Loner (14 page)

“But you
never
get anxious about work. It's actually kind of annoying.”

She had me again.

“If I don't usually get anxious, it's because I plan ahead, like this.” I summoned a wounded look. “I know you think everything comes easy to me, but I actually have to work hard. It's not always fun to be me.”

She rested a hand on mine. “I understand,” she said. “I'm the same as you, really.”

“Why don't you invite that girl in your Chilean seminar you want to be better friends with?” I asked. “Lila?”

“
Lay
la.”

“Layla,” I repeated. “You'll have a much better time with fun new Layla than with boring old David.”

“You're not boring,” she said. “Or at least you're not old. Boring
young
David. Boring young David and Sara.”

Grinning, she pulled the drawstring of her sweatpants taut and strummed it.

“I should get out of here,” I said. “I'll see you at dinner, okay?”

“Okay, Grandpa,” she said.

I arrived at the brick Colonial building near the upperclassman River Houses a few minutes before the time Suzanne had given me. I didn't know if I was supposed to ring the bell or wait for you, and couldn't see inside; the ground-floor windows were obstructed by curtains.

Standing by the entrance, I struck an indifferent pose as two girls came along and rang the bell. The door opened and they disappeared inside. A moment later it reopened and an Indian guy leaned out.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

It was well-known to everyone on campus, even the out-of-the-loop Matthews Marauders, that nonmember males couldn't enter a final club unless invited; women, on the other hand, just had to meet certain physical requirements.

“My name should be on the list,” I said, sinking my voice an octave deeper. “David Federman.”

“We don't have a list,” he said. “Who are you with?”

“It's not a member,” I said. “But—”

He shut the door.

Twenty minutes later it opened again, and this time you and Suzanne spilled out, unlit cigarettes dangling from your lips. Under the yolky haze of an overhead lantern your hair gathered warmer tones, the butterscotch yellows of my van Gogh wheat fields.

“Oh,” Suzanne said, noticing me. “Did they not let you in?”

“I just got here.” My new line for all denials. Not
I didn't do it
or
I don't recall
or
I can neither confirm nor deny
but
I just got here, I'm barely here, my restroom graffiti tag is “David wasn't here.”

Without my asking, you passed me the smoking apparatuses. This time I opened the flue of my lungs a little, not so much that I'd cough. I grew lightheaded and reverted to simulation. Even a fraudulently inhaled cigarette, I was discovering, conferred upon
the smoker divided attention, an interior life more compelling than the one outside, alleviating the burden of generating conversation.

Suzanne hugged herself with her free arm and shivered. “It's fucking freezing out here,” she said.

“Do you want my jacket?” I offered. I'd broken out my winter parka for the nippy evening.

Suzanne gave it a once-over. “Thanks, I'm all right.”

“Okay, this is too cold,” you said, flicking your cigarette into the street. Suzanne and I did the same.

A front of temperate air embraced us as we entered the building. It wasn't the human swamp that smothered dorm parties but well-stoked warmth, the cozy heat of hissing prewar radiators. “He's with us,” Suzanne told the Indian guy.

This was no sophomoric party in a freshman dorm, with its frenzied frottage of ephebes like so many molecules in a ­chemical reaction, its deafening Top 40 songs, its disembodied arms holding out red Solo cups by the keg like baby sparrows squalling for worms. Upperclassmen mingled around button-tufted leather sofas and armchairs as the Kinks played at a soothing volume. Drinks were dispensed at a brass-rail bar. The walls featured framed black-and-white photos of notable alumni and vintage Harvard. From a far corner came the periodic crack of colliding billiard balls.

Having assumed there was a dress code, I'd worn the same outfit as I had to my college interview at New York's Harvard Club: a check-patterned button-down, my single necktie, beige chinos, and black patent leather dress shoes. But I was the only one in a tie. Hardly anyone even had a blazer. For the most part the guys were in jeans, sneakers, and boots. I contemplated loosening my tie, but worried this would call more attention to myself, an exhausted ­middle-manager father home from the office.

I trailed you and Suzanne to a secluded nook where, splayed over a sofa in decadent repose like models in a unisex fragrance ad,
were three members of your inner circle: Christopher Banks, Andy Tweedy, and the angular blonde, Jen Pelletier.

“This is David,” Suzanne said, omitting their names either out of laziness or inebriation.

They all looked up at me, then cut their eyes over to you and Suzanne as if to ask why you had invited me, why I had been granted entry, why I was standing next to you in public.

“Hi,” I said. I received nods from Christopher and Andy and a raised glass from Jen.

Suzanne took a seat and you slipped off to the bar. I followed. A guy—presumably a younger member paying his dues—fielded someone else's complicated drink order.

“A shot of vodka and another vodka soda, when you get the chance,” you said.

“Same for me,” I added. He nodded over at us in confirmation.

“Thanks for inviting me,” I said as we waited.

“Thank Suzanne.”

“Either way.”

You were facing the bar. From a distance, no one would know we were talking. You weren't the one inviting me; it was just payment for writing your essay. Maybe Suzanne had invited me only because she wanted me to write her
own essays from now on, too. If I didn't engage you, the night would be a wash.

“So, vodka,” I said. “My mom only drinks red wine. For the antioxidants.”

You didn't respond.

“How about your parents?” I asked.

“What do my parents
drink
?”

“Yeah,” I said before realizing how stupid a question it was. “No, I mean, what do they do?” You'd somehow dodged the question in the library, though I knew, of course.

