I waited with bated breath.

Please God, oh please God, don't let him say he wants to be a writer or a journalist, I begged.

It would be just too much of a clich�.

I was starting to like and respect him, and this would ruin it entirely.

I put my hands together in prayer and sent my eyes heavenward.

"I'd like to do something with the psychology," he said. (Phew! I thought.) "I'm interested in the way people's minds work. I might like to be some kind of counselor. Or I might like to get involved in advertising. And use the psychology that way," he explained. "Anyway, it's a long way away."

"And what about English?" I asked him nervously. "Don't you enjoy that?"

"Of course," he said. "It's my favorite. But I can't see myself getting a job out of it. Unless I want to try to become a writer or a journalist. And everybody wants to do that."

Thank God! I thought.

I'm glad that he likes it. I just couldn't bear to hear another person going on about how he wants to write a book. So we chatted pleasantly. Laura went to the bar to get more drinks.

Adam turned to me and smiled.

"This is great," he said. "It's so nice to have a bit of intelligent conversa- tion."

I glowed.

Adam moved a little bit closer to me.

So I may not have the body of a seventeen-year-old but I can still entertain a man, I thought smugly.

"Adam, we're leaving now. Are you coming?"

The pretty blond girl appeared at Adam's side.

"No, Melissa, not yet. But I'll see you tomorrow. Okay?" said Adam.

It was obviously far from okay. Melissa looked outraged.

"But...I thought...aren't you coming to the party?" she asked, sounding as if she couldn't believe her ears.

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"No, I don't think so," said Adam, a bit more firmly this time.

"Fine!" said Melissa, letting Adam know that it was far from fine. "Here's your bag." And she let a huge sports bag fall with a thud onto the floor.

She cast venomous looks at both Laura and me.

Puzzled but venomous.

She really couldn't understand what Adam was doing with two old bags like us when he could have had his pick of all the nubile seventeen-year- olds in the place.

Quite frankly, neither could I.

Melissa flounced away and Adam sighed.

"I couldn't stand it," he explained wearily. "Another student party. Cans of warm Heineken. And not being able to get into the bathroom because someone's having sex in there. And you leave your jacket on the bed and someone pukes on it. I'm too old."

I suddenly felt genuinely sorry for him.

I thought he was being sincere when he told me he was enjoying a bit of intelligent conversation.

It couldn't be easy to be surrounded by giggly excitable eighteen-year- olds like Helen and Melissa when you're a lot more grown-up than that. And it also couldn't be easy, I realized, to have so many young girls in love with you. Not if you were a kind person, like Adam seemed to be, and didn't want to hurt or upset them. Sometimes, not that I'd know or any- thing, but being beautiful isn't all fun and games. You have to use your power wisely and responsibly.

For the next ten minutes or so a steady stream of young girls came over to say good-bye to Adam. Well, that was their pretext. Melissa had obvi- ously reported back and they were really coming to see how hideous and old Laura and I were. I have to admit, if the tables were turned, I'd be one of the first over to criticize and ridicule the shoes, clothes, makeup and hair of the offending women.

As it happened, Laura looked beautiful, red curls, alabaster skin and nothing like her thirty years. I don't think I looked too awful either. But I'm sure that didn't stop anyone from saying how ancient we looked. And what did it matter?

Someone stuck a can under my nose and rattled it a bit.

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"Would you like to make a contribution to children in need?" asked a harassed-looking man in a wet overcoat.

"Certainly," I said, and shoved a pound into the can.

"Yourself?" he said, looking at Laura. He hadn't even asked Adam to contribute. He obviously recognized a penniless student when he saw one.

"Oh, I make my contributions directly," Laura explained to the man.

"Do you?" I asked, puzzled. I hadn't known that Laura was involved in any children's charities.

"Well, I have sex with a child on a regular basis," she declared. "If that isn't contributing directly, I don't know what is."

The man looked horrified and moved on to the next table at high speed.

Adam roared with laughter.

"I've never met a pedophile before," he said to her.

"I'm only joking. I'm not really a child molester at all," she told Adam. "The child in question is nineteen."

We finished our drinks and put on our coats and got ready to leave.

The pub was starting to empty. Everyone at the tables around us seemed in high spirits, except the bartenders, who were practically begging people to leave. "I've worked thirteen nights in a row," I heard one bartender telling a particularly rowdy table of revelers. "I'm exhausted." In fairness, he did look exhausted, but I think he was wasting his time trying to appeal to their humanitarian side.

"You're bringing tears to my eyes," said a rather drunk young man with grave irony.

"Finish that beer, or I'm taking it," threatened another bartender, at an- other nearby table.

So the customer drank nearly a whole pint in one gulp, to the encouraging comments of his friends--"Good man," "Waste not, want not," and various other shouts.

Even Laura called over, "Swalley that down."

We passed the customer about five minutes later, just outside the pub, as he was being assisted by a couple of his equally drunk friends while vomiting copiously.

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When we got to the door of the pub, we found that the rain had started again.

"I'm only parked up the road," said Laura. "I'll run."

We hugged each other.

"I'll be out on Sunday to see Kate," she said. "Lovely meeting you, Adam." And off she ran into the wet night, almost colliding with the vomiting man.

"Sorry," she called to him, her voice floating back to us on the damp night air.