Max leaned his head against the back of the chair and nodded in solidarity with the professor. "You're preachin' to the choir, mister."

She tried to shush him but a little laugh colored it.

"The double standard, and from the previous chapter we've seen this played out in language, images, and social structures... this standard helps increase the odds that the male will be reassured of paternity. It also puts the female in a better negotiating position."

Max tapped his finger on her notebook. "Write that one down. I've never even heard of the negotiating position."

She flicked the side of his hand like it was a bug that had landed on her paper.

"In negotiation, do you remember this? The party that is least attached to the outcome has the most power. And since women have been culturally perceived as wanting sex less than men, and, in fact, pay more for sex in terms of the time and energy devoted to subsequent offspring, they appear to be even less attached to the outcome."

Max shook his head. "Again, he's not doing it right."

"Sexual power is delivered into the hands of women."

Max yawned. "All this tool talk is making me feel redundant."

Gwen tilted her head to look at him. "Redundant? Is it making you feel gay as well?"

He put his hands on his chest as if he'd taken a hit. "You've used your sexual power for evil not good."

"I haven't used my sexual..." she stopped herself. Nothing after sexual could possibly be something she'd care to say to him.

"Now that is a shame, but I'm gonna help you out. I'll pick you up tomorrow night at seven." Max got up from his seat. He moved quickly when he wasn't sprawling.

He made it to the aisle, but she put her hand on his arm. "I'm not having sex with you tomorrow night!" She glanced ahead to make sure she hadn't said it as loudly as she imagined. The three closest students swiveled around to stare.

Max waved at them then pointed at Gwen, "Powerful negotiator."

"This coupled with the female's learned response to say no, due, really, to her larger investment in reproduction, gives her sexual power over the male."

Max leaned down to her other ear this time. "Seven. And you can say no to everything else." He headed to the door.

"I will!"

The students stared again.

"Not have sex. I will say no."

They turned back around.

She whispered to herself. "I will. I'm good at it."

Friday afternoon she thought about leaving the dorm altogether. There'd be no chance he could find her then. She didn't think he even knew where she was staying, although Ellen, her traitorous mother, might have blabbed it. But fleeing would communicate fear, hers, and power, his, despite what the professor had said. Staying in her room reading, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, completely underdressed for dinner and overdressed for sex, would tell the sad tale. She was turning him down.

The knock on the door made her drop her book. She knew that knock. It wasn't the surprise rapping her mother had given the weekend before. This was Max's dorm door knock. She hadn't even known she'd remembered it. Well, shit. She took in a deep cleansing breath and journeyed the five steps to the door. She repeated no, thank you in her head as she opened it.

"Good, you're ready." He turned back toward the elevator, his camera bag swinging on his shoulder.

"I'm not."

She kept her hand on the doorknob, while he glanced down her body, and she tried not to flinch. No one who knew you at your prime should ever scan even your clothed body after a baby, even if the baby was a legal adult. He seemed to stop at her socks. "Oh, get some sneakers on. Might want a sweater." He raised an eyebrow. "I like pink."

She rolled her eyes. She was in Psych. II. She knew all about pink. "I'm not going with you."

"Oh, well, if I'd known you wanted to stay in..."

"No." She put her palm out to stop him and realized he was just messing with her. No one messed with her. She was a grown woman, a mom, a homeowner, a former P.T.A. secretary. Steve was mature and serious and nicely literal. Max took casual to a level of irreverence, and she hadn't experienced that since, well, she'd last sparred with him.

She didn't know what to say. If she said something logical and true and reasonable, he'd say something funny or charming or he'd deliberately twist her words and then they would go around again because she was rusty. Her stomach growled. Rusty and hungry. She lowered her head, took a breath in, and stalked over to her closet. She pulled out her tennis shoes, and reached for a cardigan.

Max lounged in the doorway, watching. "I like pink."

She passed the cardigans in petunia and coral and hoped he didn't get a glimpse of the deep pink bathrobe. She yanked out a navy sweater, and its hanger swung from the force.

"Blue's nice."

She pointed at him with the cardigan. "Don't push it."

The hotdog made her feel better. The pep rally, populated by hundreds of college kids, made her feel a little silly. But washing the hotdog down with the imported beer Max smuggled in his bag felt mature, despite the immaturity of breaking the rules.

