Loner (12 page)

“I always forget to respond to those.”

“Here, let's put an end to your procrastinating ways,” I said. “Go on now and respond to all your friend requests.”

Outside, you turned to me, looking as if you were appraising me, wondering if you stood to lose any social status from accepting my invitation.

“All right,” you acquiesced, taking out your phone. I peeked at the screen. You did, indeed,
have a slew of pending requests.

“There,” you said. “Now we're the best of friends!”

“Yeah, BFFs,” I said with a laugh. “Or is it already plural, because it's ‘best friends,' so just BFF?”

“Dunno.”

“Well, have a good day,” I said, pivoting toward Matthews, pleased with what my pushiness had accomplished. Ask and ye shall receive.

“You aren't going to walk with me?” you called out, sounding playfully hurt.

I stopped short. We'd already reached the endgame. I couldn't contain a giddy hiccup. All that ostensible apathy to the Facebook request, and you wanted me to escort you across the Yard, flame-colored leaves crunching underfoot in the brisk October air, as if I were a Harvard man of yore walking his Cliffie to class. You'd chosen me again.

“What?” you asked in response to my laugh.

“Nothing,” I said. “I could kill some time.”

We strolled toward Sever. “Want a cigarette?” you asked, rooting through your bag.

“Isn't smoking not allowed in the Yard?” I asked.

You laughed and lit up. “Such a rules follower.”

“Sure,” I said. “I'll have one.”

You passed me a cigarette and the lighter. Trying to evade the inevitable coughing fit, I sipped a wine tasting's worth and spat it back out. It worked: a modicum of smoke I was able to store in my mouth that didn't infiltrate my lungs.

We crossed paths with a Crimson Key member regaling a college tour with the three lies of the John Harvard statue (that it wasn't modeled on its namesake; that the university wasn't founded in 1638 but 1636; and that John Harvard wasn't the founder but simply the first major benefactor). The centerpiece of the Yard, bronze symbol of educational aspirations, whose foot prospective students and tourists were invited to rub for good luck. (Harvard students, I found out upon arrival, sometimes urinated on it at night.
John Harvard peed himself!
I thought every time I passed it.)

I realized I was holding the cigarette like a joint. Fortunately, you were engrossed by the college tour.

“Ooh, sixteen thirty-
six
, not sixteen thirty-
eight
,” you scoffed under your breath as the guide concluded his spiel with a camp counselor grin. “What self-aggrandizing bullshit.”

I'd been one of those wide-eyed high schoolers, herded along with other antsy pre-frosh, crowding around the windowpane to catch a glimpse inside, sizing up the undergrads to crack the code, polishing John Harvard's urinous foot in the hopes it would lead to my acceptance. Maybe it
was
good luck: just a year later, and they were all watching me breeze past them, with you, as we mocked their naïveté.

“How'd you do on your essay?” I asked.

“I don't know. I haven't gotten it back yet.”

“I thought you were discussing it with your TF when I saw you at Barker.”

“I was,” you said. “We were going over it. But he hadn't graded it yet.”

“Did he have good things to say?”

“Yep.”

“Cool,” I said. “So, have you liked school this past week? And college? And how's your semester going?”

The small scar on your forehead rose quizzically. I felt a shock of glee whenever something I said catalyzed its ascent, proof of my existence in your mental universe. And it was such an elegant forehead: an otherwise unlined quadrangle, the hairline sharply delineated against the skin, bypassing the fuzzy no-man's-land that Sara had, whereupon it ceded to the sheltering forest of your locks.

“You pointed out people always ask how you like
Harvard
,” I reminded you. “Never just school or college.”

“Oh, that.” You took a meditative drag and the scar returned to its resting position. “You know. My horizons are broadening. The foundations of my worldview are shaking.”

I laughed too hard, a diaphragmatic bellow that sounded like an off-key horn.

And then a sobering sight: a hundred feet away, Sara walking to the library. That's right; her Chilean politics class had just let out. I was getting reckless—we'd probably missed her by minutes last week.

I bent down to tie my shoe, deftly plucking the laces loose first with my free hand, turned away from Sara's figure, and plugged the corner of my mouth with the cigarette. Leaning slightly so it didn't look like we were together, I took more time than necessary retying it.

When I stood up Sara was far enough away, with her back to us.

“There goes your girlfriend,” you said, blowing smoke in her direction, wearing the impish smile from when you'd said
veritas
.

“Huh?”

You pointed with your chin. “Sara.”

“Oh,” I said, acting like I'd only just noticed her.

We pulled up to Sever. “Later,” you said, grinding your cigarette underfoot.

“Later,” I echoed, without the usual pang of loss when we parted ways. Now I could behold you from afar, on a screen, whenever I wanted.

In the privacy of my room I pored over your Facebook profile. There was no fodder for our budding relationship; you hadn't listed any favorite cultural interests or other groups, and the posts you'd written on your own wall were spare and logistical. So much for my plans of bonding with you over my deep knowledge of esoteric films or bands.

