Fall (9 page)

I got back into bed and said, “Yes.”

“Me too, man.”

I asked him what was wrong.

“I don’t know . . . Can you keep secrets down there, Noel?”

“I can keep secrets down here.”

“I don’t know. I’m not tired of them. But I was at this party last night and it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Right? Not that it wasn’t as fun as I wanted it to be. Just that I’m sick of other guys. You know?”

“I think so.”

“Not like I don’t like my friends or other guys. But you think there’s a connection. I was at this party and Ant kept moving in on girls. And Chuck kept getting pissed off. And I’ve been thinking about how guys do that. You think they’re friends who care about what you want, and suddenly they’re moving in on someone you love. The whole thing pissed me off, I guess. Because Chuck kept coming up to me and complaining, and I was looking around at this party and feeling like everyone’s too close somehow. Or they’re not close in the right way.”

“What’s the right way?” I said.

“My girlfriend. Fall. You know her, right?”

I felt nervous, I remember, like I was going to have to reveal something or like he was going to make me confess something I wasn’t ready to admit.

“Yes.”

“Those eyes. Right?”

I would have put more effort into describing them. I didn’t know whether he wanted me to respond or not. Julius had been going out with Fallon since the middle of the previous year. I knew every skirt she owned and how she changed her hair. I knew how she had grown up over every year. She walked into a room and made it elegant and she was so disarming, stripping away all guile and fraudulence from anyone she spoke to.

“I dream about her ass,” he said. I remember feeling discomfort because I respected Julius. I didn’t know what I wanted to hear him say about her.

“There were a lot of pretty girls at the party,” he said.

“There’s a lot of beauty,” I suggested.

“There’s a lot of beauty,” he said. He laughed. “Why don’t you go to parties, Noel?”

I looked for the right answer. “I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t know whether he could really be ignorant of the fact that I was never invited to parties. That’s what was so appealing about him. A strange obliviousness to the world, which somehow drew the world to him. “I don’t like not connecting with people,” I said.

“You’re a smart guy, Noel.”

He said it after a pause, a warm dark pause that made it sincere and sympathetic. I feel like it was then that our bond really developed.

“I feel like I can talk to you,” he said.

I said, “I’m your roommate.” That’s the way it was supposed to work. Find the right roommate and he could be your confidant. Your wife. I wanted to say that I felt like I could talk to him, too.

“I feel so weird today, man. I love my girlfriend.”

I caught myself saying “She’s beautiful.”

“I’m lucky. I feel really lucky. About everything.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“But I feel like things aren’t working somehow. This space. I’m not usually anxious, you know. Fall. What’s going to happen? How do we get close?”

“I know.”

“Because, you’ve seen her
ass
.”

“I know.”

“I think I feel scared,” he said.

Over our time together, I wanted him to think. I wanted him to slow down and reason. I wanted him to consider things from the bunk below. Look at things another way.

I thought about him up there above me, scared, and I found more comfort. I liked the idea of him being scared, admitting it to me. No one else in the school would see him scared. And I loved possessing his secrets. I wasn’t thinking that night that they might be useful to me. I simply thought that I was lucky to know him like this.

“Everything will work out for you,” I said.

I had seen the way she would flirt with other guys. I didn’t know whether it was just her manner, her openness, or whether she was willing to be with other guys besides Julius. Everyone respected him. It was hard to imagine that anyone would deliberately try to steal Fall from him or even respond to an invitation from her. But if she truly invited, if she saw a bigger world . . .

He was quiet. I spent a long time considering what little I knew of his life. What was it like to have this girl who was everything, and still be uneasy? How much was he actually thinking? I wondered whether Julius’s life was just a series of reactions. Put him in a room and watch people come to him, watch how he reacts. Is there any thought behind each reaction? There must be. He was up there thinking now. I wanted to help but found myself speechless. I imagined that it
would
be difficult to be in his situation. He clearly loved Fall, but what should one do, so full of love, when a beautiful girl comes into the room, into the bar, into the party, and seduces one? Should love be shunned for the sake of love? What if Fall did indeed find one of Julius’s friends superior to him? I think we all started wondering more profoundly about the future that year.