The stage, set up in an immense field on the edge of campus, held a couple of guys in suits. One, she assumed, was the president. It was unpleasant to realize the president, whose name she'd known twenty years ago, could have retired even if that had been his first year. How had so much time gone by? She realized she hadn't even asked Max about his parents. Back then his dad would have been at a school function like a pep rally. She hadn't thought of Dean James in years or the first dinner at the Holter house when Max had used her as a human shield to avoid his parents. It had gotten her that first date, hadn't it? And changed the trajectory of her whole life most likely. It's not like you ever knew even looking back. Hindsight might be twenty-twenty for some people, but she was pretty sure that even examining the past, she required reading glasses.

She glanced up at Max, watching the crowd as if framing photos in the quickly fading light. She could see his mind working, and it disturbed her that she thought she knew him that well. Twenty years would have changed him as much as it changed her, sent his own trajectory in a different direction. But once they had been in the same place, and there had been fun and lightness mixed in with the other. She'd been fun. She'd even gone a little wild, hadn't she?

Growing up with Ellen, who'd been a questionable role model, the only way to rebel was to be really, really good. But she'd gotten away from the town that watched to see if she'd be like her mother. At Belmar she could be wild and in love, in crazy all-consuming love. She'd been the Road Runner for a while there, zipping joyfully down the highway, and when the anvil fell, she'd turned into Wiley Coyote and been knocked out cold.

"You okay?"

She took a swig of beer and raised it in answer while she swallowed.

Max pointed toward the impending bonfire torching where the boys, along with what looked like an entire fraternity, guarded a mountain of stacked pallets that had a paper mache B perched on top. When they spotted her, they waved, and she raised her beer to them and got the outraged expression she wanted.

Max clinked his bottle to hers. "There are privileges to adulthood, kids."

She considered that. Maybe she'd been focusing too much on what she'd lost. There had to be some advantage to being nearly forty. None were coming to her, but she'd keep her eyes peeled. Yep, that's what she felt like at thirty-nine, someone whose eyes were peeled.

She heard the crackle of a microphone and the football coach, the only one not wearing a tie, stepped up, his image captured on the giant projection screens on either side. Unless he'd indulged in toxic amounts of Botox, he not only wasn't the coach from twenty years before, he couldn't be a great deal over twenty himself.

He looked over the front of the stage where his players fanned out in blue and silver largeness. "Belmar's gonna go all the way!"

The crowd cheered, and the cheerleaders, teeny in comparison, jumped around in front of the team. Mranda was, naturally, among them.

Max pointed his bottle toward the stage. "Betcha ten bucks he says let's win this thing."

She considered how much a good cliche added to an American moment. "Betcha twenty bucks he's too young to know it's been said before."

Max laughed, "And also, let's stay focused."

The coach lowered his voice. "Right now, men, this is the biggest game of the season."

She liked the men part since the team was her daughter's age.

Max made a sweeping gesture with his second hotdog. "Leave it all on the field."

That was a good one. Did she know any more? Think Olympics. "This is what we've been working for. Oh, I've got another. Go earn some respect." Maybe that's the pep talk she'd missed in college.

"We're gonna put the hurt on them. Not in our house." Max said our house in falsetto and sounded like the lady next door who took your ball.

She gave him her earnest face. "Hey, you can do anything."

Max nodded at a student with a camera around his neck and turned back to her. "I bet my home on this game, guys, don't let me down."

Looking past Max, she could see the shape of the campus behind him. A long time ago, they'd let each other down, and this time she really had left her home for the game. The odds felt pretty high she'd let even more people down before she was through.

"Let's take care of bidness." Max tapped his chest and gave her a peace out sign.

"Winning is your bidness."

He smiled. "Nice. I like you gansta." He narrowed his eyes and came closer to her face. "Don't offer any mercy because you won't get any."

She felt her eyes fill with tears, and before she could think, she whispered, "I didn't offer any, did I?"

He stepped back, and she searched for any distraction she could get. The boys stood with torches, ringing the pile of flammables. "Hey, they're lighting it. I bet you ten dollars somebody's going to lose their eyebrows tonight."

Max didn't say anything, and they stood and watched the wood quickly blaze. A fire was such a dynamic thing. It almost seemed living, like a mess of red and orange snakes leaping into the sky. And the smell of smoky wood made her think of mesquite grilling and hot chocolate, neither of which should be a chaser for a hot dog and too many memories.

The band started playing the fight march, and though the words had always escaped her, she recalled singing up with Belmar and down with hum, hum, hum to get her through.