“My dad's in finance,” you said.

“And your mother?”

“A socialite,” you said. “Quite the progressive arrangement.”

This was more personal than anything you'd revealed before. Exposure begat familiarity begat intimacy. The next time we hung out here, you wouldn't care who saw us together.

“I hope you didn't have anything else going on tonight,” you said. “I'd hate it if this disrupted any plans or anything.”

“Nope, I was just doing work.”

“Work, work, work. Got to be a good worker,” you said. “God, I'm starving. Would you mind—” You shook your head. “Forget it.”

“What?”

You turned to me and put on the squinching, apologetic expression of someone about to ask a big favor. “You know what would be so good right now? A slice from Noch's.”

I estimated how much time walking to Pinocchio's, ordering pizza, and returning would take. “You want me to run over there and bring some back?”

“That'd be amazing,” you said. “Could you also get me a decaf nonfat latte at Starbucks? Venti?”

“No problem.”

“Do you need money?”

“No, I've got it,” I said, not wanting to seem like a parsimonious Jew. “Any toppings?”

“Peppers, onions, and fresh basil,” you said. “Oh, and black olives.”

“Okay, so that's peppers, onions, basil, and olives, and a decaf nonfat latte. Venti.”

You smiled.

“Did I not get that right?” I asked.

“I'm
kidding
.” Your face lit up with manic amusement. It was so pretty that I didn't mind if the source was my gullibility. “I can't believe you were actually about to leave. I feel like you'd
murder
someone if I asked you to.”

“Good one,” I said.

“Like, if I asked you to murder Sara, would you do it?” You peered at me closely and spoke more quietly. “If we planned it in a way so you definitely wouldn't get caught? If I got someone who knew what they were doing to help you?”

You held your stare as I tried to formulate a response. The tension was broken as the bartender deposited our drinks before us and you laughed.

“I got this,” I said, taking out my wallet.

“It's an open bar,” said the bartender as you scooped yours up and took them back to your friends.

There wasn't enough room for me on the sofa, so I perched on the arm by your side. Christopher hovered over a book on the coffee table, a rolled-up dollar bill in his nostril as he vacuumed a line of white powder on the book.

A lifetime on the inside of a jail cell flashed before my eyes. (Ha.) I instinctively looked around the room for authority figures and the nearest exit. But it was dark and we were far enough from the action that others might not see it—should this even be considered illicit behavior within the debauched walls of a final club. And if I were going to get caught with narcotics, this would be the drug and the crowd with which to get busted. It might even be worth criminal charges to have this ace up my Never-Have-I-Ever sleeve.

I listened to the conversation—something about a party invitation that Jen never got—hoping for a way in, the tentative amateur trying to time the hummingbird rope cycles of double Dutch.

“Oh, it's in my spam folder,” Jen said, looking at her phone.

“The spam folder is the collective id of late capitalism,” Andy said.

Christopher sniffed with his head back. “Nice,” he approved. He chopped a fresh set of cocaine vectors on the book with a credit card, pushed it over, and passed the dollar to you. Tracing the powder with the bill, you snorted it. I studied the procedure and began
exhibiting the paranoid symptoms of cocaine use before having ingested any. You would all figure out I had never done it before, provided you even offered it to me. I didn't know which would be worse, a failed first attempt at recreational drugs in which I sneezed it out like a snow shower, or being denied them at such propinquity.

You turned to me and held up the bill. “David?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, like I'd just been offered a soda. You foisted the dollar on me. I rolled it between my fingers, this filthy, low-­monetary-value portal into a high-value social sphere, and knelt in front of the table, hunched over the book (
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
, by a Harvard alum, I knew, though I'd never read it). After inserting the bill—the same currency that a minute earlier had been inside one of your cavities—into my left nostril, the clearer passageway for my mildly deviated septum, I inhaled. It was easier than I thought, and I mimicked the others, tilting my head back when the line had vanished and continuing the insufflation.

I sat back down on the arm of the sofa and stared at my feet. I couldn't tell if the drug had an immediate physical impact on me, but regardless, it was a high. Just a few months ago I was watching TV at home during my senior prom. Now I was doing cocaine at a final club with the oligarchy of my class and sitting beside you. A regular Tuesday night for David Federman, Harvard edition.

Someone tapped my shoulder. I looked up from the floor and saw a groin not far from my face. Liam C. Barrows.

“Hey,” he said. “Have we met?”

“I don't believe so,” I said, the pitch of my voice rising with agreeability as I stood. “I'm David.”

“Liam.” He shook my hand, which was consumed by his paw as he squeezed. The effect of his nearness to me was similar to yours, minus the erotic component; I felt he could X-ray my marrow, had an intuitive understanding of exactly how far below him I crouched.

But you appreciated intelligence and gentlemanliness. Liam was a brute, a government concentrator and taker of pass-fail gut courses
if I ever saw one, a regressive banker in the making. You were smart enough to figure that out.

Christopher showed him the bag of cocaine. “Want a line?”

“No, I have to pace myself,” Liam said. “Punch season starts Thursday and we've got events nearly every night.”

So this was his final club, which would be hosting sophomores and juniors soon, recruiting the most desirable candidates and legacies for membership; I hadn't recognized its interior from any of your Facebook photos.

“Where'd you go?” you asked him.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he said instead of answering.

You made a face and stood, and the two of you disappeared around a corner.

“Trouble in ‘Paradise Lost,' ” Christopher said.

“Trouble in
gangster's
paradise lost,” said Andy.