Loner (13 page)

“I wish I could disable the thesaurus function from my kids' computers,” she said. I looked up from my Dickinson book and at her screen, where she'd highlighted a sentence: “In college I will continue to prevail over my trials and tribulations and conquer adversity as I metamorphose my dreams into a reality.”

“That's really bad,” I said. “I hate to say it, but are you really doing
a favor helping someone who writes like that go to a good college? Won't they be in over their head?”

“First of all, she's not trying to get into Harvard. Second of all, it's over their
heads
. And when you feel like criticizing someone, remember that all the people in the world haven't had the advantages you've had.”

“I used ‘they' because I didn't know the writer's gender. And I haven't had
all
the advantages. Compared to some people.”

“You
have
, hugely,” she said. “And I said ‘all the people,' not ‘all the advantages.' It's the beginning of
The Great Gatsby
. Don't you remember the opening line?”

“It's been a while since I read it. I think it was, like, seventh grade,” I lied. “It's the last book on the Prufrock syllabus. I'll be rereading it soon.”

“You'll be
breeding
it soon?”

“I'll be
re-read-ing
it soon.”

“You're a real mumbler, you know,” she said.

We were lying on the bed, about to start the movie on her laptop, when you came out of your room. That was our riotous Friday nightlife on display for you:
Dumbo
, my Dickinson anthology on the floor, tickets for an upcoming performance of the Boston Philharmonic thumbtacked to the corkboard. Just a couple of unruly college kids.

“David,” you said as you passed by. Sara and I looked up, both incredulous that you would address me. “Do you know what this week's reading is?”

“Emily Dickinson,” I replied.

“Cool.” You stepped into the hallway. “See you in class.”

It was completely unnecessary for you to ask me, right then, as you were leaving to go out. You were throwing your weight around, letting Sara know she had some competition.

“I didn't know you were in class together,” Sara said a minute into the opening credits.

“We didn't realize it until this week,” I said. “It's a pretty big class.”

I followed her to it during shopping period. If I could have, I would have signed up for her other classes, too. I stayed up all night writing an essay for her while I lied to you. I'm only here because she sleeps in the next room.

Feeling Sara's gaze on my face, I yawned.

“Did you guys sit next to each other or something?” she asked, yawning contagiously.

Yes, because I waited for her late arrival, and she intentionally rubbed her elbow against my arm, and she asked me to walk her across the Yard, and I saw you but tied my shoes so you wouldn't see me.

“No, we just saw each other when we walked out,” I said. “Look, the movie's starting.”

I snuggled closer to her and she dropped it. Sara teared up during the sequence when Dumbo's mother cradles him with her trunk through the bars of her cage.

“I should've warned you,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I always cry during this scene.”

The awakening of an erection. I was disturbed by the lack of obvious stimuli—the main on-screen visual was the animated elephants' non-pathetically phallic trunks—but when Sara's tears grew more pronounced, I noticed, so did my penis. To allay it, I looked at the nearby
Anti-Imperialist Marxism in Latin America
. (I'd gotten about a hundred pages into it by now, all during sessions on Sara's bed; it was more interesting than its dry title promised, an engaging primer on both specific Latin revolutions and the precepts of Marxism.)

“You didn't find that sad?” Sara asked when the movie ended.

“It's an animated kids' movie,” I told her.

“You never seem to get moved by
any
of the movies or plays we watch.”

“Who gets moved by plays?”

“
I
do.”

“Guys don't cry during plays,” I said.

She studied my eyes, as if plumbing their depths might solve the mystery of me. “You don't even
laugh
all that much. Like real laughs.”

“I laugh at your jokes,” I said, which wasn't entirely true. I always at least smiled at them, but it was a forced response to the concept and effort, and I often had to remind myself to emit a polite chuckle.

“I should hope so.” She tapped my forehead with her finger. “Knock, knock.”

“Who's there?” I asked.

“That's what I'd like to know,” she said. “Who's
in
there?”

S'ohw ni ereht?

“No one,” I said in the automatonlike voice. “I'm actually a robot. I have no soul.”

“It's a joke,” I added when she didn't react.

“I feel like there's a lot you bottle up inside,” she said gently. “I wish you'd let it out with me.”

“Would you really want some guy who's uncontrollably weeping all the time?” I asked, thinking of Steven after his breakup.

“Maybe you've got a point,” she said with a short laugh. Then a hesitant undertone crept into her voice. “I told my parents about you.”

“What'd you tell them?”

“How smart and thoughtful you are. How you're the one person here I feel like gets me.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“They want to meet you.” She chewed her bottom lip. “I thought maybe you could visit Cleveland over winter break.”

“Sure, that'd be fun,” I said, imagining the bleak prospect of being snowbound in Cleveland with the Cohens. “Let's talk about it closer to the break. My family might be upset over losing time with me.”

“Do
your
parents know about us?” she asked a minute later, shyly averting her eyes.

“Uh-huh.” I hadn't spoken to my mother since that phone call
before the Ice Cream Bash and had relayed only bare-bones, predominantly academic data about my life over e-mail. “Well, just my mom. I figured she could tell my dad.”

“And what did you tell them about me?”

“The same stuff, pretty much,” I said. “Smart and thoughtful. Quotes Great American Novels to buttress her arguments.”

She mussed the part in my hair. “Buttress,” she said, smiling. “I should disable your thesaurus function, too.”