Max motioned that he was going to go for a minute, and she tried to relax in his absence. They were like any two people who ran into each other at, say, an alumni event. Of course, she wasn't an alumnus, having not graduated, but she and Max were just two people who had once dated. That was all, really. They'd been a match at eighteen when anything female would do for anything male, but they weren't in any way compatible.

She watched him make his way through the crowd toward a row of vendors. Damned if he wasn't going to get hot chocolates.

The Sousa marches were rousing. They had the old-timey quality of town picnics and men in bowler hats and held a sweet comfort. She sipped her hot chocolate, a perfect chaser to a hotdog after all, especially since Max had managed to get a shot of peppermint schnapps into it. She tried to picture him, international man of mystery, swaggering into a liquor store and asking for a bottle popular with under-aged drinkers and hot cocoa fans. "How did you retain your dignity buying this?"

He shook his head. "I didn't. My cart was overflowing with cases of wine coolers and cinnamon tequila."

"Oh, god, they make that?"

"I have no idea." He laughed, and it was a sound she hadn't forgotten in years.

She studied him, a half smile still on his face. How had he gotten better looking? What kind of unjust aging process made his laugh lines, the fine ones around his eyes, probably from squinting in some exotic location and not from having a hard time reading the crossword puzzle in the Phillipsburg Daily Bugle, so appealing? Oh, it was just too unfair for words.

She turned her attention to the band just in time for the piccolo solo, her favorite part of any march. It was great, and she felt herself relax as she watched the boy in his wool uniform whip through the piece. How could anyone play that fast? It ended with the cymbal crash, and she felt disappointed that the rally was breaking up.

She sensed Max looking at her and turned. "What?"

"You're a sucker for a piccolo player."

"Well, who isn't?" She laughed at herself. "I'm a dork now."

Putting his hand lightly on her lower back, he led her through the crowd. "It's okay. You were always a dork."

"And still you're seen out with me."

"I guess I am."

Max's Life - October 3rd, 1989 Saturday His friends were out, out where he should be.

He saw the bridge ahead in the dark and felt Gwen beside him, matching his pace comfortably all the way from the movie theater. Half-way across the span of it, the reflection of the moon on the river made her smile. He saw it, that feeling that ran right through her and showed up in her expression. It was happy, but he guessed she'd show sadness and pain just as easily. He'd like to make her smile.

He stopped and put his hands on the rail, waited for her to lean on her arms and take in the silvery motion of the water with him. He wanted to kiss her, but more, he wanted her to take in the river and turn to him when she was ready. He heard her sigh and knew she didn't even get she'd done it. He'd not met many girls like that, girls who didn't hide, couldn't maybe. He'd known girls who could smile like it was part of some uniform. They were cute girls with the right clothes and the voice and the shoes, he guessed, since they talked about shoes. But what should have been a killer smile was only there like she thought that's what you wanted to see. Gwen meant it. He liked that best about her. So far she seemed to do and say what she meant, guy-like without anything else guy-like about her.

She turned to him and closed most of the gap between them until he could feel her warmth even in the October night. Her smile was different now, kind of sexy but with more fun, like the face she'd had when he'd handed her real ice cream after the fake kind at his parent's house.

He smiled back. "Seen enough of the river?"

She stepped a little closer. "Yep."

He was definitely going to get this girl back to his dorm some night, no matter what it took. He'd...

"Wanna go to your room?"

He felt his heart stop, speed up like he was about ready to run into the gym for a big game. Who couldn't love this girl? His friends may be going out, but he was stayin' in.

Back to U...

Chapter Seven.

Pepper can add surprising heat to any dish.

As the pep rally broke up, she thought they'd head back to campus, but Max took them towards the bridge. She hadn't been there yet, and she'd loved the old walking bridge, its wood creaky but sturdy with a lacy metal canopy overhead. Her favorite time had been in the spring when the river beneath ran murky and fast, but she had only seen that her freshmen year. By her second year, she'd been gone in December. This time she'd be repeating that. She wouldn't be there to see the branches and logs float by during the high tide of nature's spring cleaning.

Max stopped half-way across, leaned his forearms on the scarred rail that had been replaced at some point but still looked lovely from wear. She copied his stance, enjoying the dark and quiet, the river hardly audible with its low fall level. "Thanks for the pep rally. I needed it."

Max smiled. She could tell from his profile and the way his body moved just a little next to hers and maybe because there were still some things she knew about him. He relaxed more beside her. "Where do you suppose the word pep comes from?"