The Magic Keys Albert Murray (read novels website TXT) 📖

And besides, what would I do back in Gasoline Point, anyway? I had never had a job in Gasoline Point or in downtown Mobile either, and unskilled jobs were as scarce as ever.

So far, so good, yea verily. And after all, when I got on that Greyhound bus with my new gladstone bag and my scholarship award voucher and my one-way ticket, my intention was to be long gone and farther, and when I arrived on campus my question was not When do I return to Gasoline Point and Mobile? but Where do I go on to from here? Philamayork, Philamayork, the also and also of Philamayork, to be sure, which even before junior high school was already a fireside, tell-me-tale code name for the best of all possible places.

But even that early on you had also already come to realize that even if your Philamayork turned out to be Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or New York City, New York, or Chicago, Illinois, or Detroit, Michigan, or Los Angeles or San Francisco, California, once you headed out from Gasoline Point toward the ever so Marco Polo blue horizon mists beyond Chickasabogue Bridge it would be as if your destination were wherever east of the sun and west of the moon was.

So far, so good. But what now? Because there I was with my fingers also crossed because this time I was wishing what I was wishing as if the crisp autumn green campus, lawn grass, and shrubbery and the bright blue silk and cotton white autumn sky made my circumstances no less fancy free than they had ever been back during the springtime elementary school bell days of honeysuckle thickets and dog fennel playhouse games. All I had to go on was that ever so polite exchange in the library. I didn’t even know her name and was not even certain that she was still there. But by the middle of the next week, the very thought of her being on the campus had become as much a part of my speculations about what my junior year was going to be like as about any of the new electives on my academic course of study.

Then after that many days, there she was in person again, coming up the steps and into the library again all by herself again. And as I opened the door for her and said, Nice to see you’re still here, she smiled but I couldn’t really tell if she remembered me or was just being a nice, well-brought-up young lady who was not cynical and didn’t consider herself vulnerable. So when I said what I said about becoming used to not being used to being at State Normal, she smiled again. And when she said what she said about becoming used to being a sophomore and that she had originally expected to be a freshman on this campus in the first place, all I could say was, Is that so? Because I couldn’t say how glad I was that she had not arrived before now, not to mention my freshman year.

We stepped onto the second-floor landing again, then and to keep her from realizing how excited I was to see her again and how eagerly I was looking forward to seeing her as often as possible, I stepped in the direction of the reference room before turning to say, So nice to see that you’re still here, and that was also when I finally said my name and where I was from and that I was getting used to not being used to being a junior in liberal arts.

And when she smiled and said her name and what part of central Alabama she was from, all I could say was, Well, hello again, statemate. And all I could do was tighten my fingers because they were already crossed.

That was how it all began with the one that I decided was the one for me, because, as luck would have it, when it was deep purple wisteria time on the campus again that next spring we had become as close as we had become because our self-imposed restrictions were as compatible as they were because it turned out that we both were there on renewable scholarship awards that had to be supplemented with what you could earn in cash or credit from jobs available through the student employment office.

So I had not seen her in the dining hall because she did not eat in the dining hall. She lived in the sophomore women’s dormitory, but she ate all her meals in the visitors’ guesthouse, where she worked when not in class or at the library and from the early-evening meal until seven-thirty, after which if she did not have to go back to the library, she did what she had to do back in the dormitory. As for nonacademic activities, she had decided to restrict herself to an occasional choice from the schedule of athletic events, movies, stage productions, and concerts covered by the prepaid incidental-fee admission coupon.

I didn’t make my first obvious move until the fall dance gala on the night following the homecoming football game in November, the biggest social event of the fall term. During my freshman and sophomore years my old freelancing roommate and I went to such shindigs unattached and made our forays on targets of opportunity as we spotted them from the stag line (or “Murderers’ Row”) near the table of refreshments. But this time I was glad he was not there anymore, because I still had not seen what I had not wanted to see in the dining hall or anywhere else. And because I was still hoping what I could not keep myself from hoping since that midmorning when I first saw her on our way up the steps and into the library.

When I arrived, the band was already halfway into the first set, and the dance floor was already more than half full of couples, with a steady