Pages for You (5 page)

That jacket, Flannery thought; yes. Those boots: I know them.

“She said we should meet for a drink sometime.”

“She did?”
And did she dance with you? Did she give you some poems?

“Yeah, but I don’t know. With your TA? Wouldn’t that be kind of weird? God, do you think she’s gay?”

Flannery felt a thick choke of jealousy around her throat. She shrugged, then coughed, violently. “Maybe. You know, I—I wouldn’t know.”

“Hey, are you okay? You look a little—” Susan saw the mail scattered like torn leaves before Flannery on the table, and concern crossed her kind face. “Did you just get some bad news or something?”

“No.” Flannery cleared her throat, coughed again, took a sip of coffee. “Just come candy corn from my mother,” she croaked. “Do you want some?”

“Sure. Thanks.” Susan put a cupped palm out for some fluorescent orange-and-yellow cones, popped a few into her mouth, then said somberly, “How was your doctor’s appointment?”

“My what? Oh, okay. It turned out to be nothing. Listen”—Flannery saw the clock over the fiction section. It was just after five—“you know what? I’m sorry. I just realized, I’ve got to get going. I’m late for something.”

Susan was a little hurt, Flannery could tell. She must think Flannery disliked her. Flannery tried to make up for her rudeness with a friendly, compensating gesture.

“Here, have some more candy corn. It’s good for you.” She poured a generous portion out onto the table. “The Indians brought candy corn to the Pilgrims, you know. As a peace offering.” Susan did not look convinced. “And to help them get through the bitterly cold winters.”

I
t turned out to be pretty difficult, simultaneously reading a volume of poetry and jogging two blocks and half a courtyard to the rust-colored building. The poems became word-blurs as her eyes watered with the cold, speedy air.

Once inside, Flannery ran up two flights of broad marble stairs to the third floor, where she assumed Room 303 would be. (She’d had the number emblazoned on her memory since that first class handout.) But nothing at this university was ever so simple. The place was a maze. The third floor was occupied entirely by classrooms. She ran up another flight, dashed down a corridor, stalled out in a blind alley, retraced her steps, was about to bark with frustration, then half-skidded round a corner and there—thank God!—was Room 303.

Without thinking about it she knocked loudly, her hand emphatic with urgency. What if Anne had gone?

“Jesus Christ!” She saw now that though the door was closed, the light was on. The voice was startled and abrupt. “I hear you. Can you please wait outside till we’ve finished?”

Flannery was silent. She realized—for some reason the possibility hadn’t occurred to her as she jogged—that someone else was still in there with her.

“Who
is
it?” Now irritated, exhausted. “My office hours ended ten minutes ago.” A pause, followed by laughter. Then, said more softly—intimately, it seemed to Flannery—“Maybe I scared them away. Oh well!”

Flannery leaned against the wall, catching her breath. She heard a mumble of voices carry on their interrupted conversation.

Quietly, quietly, Flannery pulled the book of poems out of the envelope again and thumbed through it. Furtively: as if it were a bomb-construction manual or an advance, sneak copy of the final. A line from an early poem caught her attention.

I bet you blush all over when you come.

Flannery closed her eyes and the book. Her legs were weak: it was a good thing the wall she was leaning against wasn’t.

Maybe this was a bad idea. She could walk away; tiptoe back down the stairs and out of the maze. It would be as if she had never been there at all.

The door opened and light spilled out, catching the sleeve of her jacket.

“Oh God. Is someone still waiting there? You’d better send them in. Come
in
!”

Brittle with impatience.

At least—small mercies—Flannery did not know the shuffling male student who had had his turn before hers and who nodded to her, sympathetically, on his way out.

S
he went in, closed the door.

“Flannery!”

“Hi.”

She sat down, mostly because she had to, or her knees might give way. Anne’s face was flushed with surprise. That, at least, was gratifying.

