Friday Mornings at Nine (13 page)

“Sure,” she said, trying to look expressionless. Indifferent.

“It’ll hold a lot of people,” he told her. “Not that we’ll need room for more than twenty.”

She glanced at him sharply.

“Mitch heard back from a few people already who can’t make it,” he explained. “Other commitments and stuff.”

“So, you and Mitch split up the club members? You each contacted half?”

“Something like that. Well, actually, I delegated a bit.”

He looked away, busying himself with putting away the list, but she knew for certain, right then, that this was entirely a setup. That the reunion was David’s idea, but he’d roped Mitch into helping. That she was probably the only club member David had contacted personally. And that this idea of being on the “location committee” with him was just a ploy, but she couldn’t figure out what had set him in motion.

“Why? Why after all this time did you want to see me again?” she asked, feeling oddly bold for someone who’d almost never challenged him when they were together.

He started walking again and, for a moment, she thought he’d try to ignore her. But then he said, “For the same reason you agreed to meet me.” He quickened his pace. “Unfinished business.”

She considered this. “But what made you think it was unfinished for
me?
Before we started e-mailing? And you said in one of those early messages that you’d heard I got married. From
whom?
I didn’t keep in touch with anyone from college that you’d have known, David.”

He batted away those questions with an annoyed gesture and a grimace. “I did a little research.”

They were right in front of the Weaver Center entrance, but she pulled him back from the door. “Wait. You cyber-stalked me?”

“I people-searched you, I didn’t stalk.”

“But you looked me up? Found photos of me? Already knew where I was living?” How creepy. And, yet, how strangely gratifying that he’d been that interested.

“Oh, c’mon. It was nothing. Some pictures of you at a kids’ cheerleading camp fund-raiser. Fall PTA minutes. Web credits for your design business. You’re not fucking invisible, Jenn.” And from the fierce look he gave her, she knew she wasn’t. At least not to him. “So don’t bullshit me. It’s not like you’ve never done it. I know how sneaky and subversive you can be. Playing at innocence while gathering up data to use against someone later. Stripping away a person’s defenses in your mind and digging at their insecurities while acting all mousy and serene.”

He glared, deep and feral, and it was a spike to the heart, this knowledge he possessed of her. She’d let so few people into her inner circle, but he’d been one of them. Once. Unfortunately, much of what he’d learned about her still remained true today. Still true because it’d always been true…and because she’d let him see her real self. Big mistake.

“Look me in the eye, Jenn, and tell me you never Googled my name.”

She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

“You want me to play fair?” he spat out. “You have to play fair back. You want me to be honest? You have to be honest, too.”

She took a deep breath and returned his glare. “Fine. A few times but, last I checked, there were ninety-six living David Saxons in the United States. A handful in Illinois alone. And, besides, I thought you’d have moved out of state a decade or more ago.”

“How many David Saxons were in my age bracket?”

“Twelve that I could identify,” she shot back.

“How many with the middle initial O?” David’s middle name was Oliver.

“At least six, but there were a bunch that weren’t listed.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t look at the ones in Illinois and wonder if one of them was mine. That you didn’t do a reverse phone number search or check out the aerial view of a few of the addresses. That you didn’t see my parents’ names recorded in the ‘relatives’ section by one or two of the listings. Or Marcia’s.”

“I didn’t see Marcia’s name anywhere. Anytime. Ever.” That was true. But, in many ways, David was right. She certainly qualified as compulsive enough to hunt down the details of his life, and she
had
made a start on it. So, the greater truth was that she was curious to a point but then simply scared. She’d suspected a connection between him and Marcia, yes, but she hadn’t wanted to look long or deep enough to have it verified.

“Then you weren’t looking too hard, were you?” He studied her, the intelligence in his eyes undeniable, and the amused delight in the wry twist to his lips unmistakable. He
saw
her.

She had been trying to work up the courage to ask about those last weeks of their senior year, to corner him and ask why he’d left, but he was the king of conversational pacing. He had turned her momentary imbalance to his advantage.

