Loner (16 page)

“Well, then, who wants a drink?”

I was shocked by the invitation, though I suppose no one wants to be alone during a blackout, and you didn't hang out with anyone else in Matthews.

“I should probably keep working while my laptop has a charge,” said Sara.

“Oh, c'mon,” you said. “It's a blackout. You're supposed to get drunk. David? You'll have a drink with me, won't you?”

“I could go for some vodka.”

Sara's face turned to me with surprise in the flickering candlelight.

“What the heck,” she said. “One drink.”

Even with Sara's presence, this was a chance to socialize outside of the library and a final club, with none of your friends or Liam around. Unexpected events could happen during a blackout, particularly if you mixed in alcohol. Dynamics could radically change.

You dipped into your room and returned with three Annenberg glasses. Sitting between us, cross-legged on the floor, you bartended. “That's good,” Sara said, making a stop signal as you sloshed vodka into her glass. You passed us our drinks as we remained at our stations.

“Another wild night in Matthews,” you said, holding up your glass in tribute.

“Yep,” I said.

Sara's phone rang.

“Hi, Dad,” she answered. “How'd you know? You have an
alert
set up for Cambridge? You're aware I'm eighteen years old, right, and I can handle a blackout? Oh, hi, Mom, didn't know you were there. Am I on speaker? Yeah, it's fine, safe in my room and my phone's fully charged. David's here, too. And Veronica.” A pause. “Uh-huh, my roommate,” she said more quietly, turning away from you. “
Yes
, I'll stay indoors. Call you tomorrow. Love you, too.”

She made a quick kissing sound, as she always did when getting off the phone with a family member. “Sorry about that,” she said with a sigh. “My parents are a little overprotective.”

“That's sweet,” you said. “You're lucky.”

“Lucky?” she asked.

“You've got a nice family.”

“You don't see us when we fight.”

“Every family fights. But I bet your parents have a good ­marriage.”

“They do,” Sara said shyly. “They still hold hands and have all
these little private jokes with each other. I suppose you're right. I'm lucky to have had that growing up.”

“Not just growing up.” You looked pensive, almost philosophical. “Also moving forward. It means you'll seek out healthy relationships.”

Now
this
was encouraging. You were—internally, at least—pathologizing your relationship with Liam, just as I'd hoped. You didn't want to replicate the dysfunction of your parents' “progressive” marriage.

“It's natural for people to be attracted to the familiar,” Sara said. “But it doesn't mean they're doomed to repeat their parents' mistakes. I'm not a psychologist, but I'd say recognizing that tendency in yourself is a sign you won't. It means you're aware of a potentially self-destructive situation and you'll avoid it.”

You stared into your drink. “What if some people just have naturally self-destructive personalities?”

This question looked beyond the reach of Sara, whose closest brush with self-destructive behavior had been getting dessert when she was already full.

“Self-destructiveness is usually the product of low self-esteem,” I said. “It comes when people think they don't deserve anything better from life, or that improvement is too hard. The important thing is to recognize that and make a change before it's too late. The real travesty isn't what's already happened, but resigning ourselves to it.” I looked at Sara to salute her as my source for the last line.

“So for some people it's too late?” you asked.

“Well,” I said, “I think there's a limited window people have to really change. After it closes, you're pretty much set with what you've got, unless you're the kind of special person who can rise above your circumstances. Most neuroscientific literature I've been reading in my Ethical Reasoning class backs this up.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” said Sara. “Don't listen to David. He's a total cynic.
Everyone
has the potential to change. Not just
special
people.”

How quick she was to stab me in the back and come to the assistance of the roommate who had spurned her all semester. Unprompted, you got on your knees and tipped the vodka bottle into her glass. I waited for her to protest, but she didn't. If anything, she looked flattered that you were now, whether out of self-pity or the uniting effects of the blackout, warming up to her. My veiled comment about how you should deal with Liam had backfired, inspiring the women to band against the tyrannical male in their sights. Should the two of you become friends, flouting history, it would be only a matter of time until Sara discovered what I'd been up to.

“Hey,” you said, “we should get a photo of tonight.”

Sara eagerly brought out her phone but frowned. “I don't have any space left for photos,” she said. “Too many podcasts I haven't listened to yet. David, can we use yours?”

I consented. You stood next to Sara with the candle.

“You get in it, too,” you instructed. “Sara's in the middle.”

There was something disconcerting about your eager choreography. But I held the camera outstretched and snapped three photos with flash as you put your arm around Sara's shoulder, a smile stretching across her face. I could sense she was reconsidering ­Tiffany Gersh's request.

“Let's see,” you said, and you both looked at the last picture. Our faces glowed ghoulishly from the flash and candlelight. After reviewing it you swiped the screen, sending it back to the previous one, and then the one before.

I remembered, with terror, what was in my gallery before this set: the picture of you outside Sever, smoking with Suzanne. In your burgeoning drunkenness, you might have mistakenly thought there was another picture of us all. The skyscraper I'd so carefully constructed would topple with one superfluous flick of your index ­finger.

“That's all,” I said, exiting out of the gallery and bringing the phone to my hip. “I'm turning it off now to husband the power.”

“Okay, you ‘husband the power,' ” you said in a fuddy-duddy voice. “I wouldn't want to frivolously ‘wife' it all away.” You turned to Sara. “So, how was the Philharmonic? It was last night, right? I saw your tickets on the corkboard.”

