How Not To Fall (6 page)

He looks up at me and throws himself back in his chair. “Annie—”

“Why
not?
”

“Saints defend me. Christ and all the apostles fucked up the arse by Moses,
fine
. All right. We'll talk about it on the second. Now for the love of god,
please
get out of my office, you harpy.” He shoos me with one hand, from his trench behind his desk.

I rise, but I don't leave. “What
time
on the second?”

He turns his eyes to the heavens and says, “What time do classes officially end?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, go and look it up. That's what time we'll talk.”

“Okay, then.” I'm smiling now, and when I go outside, the rain has stopped.

 

That night I text him:

 

About ten minutes later he replies:

 

 

I answer:

 

 

 

 

 

I turn off my phone and plug it in for the night, and decide to go to bed early. I get myself off to sleep with a fantasy about what will happen at five o'clock, Friday, May 2.

M
y oral defense is not a formal part of my degree requirements. Professor Smith has her undergrad research assistants do it as practice for grad school defenses, but there's nothing really at stake. I mean, nothing apart from standing up in front of faculty and peers and talking about the project in which you've invested the last two years of your life. So. Nothing at stake but basic pride, I guess. And if there's anything I know for sure about myself at this point in my education, it's that I can withstand any injury to my pride.

For me, it's also practice presenting the talk I'm giving at the World Congress on Psychophysiology in Montreal at the end of May. Charles is going too, so I won't be completely on my own up there—Professor Smith can't go because she's Pregnant Like Whoa, but she's helping me be as prepared as I can be for my first academic conference presentation.

Charles is right. It's a walkover. I've thrown myself into fixing the problems with my presentation, and I've prepared for the most abstruse and picayune comments, criticisms, and questions. I can respond to everything they throw at me, even Charles's curveball of, “What methodological changes would you suggest to better control for individual differences in life histories of research subjects?” Why, I'd add the Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire, I tell him, as part of the standard protocol, the same way assessing for menstrual phase is becoming standard for all female subjects. Even when Professor Smith asks me about changing mood induction methods, and my real answer is, “Shit, I have no idea,” I manage to say it in a way that sounds like I kind of know what I'm talking about.

After my defense, there's cake and pizza for the whole lab. Professor Smith gives me a giant hug full of baby belly and says, “You'll be great in Montreal.” Margaret squeezes me around the shoulders and says, “Dude, you
totally
nailed that.” The younger ducklings look at me with something like awe—I recognize it because it was how I looked at seniors defending their theses the prior three years. Charles stands five feet from me and says, “Well done, Annie,” and then goes into his office and closes the door.

Well.

Margaret and I go out to dinner in preparation for the drinking that will be happening tonight. As we're getting ready to go out, I text Charles:

 

 

I don't have any idea where he lives, but it's surely better than my undergrad shithole, so I'm hoping he says his. But he answers:

 

 

Oh. He wants to talk over coffee. Sigh.

 

 

 

There is a long silence. I wait fifteen minutes for this next text:

 

 

Is it just me, or does this sound like he wants to fuck me
a lot?

 

 

 

 

 

 

My friends get me drunk that night.

That's about all I can tell you.

When I wake up in the morning, I am in an unfamiliar bed, which is not something I have experienced before. I am, fortunately, alone, but that means I have no clue as to where I am. Also, my entire body hurts. There is no part of me that feels okay.

I blindly feel around me and find my phone, which I check for the time, and I find this enlightening series of texts from the night before, which I read through a haze.

 

 

What. What. What have I done? Oh, sweet motherfucking Jesus, I texted Charles Douglas that I could see his panties. I called him poodlepie.

I read on.

 

 

 

No, sirreebob. No, you would not. Except yes. I had clearly had more than two. So that would, in fact, be wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bits of memory assemble themselves in my brain as I read. Margaret on the dance floor, her underwear visible over the top of her jeans. Charles dropping into the chair beside mine. Dancing down Kirkwood Avenue, singing, possibly, “Let It Go,” and possibly—no. Not possibly. Definitely taking off my clothes. I look under the covers at my body and find I'm in my camisole and underwear. Shit. Balls. Shit balls. Who was there? Who was there?! Whose bed am I in?!
Fuuuuuck!

“Fuck,” I say out loud. I close my eyes again and lie there with my hands over my face. I've had hangovers before, but this is an order of magnitude beyond anything I've experienced.

“Hello,” a voice says. “You among the living?”

It's Charles. Does this make it easier or harder to cope with reality?

“I'm not really sure,” I say through my hands.

There's noise, and then I feel movement on the bed—Charles sitting on the far side.

“Please don't move the bed,” I beg quietly. I move my hands to my stomach. I haven't reopened my eyes yet. “I don't feel good.”

“Ah, poor you,” he says. It sounds kind, even though I think he might be being facetious. “Remember much?”

“Flashes. It'd be really interesting from a memory-consciousness point of view if it weren't so frickin' scary.”

“You're all right. You just drank too fast.”

“Am I at your place? How did I get here?”

“No one was in a state to take you home, so I walked you here as the safest place to sleep it off.”

“Did I ...” I lick my dry, sticky lips with my dry, sticky tongue. “Um. Was ‘Let It Go' in any way involved?”

“Indeed it was,” he answers softly but eagerly. “Never again will I hear that song without thinking of you.” I can hear the smile in his voice.

