Higher Education (4 page)

Jessica now occupies the entire couch and is using my coat for a pillow. “Well, it's nice of you to ask, Steve. Really. But it's the Radcliffe Senior Soirée, you know. The girls are supposed to ask the boys.” I lift up her legs and reclaim my place, settling her feet in my lap. She wears a white crew sock and a sagging pink anklet. “Right. Like a Sadie Hawkins dance.” She rolls her eyes at me again. “Well, to be honest with you, Steve, Miranda and I have already asked two football players from Kirkland House to go with us. They're very sweet boys. Varsity.” I start playing “This Little Piggy Went to Market” with her toes and she kicks back at me. “Listen, Steve, I've got to run. We're having our Wednesday-night fire drill over here. Thanks for calling. Yes, I enjoyed talking to you too. Really. Bye now.” She hangs up the phone and drops her jaw into her neck, reminding me irresistibly of a disgruntled carp. “Why do these graduate students keep bothering me?”

“Jessica?”

“What?”

“Are they buying us corsages?”

“Who?”

“The football players.”

“Oh, Christ. My life is falling apart, and you're pestering me about corsages.”

“Why is your life falling apart?”

“Do you want an itemized list?”

“It might be helpful.”

“Okay. In no particular order: Steve, my thesis, the Radcliffe Senior Soirée, Yale Law School, and a Coop bill for three hundred dollars.”

“That's all?”

“Do you mind if I slug you?”

“Couldn't we talk about your thesis instead?”

“But what I'm really worried about is the Soirée.”

“Your thesis. I insist.”

“God, you're a bore.”

“Now, Jessica.” I clear my throat sententiously. “As I hope you realize, this thesis represents a truly magnificent educational opportunity, a once in a lifetime chance to contribute in a meaningful and lasting way to the prestigious academic community we know and love—”

“Do you mean Harvard?”

“Not to be confused with Princeton, say, or Stanford,” I affirm. “You should be grateful. Think of all the starving children in Africa.”

“I'll send them my meal card. Let them write my thesis.”

“Come on, buck up.” I give her instep an encouraging little squeeze. “You've been at the typewriter for three days. How many pages have you written so far?”

“Four.”

“Four?”

“Well, four and a half. If you count the outline that makes a grand total of six.”

“Sweetheart,” I say delicately, “when is it due?”

“A week from Friday. Oh Jesus, Miranda.” She sits up and grabs my wrist. “Anything yet?”

“Did I say
due
? Whoops.” I smirk at her. “I can hear Freud spinning in his grave.”

“It's ten days already, isn't it?”

“Twelve. But who's counting?”

“Have you been to UHS yet?”

“You know how I feel about bunny rabbits.”

“Miranda—”

“Now let's see.” I disengage my wrist from her grasp. “Who's the lucky guy who gets to pay for baby carriages and child support? Anthony, maybe? Or Danny, the waiter at Soup ‘n' Salad who took me to a Celtics game during spring break?” Tim's name hangs in the air between us, although technically speaking he can hardly be classified as a candidate. “Or Guillaume, my one-night stand from the romance-languages party?”

“Guillaume? You mean the kid who spilled sangria down your back?”

“Maybe.” I shrug, thankful that she's accepted the omission. “I'd rather it be Anthony, though. His parents are rich.” I smile crookedly at her. “I wouldn't mind hanging out in Coral Gables watching my stomach get fat.”

“Jesus, Miranda.”

“I hear Florida's a nice place to raise kids.”

“
Aren't you going to take your sweater off?” Anthony whispers
.

