Chapter 800

• With the advent of the fall semester, things in the Martin household settled down--if, in a place where everyone was sleeping with everyone else, it could ever be said that things were settling down. The bedroom arrangements were getting increasingly complicated, at least as far as Vanessa--the one most in demand by all three of the others--was concerned. Eventually a system was worked out whereby she was with Jack for three nights a week and Joanna and Eileen for two nights each. Jack had Joanna for two nights and (with his ex's grudging permission) Eileen for one night.
• As she began her senior year, Vanessa felt increasingly confident that she would pass with flying colors and be able to get a good job afterwards, even if English majors were a dime a dozen in the working world. Jack, Joanna, and Eileen made sure not to tire her out too much with their demands for intimacy, lest her classwork suffer; but it was difficult to restrain Jack from doing at least a bit of cuddling in the nights he had her.
• Early in the semester she found herself wandering into the student union for a snack before her next class. For some reason her attention fell on a boy--sorry, young man--sitting at a table in the cafeteria. He was not actually eating anything, although he did have a cup of coffee or tea in front of him. What he was doing was scribbling furiously in a notebook, his nose bent down almost to the sheet of paper he was working on, as if he couldn't see very well. It was in fact pretty dark in the cafeteria, and Vanessa thought to herself that this wasn't exactly the ideal place to be doing homework or working on a term paper.