“I thought maybe you had already flown the nest. Or, you know what I mean, flown back to the nest.” Was it possible that Anne was nervous? “The way you fledglings do, around Thanksgiving.”

“I’m staying here.”

“Not for the whole week?”

“No. My roommate invited me to go to New York. Another friend asked me to go to the Cape. I haven’t decided which I’ll do.”

“That’s where I’m going New York.” Well then: that decided it. “I can’t wait to get the hell out of here.” But Anne seemed to feel she’d said too much. “So. I take it you’re not here to talk about your term paper? I’m not Bob, as you’ve probably noticed.”

“I know.”

There was a pause. Anne waited, still as a cat. Her eyes had again that translucent intensity that Flannery found infinitely distracting. The pause expanded with Flannery’s silence, till Anne finally said, “Look, I have to—” and Flannery spoke at the same time, right over her.

“Do you want to go out for a drink?”

That
shocked her.

“A drink? When—now?”

When? Flannery hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Sure—now. Or—later.”

Flannery watched the possibility travel across the instructor’s face, like a breeze. What it would take: letting go of responsibility; release; the chance of risk.

“Sure, Flannery. I’ll have a drink with you,” she said. “What the hell? Let’s go.”

T
hey were both startled into silence by their daring decision, and conversation between them stuttered like a broken faucet. Flannery followed Anne out of the building and into the gray dampening streets. She had no idea where they were going, and in spite of Anne’s shorter legs had to jog some to keep up.

“So—” Flannery kept her head down as they passed the brightly lit bookstore/café, where Susan Kim might lurk. “You had a lot of students come by about their papers?”

An immediate cringe. Why talk about that?

“Yes.”

“It must get a little repetitive after a while, all these paper ideas.”

“Mmmhmm.”

A spell of brisk heel-chatter—Anne’s. Flannery’s, flat, were quiet.

“I guess it’s a pretty key part of the class, though. The term paper.”

Anne declined to dignify this vapidness with an answer. She was not going to make it any easier by speaking, apparently; leaving Flannery plenty of room to dig her own ample, comfortable grave.

“At least you don’t have—I mean, at least you’re free over this break.”

“Not exactly. I have a paper of my own to write. I’m going to be on a panel at MLA at the end of December.”

“MLA?”

“The Modern Language Association. Their year-end conference, where everyone in all kinds of fields, including me, prostrates themselves trying to get a job.”

Of course! She had a life outside of Intro to Criticism. Flannery would have to remember that. She would have to bear that in mind.

“Well then, I’m glad I caught you before—”

“Here we go.”

They were at the bar, thank God: the Anchor. Together they ducked out of the cold and into its dim jukeboxed interior. The warmth here, Flannery hoped, might stem the flow of her wintry inanities, and she’d find a way to make herself shut the hell up.

T
he bar was almost completely empty at that hour.

“At least we won’t have a problem finding a table,” Anne said.

“Yeah. It’s probably good that no one’s here.” Flannery allowed the reminder to hover: this is a student-teacher meeting. We’re not supposed to be doing this. It had the desired effect of throwing Anne a little off her rhythm. Anything, Flannery felt, to disrupt for a moment that stern assurance.

A plump, mannequin-faced barmaid came by, scrutinized Flannery, understood that she was underage; then asked anyway, with a skeptical drawl, “What are you having?”

Flannery ordered a White Russian. Anne started to comment, but checked herself and ordered a gin-and-tonic. When the barmaid had gone, she leaned over the table. Her eyes were fireflies, suddenly, of brightness.

“AWhite Russian?” she teased. “That’s a kid’s drink!” Flannery shrugged, unembarrassed. She felt better in here. It was nice and dark, and the jukebox soothed with a series of Glenn Miller classics. “They taste good.”

“I suppose it’s a step up from a daiquiri.”

“So what do grown-ups drink? Gin-and-tonics?”

“Yes, that. And other things. You’ll have to learn.”

