Mirrors of Narcissus (6 page)

Standing at the next sink combing my hair, I watched him in the mirror until he locked himself in the far stall. Then I filled the sink with cold water and splashed some onto my face.

I could hear people outside in the library, but for a long time was afraid to step out there again. I didn’t want to meet the boy with whom I’d had my encounter.

The toilet in the far stall flushed, and as if in delayed reaction, my hands began to tremble. From there the trembling spread throughout my body, until I was shaking like a leaf. I imagined shimmering ripples radiating outward from me, passing through the restroom walls, spreading out across the campus, to the far ends of the universe.

6

Even after I’d gotten back to the safety of my dorm room, I still felt shaken by the encounter. Now that a little time had passed, it seemed more like a dream than ever, like something I’d imagined.

I decided to work out with the dumbbells for a little while to clear my mind. Just as I’d taken them out from under my bed, a sudden knocking on the door almost made my heart stop.

“Who is it?” I called out.

A voice I didn’t recognize answered. For an insane moment, I imagined it was the boy from the restroom, who’d followed me here.

In dread, I opened the door. It was a boy I’d never seen before.

“Can I help you?” I said.

“Is this where Jonesy lives?”

“Yeah. But he’s not in right now.”

He thrust a handful of photographs at me. “These are his. Could you give them to him?”

I took them. “Where’d you get them?”

“He sold me his camera last week. But he must have forgot there was still half a roll of film left in it. So I shot the rest of the roll and developed his pics for him.”

“I’ll make sure he gets them,” I said.

“He owes me about 50 cents, but I’ll let it slide. He sold me the camera pretty cheap.”

After he left, I looked at the photographs. Strangely, there wasn’t a single picture of Jonesy, though there were many of Kruk, and some people who looked like Kruk’s parents.

I walked down the hall and knocked on Kruk’s door. He came to the door right away, almost as if he’d been waiting for my knock.

“Oh, hi, Guy. What’s up?”

“Do these look familiar?” I handed him a few photos.

He glanced at one, then peered at it more closely. He flipped through the rest, then grabbed the entire batch out of my hand.

“Where’d you get them?” he asked.

“From a guy who bought a camera off Jonesy.”

“These are from my stolen camera.”

“What?”

We stared at each other for a sickening moment and then Kruk whispered: “Jonesy is the thief.” His voice was shaking.

My first thought was: Impossible. But the more I thought about it, the more likely it became. So that was where Jonesy had gotten all his partying money. As it sank in, I felt the blood drain from my face, and then a wretched feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. I felt a little sick.

“He didn’t even bother to take the film out,” said Kruk. “I can’t believe it. He left the friggin’ film inside.”

Kruk and I continued to look at each other blankly.

“We’d better tell the other guys,” I said.

“I’m going to the campus police,” he said.

I went back to my room and made a quick inspection of my effects. As far as I could tell, there was nothing missing, but the thought of Jonesy going through my things looking for something gave me a creepy feeling.

Ever since Kruk had first told me about a possible thief, more things had been disappearing from our floor—watches, rings, money. An air of suspicion had fallen over the dorm. Reports were made to the campus police each time a new theft occurred, and they filed the reports and made lists of the missing objects, but we knew that nothing more would come of it. Such cases were quite common, they said, and it was almost impossible to catch the culprits.

Now it would be different. Kruk had firsthand evidence.

I looked over at Jonesy’s side of the room. It looked the same as ever. Nothing was different, yet there was a strange feeling of change in the room’s atmosphere.

Now that I’d discovered another, hidden aspect of Jonesy, suddenly the boy I’d known all along seemed false. And strangely, it was I who felt ashamed and embarrassed about it. A hidden part of his personality had been exposed, and it was like glimpsing a part of him which shouldn’t have been seen, as if I’d accidentally stumbled into the bathroom while he was defecating.

I wasn’t angry; he’d stolen nothing of mine. But the fact that he’d stolen things from the other guys on the floor meant that I could no longer talk with him. He was no longer one of us.

