It was never calm in room 312 when Michelle was there. She smoked incessantly and she tossed her lit matches into the round metal waste basket. After the third trashcan fire, Mel had to conclude that Michelle liked the flames. They managed to extinguish the flares themselves except one time. Then firefighters poured into their hall to the sounds of the floor alarms and the usual yell of “Man on floor.”

Mel knew that Moe slapped Michelle sometimes, and it may have been disloyal and politically incorrect of Mel to even think it, but her roommate seemed to ask for it. It was like a dance Michelle and Moe performed and each knew the steps; the reward was some kind of fabulous makeup sex, busy mouths locked on each other’s loins for hours, hours – a scene that Mel and Mike couldn’t imagine well enough to mock.

Mel once saw it from the other side. Instead of being in the dorm room studying when Michelle tromped in, she was at the fight when Michelle stomped out. They were all at Moe’s and Nasri’s place. Mike and Nasri were playing a long game of chess and Mel was reading when sounds of profound argument began in the bedroom. Epithets and drawer slamming.

Soon they were in view. She was leaving, he was following yelling, she was turning screaming, and he was reaching for her at the door, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her a little to emphasize his words. It was scary, so sudden, but then Mel saw that Michelle was moving under those hand-covered shoulders, resonating like a tuning fork, amplifying the sway till her back was smacking the door. Mel witnessed her helping the passion look good before she tore out of there for the privacy of her bouncing bed.

Mel saw all that, the choreography, and appreciated it like a good observer. But she somehow never realized that the sags and shadows of Michelle’s body signified more than harmless ventures into sex. Why that girl had birthed at least one baby, and Mel never knew it till recently, gazing at her own used belly, thinking back.

West Virginia. Michelle never went back. She and Moe didn’t make it of course; neither did Mel and Mike. Mel lost touch with her after their freshman year, but she heard tidings of her last month.

Michelle married a fireman. They moved to Nevada. She settled down in the Sparks area and raised four kids.

Mel got the news from Alain’s wife Rita, after connecting with them on the Internet. Alain seems successful: a tenured math professor well-married to a self-employed businesswoman. Through them she learned about Nasri’s disability and Moe’s death in a rock climbing accident. They told her one knew where Mike was. They forwarded some e-mails from Michelle.

Her letters were creepy. It sounded like she had gone completely over to the other side. An avid church participant. Probably fundamentalist. Profoundly anti-choice. So consistent about denying her past deviance that she sounded like she believed the rewrite herself. It was easy to resist re-acquainting with her.

The view of Michelle is much more satisfying from here, thirty-eight years backward, noticing clues that Mel never thought of then. She can still see Moe edged forward on his chair, fired by argument, punctuating his opinions with sharp drags on the unfiltered cigarette between his orange fingertips. She’ll never erase the vision of wide-eyed Michelle in vehement, naked, chaotic bounce. They were young then, weary and excitable, coiled in abusive ballet. They’ll always be action figures on the sex side of Mel’s shelves.