In Between Days (3 page)

Brandon smiles. “Beto,” he says. Then he turns around and does a sort of sideways dive into the pool.

When Richard returns to the kitchen, Michelson is waiting, drink in hand. Richard explains that he has to leave, and Michelson says he’ll walk him to the door.

“I was talking to some friends of mine,” Michelson says as they move through the hallway. “One at Cornell, one at Michigan. I was telling them about you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“They said that if you still wanted to apply, then you should go ahead and send your application directly to them. That way you’d be sure to get a fair read.”

Richard nods again.

“Are you still thinking about applying, Richard?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Well, yeah, I don’t know.” He pauses. “I mean most of those places are pretty hard to get into, you know, and also I’m a little strapped for cash these days. It’s not really such a good time for me.”

“It’s never a good time,” Michelson says. “But you’re still young, you know. The older you get, the harder it becomes to do something like this.”

Richard nods again. Then Michelson smiles and puts his hand on Richard’s shoulder, massaging it lightly. For some time now, Richard has suspected that Michelson knows about him, about him and Brandon, and about some of the other boys in the group. At least half of them are gay, a fact that surely couldn’t have escaped Michelson himself, though he never mentions it, never even brings it up, except in reference to their poems. Perhaps this is what years of being closeted has done to him, years of going out to cocktail parties with his wife at the dean’s house. That poor, lovely woman, Richard thinks. How could she have endured it for so long? How could she have put up with this man for so many years?

At the edge of the hallway, Michelson slows down and stares at him. “I feel like I’m losing you, Richard.”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like something’s changed.”

“Nothing’s changed,” Richard says. “I’m just really busy right now, that’s all.”

Michelson nods.

“With work and stuff.”

Michelson moves toward the doorway, and Richard suddenly feels bad, guilty for not explaining to this man what he can barely explain to himself. That ever since his parents’ divorce, he can hardly bring himself to care about anything. Not work, not poetry, not graduate school. Not even the tiny apartment he shares with a few other boys from his year.

“Well, if you’re interested,” Michelson continues, opening the door now and letting the rain into the hall. “I have a friend coming into town next week. A minor poet who’s actually pretty good. I think you’d like him.”

Richard nods.

“Just let me know if you’d like to meet him and I can arrange for the three of us to have dinner together.”

Richard nods, considers this, wonders about Michelson’s deeper
motives. “I’ll check my schedule,” he says. “When did you say it was again?”

“Wednesday,” he says. “Wednesday night. There’ll be a reading, of course, and then, if you’d like, we can all have dinner.”

“Wednesday,” Richard says, pretending to ponder this, pretending he’s actually considering it. “Okay,” he nods. Then he gives Michelson his hand, which Michelson holds a beat too long, says good-bye, and takes off through the rain, jumping over the puddles on his way to his mother’s minivan.

EARLIER THAT DAY
, before the sun came up, Raja had come to her dorm room and let himself in with the key she had given him. He had lain down beside her and put his arms around her and squeezed her tightly. He had been up half the night talking with the police, then his lawyer, then his parents. Technically, he was not allowed to be on the campus anymore, but he no longer cared. What else could they possibly do to him? he often reasoned. What else could they possibly do that hadn’t already been done?

It was still unclear what would happen to him, or to her, what the charges would be, but that morning he had come into her dorm room and said that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. It was her last day, after all, and what he wanted to do now was make love to her, then take her out for breakfast, then drive her up to the airport in Boston. It would be a month, possibly two, before they saw each other again, and he didn’t want to spend their last day together worrying about it. She had finally relented, agreeing not to talk about it, though it was hard for her to think of anything else. When he’d made love to her, she’d cried, and then afterward, she had sat there at her window and stared out at the empty quad, at the freshly fallen snow and the purple sky above it. In the corner, Raja had dressed quietly, then come over to her and sat beside her on the bed. He had squeezed her so tightly that she was sure he’d broken a rib, or maybe something else, something that would leave a permanent trace of him.

