I didn’t expect to be living alone my senior year but so it goes. Ronnie and I already faced our domestic incompatibility, and Chaz and I still aren’t ready to share a home. Or Chaz isn’t ready. His reluctance about the next step has me looking seriously at our relationship now. Or maybe it’s the imminence of all the next steps – “real life” or whatever they turn out to be – that has me reassessing everything.

I like my little studio apartment. It’s on the quiet side of campus. I read Swift and Austen. I enjoy my time alone but I have to get out once a day at least, interact with others even if I don’t know them, or I’ll go batty.

I have a heavy writing assignment this weekend, so I’m not getting out much. But sometimes it doesn’t take much.

I worked all day yesterday and finally got myself shod and out of my apartment around dusk. I figured I’d walk across campus, find food, maybe see Chaz later.

As I was entering the campus I ran into Peter Pelham.

I recognized him this time. His hair was shorter, like when I first met him, and there was something so familiar about his posture that I felt my heart jerk and my face flush.

“I think we met when I first came here,” I blurted.

“I know we did,” he answered. “But that was a lifetime and a half ago, for me.” He was unlocking his car as he spoke. It was a clean yellow roadster and it looked new to me. “Can I give you a lift anywhere?”

“I’m out for a walk,” I said without considering alternatives. “I needed a break from a day of writing.”

“Well I’m still good at that,” he said. “Care for company?”

I think I smiled. He put his bag in the front seat of his car, relocked the machine and began to match his stride to mine.

It didn’t even surprise me, the way we connected again. There’s some kind of chemistry between Peter and me, but I’m older and wiser now, and I don’t think we can be a couple. There’s something about him that’s flighty.

But there’s also something interesting. Peter seems to be an example of crime that paid. After we walked for an hour or so, finding food as we wandered, we ended up back at his car, and I accepted that lift. He took me to his place.

Wow. He’s perched near the top of the hills, with a great view. His sound system is peerless. In the course of the night he confided in me some. There’s no way he’s as candid now as he was then, but I guess that makes sense. One of the lessons Peter says he learned is discretion.

He reported that those prison weekends left him with nothing to do but homework. He pulled his GPA up more than a full point during his jail term. He also had lots of time to consider his errors. When he was released and he returned to dealing, he started doing business carefully, conscientiously, professionally even. He only dealt with customers he knew well. He didn’t work with referrals. And he planned his exit from the industry; Peter applied statistics to his own venture and made a bright-line determination about when to get out.

It took him less than a year. He earned enough to buy his car and his stereo, and he graduated with a decent transcript. Peter’s father is so pleased he’s helping with rent on the hill place, assisting with placement in a job with a future.

He took a weird phone call this morning, before driving me home. It wasn’t a woman (and I’m not jealous anyway) and it wasn’t his dad. If I hadn’t heard otherwise I would have suspected it was a customer. But he told me he’s retired from his life of crime.

I wonder.