Loner (21 page)

Inside that welter I searched for you, the one person who could make the chaos fade away. I saw the tawny highlights of your hair first, ponytailed and swinging over a black peacoat, poster co-ed from another, more dignified era, as you stood with Suzanne in a mixed-age cluster, all drinking champagne from clear plastic flutes. I crept up behind and waited for an opportunity to catch your ­attention.

“How's your cold?” I asked when you turned your head to blow out smoke.

Your expression was hidden by oversized sunglasses. “Much better,” you said in a raspy voice, tapping your cigarette to dislodge a glowing clump of ash. “See ya,” you added, ready to return to your crew.

“I know where you went the other night,” I said softly, so the others couldn't hear. “After Lamont.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” you said after a few seconds, also quietly, but the delay and volume betrayed the claim.

“Tom,” I mouthed.

Your sunglasses fixed me in a lengthy, hard stare. Then you ushered me in the direction of the cooler.

“You went to his place on Story Street,” I said once we were far enough from the others.

“You
followed
me?”

“There are no rules against walking around the streets,” I said. “But it
is
against university policy for a grad student to be with an undergrad he's teaching. It's considered sexual harassment, even if it's consensual.”

You swallowed some champagne.

“And I assume you know he's married.”

“I'm aware,” you said with a mirthless laugh.

“I just don't want to see you get hurt. He's not going to leave his wife for you, if that's what you're expecting.”

“Thanks for the concern, David.” You smiled sarcastically and turned to go back to your people.

I reached out and tapped your back. “You should report what happened to the Ad Board.”

You whipped around.

“If you're scared, you can bring me along as a personal advisor and I can do most of the talking,” I offered. “I researched how it's done. They'll just need you to corroborate. You won't get in any trouble, only him. No one else will even find out.” I sounded unusually confident, in charge, as if I made it a regular habit to save beautiful women from themselves.

You gave me another long look, but this time your mouth softened. Resting a hand on my shoulder, you shook your head. “Thank you, but don't worry about me. I was about to break things off anyway.”

“You were?”

“Yeah.” You exhaled smoke with a rueful scowl.

“So you'll go to the Ad Board?”

“I would. Except you know how these things always work out. Even if the guy gets punished, the girl gets shamed for it,” you said. “Sorry about my reaction before. I appreciate you looking out for me. Obviously, this is not something I want other people to know about. I hope I can trust you, David.”

“Of course,” I said, trying not to smile. I'd done it: Liam had never been the real competitor; Tom was, and now I'd knocked him, if not out of the school, then out of contention.

“How's that champagne?” I asked as you started to walk back to the others.

You paused, trying to come up with a witty line for me. “It makes being around the alumni tolerable.”

“So getting drunk is a prerequisite for hanging out here?” I grabbed one of the open bottles submerged in a cooler of ice and a flute from a stack.

You shrugged. I poured myself a serving and took a cold, fizzy draft.

“You're right,” I said. “It's already making them better.”

Suzanne drifted over, looking at her phone. “Jen's still in bed with a hangover,” she reported. “She said she wishes we'd gotten her stomach pumped last night. And she left her credit card at the bar.”

“Hi, again,” I said. “Famous David.”

Suzanne glanced at you. “The man who needs no introduction.”

As the two of you recapped Jen's wild antics the previous night, one of the older men came along and inserted himself into our trio. He wore a corduroy baseball cap emblazoned with an
H
, the end of its adjustable strap dangling like a vestigial tail.

“You kids having fun?” he asked with the bluster of a host proud to have comely young women he didn't know at his party.

“Absolutely,” said Suzanne.

“Go Harvard,” he cheered, making a small fist. Suzanne mimicked him with a smile.

“Beat Yale,” you said.

“That's what I like to see,” said the man. “Good old-fashioned school spirit.”

“Destroy them,” you added.

“Our guys have looked good this year,” he said.

“Dismember them and send them back to New Haven in body bags.” You beamed at him as if you'd said something adorable. I felt the first pinpricks of an erection, ogling the scar on your forehead, a seam into your skull, wishing I could open it up, rappel inside, and suture it back together so I could swim around your brain ­undisturbed.

The man chuckled. “Well,” he said with a diplomatic smile he'd doubtless used in hundreds of hostile boardrooms, “you kids have fun.”

After he found shelter with a safer set of people, Suzanne cackled. “Cheeky,” she said. “Always biting the hand that feeds you.”

Marco Lazzarini, the aristocratic Italian among your friends, swanned over, talking about his upcoming trip to Barcelona. For the remainder of the tailgate I hovered by your side (maybe I hadn't been overtly invited at first, but you weren't going to evict me now), maintained a steady intake of champagne, and celebrated Thanksgiving early with gratitude that I wasn't trapped with Sara and the Marauders. How dispensable are most people in our lives, collections of matter filling empty space until they're recycled.

Throughout all this a cavalcade of males of varying ages found excuses to sidle up and talk to you and Suzanne—mostly you. Though you treated them with more civility than you had the patron of our party, you weren't letting them into our circle, and inevitably they backed off. Their unabashed attempts to court your attention amused me. I didn't need to do a pathetic song and dance for you. I was the one you trusted.

When the tailgates closed down at kickoff the three of us moseyed back over the Anderson Memorial Bridge (Justin and Kevin would have approved of our pregaming without going to the actual game). You led us to a final club—not Liam's—where we rolled liquor around our mouths and sampled hors d'oeuvres of deviled eggs, sashimi, and goat cheese croquettes among an ­intergenerational ­assembly of alumni before progressing to a different establishment, the sun-slanted afternoon pushed away by gray early evening, which surrendered to inky night, hours and hours with you, eventually ending up, to my dismay, at the club of your school-sanctioned boyfriend.

