Those summer weeks were as near to bliss as any he had ever spent. Rochelle had somewhere procured an old Handybreeze electric fan for the room in Jameson Hall, ponderous to lift but, once switched on, deliciously effective. （The dorms were not air-conditioned, something she was at pains to explain, again and again, to the mystified youngsters in the pre-college program, most of them from families of means, away from home for the first time, and unable to comprehend why the temperature in their rooms should not be magically comfortable.） The two of them lay on their pushed-together beds with the windows open and the shrill air pulsating above them, and the din the fan made effectively obscured their own noises from the ears of others.
He’d enrolled in an art history course when the summer term began. It was on Flemish painting, and those gray, flat lowland skies and pasty, pockmarked faces made a kind of invigorating inversion of his own happiness. He loved them for that, but then again, he loved everything then; there was simply no bringing him down, not on days he woke to the peculiar position of Rochelle in sleep （hands palm to palm and wedged between her bent knees） and spent the rest of the hours parting from and reuniting with her around classes, study, mentoring （hers）， and his own hours in the art history collection, only to end with those hands, once again palm to palm, once again between her angular knees, as she curled away from him and the fan blew over their warm bodies, drowning out the rest of the world. It took Lewyn no time at all to persuade himself that this could be his life in perpetuity, a nonterminating and thoroughly normal existence for the two of them, as if “normal” might feature the conveniences and ease of a college campus in summer, with low-stakes classes in a subject he now felt a genuine interest in and this wondrous girl who, miraculously, inexplicably, returned not only his affection but his desire. He was fine and he was normal and he was in love with Rochelle Steiner.
One night, the two of them came out of Moosewood （feeling virtuous but also still hungry） to find Jonas and Mark in one of the outdoor cafés on Cayuga. They had half-eaten hamburgers on their plates. Lewyn fought a powerful urge to grab one and stuff it in his own mouth.
“Thought you were gone,” he said to his now-former roommate. “Doing that pageant.”
Rochelle’s laugh sounded slightly like a bark. “What does that mean?”
“I am,” said Jonas. “We had a night off rehearsal. Decided to drive back for a real meal. There’s not much in Palmyra.”
“Not a beauty pageant,” said Lewyn. He and Rochelle were holding hands.
“Still planning on coming?” said Jonas. “Mark’s driving up next weekend.”
“We haven’t discussed it yet,” he said to Rochelle, echoing a phrase he’d heard one of his parents say to the other too many times to count. It made him feel strong and partnered, saying it.
“Discussed what?” Rochelle said, with a definite edge to her voice.
“Uh-oh,” said Mark, with obvious delight.
“I get to play a Lamanite, which is a lot more fun than playing a Nephite, though my mom wasn’t happy. She was holding out hope I’d get cast as Nephi or Joseph Smith himself. I’m like, Mom, I get that you think I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread and I love you for it, but I’m having a blast. We do these warlike grimaces and gestures, because we’re actually so far from where the audience is sitting that everything has to be kind of exaggerated. But the best part is we’re doing it on the actual hill where Joseph Smith found the golden plates. The ultimate site-specific.”
Rochelle was looking up at Lewyn. Her eyes said paragraphs.
“C’mon, Rochelle. You’re a student of religion. You’ll get a kick out of it.”
“I’m not a student of religion,” she said. “I’m going to be a lawyer.”
“I mean, you respect the traditions. We’re the fastest-growing religion in the world, did you know that? Plus, we’re super fun,” he grinned. “Plus, we crashed your party. You should crash ours.”