Loner (24 page)

I pretzeled into an opening at the bar, but the bartender kept fielding orders from whoever was next to me. After the third such slight, I managed to interpose a request. She cupped her hand behind her ear.

I held up two fingers. “Vod-ka so-das!” I hollered, and scanned the crowd for you while I waited. There was another room in the back. You had to be there.

The bartender served me my drinks and asked if I wanted to start a tab. Low on cash, I said yes and gave her my debit card. I chugged one of the drinks and took the other to the back room,
shaky from the booze on an empty stomach and a day of standing guard in the rain.

And there you were. Yes—that was your head; I could pick out that compound of colors in the stands of a stadium. You sat on a stool at the corner of a high-top table with two girls, your back to me. I bushwhacked through a thicket of twenty-somethings, the last leg of a grueling obstacle course. The day had worn me down, but I suddenly felt helium-filled, it had all been worth it, who cared if I woke up with a cold tomorrow. I stifled a keyed-up laugh as I reached out to tap your shoulder. You twisted around and the scar on your forehead shot up in surprise.

“I
thought
that was you!” I said. “Funny bumping into you like this.”

You glanced at your two companions before looking back at me.

“So, how was your Thanksgiving with good ol' Larry and Margaret?” I asked.

“It was fine.” You fingered the straw in your drink. “How'd you know their names?”

“It came up the last time we hung out, after the Harvard-Yale Game,” I said. “You were pretty inebriated,” I added chucklingly, to explain your forgetfulness to the two other girls.

You squinted at me before responding. “What are you doing here?”

“Meeting up with some old friends,” I said. “I'm early.”

You took a long sip.

“Did you get a chance to”—sotto voce, though the other girls were now talking among themselves—“talk to the Ad Board?”

The straw still in your mouth, eyes on mine, you nodded once.

“Good,” I said. “You've done the right thing.”

“Where d'you get that sweater?” you asked. (Where'd
Jew
get that sweater, it sounded like.)

I looked down as if to remind myself of what sweater I'd worn that day. “Christmas,” I said. “I got it for Christmas last year.”

“Veronica, who's your friend?” one of the girls you were with cut in.

“This is David,” you said. “He goes to school with me.”

The friend translated for the third girl, who couldn't hear. “From Harvard!” she shouted.

“We're in the same dorm,” you said.

“I used to date her roommate,” I clarified, bellying up to the table.

You stood up and offered me your seat. “We were actually just about to leave, if you want to claim this table for when your friends get here.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But they won't be here for a bit. You guys should stay another round.”

“Unfortunately, we really have to go.” You buttoned your coat. “It was great running into you.”

“Stay for one more,” I said. “It's on me. I insist.” I leaned over the table and made eye contact with your friends. “What are you guys drinking?”

“Scotch and soda,” one answered.

“Gin martini, extra dirty,” requested the other.

I looked at you. “I'm good.” You sat back down.

“I'll get you a vodka soda, just in case,” I said, tapping the table as I left.

Back in the other room, it again took a while to get the bartender's attention. “Close out your tab or keep it open?” she asked.

“Keep it open,” I told her. “The night's just beginning.”

Four drinks was too many to carry in one trip, so I guzzled my own and cradled the other three against my chest as I began the perilous journey back, bracing for impact from rogue elbows, from men stepping back for full-bodied laughter, from women's swinging bags.

When I arrived at the table your stools were empty. You must have gone to the bathroom together, as girls are wont to do. Better
to stay there, I reasoned, than wander around the bar and lose you.

Ten minutes later I took out my phone and wrote you a message on Facebook:

Got the drinks. Where are you?

“Sorry, these seats are occupied,” I told a party of women who attempted to take your stools.

After a few minutes, when you still hadn't shown, I surrendered the table to the glaring women and relocated your drinks to a ledge on a nearby wall, in unfortunate proximity to a speaker. “Sweet Caroline” came on, to cheers from the patrons. I wrote you again:

I had to give up the stools and moved to a wall.

I started sipping the scotch and soda.

The wall with an exit sign.

The densely packed room and the alcohol and the long day and my waterlogged clothes coalesced in a queasy, moist heat. “
So good! So good! So good!
” a man bellowed in my ear.

You probably didn't receive Facebook notifications on your phone; that would account for why you hadn't responded to the one I sent from Applebee's. I wrote you at your Harvard e-mail:

In case you didn't get my Facebook messages am with our drinks against the wall with the exit sign.

I polished off the martini. Your vodka soda I refused to besmirch with my lips and carried with me as I made my way to the
front room, digging a thumb inside my jeans pocket and rubbing the piece of your belt. The stitched initials gave the weightless silk a feeling of tangibility, of something that could be held and corralled.

You'd ditched me.

My attempt to blunt my anger by drinking your vodka soda was a mistake. Vision juddering, a medley of liquors roiling inside me, I lumbered to the men's room. I made it just in time, barging into the graffiti-tagged stall and kneeling in front of the scummy toilet seconds before my body rejected the poison. I cleaned myself up, hailed a cab back to Penn Station, remembered I'd left my card at the bar, apologized profusely as I handed the driver my remaining cash, and missed the last train by three minutes.

