“Wonderful girl,” Duff said. “Why me?”
“She goes for serious types, I guess,” Scotty answered. “Only girl I ever heard of named Indigo.”
“Suits her, though.”
“Deep purple? You bet! Well. Have fun, Archimedes.”
“I’m having a wonderful time.”
He was. The wonderful time continued. There was a long drive in the convertible, windows wound up “against the chill, and Indigo Stacey snuggled close as a further thermal measure. A Miami Beach night club and another floor show. A still longer ride back to Coral Gables — a ride on which Indigo said, “You can start kissing me good night about here, Duff.”
“Here” was some miles from her bungalow.
When the two young ladies had been deposited at their homes, Scotty suggested a nightcap.
And it was in a small bar not far from the campus where Duff, far removed from normal reticence and warmed by the fellowship of Scotty Smythe, shared his problem.
“You know, Duff,” Scotty had said, turning his nightcap highball in his fingers and not tasting it, “I can’t figure you out. On a party, you’re tops. You have fun. At school the work doesn’t seem to bother you — you breeze through it. And yet you act like a man carrying a mountain on his back all the time. Why?”