“You’ll have to teach me,” Flannery dared. Before even having a sip! The barmaid brought their drinks, and they waited till she had retreated to continue.

“How old are you, Flannery?”

Anne’s low voice caught at Flannery’s throat. That voice: she wanted to own it. She looked away. “Seventeen.”

“Seventeen!” The startlement was real. “My God. You shouldn’t be drinking that! You should be drinking a Coke. You should be drinking a glass of
milk.
Your bones are still growing.”

“So how old are you?” Flannery challenged.

“Ancient. Twenty-eight.”

Twenty-eight. Like everything else, of course, it was perfect. It sounded wise; well traveled; sophisticated. Promise-filled.

“Well, cheers.” Flannery lifted her glass, her own gray eyes alight now, she knew, with some unsuppressed delight in the company.

“Cheers,” Anne answered. “To what?”

“To twenty-eight.” Flannery clinked her glass to Anne’s. “It’s a beautiful age. In my opinion.”

The word reached Anne and softened her. Warmth moved her mouth into a heart-shaped pleasure.

“Cheers,” she replied again, with a sudden shyness that made Flannery swoon.

“To seventeen.” Clink. “Ditto.”

T
hey drank, as Glenn Miller played on.

“Thanks for the Marilyn Hacker book. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.”

Something like relief loosened Anne’s shoulders. “She’s a wonderful poet. Deceptive—a great formalist, under the conversational style.” Anne sipped her drink. “Something you said the other night about your love of rhythm made me think you’d enjoy her.”

Flannery thanked God in heaven that she’d never have to know what she might have said about her love of rhythm.

“What other poetry do you like?” she deflected. So they talked poetry for a while; or Anne did. Flannery had to plead ignorance. As in so many things. Poetry hadn’t, she explained, made it onto her first, introductory platter. Anne asked her what had, besides Criticism. “Revolution, Art History, World Fiction. I was taking Animal Behavior, but had to drop it.”

“That’s an eclectic mix.”

“Well, I’m undeclared. —In my major, I mean.”

They both let that pass.

“So: World Fiction. Who do you read in that? What is ‘World Fiction,’ anyway?”

“Fiction—from the world, I guess.”

“As opposed to fiction from other worlds?”

“Yeah.” Flannery liked the joke. “That’s probably the kind I’ll write.”

“Ah.” Anne took another sip of her drink, rummaged around in her pockets for her cigarettes. “You’re hoping to write?”

“Not hoping to, exactly.” Flannery looked puzzled. “I just do.”

“And isn’t it a little—daunting, if you write, to be saddled with a name like Flannery?”

Flannery’s shoulders rose involuntarily, their customary punctuation. “I’m used to it. I mean, I’m used to my name. At least I’m not called, you know, Jamaica.”

“That’s true,” Anne said with a tilt of her head. “But then, who is?”

“Oh—Jamaica Kincaid. We’re reading her for World Literature. She’s incredible. I love her.”

Interest sharpened Anne’s focus. She thought, maybe, of bluffing recognition, then decided against it. “I don’t know her work.”

“You don’t?” Flannery said, a little too eagerly. “You’d love it. God, it’s so crazy, and lyrical. Beautiful.”

Then she quieted down and looked into her milky drink, embarrassed. Having, as usual, given too much away.

So that she had the bad luck to miss the gold that had come into Anne’s eyes, which suggested otherwise.

“S
o. Flannery.”

Anne reached for her hard pack of cigarettes. From the box she slowly drew a Marlboro. With the other hand, she found her lighter.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

After a flick of her thumb, she lit the cigarette, capped the lighter, and took a drag, watching Flannery through narrowed eyes.

Flannery sipped her drink.

She watched Anne smoke. Anne knew damn well how good she looked when she smoked. She was enjoying it. So was Flannery, who was reluctant to interrupt her. Also, she liked inhabiting this moment of suspense. Finally, though, she answered.