He broke their eye lock and pushed open the door to the Weaver Center. If Jennifer had wondered where they packed the students on the C-IL-U campus, she had to look no farther. The interior was swarming. Even busier than when they were students. Some kids were there for meals (the building housed the main cafeteria), some for small group seminars, some for tutoring and many simply to hang out in the lounges and study in those comfy, ratty chairs.

Jennifer and David wandered the long corridors of the rec center for a few minutes, peeking into the rooms set aside for the larger lectures or student gatherings.

“You could host a wedding reception in this one,” David said, pointing through the open door to a “lounge” that could easily seat two hundred.

“If we’re going to have less than twenty people, maybe we should look for something more, um—”

“Intimate,” David finished for her.

“Well, yeah. The Center is just too big.” And they hadn’t even bothered to trek through the lower level where the dances and performances were held. They already knew those wouldn’t provide any kind of cozy, chat-with-old-buddies atmosphere.

“I think we should give TJH a chance,” he said. “I don’t know if they still have those party rooms on level three, but they’d be about perfect for what we’re looking for.”

TJH, or Thomas Jefferson Hall, was the upperclassmen dorm. The dorm she and David had lived in, just one floor apart, during their junior year. Every hallway housed a memory. Every study room a recollection of their relationship. Jennifer wasn’t sure she could handle being in there again. Of course, anything was better than the Vat Building, which David also had on his list.

“Okay, let’s go there,” she said, resigning herself to the lesser of two evils.

But unexpected news befell them before they ever got out of the Weaver Center.

They passed by a campus information booth, manned (womanned?) by a perky blond thing, a student guide whom David, apparently, couldn’t resist questioning. “Hi, there,” he said. “Perhaps you can help us.”

“Sure!” Perky Girl said with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. Jennifer tried not to scowl at her.

“We were interested in renting out one of the party rooms in TJH. Who on campus should we speak to? The dean? The dorm director?”

The girl regarded them blankly. “Um, party rooms?”

“Right. On the third floor. You know, those large rooms where people gather?”

Jennifer could hear the polite condescension in his voice, something a typical eavesdropper might miss. He looked so pleasant, but the glint in his eye, the measured enunciation and the marginally terse tone gave away his impatience and irritation. Good to see that one of his core traits had remained unchanged through the years. And that, no matter how nubile the woman, David still didn’t suffer fools cheerfully.

Though there were exceptions. He’d married Marcia after all.

“My friend lives in Thomas Jefferson Hall,” the girl said, squinting at them. “They have a few kinda small lounges up there for residents, but I’ve never seen big party rooms. I mean, some guys live on level three and they, you know, have
parties
”—she blushed prettily—“but not, like,
officially.
”

“They must’ve converted the space to dorm rooms,” Jennifer said, the tension in her chest loosening at this news. Now they wouldn’t have to go there.

David nodded, bit his lip, turned back to Perky Girl and slowed his speech even further. “Is there
anywhere
on campus that might have rooms alumni can rent out?”

Perky Girl batted her eyes as she stared, unfocused, into the distance. Thinking, presumably. “Um, maybe somewhere in the Vat? I think they have, like, places just for responsible adults and stuff.”

“Responsible and practical adults,” David murmured in an aside to Jennifer. “Dependable, sensible, respectable adults.”

“Acceptable, presentable adults. A vegetable,” she murmured back with a grin, parroting a mixed-up version of the famous Supertramp lyrics from verses they’d once had memorized. Words they’d danced to in that very building.

Perky Girl looked confused. “A vegetable? You mean, like, you wanna bring food in there?”

“Not necessarily,” David said with feigned sweetness. “We just want a room where we can joyfully and happily be intellectual, logical, clinical and cynical, uh,
adults.
”

“That would be a magical miracle,” Jennifer contributed in her most serious voice.

David snickered.

Perky Girl no longer looked so perky. “You’ll have to ask the dean,” she said with a sniff. “I totally don’t know.”

“Thanks, anyway,” David said, pushing Jennifer away from the booth before they both started laughing.

“That was mean of us,” Jennifer said once they were outside, even though she couldn’t stop giggling. “Funny, but unkind.”

