The Romantics (16 page)

“Your friends seem pretty calm.” He sniffed. “Very nonchalant. Seems like they’d rather turn this into a game than let it put a damper on the evening.”

“Honestly, Chip.” Laura turned to face him, making a heartfelt appeal for silence.

“I personally don’t think he drowned. Not our intercollegiate champion. My bets are on the harbor sharks. They’re no match for the tough guys in warmer waters, but those suckers can bite.”

At this, he burst into hysterical laughter and fell onto his back. He remained like this, cackling fiendishly, until he became distracted by the sky and stared at it, muted and perplexed. A blur of clouds obscured the stars he had come to expect above his house on a summer night, and their absence struck him as both a surprise and an inconvenience. He had come to think of the stars above the lawn as a part of Northern Gardens’ property, and so viewed the obstruction with a proprietor’s annoyance, like a farmer watching a swarm of locusts descend upon his crop.

“I’m going to walk down the beach toward the Gettys’, see if he overshot the house or got pulled by the tide,” said Laura.

“I wouldn’t go that way,” Chip said. “It gets rocky right after the property line. And then it turns into forest. Trust me. You don’t want to get lost there at night.”

Laura stared at Chip for a moment, evaluating his sincerity. “If you don’t want to come, that’s fine.”

She paused, daunted by the thought of dense trees in the darkness, then started down the beach anyway, bolstered by the possibility of losing Chip for good. Better to be lost in a haunted forest than spend the rest of the night with him.

“I don’t blame you,” he called out. “My sister’s pretty awful. But he’s no better. At least, not anymore. Before, I could see what you saw in him. The wild, unpredictable rebel. The fiery temper, the Irish good looks. But now he’s a shadow of his former self. A submissive, humorless, kept man. He might as well hold out his hands for cuffs. And the fact that he knows it makes it so much worse.”

Laura stopped against her will, unable to ignore the performance. Some part of her—the lowest, the least admirable part—took pleasure in hearing someone else voice her complaints about Tom.

“Don’t worry. I’m not gonna sell you out. I guess I just wish you had higher standards. I always looked up to you, you know.”

At this, she started walking again. And walking seemed to help. She had spent precious few moments alone since she had arrived, and the privacy was almost as exhilarating as air against her face.

It was not that she didn’t like people. She was comfortable enough with most types. But after being with her friends for extended periods of time, she felt the distinct need to recuperate, just
to sit in silence for a little while and revisit her thoughts—to draw a chalk line around herself as though she were a piece of evidence. She wondered if other people felt this way and simply recovered faster, or if she alone suffered from a rare social disorder. Luckily, spending time by herself usually recharged her quickly. With every passing step, she began to feel safer, more protected, so much so that she was totally taken off guard when someone threw the full force of his weight onto her, tackling her to the sand.

Shock and adrenaline combined to disorient her for several moments.

“Tom,” she whispered.

“Yes,” said a voice.

They lay in a heap, recovering their breath. Being close to him was such a surprise, such a welcome comfort.

“We thought you were lost,” she whispered.

“I was,” Chip sneered, “until I found you.”

His voice finally revealed what his body had not. It was Chip, not Tom, of course. Alarmed, Laura struggled to push him off, but Chip pushed her back to the sand.

“Get the fuck off,” Laura shouted. She jammed her elbows into his ribs, loosening his grip.

Gravity conspired with Chip. He pinned her down with a clumsy shove, then pushed with all of his weight.

“Chip, I’m serious,” Laura yelled.

Chip said nothing and tightened his grip around the top of her arm. Then, confirming she had no hope of escaping, he buried his face in her hair.

In all the years she’d known him, Laura had never considered Chip a threat. He was often annoying, inappropriate always, but, for the most part, harmless. Now, as she lay trapped under him, she
suddenly felt panicked. It seemed feasible that Chip was capable of something depraved, that the twisted heart of his college years had rotted and decayed, that she had no control over him, and he had less of himself. The lights of the house glowed in the distance, but they might as well have been miles away.

