Higher Education (2 page)

“My garbage?” I feel my lips curving in a sneer, yet somehow my voice is softer than I intended it to be. “I needed a trash can.”

“Darling, you're an English major.” He takes a drag on his cigarette and lazily exhales. “Don't you know the difference between a piano and a wastebasket?”

“Is this a trick question?” I stare back at him, envying for perhaps the thousandth time the length and impossible curl of his eyelashes.

It's well past midnight and the Advocate party is packed. For the past half-hour Molly and I have been doing go-go routines on the fireplace mantel, high above the crowd. Even though the ledge is barely a foot wide, we've managed to pull off some pretty impressive Supremes imitations, although at one point I had to grab Molly by her polka-dotted miniskirt to keep her from tumbling headlong into the dancers below. Across the room on the massive oak table Billy and Gerard are ripping up back issues of the
Advocate,
sprinkling the pieces on people's heads and howling with laughter
.

More and more people keep jamming into the room, which by sheer dint of body heat and kinetic energy gets warmer and warmer. Although the open windows admit the chilly November air, only those at the very fringe of the crowd can feel the steamy coolness, tingling on overheated skin
.

Over at the makeshift bar they've run out of mixers and are pouring gin and vodka straight up in clear plastic cups. Jackson, who as Advocate Dionysus this year is the official party-thrower, seems unconcerned; the party is another glorious success. Eyes glittering and outlined with brilliant blue kohl, he weaves his way through the crush, stopping here a moment to kiss someone in greeting, there to dance briefly with someone else before moving on, supremely at his ease. He and I haven't spoken, save for a quick kiss exchanged upon my arrival, although at one point as I stood by the fireplace talking with Anthony, our heads close together so we could be heard above the music, Jackson suddenly appeared and swung me up onto the mantel, where Molly had been doing the Pony solo to the last couple of songs
.

Now we go from the Ramones right into “Jumpin' Jack Flash” and then to “Twist and Shout,” the music reaching a mad crescendo as everyone jumps into the four-part harmonies, singing, sweating, swaying, sinking to the floor in an ecstatic paroxysm. The song ends and now Elvis Costello is singing “My Aim Is True.” Swiftly the room quiets, becomes somehow reverent under Elvis' moody spell, and Jackson is standing before me. He holds out his arms, and I descend from the mantelpiece into his embrace, and we're dancing together, my cheek pressed tight against his familiar knobby shoulder
.

Later, much later, Jackson closes the front door of the Advocate behind the last guest, turns the lock, and leads me upstairs, where he clears one of the sofas of empty beer bottles and forgotten jackets. It's nearly dawn and it's breathtakingly quiet in the room. As Jackson pulls off his shirt, I sit waiting for him on the sofa, reputedly the very same sofa on which Norman Mailer used to take his daily afternoon naps. “What's so funny?” Jackson whispers, sitting down next to me. “Nothing,” I whisper back. “Nothing at all.” Leaning forward, I very gently bite him on the salty skin at the base of his throat, still smiling as all thoughts of Norman Mailer swiftly vanish
.

“Have I ever asked you a trick question? Miranda?”

I blink. Jackson has just executed a flawless smoke ring, which he carelessly brushes aside.

“Pay attention, darling. There's going to be a quiz afterwards.”

I shudder ever so slightly, wondering if I'm imagining the sudden draft I feel snaking down my spine. “Loan me a cig?” I say, giving him my best glammie smile, a precisely calculated expression displaying equal parts of derision, spurious affability, and indifference. It is an art that I have cultivated in recent years, and which of late I have brought to something close to perfection.

Jackson frowns at me. “Since when do you smoke, Randa?”

“Everyone needs a hobby.” I shrug. “What brings you to this den of sin, anyway? Waiting for Godot or something?”

“Meeting somebody.”

“There's no interhouse tonight, you know.”

“Oh?” He blows another smoke ring. “Why not?”

