Early Decision (13 page)

Are you now seeking, or have you ever sought, treatment for any diseases of the skin?
(
E.g., acne, eczema, psoriasis
. . .)

Once Anne had seen a dermatologist, yes. In high school. She ticked
yes
and filled in
acne
.

Immediately the test asked,
Are you currently suffering from this condition?

Anne closed out of the thing and called Mitchell for his walk. Her apartment felt tiny and miserable. She dutifully led the dog down the back stairs, where the blustery night was a relief. The leaves were beginning to let go, and the air had a touch of Halloween to it. It was enough to startle her a bit when her cell phone piped up, halfway down the street.

The text was from Sadie.

NOT APPLYING TO DUKE ANYMORE. JUST THOUGHT U SHOULD KNOW.

Anne stood for a moment in the phone's blue glow. Christ. It was past eleven. The girl would be awake, sitting in her third-floor—or was it the fourth?—bedroom, or playroom, or television room, brooding and plotting to trash her life. I've got nothing for you tonight, kid, Anne thought. Mitchell was sitting quietly, sniffing the wind. Anne shivered. I'm just an almost-thirty girl who takes the back stairs.

OCTOBER

“W
ELL, FUCK HER,
” Martin said squarely.

Anne turned the bolt and followed him down the stairs.

“She can take a fucking Xanax to deal with Mitch if she needs to. But I'd be wondering why she doesn't want you in the halls. What's she doing, running around naked?”

The streets were dark and cold. Anne hopped a step to take Martin's arm. Finally he was here. It was October, and early applications were due November 1, which meant the college frenzy had reached its highest pitch, like wasps before a frost. Anne's phone had been ringing all day. Kids were texting. Mothers were e-mailing in case their voice mails got lost. Fathers were e-mailing in case the mothers forgot to call. Lincoln Park this time of year was nothing but high school kids and hot-dog stands, but Martin at her side restored the city to a metropolis, a place of grit and glamour. His suitcases spilled across her floor like her very own wishes. It was a mess. She wanted to collapse in the same way—say,
Take me to California, take me to a life without miserable high school kids and their panicked parents, take me to something I can look forward to.
But she bit her tongue. Martin had held on to his River North apartment, but even in his absence the place was filthy, and he'd finally agreed that the cactus in the window was beyond watering. From the sidewalk you could look up and spot it browning on the sill.

“That's a grim thought,” Anne told him, not wishing to imagine April nude.

“Just do whatever you want,” he said. “She can have fun trying to evict you if that's her thing.”

Oh, to borrow his certitude! It was in his very gait—how his shoulders plowed ahead while his hips swung ever so slightly beneath his torso, his long legs picking a horse's stride. Anne forgot how much ground he covered. She loved the clicking sound of her heels, trying to keep up.

“Jeesus, it's cold,” he moaned. “Why do you live here?”

They both knew damn well why, and what she was waiting for. But Anne kept the peace. He'd just arrived. His old friend Tara had the lead in the new production at the Goodman, just opened, and Martin would be something of a celebrity in the house. It was enough.

And inside the theater, Anne found her reward: exclaiming patrons everywhere, the excitement of a new show, folks shuffling and embracing and apologizing, Martin's large hand at the small of her back. It seemed every third person recognized him. She saw that he had perfected the half-focused gaze and uncommitted smile of the center of attention—was this some Hollywood affectation? A small wave of energy preceded them down the rows, as though people sensed they should turn to look. Then Anne saw, with a few rows to spare, that William Kantor was sitting toward the front of the house, alone on the aisle, and she tugged on Martin's sleeve, but he was too slow; and what would she have suggested, that they retreat and hide? It was ridiculous. He was only a kid.

William sat with a playbill in his lap, reading the
Economist
. But of course he looked up as Martin approached, and by God, in his face it was like Christmas morning, or Hanukkah evening, or whatever; he scrambled to stand. “Anne!” he said, spotting her. “Hi!”

“Hi, William,” she replied. “How are you doing?”

He looked at Martin, and back at her. “Are you? Is this?”

“William, this is my boyfriend, Martin,” she said.

“Will,” he corrected. “You're Martin Waverly. Wow.”

“Will?”
Anne asked.

He darkened his eyes at her. He had his
Economis
t in a death grip, and his other hand, which had just greeted Martin, was held against his solar plexus as though in prayer. “I saw you in
Closer,
” he told Martin.

“Cool, man, thanks.”

“Your parents here?” Anne asked him.

He shook his head. “They're at services.”