“I don’t want you to talk about this with your parents,” he’d said finally.

“I already have.”

“I know,” he said. “But I don’t want you to say anything that you haven’t already said.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t,” he’d said. “It’ll be better that way.”

“For who?”

“For both of us.”

She’d nodded, though it bothered her how surreptitious he’d become, how guarded. Earlier that week, he had come over to her dorm room and demanded that she show him all of her e-mails, even the personal ones from friends. Then he’d made her delete each and every one, even though she’d made a promise to him long before that she would never talk about this stuff with anyone. Deleting the e-mails from him had been the hardest. It was like erasing a part of her life, a part of her past. Suddenly, aside from the few tiny letters she’d kept hidden at the back of her desk, there was no evidence, no sign at all, that she’d ever actually known him.

Later, on the way to the airport, they stopped at a diner for breakfast, and then afterward they’d driven the rest of the way to Boston in silence. When he dropped her off at the airport, he’d been quiet, evasive, just like he’d been on the way up. He’d helped her with her bags; then he’d stood there and hugged her tightly, though he hadn’t cried. She had wanted him to cry. She had wanted him to show some sign of remorse, some sign of contrition for what he’d dragged her into, or, at the very least, some sign that he would miss her. But that was not his style. Instead what he’d done was patted her on the head and kissed her. Then he’d said, “It’s gonna be okay.”

“I wish I believed you.”

“It will be,” he said. “I promise.”

“Do you have enough money to get back home?” she’d said. “I mean, for gas?” He almost never had enough money for anything.

He looked at her and shrugged. “I’ll manage,” he said.

“What if I never see you again?” she said. The thought of this had never even occurred to her before that moment.

“Then that would be a miracle,” he’d said. “Or a tragedy.” Then he’d started to laugh. “Or both.”

Now, as she stands outside the empty baggage claim at Houston International, she wonders how long it will be before she sees him again. How
long it will be before she hears his voice. Raja had been the first and only boy she’d ever loved. Before him, there had been Aiden Bell, and before Aiden, there had been Dustin O’Keefe, but neither of those boys had held a candle to Raja. It was only with Raja that she felt herself. It was only in his presence that she understood what women meant when they talked about love in magazines and books. There was a coolness about him, a detachment, that seemed to attract other people. He had more friends than she had ever had, and yet he never seemed to make the slightest effort to get to know them. They simply showed up at his room at all hours of the night, wanting to talk about books or politics or movies or wanting to tell him about the problems in their lives. That he’d chosen her as his girlfriend had been a miracle. He could have been with any woman he’d wanted to, practically. Any Indian woman, for sure. And yet, he’d chosen her, a suburban white girl from the South, his Indian parents’ worst nightmare. On their first date together, he had taken her to Tommy’s, the local hamburger joint off campus, and over chili fries and beer, he had told her about his life in Pakistan, then India. How they’d moved around a lot. How they’d never had enough money. How he’d shared a room with his brother and sister. He talked a lot about his father’s jobs, most of which were part-time jobs in the pharmaceutical industry, and how he’d usually get laid off or canned just as Raja was making friends. They were always moving, Raja said, but certain things remained the same, remained constant. His mother’s cooking, for example, the rich tandoori and vegetable curries she made, the flaky
parathta
and roti that she baked in a coal-fired oven. The way he talked about his mother’s cooking made her feel guilty for wanting to eat the chili-cheese fries at Tommy’s, for devouring them so quickly.

When he’d finally finished, she’d asked him if he thought he’d ever go back.

“To visit, sure,” he’d said. “But not to live.”

“Why not?”

He’d thought about this for a moment. Then he’d said, very earnestly, “That place is dead to me now.”

She’d asked him what he meant by that, but he hadn’t answered. Instead, he’d taken her hand and reached for the bill. “Would you like to see my room?” he’d asked.

