J u ly / a u g u s t 2 0 1 8 1 4 9 Fiction captain tom The TalkBy Gibson Fay-leblanc K ate was a devoted women’s studies major with long hair that seemed to have a color and life of its own. A brown built from gold and rust and fresh- dug earth. She raised money to put a rape whistle in every student’s mailbox; she wrote a thesis analyzing the paternalism in- herent in the college’s expansion plans. I was a longhaired peacenik, ex-hockey player—the one who dropped his free ride to study Shakespeare and the Metaphysi- cal Poets. Our lengthy courtship was either one night at a keg party, or two years of subver- sive work followed by one beautiful night at a keg party. I noticed Kate at freshmen orientation. Something about the way she carried her- self: her small frame, the angle of her chin and neck, her eyes’ bright secrets. I was dis- tracted plenty by the large-breasted bot- tle-blondes who hung around the hock- ey house—the kind of girls I dated in high school—but I kept my eyes on Kate. For two years, I noted where she stud- ied in the library and found chairs not too close but close enough that she might walk by and see me intent on Love in the Time of Cholera or the complete John Donne. Af- ter I quit the hockey team, I volunteered to build houses in Kentucky over spring break but got put in the group Kate wasn’t lead- ing. Sophomore year I brought my own home-made sign to the annual Take Back the Night walk Kate organized: Dudes, No Means No. She never looked twice in my di- rection. I began to wonder, though, if never looking at me twice was a strategy, some- thing she was proving to herself. That night I was deep into a paper on the lyrical appeal of Satan in Paradise Lost when barbaric hooting and yelling shat- tered the library’s quiet. It grew louder and louder until three senior defensemen, Big Will, Macky, and Strapdog, rushed