But even as I fought to master my disgust, this new, sinister Jonesy began to awaken a strange fascination within me. His outcast status made him somehow more attractive, for, mingled with my repugnance was a queer feeling of kinship with him.

I felt restless sitting in my room. If Jonesy were to come back I wouldn’t know what to say to him, or how to act toward him. A sudden dread filled me. I realized I was afraid of facing him. I didn’t want to be here when he came back tonight.

I put away my dumbbells and slipped on my windbreaker. I knew Christine would be in her room studying, and she wouldn’t mind if I stayed over.

As I suspected, she was at her books when I got there.

“Guy, what’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Christine, it was Jonesy. Jonesy was the thief.”

“Oh, no.” Her face blanched. “So that was where he got all his money for partying.”

“I guess so.”

“He
has
been acting strange recently. His drinking’s been getting out of hand. And remember what I told you that time?”

She was referring to her suspicions that Jonesy had been making a play for her, disguising it as friendship. He had called her apartment a few times when he knew I wouldn’t be there. We both knew he’d been infatuated with her ever since I first introduced them; he hadn’t made a secret of it. In fact, it was a joke between us: if I didn’t watch out, he’d steal her away from me.

I let out my breath. “He had his bad points, I guess. But we did have a lot of fun together, especially in the early days. You wouldn’t believe some of the stunts he pulled.”

“You talk of him in the past tense already.”

“Now that he’s known as a thief, it’s impossible for him to stay in the dorm. There’s no telling how someone might retaliate. He’s finished.”

“Sounds like the wild west or something. The world of macho codes.”

“It’s hard to believe I only met him three months ago. The dorm will sure be different without him.”

“Why don’t you move out?”

“What?”

“Nobody says you have to live there.” She began fingering her hair searching for split ends. “When you live in a dorm, you have to live with all the risks which come with communal living.”

“What are you getting at?” But I knew already what she was leading up to. She had the tired look on her face which she always got whenever she brought up a topic she knew I wanted to avoid. “You mean about us living together,” I said, dumbly.

“Mm-hm.”

It was a topic which was coming up between us with greater and greater frequency, especially since Christine’s roommate, Nancy, was considering moving in with
her
boyfriend.

There had been a time when it was I who was pushing for the idea of living together. When we were first going out, I’d fondly dreamed of a domestic arrangement—probably out of homesickness more than anything else. In addition, there had been the desire to impress the guys in the dorm: it was considered the ultimate sign of manhood to live with a girl. But now I realized that such an arrangement would never work for me. I’d grown much too fond of living in the dorm. And I needed my freedom.

“I don’t know, Christine. I’m worried that if we lived together, I might not be able to concentrate on my studies.”

“That’s an excuse and you know it. If you can study in that dorm, you’d be able to study anywhere. This quiet apartment is much more suited to study, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

She was right, of course. But I disliked it when she tried to force her way with me. Our relationship as it was satisfied me, and I couldn’t understand why she wanted more. Meeting two or three times a week was fine with me. I couldn’t imagine seeing her every day, no matter how much she meant to me. It would be like we were married, and that was something I didn’t want.

“Will you give me time to think about it, Chrissie?”

“That’s what you always say. I don’t see what there is to think about. Either you want to live together or not. It seems pretty straightforward to me.”

There was an almost desperate look on her face which I’d rarely seen, and it frightened me. I knew she was only voicing her feelings out of love, yet I detected a spitefulness coming from her, even a desire to hurt me. I hated her when she was like this; she was ugly.

“It isn’t like I’m asking you to marry me,” she said. “If it doesn’t work out, we can always go back to the way things were. What are you afraid of, Guy? You make it seem like imprisonment or something.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m a little afraid it
won’t
work out. Maybe I’m afraid it’ll be what breaks us up.”

“Don’t you want to grow up? I mean, look at the guys in the dorm. They’re just kids, a bunch of childish babies. You’re so much more mature than them.”