• • •

Outside the baggage claim at Houston International, the rain is coming down thickly now, blurring her view. In the distance, she can see a long row of lights, headlights from the cars moving up along the thruway. She tries to imagine Raja’s face, his lips, tries to picture him just as he looked that night at Tommy’s, that first night they kissed, but as soon as she sees his features, as soon as she pictures his face, the image is gone, broken up by the sound of her cell phone ringing. She reaches into her purse and grabs the phone, and a moment later she hears her brother’s voice on the other end.

“I’m here,” he says.

“Where?”

“Look to your right.”

Craning her neck, she sees her mother’s minivan, and then inside it her brother Richard, sitting in the front seat, waving.

Later, when they’re on the interstate, Richard looks her up and down evenly, almost like he’s surveying her. Finally, he leans across the seat and pats her hand. “You look thinner,” he says.

“You think?”

“Uh-huh.”

She shrugs.

“You hungry?”

She shakes her head.

“Mom said I needed to feed you.”

She looks at him and smirks. “Since when am I incapable of feeding myself?”

“I don’t know,” he says, hitting the gas. “I’m just telling you what she said. I think she’s just kind of freaked out, you know.”

She nods, looks out the window, straightens her dress. In the distance, she can see the skyline of Houston, looming along the horizon.

“So I guess you’re going to be staying with us for a while now, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

“Any chance you’re going to tell me what happened up there?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Mom said it was pretty serious. Something about a political disagreement.”

“A political disagreement?” She laughs. “Really? That’s what she said?”

“Yeah. Why? It wasn’t?”

She looks at him but doesn’t answer. She can feel his curiosity, his eyes on her. There is no one in the world who knows her better than Richard, no one else who understands her like him, and for a moment she feels transparent, exposed, like he can see everything she’s thinking simply by looking at her. It has always been this way, though, their whole lives. There is Richard, and there is her, and then there is everyone else. For most of her childhood, he had been her best and only friend, her sole protector, her confidant, and even now she realizes that there is no one else in her life who she can trust with this information, no one else who she would even consider telling the story to. Still, thinking of Raja, she decides against it, decides instead to change the subject. “Where are you taking me anyway?” she says finally as they’re moving toward the exit.

“Back home. Back to Mom’s.”

She looks at him. “Can’t you take me somewhere else?”

“Like where?”

“Like anywhere. You know, anywhere but
there
.”

He steadies the wheel. “Well, I’m going to a club later, but I don’t think it’s really your type of club, if you know what I mean.” He looks at her and winks.

“I don’t care,” she says. “As long as they have booze, I really don’t care. And besides, I like gay clubs. Gay men are about the only type of men who are nice to me these days.”

He puts on his blinker, takes the exit.

“How are they doing anyway?” she says.

“Who?”

“Mom and Dad.”

He looks at her and shakes his head. “Last week Mom got the locks changed on the house.”

“Really? Why?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess she didn’t want him sneaking into the house anymore and stealing her stuff. He still has his key, you know, and so I guess he kept coming by during his lunch break and hanging out there. I caught him once. He was just sitting around the kitchen, drinking a glass of wine, reading the paper.”

“God,” she says. “That’s depressing.”

“I know.”

She looks at him. “So, I guess they’re not talking still.”

“Nope. Not unless you count leaving hostile messages on each other’s voice mail as talking.”

She looks at her brother and sighs. In a way, she still feels guilty about it, guilty for leaving him here all alone to deal with their parents by himself, guilty for not being around when it all went down. It had been Richard who had had to deal with the brunt of it, Richard who had had to endure the fighting, the legal disagreements, the disassembling of the house. It had been Richard who had called her up that Sunday night in late October and told her the news, left that cryptic message on her voice mail:
World War Three here, Chlo. I’m serious. All’s not well on the home front. Call me as soon as you can
. And when she’d called, he’d been sweet, almost apologetic about it, like it had all been his fault. He’d listened to her as she’d cried for half the night, comforting her, reassuring her. And then finally, when she’d finished, when she’d finally exhausted herself, he’d started to laugh.
Well, there’s one good thing about all this, you know
.