I felt the bed shaking a little and realized he was crying. I felt terrible. I wondered whether I imagined the shaking, and thought he might have fallen asleep. He sighed and I realized he was still feeling bad.

“Sometimes people surprise you,” was all I could offer. I didn’t even know what I meant, wondered if it was one of those platitudes, borrowed from someone else, that appear on the tongue at awkward moments. I was trying to remain essentially quiet, to let things happen at a calm pace, but being privy to his secrets, being there in that private space with him and feeling a potential friendship bloom, I felt like I should offer something of myself.

“It’s just a lazy eye,” I said. “I think people think it’s something more serious. It’s just a muscle problem. I can’t control the eye.”

“Okay.”

“And the eye and eyelid go into spasms. I know it makes people uncomfortable.”

I felt like I had stepped off a cliff. Why did I talk about my eye out of the blue? I cast about in my mind for some way to change the subject, for a joke to tell, some way to bring the talk back around to Julius. But all I remember saying was, “I find it hard.”

There was silence again and I found myself retreating. Shutting everything down and thinking this year is only a year and I will get through it quietly and on my own terms.

Julius said, “I think it’s cool. I think you’re a handsome guy.”

It was still noisy and bright out in the hall. I was still wide awake.

I was warmer than I’d ever been in those strange beds.

“Goodnight,” I said.

“Goodnight.”

I had seen Fall that weekend. I saw her come out of the front door of the Girls’ Flats on Saturday during the day. She had a book in her hand and I wanted to see what it was, but couldn’t. I had never spoken to her.

I saw her that Friday night, too, in the TV room. It was the one place on the Flats (between the Girls’ and Boys’) where both sexes were allowed to mingle. People often wore their pyjamas there on the weekend. Someone would rent a movie or two and usually whoever was staying on the Flats would gather in the dark on the old couches and watch movies until a Master would come around and call Lights Out.

I often found it an annoying scene, people in their pyjamas getting cuddly. Occasionally a boyfriend and girlfriend, or several of them, would be in there and often enough they would be making out, their hands busy under blankets, and I found it all repellent. Everyone seemed to settle into a phony vulnerability, as though wearing pyjamas and slippers revealed their soft nature, as though they were all the same. People made sure they laughed in the right places, groaned in the right places, the girls always cried when a movie was sad. A group of flannel-clad, insincere emotions.

I would walk through the TV room most Saturday nights to see if there was a movie I was interested in. I rented Fellini’s
Satyricon
once, but only a handful of boys stayed to the end, in hope of more nudity. I was generally not interested in their movies, and the sight of them all irked me, but Fall was there that Friday and I stopped for a while.

I sat at the back of the room, and the couch she sat on was to the side. She angled her head toward the screen and I saw her in
three-quarter profile. There was little danger of her noticing that I was staring at her.

There was such a hungry curiosity in her look, regardless of what banality was on the screen. I stared at the light flickering over her eyes and thought of some lost white sheet blowing in the night and settling into dark water. I wanted her to look at me and I wanted to be absorbed, transformed in her mind into something calm. I wanted her to help me. I had wanted that for years but I had never articulated it, and I was shocked to realize it. I felt weak. I realized that the only way to be helped by someone was to surrender, to be honest and say this is me, I’m yours, please fix whatever’s wrong with me. I discovered that night that it was more than just desire I felt, it was that higher level of need and an acknowledgment that she could own me—maybe owned me already.

I stood up and attracted attention. I know she looked at me, but I kept my eyes on the screen as I walked past it and out of the room.

Some people don’t know their words and some writers deliberately lie. I believe in the effort of words chasing thoughts: the spectacle of it, the truth of that alone. Words chasing thoughts are like greyhounds chasing the mechanical bunny. What’s interesting is not the bunny but the dogs: the hunger, the sinew, the energy and movement. I know my words. I write policy papers and memos. The right words are the dogs in front, one sniff behind the truth. There is never disappointment.