“Ah.” Martin nodded. “Good for them.”

William took this as a sign. “I think you're amazing,” he gushed. Anne realized, observing his apple cheeks, that she'd never seen him admit pleasure about anything.

Martin pretended to miss the compliment, but none was ever enough. The kid was an easy mark. “Hey, so listen,” he said, “why don't you join us for a drink after the show?”

“Oh, yeah! Wow! That'd be cool. Yeah. Thanks.”

“Cool,” Martin confirmed, and shook the boy's hand again.

They funneled past him, to Martin's reserved seats. Anne knuckled his arm. “What the hell was that?”

“What was what?” he hissed back.

“Asking my kid to drinks. Seriously?”

“What's the problem?”

“He's my student!”

“So we'll buy him a Coke.”

Martin was nodding to the people on his other side as they arrived at their seats. “That's not my point,” Anne continued. “I don't want my students in this part of my life, you know?”

“What part of your life?”

“My love life.”

“Tara will be there, too,” he reminded her. The houselights were flashing. “Not like it's a date.”

“God forbid.”

“Shhh,” Martin said, leaning an arm around her shoulders. “Watch the show.”

Three hours later Anne could not have recalled a thing about the play except how Tara looked, stalking and sulking onstage, and how Martin watched her, and how she, Anne, measured gradations of closeness between their two bodies from Act One to Act Two to Act Three. Tara wasn't a surprise—they'd met before, she was long married—but that evening, William's bright eyes cast a new spot on Martin. Anne studied him and felt, inside her, an understanding small and hard as stone. It made her want to vomit. She refused it, and it was immediately restored. Martin, sensing her withdrawal, grew cordial.

“You should listen to your teacher, here,” he told William, after the show. “She's a good little writer.”

“Are you?” asked Tara. It wasn't curiosity alone, but her face betrayed neither sarcasm nor envy, which made the question that much harder to answer. Anne knew Tara's husband was home with their small daughter. Meanwhile they had smuggled a teenager into a hotel bar—he'd slipstreamed Martin, coming through the doors, and now was settled wide-eyed before the mighty actor as though Martin were the Burning Bush. The boys having easily settled their pecking order, Tara was forcing the issue between the girls.

“I don't write, really,” Anne replied.

“You should,” Martin said, into his rye. He straightened. “I'm always saying you should write for television. Come on out to L.A. and do it.”

“That'd be cool,” William offered. “And I do listen to her.”

“Good boy,” said Martin.

“I don't own a TV,” Anne said.

William persisted. “I totally listen to her. But she's a greenie. Grammar, yes. But the liberal stuff drives me crazy.”

“Hey,” Anne warned.

“Oh God, you're not one of those Young Republicans, are you?” Martin scoffed.

William's eyes were busy; he was furiously recalculating.

“What's your first choice, UVA or something?”

“SMU,” grunted Tara. “TCU. Anything-C-U.”

“Actually, Vassar,” said William.

Now Tara beamed. “I went there! I loved it!”

“Hear, hear,” said Martin, reaching for Tara. He fingered the three gold bracelets at her wrist. “Now, there's a recommendation for you, Will.”

“But I can't apply there,” William explained. “Parents won't let me.”

Tara was angry. “Why the hell not?”

Martin stretched his face into mock horror. “No girls' school for my boy!” he bellowed, and laughed.

“Bingo,” Anne said.

“Wow,” said William.

“What an ass,” spat Tara.

“It's not that shocking,” Anne said, watching William's face.

“Not many Gippers at Vassar, kiddo,” Martin said. The more he demeaned the boy, the more William adored him; he kept leaning across the table in Martin's direction and then catching himself, regrouping around his club soda with lime.

“That's okay,” he said. “I'll probably be at Penn anyway.”

“Why Penn?”

“I want to hear more about Anne's writing,” Tara said.

“I don't think so,” Anne replied.

“Is that how you met?” she pushed.

“No.”

“Tell 'em, Annie,” Martin urged. “How did we meet?”

He loved the story, seeing as it placed him on his pedestal from the very first moment—as indeed he had been, coming in as a guest on the morning talk show at the local public radio station, one of Anne's internships straight out of college. Anne thought she'd like to be among those confident, chalky voices she'd grown up with. But she hadn't got far enough to imagine a beat for herself, finding it surprisingly dull working on the day's headlines. Radio production was just at that time changing over from manual to digital, and most of the senior reporters used China-white pencils and tiny bits of masking tape to form their stories. Three minutes: the lede, a few voices, some ambient, a concluding note, and out. The work of spinning the reels and fitting together tiny snips of tape appealed to Anne a good deal. It was solitary and meticulous, done in tiny editing rooms. But she did not have the gumshoe instinct, and quailed at cold-calling. Nor did she yet have the larger sense of social justice that might have driven her to seek out stories of lesser civic interest.