“I'm going to open my eyes now,” I say. “And then I'm going to sit up.”

“Okay,” he says.

“And then, depending how that goes, I might throw up, or I might pass out.”

“There is a bin immediately to your right,” he says, placid.

I tug my gummy eyelids open. That goes okay. The room is dark, sunlight coming in through breaks in the curtains. I tentatively lift myself to a sitting position, tucking the blankets under my armpits. That, too, goes okay.

“I think some water would be good,” I say, not yet able to look at Charles.

“There's some on the nightstand there.”

I reach over and find a Nalgene with a sipper in it. The bottle is sweaty and cool, like ice water that's been sitting for hours.

It tastes. Like. Nectar. It tastes like springtime. It tastes . . . a little minty, actually.

“Oh my god, that's good,” I moan, still not looking at Charles. “What time is it?” I never did notice the time when I looked at my phone.

“Half eleven, nearly,” he says.

An unpleasant spike of adrenaline hits me. “I have to be in class in two hours.”

“You're going to class?”

“Of course I'm going to class! I'm hungover, not
immoral!
” I say. And then I put my hand on my forehead and add, “Ow.”

“Why don't you try a shower first, see how that goes, and then decide about class?” He rises from the bed and clears his throat. “Your clothes are on the dresser.”

“Okay,” I say, still not looking at him.

And he walks out.

The shower helps a lot. Being clean is rarely a bad idea, but what I learn this morning is that when you're hungover, being clean can make the difference between wanting to die and being willing to live. It puts me in a stable enough state of mind that I can be curious about Charles's apartment. His bathroom is a dude's bathroom, basically. A tiny bit scuzzy, but not so bad, considering. It smells like him, which is nice, and it's totally mildew-free, which is more than I can say for my own shower.

I dress in my clothes from last night and shuffle from the bathroom into the living room, where I stand in a daze under my wet hair, regarding the bookshelf. It covers an entire wall, and the wall is not a small one. Charles is sitting on the couch, his ankles crossed on the coffee table. He's reading.

“Are my glasses anywhere?” I say. “And do you have painkillers of any kind? And can I use your toothbrush?”

“Nightstand for the first two, and there are spare heads in the cabinet over the sink,” he says, looking up. “Feeling all right?”

“Better,” I say, and I shuffle back to the bedroom for my glasses. I pick up the water and take four ibuprofen from the small bottle beside it. I detour to the bathroom and go back to the living room, where I stand in front of the shelves, reading titles and brushing my teeth using a fresh head on Charles's electric toothbrush. I wander back to the bathroom to spit and rinse. When I come back, I peruse the titles once more until I ask, “Was I . . . I mean, is there more to be embarrassed about than I already know of?” I finally turn and look at him.

He smiles at me—a different kind of smile, a new kind. Fond. “You were fine. I had been drinking myself, so I couldn't drive you home. I walked you back here—and yes, whatever you remember doing on Kirkwood, yes, you did those things. On the bright side, it saved me the effort of undressing you before putting you in bed.” He raises his eyebrows at me significantly and adds, “You were hilarious, and I slept in the living room.”

“You gave me your bed?”

“Yes. Coffee?”

“Hm?”

I think he's addressing me, but he says, “Do you want any coffee? And then I'll take you home.”

“Oh. Yes, please.”

He goes into the kitchen and returns with two cups. He hands me one and returns to his seat on the couch. I sit too, in the chair opposite him. We sit in silence, him reading, me just waiting for the painkillers to kick in.

I interrupt him to ask, “Why do hangovers feel so shitty?”

And he says, “Glutamate and GABA, apart from anything else. Surely, you've studied alcohol metabolism in the brain.”

“Oh yeah,” I say, remembering. “Fuckin' GABA.”

He grins and goes back to his book.

There's more silence and then I ask, “Whatcha readin'?”

He holds his book up without speaking or looking at me.

Pleasures of the Brain
says the cover, and there's a big picture of a brain. It's a book about the brain, I conclude.

“Is it good?”

“Yes.”

“Can I read it when you're done?”

“Sure.”

Another long silence, and then I ask, “How come you're not at work?”

“I had no patients and no subjects until the afternoon, so I told Diana I was working from home, to avoid distractions.”

What he's saying is,
Annie, shut the hell up and let me read
.

Between the analgesics and the caffeine, my headache eases, and eventually I say, “I've never seen your apartment before. Is this where we're gonna . . . ?” I gesture to indicate fornication.

“We'll talk about it on Friday,” he says, with a repressive eyebrow. “It isn't certain that we're ‘gonna' anything, young Coffey, so don't start imagining it.”

“Dude.” I shake my head—then stop. I feel better, but not
that
much better. I drink more coffee and then start my sentence over. “Dude, I've been imagining ‘gonna' for, like, two years almost. That ship has sailed.”

“Annie,” he says in his stern-teacher voice. “We will talk about it. On Friday.” His expression is serious, but he's got that little bit of pink in his face again.

“What, we can't talk about ‘gonna,' but it's okay for me to be here?”

“It's not okay for you to be here. You'll notice I'm trying to boot you out.”

I give him a wink. “You kinda like it, though, really,” I say, and I purse my lips provocatively.

“Annie!” he snaps, then he gets up and walks to the kitchen, muttering, “Mother of god. Oh help.”