Brown University - Liber Brunensis Yearbook (Providence, RI)

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bra il :j-, 1 AR e L7 I 7 . V2771 b METAMORPHOSIS No, I can't tonight, she was saying to me over the phone. It's impossible, 've got a Chem lab due tomorrow morning. I thought that was due yesterday, I protested. That was for Chem 137. The one due tomor- row is for Chem 145. This is riduculous, I said. I haven't seen you in a week. What's the matter with you these days? Nothing, she said quickly. I gotta go. She hung up, leaving me baffled. I hadn't seen her since she started studying in that damned Sci Li. What had gone wrong? In September we were two happy humanities majors in love, with the world at our feet. And now? And now she had thrown it all away for some lab notebooks and a few lectures on colloidal substances and valences. No. No, it couldn't be. She just wasn't that kind of person. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. Just three years ago you and I were making eyes at each other over copies of Ulysses. We used to walk to the Dean's Convocation lecture series hand in hand and neck in the back rows of English 45. And then it happened. At first, it was unnoticea- ble. She wanted to take Bio 11. Fine. Then Bio 12. Okay. Then it was Computer Science, Psych and Chem. Then Physics, Apple Math and Engin. Then there was that day she dragged me into the book- store to show me the Texas Instruments program- mable TI 690e-14. It makes me sick to remember the way she fondled it. Look, I said somewhat sternly to her about a week later. Enough of this. I've got to see you. I'm going crazy here. Either you come down out of

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the Sci Li and see me or or I just can't be responsible for what I'll do, that's what. Okay, she said with a sigh of exasperation. Since you're persisting with all this love non- sense, I'll meet you on the eighth floor tomorrow at noon. 1 dont have time to come all the way down to A level because I've got another lab due. But there's no place to talk in that building, 1 said. Be reasonable, Lucy. We can go over to Rascal House and talk and laugh about old. No, she said. You've got seven and a half minutes only. I'm running late. See you on the eighth floor tomorrow at noon. Sharp. She hung up. The elevator whined me up to the eighth floor the next day. I was nervous. The grafitti on the elevator walls screamed at me. When the doors finally opened, she was standing right in front of me. Lucy began. And then I found myself at a loss for words. Her wonderful blonde hair looked sticky and unwashed. There was dirt under her fingernails and she wasn't wearing her contacts but a pair of greasy glasses. She had on light blue cords with a rip in the left knee and a sag on the side where a large black calculator hung from her thick black belt. She had a sharpened pencil be- hind one ear, a slide rule in her back pocket and one of those four-color pens which she clicked regularly while staring at me with cold eyes. Well? she said sternly. Where had her dulcet voice gone? Her laughter like water, her clear eyes which spoke to me of the Aegean? Her angel- ic face more stunning than Helen herself? Where? Why? I never knew, I said at last. Why didnt you tell me? You've turned into you've . be- come a a Science Major! She just stared at me. How long have you been this way? I asked, unbelieving. You should have told me when you felt it coming. We could have called Health Ser- vices and ? But I saw her eyes no longer looked at me, but were focused somewhere be- yond, deep inside my head. She was probably performing some inverse trigometric cosmic three- dimensional proof of human existence and sorrow. A proof I had been unsuccessful in solving. I turned and went back into the elevator, taking one last glimpse at her before the scribbled walls shut in front of my face.