“Good night, Arnie,” she said, smiling. The two men carried luggage into the building while Karen sat in the car, engine running. Jack returned in a moment, sliding into the front seat and leaning over to kiss her cheek.
“Alone at last,” he said huskily.
“You let Arnie take the luggage up by himself?”
“He insisted. Practically threw me out of the elevator, and told me to get back to you.”
Karen laughed, put the car in gear and pulled away from the building. “I wish we could find him a nice girlfriend, Jack. He’s a sweet guy.”
“What we need is someone who’s big, beautiful, horny, a great cook, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of football. Know anyone like that?”
“Could be a Swedish girl. I’ll keep my eyes open. You had a good game tonight.”
“Yeah, not bad for the opener. Arnie was awesome. He tries so hard when he knows scouts are watching him. I don’t know what he’ll do if he can’t play pro ball. He makes jokes about not playing, but the game is everything to him.
“Well, it’s important to you, too.”
“Sure, but not like Arnie. I mean, it’s just a game to me, and without the scholarship I couldn’t afford this school. God, a full-time job wouldn’t even pay the tuition. I like the exercise, the discipline, being a part of the team. I like being a part of something unified, with a single purpose.”
“Like the military,” said Karen, looking at him seriously.
“Yeah, like that. Sports and military overlap a lot: being the best, team spirit, discipline.”
“Always the discipline. You talk about that a lot, Jack.”
“Does that bother you?” he asked.
Karen kept her eyes on the road. They were coming up to the president’s house. The lights inside were all on, and a county sheriff’s car was sitting in the curved driveway in front of the two story, brick structure. “Not really,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s
