Bedtime Stories October 1983 I WALK THROUGH THE DARK night to Wentington. Jake will most likely still be awake, and he can let me in. Surely I can think up a good excuse for being there at that late hour. Cape’s room is on the second floor. Jake lets me in after I rap on his window. He is wearing boxer shorts. Reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. “Bettina,” he says, “I wasn’t expecting you.” I want to stay with him, but I say, “I need to go upstairs and see Cape Morse.” “That frat boy?” Jake says derisively. “Why?” “Meredith was supposed to come visit him, but she got sick from drinking too much. I didn’t want him to worry.” “Those WASPs just can’t handle their liquor.” He doesn’t seem to include me in this category. I am a WASP, but in my case, it doesn’t give me membership in the elite club of blue bloods. I will always be a stand-alone entity, a marginal girl with cigarette burns on her ankles and stories about Babs I can’t publish in the Cardiss literary journal.