“Oxblood, Cowland, Starve a Steer for Christ. I forget.” I raise my right foot a few inches off the floor and flex the ankle, one two, one two. My shinsplints seem to be bothering me more than usual tonight. “You know. Another one of those massive bleeding-heart gestures that gets a lot of publicity and makes everybody feel guilty for a few hours. But all it really means is that there's no interhouse.” One two, one two. “Hope it doesn't interfere with your plans.”

“Not really. We'll go out, I guess.” He yawns. “What's wrong with your leg?”

I turn away. “Well, I'll see you around.”

“Randa?”

“Yeah?”

“D'you think I need a haircut?”

I look over my shoulder. His hair, a tawny brown, curls with artless grace over his collar.
Dear god
, I think unguardedly,
he's Byron, he's Baudelaire
.

“Randa?”

“You look fine.” I take my hand from my throat. “How's the French lit coming along these days?”

“Same as usual.”

“Good.” When I am at the door, he speaks again.

“Hey.”

“What.”

“Want that cig?”

“No thanks. I was only joking.”

After descending the three steps into the dining hall, I pass the enormous portrait of John Quincy Adams, who somehow looks more solemn and dyspeptic than ever, and head for the checker's desk, nimbly avoiding a collision with the house chemistry tutor and one of his students. Sourly I notice that they both wear trousers that are slightly too short, which leads me to ask myself yet again why it is that chemistry majors always look like chemistry majors.

Virginia the checker waves me on into the kitchen, making a little red mark next to my name on her list. “I got you, hon.” She is for the most part genial and easygoing but I have seen her on occasion break into a terrifying sprint after unauthorized diners attempting to slip out the back door carrying trays of food. Virginia never buys the sick-roommate story. “If they's so sick,” she'll retort, “how come they need two servin's chicken cacciatore?”

My cynical interest in tonight's culinary aberrations notwithstanding, I pass the hot entrées and proceed directly to the chilled metal dairy tins and help myself to a bowl of yogurt. Grinning, Serge tosses me an apple and a whole-wheat roll. Next I jostle my way to the head of the line at the coffee machine. Then, following the obligatory moue of disgust, it's out of the kitchen and into the dining hall. Not unlike Scylla and Charybdis, now that I think of it, impatiently waiting for a pair of overweight sophomores to finish squeezing through the doorway in tandem.

Standing by the salad bar with my tray, I peer about in search of friendly fauna. It's the usual six o'clock scene: a blur of faces and arms and legs and teeth, the cacophony of trays and dishes and silverware clattering, shoes clicking and tapping on the polished wood floor, voices raised in banter and salutation and laughter. The house master's baby is crying again. He's propped up in his high chair at the pre-law table, where Master Ackerman holds court, flanked by two long rows of sycophants who snatch bites of food between nods. His wife sits at the foot of the table, her chin receding desperately as she attempts to shush James P. Ackerman, Jr., who waves his tiny fists about and wails with a fortitude that might come in handy during the Yale game when football season rolls around again.

I wouldn't want to be sitting at that table either, bulging as it is with articulate, neatly dressed overachievers engaging in thoughtful and well-informed conversations about important issues of the day. Dear god.

Their
first word was probably “LSAT.” It's not that I object so much to their sedately checkered flannel shirts, or even to their inexplicable interest in world affairs. It's the
effort
they display that unnerves me. The trick, I've found, is to breeze into exams, serenely whip your way through a bluebook or two, and leave forty-five minutes early; to ostentatiously skip language lab yet be able to recite your French verbs perfectly the next day; when called upon in English lit to explicate a passage from “Il Penseroso,” confess that you haven't read it in years but would be happy to hazard an interpretation, and then launch into a short but brilliant exposition upon Milton's unmatched utilization of imagery and meter.

Smiling maliciously, I loosen the cap on the vinegar cruet. I keep it to myself that I spend a lot of time hunched over my books in the Widener reading room, sequestered among the portly bearded scholars and the haggard Eastern European émigrés who sit reading obscure Czechoslovakian periodicals and chain-smoking till closing time. Or that I'm often in the Widener stacks, borrowing some anonymous graduate student's carrel for a couple of hours to do some writing or reading. If anybody ever asks me, I claim to have been playing video games. Either that or out doing volunteer work for the Radcliffe Foundation.