“
No, it's too cold.” Absently I pat his shoulder, mentally retracing the steps that have led to this unexpected little Tuesday-night tryst. It seems to have begun with a casual discussion at dinner about the Brattle Theatre, which led to a 7:35 showing of
Breathless.
Next was Pamplona and two double espressos apiece, followed by a quick detour to the Hong Kong for a couple of Scorpion Bowls, which somehow resulted in an impromptu excursion to his room to look up a favorite Yeats passage, and now here I am in Anthony's rumpled futon with my underwear shut into Volume 2 of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. “You're a swan, a swan,” he murmurs, mouth at my hipbones. His hands are moving over my body with an urgency I find somewhat unnerving, and I am in fact about to politely ask him to stop kneading my quadriceps when suddenly he is thrusting against my left leg, the flesh of his buttocks shimmering smooth and pale in the moonlight. He's breathing with what strikes me as unnecessary loudness. I look over at the door to the living room, wondering if any of his roommates are in. “Miranda,” he whispers hoarsely, sinking onto my pelvis, still shaking a little. My kneecap feels sticky, my back is starting to hurt, and it occurs to me that I was never all that crazy about Yeats anyway
.

“You're taking this very well,” Jessica says dryly.

“Will you stop? I don't even know for sure.” I toe off my sneakers and begin flexing my ankles. “Which reminds me. Why did the Valley Girl take two birth-control pills?”

“You must be kidding.”

“Come on. Be a sport.”

“Jesus. Why.”

“She wanted to be fer sure, fer sure.” I poke her in the ribs but she merely frowns.

“Have you been checking your diaphragm for holes?”

“Now who's kidding who? Do you check
your
diaphragm for holes?”

“We're not talking about my diaphragm,” she snaps.

“Don't you think they look like giant contact lenses?”

“No.”

“Screwy little things. So to speak.”

“Don't be disgusting.”

“Fallible loops, you might call them. Note the oblique allusion to fallopian tubes.”

“Jesus, Miranda. Will you stop joking for once?”

“I thought I told you to relax. Would you kindly remove my notebook from underneath your lumbar region? I want to write this down. When you get a chance, of course.” I reach for the phone and start dialing.

“Hi, is Dean there?”

Jessica flashes her cynical fish face at me and climbs out of the couch to go back to the typewriter.

“Hi, Miranda.”

“Hi, Kevin. How's everything?”

“Really shitty. How about with you?”

“Oh, I can't complain.”

“You can't complain?” he says aggrievedly. “What do you mean, you can't complain?”

“Speech defect. Darling, is Dean around?”

“Miranda, why don't you go out with me instead? I don't already have a girlfriend.”

“It's sweet of you to offer, Kevin. But I'm afraid I'm just not good enough for you.”

“Oh.” There is a short silence. “But still. I just don't think you're using your energies constructively here.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Let's face it, Miranda, Dean's a tough nut to crack.”

“Watch your mouth.” I open my notebook.

“Look. He spends a good twenty, twenty-five percent of his time with Jennifer, right? Drinking, screwing, and arguing.”

“Not necessarily in that order, I hope.”

“Right. Then, what with meals, watching TV, and going to Advocate meetings, that doesn't leave much time for outside activities, like cheating on his girlfriend or going to classes.” Kevin speaks with the oily reasonableness of an economics major. “It's really a matter of simple arithmetic.”

I'm hunting through my jacket pockets for a pen. “What's your point, Kev?”

“Miranda, can I be honest with you?”

“Why bother?”

“Have you and Dean slept together?”

“Why don't you ask Dean? He's your roommate, after all.”

“That's kind of a personal question to ask someone, isn't it?”

“I suppose you're right.” I find my favorite Bic fine-point in an inner pocket, along with a couple of pieces of sugarless gum and a lipstick I thought I'd lost weeks ago. “No, Kev, I'll tell you the truth. It's Jennifer I'm after. Is she around, by any chance?”

“You're so wild, Miranda. I need that in a woman.”

“Don't start flattering me now. I take it Dean's not there?”

“And smart too.”

“Yes, but I can't cook and I hate housework. Do you still want to marry me?”

“Well, thanks, Miranda, but really I just want to get you into my room to show you my bar graphs.”

“Forget it. I go for anemic stringy-haired intellectual types, not great big M.B.A. bruisers like you.”

“Oh, Miranda.” He sighs breathily into the receiver. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Staring at a blank page. Where's Dean?”

“Having dinner with Jackson.”

“My, what a small world it is.”

“They're probably talking about you right now.”