“She was a dope,” David said with a dismissive shrug. “But I think we may have to go over to the Vat and see what’s available in person.”

Jennifer sucked in some air. She knew she couldn’t express to David how very much she didn’t want to go back there. Not with him. Not with anyone, really. The words she wanted to say got stuck in her throat, however, and all she could do was nod mutely. A gesture that he, of course, took to mean acquiescence.

“It’ll be kind of strange to walk around in there after all these years, don’t you think?” he asked.

Strange didn’t begin to cover it. Again, she sort of nodded at him.

“God, the hours we spent in that lab…”

No kidding. The Vat Building housed the university’s main computer lab. She, David and their friends had treated it like their true campus home. If the rooms in TJH presented painful flash-backs, every nook and cranny in the Vat caused the equivalent agony of a two-hour-long torture film.

Nevertheless, to the Vat they went.

Bizarre how someplace could be altered—room elements switched around, new equipment incorporated, even additions put on the building—and, yet, two decades later, still look and feel exactly the same.

The room that was the hardest for her to walk into was the Techie Lounge. It had the ancient familiarity of her childhood bedroom, and despite its emptiness, or maybe because of it, she felt teleported through time when she crossed the threshold. There were new vending machines, of course (though they still were stocked with Coke, Snickers bars and bags of Doritos), a few pieces of different furniture (old and moldy, but not as old or as moldy as the ones that’d been there when she and David were students), a marginally less horrible valance above the window overlooking the quad (but still
very
ugly).

Even David paused, speechless, by her side. They gaped in stunned silence at the room—one that was “just right” for their gathering, whereas the Weaver Center had been too big and Thomas Jefferson Hall too small.

She was thinking about this for several seconds before she became aware of David’s breathing. It had turned hard and labored, his eyes becoming glassy to the point of wateriness.

What the hell? Was he having a heart/asthma/panic attack? She stared at him in alarm. “David? Are you all right?”

He shook his head.

She grabbed his wrist and felt for his pulse. It raced beneath her fingertips, but he just stood there, immobile. “David?” she said again. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’re feeling.” She fumbled for her cell phone. “You need to sit down. I—I can call for an ambulance or at least get a doctor out h—”

He turned to face her, twisting his wrist out of her grasp and, instead, taking her hand. Gently. “What I’m feeling,” he said, still panting more than breathing, “is regret. That I’m sorry, Jenn. So sorry I left our life together. So sorry I left…you.”

Jennifer, held fast by both his grip on her hand and by the circle of magnetism he always seemed to create around himself, gazed at him. She realized with shock that the water in his brown eyes stemmed from tears, not pain. Well, at least not physical pain.

“It was a long time ago,” she whispered, again wanting to ask him for the details of his departure but unable to voice her question for fear of setting off in him some kind of relapse.

“Doesn’t seem so long.”

“No,” she said. “Not in this room. But it was.”

He pulled back then, released her hand, looked away. She heard him mumble something that sounded like “Maybe. Maybe not.” She wasn’t sure, though, since he’d walked away from her and toward the window. He seemed strangely fine again.

With an abrupt motion, he snatched at the dangling cord and pulled, opening the blinds until they smacked the underside of that ugly valance. “Let’s get some light in here, huh? Take a look around.”

She figured they had already had plenty of time to look around, but since color had begun seeping back into his lips and cheeks, she humored him. Still, she couldn’t help but say, “Are you sure you don’t want to check out any of the other rooms? They built that new wing in the back—”

“Nope. This is the spot. Everyone in the club knew it well.” He met her gaze directly. “Dreams were formed and abandoned here. People met each other, then moved away. And isn’t that what reunions are all about? Returning to an influential place and facing those dreams, and those people, again? Seeing if the present reality in any way mirrors the hopes of the past?”

How poetic, she wanted to say, feeling the anger bubbling inside her at his words. How easy to speak of abandoned dreams like they were a figurative concept. And blithely pulling out the phrase “hopes of the past,” as if he were giving some valedictory speech meant to be inspirational and not merely trying to excuse his own lousy behavior.