Never the disappointment I feel when I don’t have the opportunity to write. When I awake and find nothing but the apartments all around me.

I am drawn to giving details.

I
S THAT YOU
, sir.

It’s me it’s me, cough cough.

Step into the light, please, sir.

I want my bed.

Step forward. Thank you, sir, goodnight.

Ah, Monsieur Jool, du lait du lait du lait.

I want my bed.

Oh, when dad shouts I smell his breath. When will that breath happen to me. How many bad things do I have to do before that breath happens to me.

I am

Never

Ever

Drinking

A single

Shot

Of

Jä

Ger

Meister

For the rest of my blond-haired life.

Dad said I was lucky to be young. When you’re young you don’t get hangovers. This is a hangover. I want juice. This is a hangover on the sun’s brightest . . . When is he gonna finish. I need to leave. I need my bed at school.

Why am I in this room.

Why am I dreaming about canoes.

There’s that French girl on the banks I can smell her.

Laundry day!

Ow, motherfuckers.

Fuck off I mean it.

Ow.

Laundry day says Ant. Christ he annoys me. What is Wink doing over there.

Let me sleep, let me sleep, let me sleep.

Give me a smoke I say.

Chuckie can be relied on. How many times are we going to walk down this hill for laundry.

I don’t know says Ant.

About thirty says Chuck.

The cigarette’s helping and I blow some smoke into Ant’s face, he’s pissing me off today.

Ant, man, do you remember the bullshit in your mouth last night.

I don’t want to talk about it. You were the drunk one, mister, Mister I was the Drunk One, fuck. You were hurling everywhere.

I won’t push it.

No one’s ever gonna know me
says Chuck.

I’ll let Chuck push it.

Do you remember saying that, Antony. About eighty-six times. We were all a little drunk. Right. So, Jules, man: tell. A little Fall action. Barfing.

Barfing I say. None of your business.

You had your hand down her pants by the bathroom says Ant. Everyone went to the bathroom.

I’m thinking about blowing more smoke in his face.

Nobody saw it says Chuck.

I can’t believe you barfed on my shoes says Ant.

I just want peace and quiet. I just want to be alone. I just want to be alone with Fall and hold her beautiful hand. There’s peace there in her palm and we won’t have to talk.

Chapel: Bong!

La la la la la, England, Jesus, Canada, Jesus, Jesus. I’m gonna leave this chapel and Niles is gonna point to my hair and say cut it. Someone is gonna fart on a pew, someone will joke p.u., and we’ll sing out of tune ’cause we’re jokers. I’m so fuckin tired and bored and I wish I was back at Dad’s tonight.

I just need to sleep.

La la la la la, Canada, Jesus, Jesus.

Julius says Niles. Cut that please by next weekend.

Wink’s here.

Hey I say.

Hey.

Hot. Bright. It’s too bright in here. He’s a quiet guy.

I just want to sleep.

Mind if I turn off the big light I say.

No he says.

I’m tired. Big run. Why do I have to be on the top bunk, it’s hard work, oof, wait. Is this my bed.

Chuck came in here looking for you he says.

Leave me alone. Please, leave me alone.

What is this fuckin feeling I’m like a bruise and a scared old man, bitch bitch.

Ah, he’s turned off the lights.

Nice.

I’ll ask him about his weekend.

He stayed here all weekend. Fuck that.

Noel down there’s a lonely guy. He’s a quiet guy.

In comes fuckin Chuckie with a bang. Chuck and Ant and a joke about cocks, and I’m so, very, tired, of, them. I just want to relax. I just don’t want to think. I just wish.

Now I’ve got to close the door.

Ow.

Nice and quiet in here. That was nice of Noel.

Should I jack off or ask him a question.

So you stayed here all weekend I say.