Instead I waded into the waters of your photogenic past, skimming over close-ups of food and panoramic sunsets to linger on images of you. The majority depicted your life before Harvard: European cities, what appeared to be your family's wraparound-porched oceanfront vacation home, a couple from childhood (wobbly on skis; crying on Santa's lap), you and high school friends posing with tipsy hilarity at bars and nightclubs—entered with the benefit of fake IDs, I assumed, or city-girl know-how, or just because you were young and eye-catching and this was your Manhattan birthright.

The latest batch had been taken here, in dorm rooms and parties, with your handpicked beautiful people nothing like the ­factory-outlet Marauders. Several of the group shots featured you in intimate proximity to a guy I didn't recognize from your Annenberg crowd. He looked older than the rest of your cohort, the adult at the kids' table. His body language conveyed, more than mere ease, a sense of ownership: sturdy leg resting on coffee table, outstretched arms over sofa, squintily satisfied smirk.

Liam Barrows
, he was tagged. His own Facebook page was private. All I could find on him was a single quote two years ago in the
Crimson
: “ ‘The changes to the dining hall will have little effect on
my eating habits,' said sophomore Liam C. Barrows, a resident of Adams.”

So he was a senior; that's why he looked so much older than your friends. He could have anyone in the college, yet he'd zeroed in on a helpless-to-resist freshman girl, the sole demographic open to me. How greedy—like a billionaire winning the lottery.

When I came home from the library that night I heard music from Steven's room. “Always on My Mind” was playing on repeat. It was irritating, and I wondered if he had left it on accidentally. After the seventh cycle, I rapped on his door.

“One minute” came his voice from inside. The volume dropped and he appeared. His face was as pink as raw hamburger, his eyelashes matted and wet.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Ivana and I,” he croaked, “we . . . we . . .”

He swallowed without finishing.

“You broke up?”

He closed his eyes and nodded as if confirming a death.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said, and I was: his relationship with Ivana had kept him out of the suite.

The ends of his lips sagged gravely as he fought off tears. It was disconcerting to see him this way. I'd known Steven only to be relentlessly chipper about everything: the weather, whatever was on the menu, all the people he knew. (“Isn't he awesome?” he'd declare about each acquaintance who stopped by our table to say hello.)

He waved me into his room and crumpled into the bean bag chair, where he delivered a long-winded, unsolicited account of how his and Ivana's romance for the ages had met its demise.

It wasn't him, it was her. She didn't want to be tied down her freshman year and thought they should see other people. She felt
like she couldn't breathe. She loved him but this was the best thing for both of them. Each cliché prompted vocal ruptures and a welling up. I responded on cue with my own platitudes lifted from movies and TV shows: he'd done nothing wrong, there were other girls out there who would appreciate him more, it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

“She's the most beautiful girl I've ever known, inside
and
out,” he said. “And she really
got
me.”

Up to this point I'd managed to affect a look of sympathy, but here I nearly laughed. Forget the absurd notion of her contending with you for that title: Ivana was, by even the most charitable judgment, so distant from the winners' circle, way up in the cheap seats, that one might almost suspect Steven of mockery.

“She's cute,” I said, “but the world is filled with cute girls. You'll find someone better.”

“I don't want anyone
better
,” he said. “I want
her
.”

“I mean better for you.”

He shook his head. “I don't want another relationship.”

“Well,” I said, “you'll feel better in the morning.”

He nodded through his phlegm production. “I should call my mom back,” he sniffled. “But thanks for being here for me.”

“Sure,” I told him.

As I headed toward the door, he stood and intercepted me with a hug. “You're a good roommate,” he said.

“Not at all,” I said, wriggling out of his embrace and ducking back into my room. “Oh, and if you wouldn't mind keeping the music down.”

Steven recovered like an inflatable clown punching bag. “I realized we're not one hundred percent compatible, and I should find someone more suited to me, and so should she,” he told me two days
later. “And don't worry—we're going to make sure nothing's weird between us, so we can all hang out like before. Ivana and I decided the most important thing is the unity of the Matthews Marauders.”

Thank God for small mercies.

On Friday evening Sara and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She kept asking what I thought about the European collection, assuming I was now an expert in the visual arts thanks to my Renaissance to Impressionism class. I answered to the best of my midsemester survey-course abilities but gave evasive or fabricated responses to questions that flummoxed me. To compensate, I pointed at a subway advertisement during our ride home.

“Look at that ad,” I told Sara. “See how it shows just the woman's mouth eating the candy bar? It's isolating the one non-taboo main orifice, which takes in an edible object that becomes a phallic substitute. Now check out that bank ad. Male mouths are rarely eroticized. Instead, they're used to imply speech or some other kind of power.”

“That's pretty insightful,” she said. “Most guys don't pick up on stuff like that in everyday life.”

I shrugged. “I guess I'm not like most guys.”

“Yeah.” She kissed my cheek. “You're definitely not.”

When we reached Matthews my eyes traveled up to your fifth-floor window, warm with apricot light. You were home.

Our plan was to watch
Dumbo
; when Sara had found out I'd never seen it she insisted upon a screening. But first she had to finish editing a high school student's college essay. The tutoring organization she volunteered for matched Harvard students with Boston-area youth from underserved communities.