She lay like this, one cheek lodged in the sand for what felt like several minutes. She tried to loosen his grip with her nails, but he bore down with new determination. Even drowning, Laura decided, would be preferable to this fate, and the thought sent a rush of rage up her spine, causing her to elbow Chip in the groin and stunning him just long enough to escape.

T
here were few things Tripler Pane loved more than a good emergency. Even as a child, she thrilled in a crisis, shepherding classmates during school fire drills, appointing herself the additional lifeguard during free swim at summer camp. In college, she was known as a benevolent busybody, a supervisory presence whose leadership skills usually benefited the group. It was Tripler who organized the biannual study review that enabled her friends to pass their finals, Tripler who divvied up the syllabus—often, she alone still had it in her possession—assigning various readings and lecture notes. It was Tripler who organized the late-night study sessions, ordered the pizza, bought the candy and Coke, roused the others to digest a semester’s worth of work in the span of one night.

It was Tripler who saw the business opportunity when the quality of these study sessions circulated throughout the student body, and Tripler who conceived of the idea to charge admission to the
review. Tripler collected the proceeds and deposited the profits into an account at the New Haven Savings Bank that eventually accrued to pay for a spring break blowout in St. Bart’s. Tripler had scheduled and organized every group gathering, with the exception of weddings and funerals, since graduation. Tripler collected money for the crappy ski condos, the joint birthday presents, the New Year’s Eve booze. Tripler bought the extra witches’ hats—just to have them on hand—for the yearly Halloween bash.

But she had not assumed this post simply because she was the most competent organizer. She did it because she was, she felt, the most competent friend. Her evidence was a staggering list of emotional crises that she had helped her friends to navigate with dignity. It was Tripler who rescued Lila freshman year when she called from a closet in Skull and Bones, having found herself, after five glasses of champagne, the only remaining female in the building. It was Tripler who encouraged Weesie not to drop out of school when she decided, fall of freshman year, that she was not cut out for Yale. It was Tripler who took it upon herself to confiscate Annie’s Ritalin when a supply meant to bolster a midterm paper was replenished long past the middle of the term.

It was Tripler who soothed whichever sniveling soul was suffering her latest heartbreak: Weesie, when Jake broke up with her, Jake, when Weesie broke up with him, Annie, when Oscar cheated on her, and Laura, when Tom broke her heart and then reappeared, hours later, to pick up Lila for a date. This auspicious track record contributed to Tripler’s suspicion that she knew her friends better than they knew themselves. Unfortunately, this had no correlation to her knowledge of herself.

“It’s so obvious where he is,” she declared as she traipsed up the lawn toward the house. She turned toward Jake, who was trailing
behind, and was greeted by a slap of wind. “If you were Tom,” she said, “where would you be?”

Jake paused and looked up at the house, tilting his head back to survey the structure in one glance. “Honestly, if I were Tom, I’d be in Lila’s bed right now.”

Tripler frowned. She instinctively bristled when compliments were paid to her friends. Compliments were in finite supply, she felt, and their distribution unnerved her.

“Possible,” she said. “But unlikely. He’s way too scared of Augusta.” She paused and made a reluctant confession. “She did look amazing tonight.”

Jake nodded wholeheartedly. “She always looks good to me.”

Tripler registered a measure of relief. In praising Lila, Jake had simultaneously slighted his own wife. “You always had a thing for her,” she teased.

“Me and every other guy on campus.”

“But your crush always seemed more tender than most.” She pointed toward the third floor of the house, the single lit window that glowed in the center. “That’s her window up there, you know. If you want to take a last shot.”

Jake sighed. It was Tripler’s special talent to turn the most innocent conversation into a controversy. “You’ve found me out.” He sighed, then sped up toward the house.

Northern Gardens looked wildly different at night than it did in the daytime. Whereas sunshine cast a picturesque glow on the house, darkness lengthened its pleasing proportions, causing the house to look foreboding. This quality was even more pronounced from Tripler and Jake’s position on the lawn. Looking up at the house, the four-story structure seemed ghoulishly tall, its Victorian flourishes—ornate trim on the eaves, swirling wooden brackets on
the porch—overwrought and manipulative, like gumdrops on a gingerbread house. The only lit window in the house—in Lila’s bedroom on the third floor—added a strange macabre note, evidence of the quintessential madwoman, locked in the attic.