She left for the bathroom with her toiletries. Reliably hygienic Sara, who always brushed and flossed and rolled on clinical-strength antiperspirant before bed. Sara Cohen, who wanted me to visit her and her family in Cleveland, the only one who wanted me to let everything out with her.

There was a lot you
bottled up, too. I knew hardly anything about you beyond what I'd seen on the Internet. I didn't even know what your room looked like.

Without having thought it through, I found myself turning your doorknob.

I remained inside the doorframe. The swath of light that seeped in from Sara's room outlined a path to your bed, where creamy sheets lay rumpled under a white comforter. The walls were bare except for a single canvas painting with an abstract design. A Turkish rug sprawled across the floor, a few articles of clothing strewn about it.

Sara would be back soon. As I shut the door, something slipped to the floor on the other side. Your robe. It had slid off the peg attached to the door. After hanging it back up, I buried my nose in the interior folds, the material that had recently been in contact with your nude skin. Rubbing the belt, my fingers came across an imperfection. Upon closer examination, I discovered it had, at one end, its own small
VMW
monogram.

I extracted the belt from the robe's two loops, balled it up, and stuffed it in my pocket as a souvenir.

I was already between Sara's pink flannel sheets when she came
back. As we carried out our nocturnal routine I thought of the silk resting in my pocket. When I ejaculated, I spasmed six times on her stomach, as if discharging a revolver of all its bullets. Sara reached for the shirt she'd demoted to a rag for the cleanup of these skirmishes. It featured an illustration of a feathered quill crossing a blade with the cursive inscription
THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD
. She regularly laundered it, but it built up a mushroomy odor between washings as it putrefied in its airless bedside-table drawer, and the blue cotton was now marbled with semen stains.
The penis mightier than the sword,
I thought with creative kerning each time it came out as I pictured the nib of a retractable ballpoint pen emerging like an uncircumcised penis.

The next morning I hid the belt in my drawer. But before I left for brunch I snipped an inch off the tip where the small
VMW
monogram was stitched, tucked it into the fifth pocket of my jeans, next to the Lactaid pills, and throughout the day I stroked it with my index finger.

I anticipated your reaction when I'd eventually “find” the belt under your bed. You wouldn't remember the missing monogram by then; you'd simply be grateful. How irksome it was to lose one small but integral piece from a larger item—a screw from an IKEA chair, the drawstring of a hooded sweatshirt, an ace from a deck of cards. Once it was gone, it could feel impossible to make the thing whole again, as if it were permanently doomed to a semi-functional life.

Chapter 9

Y
ou shuffled in especially late to the next Prufrock lecture and didn't sit near me. I caught your eye when class ended, but you were the first out the door. En route to Sever you ran into your black-haired friend Suzanne Marsh (Ilchester Place, London; Marymount International School London). The daughter, according to Google, of a famous British artist. The two of you procured cigarettes from your bags and stopped near University Hall to brazenly smoke within spitting distance of the school's administrative offices. So you had time for her but not the guy who wrote your paper.

As I approached, a student with a clipboard buttonholed me.

“Want to sign this petition to improve the benefits of dining service workers?” he asked.

“For the dining service workers? Sure,” I said, loudly enough for you to hear me, and scrawled my name.

“If you give your e-mail we'll send you updates on this and other movements, too,” he told me.

“Cool,” I said, writing down a fake address before sidling up to you. “Can I get one of those?” I asked, pointing to your cigarette.

You took a long drag and handed me your pack and lighter. “Suzanne—­David,” you said, and exhaled through your nose.

“Ah, famous David,” said gap-toothed Suzanne. It wasn't clear if this was sarcasm or if you'd actually discussed me with her.

“Nice to meet you.” I clumsily pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and looked at you. “Did you get anything back recently?”

“What?”

“Did you get anything back? Like in terms of school?”

“It's okay,” Suzanne said, directing a small smile at me. “I know about your little study session.”

So you
had
talked about me with her.

“I got an A,” you said nonchalantly, as if this were something you'd expected all along.

“An A,” I repeated in a similarly measured tone, more pleased with this than I'd been with the A on my
Moby-Dick
essay. I puffed out an anemic em dash of smoke. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“David, are you free tonight?” Suzanne asked.

“He doesn't want to go to a final club,” you said curtly.

“You're going to a finals club?” I asked.

“Fin
al
club,” you quietly corrected me.

“Just a casual thing,” Suzanne said. “Not a big do. Probably boring.”

An invitation to an exclusive establishment with the elite members of my class—on a Tuesday night, no less, when all other Harvard students would be toiling away on problem sets and response papers. My foray into academic dishonesty was reaping unanticipated rewards.

“But I thought your Ethical Reasoning essay wasn't due till next week,” said Sara, sitting cross-legged in sweatpants at her desk chair.

“It isn't.” I thumbed through the Nietzsche reader I'd brought along with me for show. “But it's twelve pages and I want to get started now. I'm really sorry.” I patted her on the head. We weren't much for physical affection, and I worried that anything more would come off as blatant overcompensation, the husband who gives his wife a bouquet of roses after consorting with his mistress.

“I'll give away my ticket and study with you,” she said. “They weren't that expensive.”

“Don't—you were really looking forward to the Philharmonic,” I said. “Besides, I'll be distracted if you're with me, and I'm already anxious about it.”