Then, one dull Tuesday, came Martin. She was prepping the talk-show host for an interview with a hot young actor at Steppenwolf, who also wrote, and had a new play being workshopped uptown, etc., etc.—she gave all the guests their laurels—and the world kindled when he walked in. Her skin grew hot. Her shirt itched. She kept feeling pieces of hair fall from her barrette and into her eyes. She sat in the booth and watched the way Martin worked the microphone, cocking his head at the host but leaving his smile for the listeners. He put them all to shame. She followed him immediately. He had a dozen years on her; was big and lean, unapologetically ruffled and with an air of urgency: someone traveling far and fast. Martin quit the studio and asked her, sotto voce, to lunch. She gathered her notebooks and walked out. There had been, that night, a pair of women's shoes—ugly black flats, scuffed, of a sort she would never wear—cast askew on his living room floor. She was twenty-one and didn't ask. In fact, it pleased her to be the usurper. The shoes had disappeared soon enough. But remembering them now, she knew that Tara would know whose they were. Tara knew Martin then, knew his life, would have seen Anne come in and wondered, What on earth? It made Anne feel not much older than William, who was vibrating with surprise at his good fortune, to be sitting in Whiskey Blue with two accomplished actors late on a Friday night.

Anne told the story of their meeting, bare bones.
“The Tom McLean Show,”
she said. “I was an intern, he was the guest, I smiled, he asked me out. That was that.”

“I remember that junket,” said Tara. “You were just getting to be a big cheese.”

Martin smirked at her. “Not half as big as you, my dear,” he said. “You were brilliant up there tonight.”

Tara was radiant. William was missing all of it. “You used to be on the radio?” he asked Anne.

“Only a few stories,” Anne told him. “Mostly I was an assistant.”

“Man,” he said, shaking his head. “Why'd you quit that?”

“Yeah, why'd you quit that?” echoed Martin.

“Mmm?” Tara urged.

“Just not cut out to be a reporter,” Anne said. Her voice was dead. It was increasingly uncomfortable to be answering questions in front of William. She sensed a prior conversation between Tara and Martin; there was something Tara was out to demonstrate.

“I've got to be heading home,” Anne said, wrestling herself back into control. “William, it's late, I don't want to get into trouble on your account. Martin, I gotta walk Mitchell. Let's go.”

“Aw,” moaned Tara. It was half purr. “Stay for one.”

“You think?” asked Martin.

“Come on. How often are you going to be back in Chi-Town now that you've made the great leap?”

“You're right,” he said. He reached across to enclose Anne's hand. “Babe, I'll be right behind you.”

There was no refusing this in front of William. “Cool, see you later,” she said, standing. She beckoned a reluctant William out of his seat.

Tara gave a small wave. “Bye, kids.”

Anne turned quickly so no one would see the sting.

In the taxi, William leaned his head against the glass and stared up. He held his rolled playbill—autographed by Tara, of course—as gently as a stray bird in his lap. “Man . . .” He sighed, and then he was quiet. Anne watched him walk up the marble steps and through the double set of doors, only a few blocks from her lonely apartment. He took home all the gold that night, she knew—piles of dreams, and a whole lotta hope. She was empty-handed. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe William Kantor needed it more than she.

 

M
ARTIN, WHO WAS
still on California time, was finishing his morning exercises when Anne's telephone rang. He turned and scowled at the sound. Anne was pleased. She was busy, you see, with a rich and full life. She forced herself to wait two rings before answering.

From the floor Martin, mid-crunch, looked up, the batwing muscles along the tops of his shoulders rising tightly into his neck. “Who's that?”

She ignored him. Already she'd forgone her run with the dog in case Martin wanted to fool around. Morning always seemed a good opportunity for romance, though for some reason whenever they were in the same city they spent very little time in bed. Martin preferred to have sex on sofas and in cars, and in ways he'd seen in movies, like up against the fridge. It was sexy to be held—no mistaking how broad and strong he was—but logistics tended to preclude intimacy. This applied to bedtime in general, actually, if she thought about it. He did one hundred push-ups every night, and hopped out first thing in the morning to work his core. As a result, when he was actually in bed, he was always the tiniest bit rancid. Mitchell, much the better date, was waiting patiently by the door.