Still, Tripler was not easily daunted, and climbed the stairs to the porch.

Jake remained still, feet fixed to the lawn, debating his next move. Was it too late to bow out of the search? Would that make him look weak or, worse, callous? He could think of nothing worse than barging into a house full of sleeping guests. One unlucky step on a creaky floorboard—this house was surely a minefield—and he would face Augusta, mouth agape, in a hastily lit hallway. What excuse could he possibly offer for trespassing?

“Why, hello, Mrs. Hayes. Just wanted a last glimpse of your lovely daughter.” And then, a polite do-si-do in the hall. He would sooner die. He looked back toward the ocean, then to the Gettys’. A whispered apology and a sprint across the lawn seemed like his best option.

Sensing Jake’s unease, Tripler assumed the chipper tone of a camp counselor. “Come on, this is going to be fun,” she said. She crossed the porch and opened the back door confidently, as though she were returning to her own house after a pleasant evening out.

“Are you coming?” she whispered.

“What are we going to do?” Jake barked. “Jump into bed with them?”

“No.” Tripler sighed. “We’ll just crack the door, make sure he’s alive, then leave.”

Jake said nothing. He continued to stare sullenly at the back door.

Tripler crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows. “Don’t be retarded,” she said.

Jake remained still for another moment. In his own home, he was accustomed to winning arguments like this, so much so that he was almost curious to discover how it might feel to lose one. A rush of wind rattled the door as though cued by Tripler to goad him inside. Lacking the energy for a dispute, he crossed the porch and followed Tripler into the house.

In some ways, Jake Chapman was more vulnerable than most to the influence of his peers. He was, even as he neared thirty, a hopeless mama’s boy. Raised in Cambridge, the son of a Boston socialite and an English professor, he had been cursed with the worst of two worlds: an oppressive emphasis on status and a shortage of cash. This confusion of values had resulted in a confusing childhood. While Mrs. Chapman provided invitations to all the best cocktail parties, Professor Chapman ensured that Jake had something to say when he arrived. While Mrs. Chapman shared her memberships with her son—the Country Club in Brookline, the University Club in New York—Jake’s father shared Marx and Engels and explained the evils of the elite.

For a time, Professor Chapman won out, steering Jake toward the writing life. A felt fedora and full access to Widener Library made this a plausible fate. Hours were clocked in Cambridge cafes; moleskin journals filled with poems about the violet hour. And soon enough, Cambridge coeds replaced the color of the sky as Jake’s favored subject. High school confirmed Jake’s promise with an auspicious prize: the Alice K. Stevenson Award for excellence in creative writing. With it, he won a five-hundred-dollar stipend and the respect of every girl in his graduating class.

The next fall at Yale, he capitalized on the trend, camping out at the doors of the blue clapboard house that was home to the
Lit
, Yale’s literary magazine. In its cavernous halls, he found new inspiration: a masthead staffed by beautiful brunettes and a clubhouse where he could crash in between classes. These editors, in their strict uniform of black turtlenecks and brown corduroy skirts, seemed to Jake like modern-day muses. They were, in turn, impressed by Jake’s quintessential New England charm—he was like a real-life Holden Caulfield! By sophomore year, Jake had seen three short stories published and been tapped as a shoo-in for editor in chief. He vowed to write his first novel by the time he turned twenty-one.

Seven years later, he had yet to write another paragraph. After graduation, he accepted a position at a prestigious New York hedge fund, promising that he would write at night and on the weekends. But as time passed, the goal slowly lost its urgency. He began to view writing as a petty ambition, a frivolous and indulgent whim, creativity itself as the pathology of the very young or very stupid. The shift was painless. Gradually, money grew to inhabit the same part of his brain that art had once occupied. The transition from a literary to a luxurious life was as easy and mindless as slipping from sobriety to a high.

Now, as he entered the Hayeses’ living room, he wished for that very transition—from sobriety to intoxication. It was no coincidence that his mood had suffered with the fade of his wine buzz. Frantic now, he scanned the room for emergency relief. Surely, he could not be too far from the Hayeses’ well-stocked bar.