“It's a lovely thought, Kev, but more likely they're discussing the next issue of the
Advocate.
”

“Give yourself more credit than that, Miranda.”

“I'm not sure the Registrar would go for it.” I snicker.

There's a silence at the other end of the line. “Do you want me to leave a message for Dean?”

“Yes, tell him that I called to ask him a question about
Lady Chatterley's Lover.
”

“Wait, I'm writing it down. Can I borrow your copy when you're through?”

“I'm not sure you're ready for it.”

“How do you spell ‘Chatterley'?”

“Never mind. Maybe you could just tell him I called.”

“Sure. But I already wrote down ‘Lover.'”

“That's what I like about you, Kev. You always get to the heart of things.”

“Thanks.”

“I'd chat some more, Kev, but we're having a little fire drill over here just at the moment.”

“I guess you'd better go then.”

“I guess so. Nice talking with you.”

“You too, Miranda. I'll leave the message on Dean's bed.”

“Good thinking. Thanks, Kev.”

We hang up, and I write
fallible loops
in my notebook.

Jessica speaks without turning her head from the typewriter. “Fascinating.”

“I assume you're referring to your thesis.”

“What else would I be referring to? Gosh, I just can't put down this book on Jane Austen's political views. Did you know she was an avid proponent of agricultural reform?”

“Wow.”

“I don't suppose you can come up with something a little more articulate than ‘Wow'?”

“Jessica, I'm trying to write a poem here. Do you mind?”

“That's your problem.” She goes back to her halfhearted typing.

The telephone rings, and I start at the noise, dropping my pen on the floor. “Shit.”

Jessica leaps up. “I'll get it.”

I hand her the receiver. “A cheap diversion.”

“Hello? Oh, hi, Sutter.” She listens for a moment, then jabs at my calf with her big toe. “Sutter wants you to know that he's not cheap.”

“Ask him how much.” I lean over the arm of the sofa and retrieve
The New Yorker
from the fireplace. Settling back, I start to turn to the book-review section but am distracted by a Bulgari ad.

Jessica stretches out on the floor, using my running shoes for a pillow. “A special on PBS?” she is saying. “Sutter, I'm trying to write a thesis over here.”

I snigger at her over
The New Yorker
but she ignores me. “What's that? A Jacques Cousteau documentary?”

Yawning, I switch to the movie listing.

“Oh, all right. You know I can't resist Jacques Cousteau. D'you have any beer? Fabulous. See you soon. Bye.” She hangs up. There is a brief silence. “Miranda?”

“What.”

“Your feet stink.”

“I beg your pardon,” I say, not lowering the magazine. “I believe you mean to tell me that my
shoes
stink.”

“Don't worry about it.” She stands up. “Jane Austen's feet smelled too.”

I flip over to “Talk of the Town.” Jessica switches off the typewriter and starts gathering up the crumpled paper that litters the floor in a chaotic white jumble. “I know what you're thinking.”

“Madame Jessica knows all, sees all.”

“Shut up. You're thinking I should stay here and work on my thesis.”

“Did I say anything?”

“No, but I could tell you were thinking it.” She's putting on her shoes. “Your lower lip is sticking way out.”

“I'm just trying to figure out this goddam cartoon, that's all.” Sighing, I toss
The New Yorker
back into the fireplace. “Just go and have a good time, okay? Drink beer, look at the whales, ogle Jacques Cousteau's skinny little French bod.” I'm trying to find my pen again. “I'll stay here and watch your thesis. What time does it usually go to bed?”

She stoops and picks up my pen from where it has landed not ten inches from my right foot. “This your gun,
hombre
?”

“What keen eyes you have.”

“Yep.” She cackles and disappears into her bedroom. When she returns she's wearing a tight-fitting imitation leopard-skin jacket that has shiny black plastic buttons the size of small pancakes. “I'm off. How do I look?”

“Very
National Geographic.
”

“Hey,” she says, pausing in the doorway. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Oh, I don't know. Stuff for poetry class.” I slouch lower on the sofa. “I should do laundry, I guess. I'm down to underwear I'm embarrassed to be seen in.”

“You've got Sutter's number, don't you?”