Among Others

present. Delicious though.
    I found myself sitting next to Wim. Honestly, I didn’t do anything to arrange it! He remains disconcertingly gorgeous close up. It’s not just the long blond hair or the very blue eyes, it’s something about the way he holds himself. I like Hugh much better, but Hugh is like a solid piece of treetrunk, while Wim is like new branches of blossom waving in the breeze, or a rare butterfly that lands near you and you hold your breath watching it in case it flies away. It’s the same sort of breathlessness.
    “So, you like Susan Cooper as well as Le Guin?” he said.
    “I’d never read them before this week,” I said. “I borrowed Janine’s, and I’ve just given them back.”
    “You read all five books this week?” he said, tossing his head a little so his hair fell back out of his eyes. “You must have a lot of free time.”
    “I do,” I said, quite coldly.
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hate it when people imply that people only read because they have nothing better to do, and here I am doing it.”
    I liked that. “What could be better?” I asked.
    He laughed. He has a nice laugh, very natural. When he laughed, I could imagine doing all the stupid things girls do when they have a crush on someone, keeping a stub of pencil and a piece of sticking plaster like Harriet Smith in Emma , or kissing a photograph before bed like Shagger and Harrison Ford.
    “How about films?” he suggested, and instantly just like that the whole group was involved in a passionate discussion about Star Wars .
    Everyone either loves it or hates it. Middle ground is not permitted. My general feeling that it was fun to see actual robots and spaceships but that it was a bit childish compared to real SF didn’t seem like a possible position.
    A bit later, when people had stopped shooting fish in a barrel or passionately defending, I turned to Wim again. “I heard you did a meeting about Delany.”
    “Do you like Delany?” he said. “You have very broad-ranging tastes.”
    “I love Delany,” I said, pleased that he had not said I had broad-ranging tastes for my age , the way so many people always do. “But there’s something I’ve been wondering about the end of Triton .”
    “Do you think Triton was intended as a response to The Dispossessed ?” he asked, interrupting me. I hadn’t thought about it, but I did then, and I could sort of see it.
    “Because The Dispossessed is an ambiguous utopia and Triton is an ambiguous heterotopia?” I asked.
    “I wonder if he looked at Anarres and said, why does it have to be so poor, why does it have to be in famine, why is their sexuality so constrained, what other sorts of anarchy could you have?”
    “What a fascinating thought,” I said. “And also how brilliant of him to show all that complexity of choice through the eyes of someone who isn’t happy with it.”
    “There would be people who drifted about like that even in paradise,” Wim said. “Bron’s always looking for something he can’t have, sort of by definition.”
    “Why did Bron—” I started.
    “Time to go now, Mori,” Greg said.
    “See you after Christmas,” Wim said as I got up, carefully.
    On the other side of the table, Keith and Hussein were still arguing about Princess Leia.
    T HURSDAY 20 TH D ECEMBER 1979
    I can’t believe I’m leaving here tomorrow. Suddenly it seems so soon. We had to clear out our lockers this morning. I wasn’t expecting that. In addition to my bag and the satchel and the neat anonymous case I came with, I have six carrier bags of books and two of Christmas presents. I had to go down to the laundry, the first time I’ve ever been there. The school employs someone full time to wash and iron our stupid uniforms. Usually they’re delivered back to our dorms and put on the ends of our beds, and I’d scarcely thought about it before. But today Deirdre didn’t have all her shirts, and we need to take everything home. She wanted me to come with her, so off we went to the bowels of the building to a room with six heaving washing machines and four roaring tumble-dryers and a girl only a year or two older than we are pulling the clothes out of one machine and tossing them into the other. I’d hate us if I were her. It was hot in there today; I can’t imagine it in June.
    Deirdre’s going to Limerick for Christmas. There’s really a place called Limerick! Of course, as soon as she said, I couldn’t help saying “There was a young lady