A cab to New Jersey would be exorbitant, and I'd have to wake my parents up and ask them to come downstairs and pay for it, with me drunk and disheveled. My return ticket granted me the privilege of staying overnight in the station. I sat against a wall, not letting myself nod off for fear of the indigent drifters who were also taking refuge there, waves of rage and nausea cresting in alternation, the swelling of one temporarily abating the other. As I scrutinized your Facebook page for any hints of where you'd gone, my phone died, leaving me with nothing but my acid thoughts for five hours.

I took the first train in the morning and walked an hour home from the station. “Taking a nap before my bus,” I called to my parents in the kitchen.

“Sounds like someone had a big night out in the city,” my mother said.

I got in bed, plugging in my phone and checking my e-mail. One new message, sent a few hours after my phone had died.

Just got email. Friend had emergency. Had to leave.

I responded:

No problem! I gave your drinks to my friends. We had a fun night. Hope your friend's okay.

I nestled into my pillow but, despite my exhaustion, couldn't fall asleep, buzzed on the welcome relief of knowing you hadn't intentionally abandoned me, even feeling a little foolish for my premature, unwarranted fury. Of course there'd been a reason.

Chapter 15

F
ollowing Thanksgiving vacation, we had a truncated week of classes, then reading period, then exams. I showed up early to the final lecture of Prufrock. Tom was at his usual post near the back. Had you not gone to the Ad Board as you'd claimed? No; he was either still unaware of the imminent charges or in denial, assuming it would blow over.

Further confirming this, you were already there for once, in the front row, to keep your distance from him. I dropped my bag in the seat next to yours and strode up to the podium, where Samuelson was reviewing his notes. I hadn't heard back when I e-mailed him “I'm Nobody! Who Are You?: The Self as Staffage in Emily Dickinson,” so I'd printed out a hard copy. “In case this got lost in your in-box,” I said, handing it to him.

He held the pages at a distance and lifted his head to read the type through his bifocals. “Your paper?” He tried to give it back to me. “You're supposed to send this to your section leader.”

“I know,” I said. “I e-mailed it to Harriet, of course. I just thought
you might also want to read it, because of last time. It's not on Hawthorne, but I figured that can wait till next semester.”

Samuelson looked bewildered and a little peeved. “What happened last time?”

“Never mind,” I said, taking the paper from him.
I
was the one who should have been annoyed. To have cited a student's essay in class and invited him to office hours, only to forget him altogether, wasn't just absentminded; it was disrespectful. When I returned to my seat, you were looking at your phone, kindly pretending to be too preoccupied to have registered the failed exchange. Samuelson began, your device vanished, your notebook came out, and you struck a pose of intense concentration that you maintained for the duration of his talk.

“If nothing else,” Samuelson said in his concluding remarks, “I hope I've done you all the wonderful service of making you aware of your own tragic flaws.” There was polite laughter and a round of applause.

“So your friend's okay?” I asked you as the clapping petered out.

You nodded as you packed up but didn't volunteer any details.

“Glad to hear it,” I said. “My friends showed up right after you left, so I didn't know if I should give them your drinks, or what. I guess I should've explained that in my messages.”

“No worries.” You shouldered your bag and turned toward the aisle.

“I was planning on knocking my final paper out of the way this week,” I said as we waited for the aisle bottleneck to clear. “Want to meet up?”

“I'm pretty busy with other work this week.”

“Next week's good, too. I'm flexible.”

You took your phone and earbuds out of your bag. “Don't wait on my account.”

“No, you're right, I've got other finals I should take care of first.”

You untangled the cord.

“So just let me know when you're ready to meet,” I said.

“Will do.”

“Cool. I'll wait for you to get in touch.” As we stepped into the
hall you put the earbuds in. “One more thing,” I said in a hushed tone, and subtly nodded my head back to the classroom.

Your eyes flitted around us, indicating you knew what I was about to bring up and that we shouldn't discuss it in the open, especially not with Tom nearby. Your signal was unnecessary: you could trust me not to blurt out anything confidential.

“Do you need any help?” I whispered.

“I'm taking care of it,” you said casually.

“Remember, you can bring me along as a personal advisor. Or if you just need moral support.”

You waited for the group ahead of us to move on. “They actually told me I shouldn't be discussing it. So the best thing you could do for me is to respect that.”

“Got it.” I nodded. “Well, keep me posted.”

“No, you don't get it,” you said. “I'm asking you—I'm
tell
ing you, this conversation is over. I can't be talking about this with
anyone
.” You looked straight into my eyes. “Do you read me?”

Od uoy daer em?

“Of course,” I said. “I completely understand.” I bet no one else knew about it, not even Suzanne. Only me.

Reading period commenced a few days later. An unstructured week to study before the rude arrival of finals, its longueurs felt like a ­never-ending Sunday afternoon. My room was devoid of activity; Steven had begun a codependent relationship with the one female member of his magic club and alighted at home only for changes of clothes. The library was crowded with students who flocked to the communal tables like pigeons to bread crumbs. Even sequestered in the privacy of a carrel, I found it difficult to focus; the floor and walls seemed to vibrate with the buzz of their prattling. I brought my work to Annenberg, where I continued to dine solo, a quarantined patient. The social
fluidity of September had frozen into compartmentalized ice cubes; fixed units of freshmen, strangers a short three months ago, now bantered with the glib repartee of news anchors between segments.

I didn't see you at any meals, but a lot of students were skipping them to prepare for finals.

And so what; I'd have you to myself soon enough, after the last essay had brought us closer together. The others were movie extras, background noise. Pure staffage in our landscape.