“Yes, it was last night,” she said. “It was really beautiful.”

“Did you like it, David?” you asked.

“Yes,” I said in a hurry. “I mean, no. I didn't see it. I was going to go, but then I had to work on this paper.”

“Oh, that's too bad,” you said. “So Sara had to go all alone?”

“I went with a friend,” said Sara. “I understood. David's really disciplined about his work.”

“What was the paper on?”

Your face was inexpressive in the weak candlelight but your tone was puckish.

“Nietzsche and ressentiment.”

“What's it about?”

“How people from historically oppressed populations adopt a slave morality that pins the blame for their present predicament on their oppressor,” I said.

“And what was your take, exactly?”

“I argue that even if their criticism is valid, their perceived victimization prevents them from looking inward and taking responsibility for their station in life.”

“Sounds inspiring. Where'd you work on it?”

“Lamont.”

“I was also in Lamont last night,” you said. “Where were you?”

Sara looked puzzled by your sudden interest in my essay and whereabouts.

“The second floor.”

“That's funny. Me, too.”

I poured some vodka into my glass. “It's a big floor,” I said, grateful for the cover of darkness.

“How long did you stay?”

“Practically all night.”

“All night?” You jutted out your lower lip. “That's no fun.”

“He's a workhorse,” Sara iterated.

“Yeah, but college is about more than studying,” you said. “You don't want to spend all your time in libraries like a perfect little Harvard student.”

“He gets out,” Sara came to my defense. “We do things.”

“I'm sure he gets out,” you said theatrically.

You were projecting your scorn for men onto me, making me squirm, trying to get me to confess or confuse my details. My white lie about where I'd been last night had triggered you, bringing up all the unresolved grievances you had with your father and Liam.

Mercifully, the interrogation ended there. “Well, guys, it's been fun,” you said as you downed the dregs of your vodka soda. “But I've got to get out myself.” You disappeared into your room and came back wearing your jacket.

“You're going out
side
?” Sara asked. “In the blackout?”

You put a finger over your lips. “Don't tell your dad.”

“But you know you can't get into any dorms unless someone opens the door from inside, right?” said Sara. “And if your phone's dead, there's no way to call them.”

“I'll figure it out,” you said. “Actually, David, can you post one of the pictures of us to Facebook? I want to let people know I'm okay.”

I turned my phone back on and drew up the last photo. “Wait,” you said before I posted it. “Can I type the caption?”

I warily handed the phone to you, keeping an eye on its screen as you typed, “Hey it's
Veronica Wells
writing. Phone dead. Safe during blackout with roomie
Sara Cohen
and her bf
David Federman
.”

You had publicly acknowledged me and the fact that we had hung out together. I would have altered the privacy settings to allow it onto my wall, except that any gains from my being with
you were negated by Sara's position in the middle, with my arm around my “gf.”

“G'night,” you said, disappearing into the darkness of the hall.

“What was
that
about?” I asked after the door clicked shut, hoping to inoculate myself against the same question from Sara. “Why did she keep asking where I was working last night?”

“She was trying to make me question your credibility,” Sara said.

I cracked my knuckles. “I was at the library all night,” I told her.

“I know. Where else would you be?” As Sara giggled at the absurdity of an alternative scenario—the implausibility of disciplined, workhorse David doing anything other than studying alone in a ­library—part of me wanted to enlighten her as to exactly where I'd been and what I'd done.

“I get the impression she had a difficult childhood,” she reflected. “Maybe it's hard for her to be around a happy couple, so she responds by trying to sow dissension between us.”

“That's a smart insight,” I said, and returned to working on my essay.

“Do you think she's pretty?” she asked.

“Do I think she's pretty?”

“Yeah.”

I lifted one cheek in deliberation. “She's not really my type, but I guess she is, conventionally speaking.”

“What's your type?” Sara asked brightly, joining me on the bed.

“You know,” I said, leaning toward her. “Brown hair, about five foot three.”

We kissed and I put the laptop away. Soon we were under the sheets, going through our paces more athletically than we normally did, from the vodka or the minor frisson you had sparked or the aphrodisiacal qualities of the blackout and lambent room. The dynamic hadn't radically changed with
you
—for the better, that is—but
all variables were primed for the breakthrough needed to lose my virginity. I tugged at Sara's underpants.

“Not yet,” she said, escorting my fingers away. “When I'm ready I'll let you know.”

Grabbing the lotion, I thought of Liam Barrows coming downstairs to let you into Adams House but faltering on a step in the dark and battering his beautiful specimen of a body. I did my business, irritated with Sara's prudishness and her inviolable cotton undergarments. Not long after I came, the power turned back on, returning the room to brightness. Sara blinked in the harsh light before fixing her adoring gaze on me, as though I were the only person who mattered. The opposite of staffage.

The next day, as I was entering Annenberg for lunch with Sara, I saw you clearing your tray. Last night's encounter had left me unsettled, especially coming on the heels of the previous evening, which had ended so nicely; my sense of well-being was entirely dependent upon our most recent interaction.

“Shit,” I said. “I just remembered I'm supposed to meet my Ethical Reasoning TF to discuss my paper.”

“When?” Sara asked.

“Now!” I adjusted to a look of playful concern. “I hate to leave you on your own. Can you handle the Marauders without me?”