Was she jealous of the dorm? I laughed. “We’re only nineteen, after all, Chrissie. I I want to have fun, too. Living with the guys has its good moments.”

“I’m sure it does.”

“Why do you feel so insecure, Christine? You make it sound like you’re worried about my feelings for you. You know I love you. Our living together isn’t going to change that.”

“I know,” she said, and a worried look crossed her face. She herself had confessed that she was a little dismayed at the strength of her own desire for domesticity. She’d never before wanted to live with a guy until she met me. I, on the other hand, was growing more resistant to being tied down—I wanted endless possibilities in life. To settle down with a woman was to concede that those possibilities were limited, restricted.

“Look, I wish you hadn’t brought this up just now, Christine. I just found out my roommate is a thief, and here you are already making arrangements for my future. Hell, if I move out now, the guys might think I’m the thief. They’ll mix it up in their minds when they think back over it.”

She laughed. “I’m sorry, Guy. I get like this sometimes. It must be hell going with me.”

“No it isn’t. Not at all.” I grinned. “Listen, Chrissie, after having refused your offer to move in with you, this might seem cheeky, but I have a little favor to ask.”

“Sure. What is it?”

“Can I spend the night over tonight? I don’t know if I can face Jonesy, knowing what I do about him.”

She raised her fist and made as if to strike me, but she was only joking. She sighed. “Sure. I understand. But I’m gonna be up half the night studying for my midterms.”

“That’s all right. I’ll probably sack out while you hit the books.”

I was glad to be able to be alone with my thoughts, not only about Jonesy, but about my encounter in the restroom with the unknown boy. Too many things were happening at once. Christine’s room was a sanctuary from it all.

I took up a book and lay down on the bed to read, but Christine seemed unable to concentrate at her desk. As if she’d been thinking it over for a while, she asked me without turning around:

“Guy, am I being a bitch?”

I sat up, concerned by the undertone of seriousness in her question. “No, you’re not being a bitch. Why do you say such a thing?”

“Well, one wants to know these things.” She shrugged.

Her pretended unconcern touched me. “Look at me, Christine.” She turned around. “We’ve always said we wanted openness in our relationship, right? And you were only voicing your true wishes. And I was voicing my own.” And then I became a little bolder. “And anyway, does it look to you like I think you’re a bitch?” I lay there on my side and saw her glance flicker down to my lap. Now that all the excitement of the day had wound down and I was relaxed, an unasked-for erection had blossomed during our talk.

She smiled. “I don’t know. Let me get a better look.”

“What about your midterms?”

“That can wait.” She pushed her book aside.

“And Nancy?”

“She’s spending the night with David.”

As she came over to the bed, I undid my jeans and pulled them down, then unbuttoned my shirt and took it off.

She lay down alongside me and put her arms around me. As always, the contrast between her fully-clothed body and my complete nudity intensified my arousal. Unlike with Peter, I could allow my excitement to blossom unchecked. I felt her clothes against my skin as she pressed herself against me and then the moist warmth of her mouth sought mine.

Some of the girls I’d been with had claimed that kissing gave them more pleasure than the sexual act itself. Often I’d kissed girls for—seemingly—hours on end, until their lips grew hot and their bodies trembled. I’d been told by them that most boys can’t kiss a girl for very long, for they become so aroused that they want to get to “the real thing” as quickly as possible. Unlike those straight boys, however, I could control my emotions long enough for the girl to get as much pleasure as she liked from kissing.

I helped Christine out of her clothes, and soon we were locked in our familiar embrace, with me sitting cross-legged and her on my lap, my dick deep inside her. I usually started out by not moving at all, just kissing her and caressing her all over with my hands. In Christine’s case, because she was so self-conscious about the smallness of her breasts, I concentrated most of my caresses on them, rhythmically kneading them and gently pinching their nipples, leaning down to kiss and suck at them. Only after she made it clear that she couldn’t stand it anymore did I push her back onto the bed and begin pumping into her with long, slow thrusts.