“Yo, Miranda.” It's Carlos loping past, empty plate in hand.

“Thank god.” I straighten up. “Where are you sitting?”

“On the right side of the tracks.” He gives me a wolfish smile, teeth very white against his skin. “For once.”

Although it's perhaps not evident to the untrained eye, the Adams House dining hall embodies an intricate and ever-changing social matrix in which different areas and even specific tables manifest varying degrees of prestige and chic. These days all tables north of the salad bar are déclassé, while those in the extreme southeast comer are the most sought-after seats in the house, veritably bristling with a ridiculous number of chairs. These tables are in such demand that it's risky to vacate your seat for something so trivial as seconds; you may return to find your chair occupied by someone else, your tray mysteriously vanished, your overcoat quite possibly gone.

“Who's at your table?” I ask Carlos. “Anyone remotely humanoid?”

“Sure, I'm sitting with Flopsy, Mopsy, Biopsy, Donner and Blixen. Not to mention the Bobbsey Twins and the Happy Hollisters.” He laughs. “Oh yeah. And Bryan and Mark.”

“Bryan?” My stomach gives a little twist. “How did he get in? There's no interhouse tonight.”

“I snuck him in while Virginia was tackling a couple of guys from Quincy House.” Carlos twirls his plate on an index finger. “Why don't you join us? The more the merrier, I always say.” He sails off into the kitchen, still twirling his plate, blithely oblivious to the fact that Bryan and I haven't been on speaking terms since the night I slept with his friend Tim, to whom he himself is attracted.

“
Why did you do it? That's all I want to know.
”

Bryan and I look at each other, the silence between us hanging heavier by the second. We're in a practice room at North House; he sits on the piano bench and I'm leaning against the soundproofed wall, hard-pressed to guess which of us is the more stony-faced
.

“
Well?” he says
.

“
Three strawberry daiquiris.” I shrug. “You know how it is.
”

“
That's not much of an answer.
”

“
It wasn't much of an evening.
”

“
I just want to know why you did it.
”

“
I keep trying to tell you.” I draw a long breath, absently noting that my lungs feel tight. What am I supposed to do, blurt out that Jessica was interested in Tim, that he was coming over all the time, we all sort of hung out together, and somehow he ends up telling me it's
me
he wants? Tell him that Tim reminds me irresistibly of a Malibu Ken doll? “All I did was lie absolutely still on his bed trying not to puke. Before that I giggled a lot. That's all that happened.
”

Bryan is tapping out a random tune on the piano. “It just seems so goddam unnecessary, that's all. You knew how I felt about Tim.
”

“
Bryan, Tim was the one who asked me out.
”

“
Did you have to say yes
?”

“
I always think I'm going to have so much fun with strawberry daiquiris. They just
sound
like fun, don't they? But it never seems to work out that way.
”

“
You could have had Perrier, you know.” He's pushing down on the same key over and over again. “And not gotten drunk.
”

“
He was paying.
”

“
Maybe you'd like to talk honestly about this
?”

“
Can't we just blame it on demon rum and get it over with
?”

“
It's not that easy, Miranda.
”

Quelled into silence by his formal use of my name, I'm busy trying to draw a deep breath when Bryan speaks again
.

“
Maybe you have something else to say
?”

“
How about playing the theme from
Love Story,”
I suggest. He shoots me a look of such black incredulousness that I raise a hand in self-defense. “Never mind. I was only joking.
”

“
Jesus,” he whispers. “Show some goddam emotion, will you
?”

“
Do I have to?” I lean my head back and watch him as he bends over the keyboard. When I realize that he's crying, I go over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. Now he looks up at me, his face distorted and wet
.

“
You're completely cool.” His voice shakes. “Like a goddam ice queen. Don't you even care
?”

“
I'm sorry,” I say, rasping a little from the tightness in my chest. “I'm really sorry.
”

“
You sure as hell don't show it.” He swipes a hand across his cheek. “Just get the hell out of here, okay? Do me a favor and get out of here. Go make some snow angels or something.
”