Yet Liam was nowhere to be seen. I tried to piece together why you'd remained with him through your affair. Perhaps it was so that you wouldn't feel as though you were just the other woman, desperately pining after a taken man, and had kept him around to make Tom jealous. Or maybe it was for whatever social status he supplied you with that Tom couldn't because your relationship had been illicit.

You and Suzanne colonized the same sofa as before and I sat next to you, no longer banished to the armrest. Cole Porter lyrics crooned over the sound system as grandfatherly benefactors limped about. Harvard had lost the game, demoralizing the fan base and further buoying my own spirits; I'd been dreading the mass celebratory atmosphere, the drunken woo-hoos in the streets, the spoils of war that would all redound to the benefit of the gridiron heroes (glory, fellatio). Now the victory parade was only for me.

My phone trembled in my pocket. A text from Sara:

I found one of your Lactaid pills under my bed today. Dot dot dot.

I didn't respond. She sent another message fifteen minutes later:

(Subtext: Thinking of you.)

A twenty-something alumnus, vice president of moving money from one account to another, insinuated himself into our space and hit on you, directing an occasional word to Suzanne out of politesse. “I have to meet some friends at the Charles,” he said. “You should come.”

His canvas belt was embroidered with little anchors and sailboats. I remembered a childhood story about a classmate's uncle who had been garroted by a taut cord while sailing, and cast the alum in my mental reenactment.

“Thanks, but we're good here for now,” you said.

“We'll be at the bar late. Stop by whenever.” He winked. “I'm staying there, room 201.”

“God, I should write my essay on the
alumni
,” Suzanne said after he left. “They're even worse than the current members.”

“What's the essay for?” I asked, eager to guide the conversation toward my bailiwick.

Suzanne hesitated.

“Can we
not
talk about school right now?” you cut in. “We're almost on vacation.”

“Duly noted,” Suzanne said. “Who needs a refill?”

She went to the bar. “Do you have any special plans for Thanksgiving?” I asked you.

“Just hanging at home with good ol' Larry and Margaret.”

“That should be relaxing.”

You expelled air between your tongue and palate, generating a cynical
t
sound. “Gag me.”

“I know,” I said,
gag em
. When Suzanne returned you made more space for her, our pelvises making unbroken if involuntary contact on the crammed sofa, how quaint that you had once touched your elbow to mine in class and now we were almost literally joined at the hip. The two of you resumed talking as I fantasized about the future with you: champagne and sashimi and sofas but, more important, the thrill of savoring these things by your side, the ecstatic rush of being alive, right here, right this moment, that had
so rarely visited me in my lifetime of safely plodding preparation for the future.

Liam appeared, ruiner of everything good.

“Veronica,” he commanded in his uncouth baritone. Just that one word, as if you were a pet. I could provoke a breakup by informing him of what had been going on with Tom through a pseudonymous e-mail, but I was one of a select few—if not the only person—who knew, and you would figure out I was the source. You might end things on your own anyway, especially under the influence of your gender class; you knew he was a repressive force who sought to silence you. And yet that was what apparently attracted you to him.

“What's up, Suzanne?” Liam said, planting himself between the two of you on the couch. He reached over to the antipasto board occupying the coffee table where we had previously snorted cocaine. Slicing a thick coin of sausage, he popped it into his mouth as if he were a meat grinder.

“How were the other clubs?” He gnashed the red meat between his teeth and cut another piece of sausage.

“They were lame, but they had—” Your eyes bulged with alarm. “You're
bleeding
.”

He'd nicked his index finger with the knife and blood was leaking out.

“Oh,” he said lunkheadedly. “Whatever.”

You took a cocktail napkin from the table and wrapped it around his finger. “
Baby
, you have to be more careful,” you cooed with a tenderness I had no idea you possessed.

It was all an act. You were exaggerating your caretaking so he wouldn't suspect you of infidelity.

“Liam, you know David,” you said.

He looked at me. “David from English,” he said. “David from Lamont.”

“Yep,” I said, afraid of making eye contact with either of you,
even though I was in a position of power, knowing all about a situation of which he was completely ignorant.

“So you guys pulled an all-nighter?”

Detecting a note of unease in Liam's voice, I waited a beat before answering, hoping to preserve your impression of me as a trustworthy ally while simultaneously arousing his suspicion. “Yeah, it was a really late night.”

“And Thursday night, too?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. (I'd spent that night overhearing Steven practice his magic act.)

“Enough with the cross-examination,” you interrupted. “Yes, we worked until very late both nights. Jesus.”

“I'm just making conversation,” he said innocently. He turned to me. “She's always saying I don't engage her friends enough.”

“You're being a dick,” you hissed.

A crocodile grin spread over his face. “You're so cute when you're angry.” He squeezed your pouting cheeks together with his uninjured hand.

“Fuck off,” you said, pushing him away. “I'm going home. The alumni here make me sick.” You stood up and put on your coat.

“She'll be fine,” Liam announced as the three of us watched you stomp off. He carved himself another piece of sausage before joining his friends by the pool table.

“And the fun never ends,” Suzanne said, leaving for the bar.

I caught up to you again on Mt. Auburn Street.

“What do you want?” you snapped as I matched your stride.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just heading back, too. You
are
going to Matthews, right?”

After entering our dorm you sped upstairs ahead of me, not pausing to say good-bye at the fourth-floor landing. You hadn't even thanked me in person for the second essay. In a few days you'd be back in New York. All the momentum I'd built up would be lost.

The dorm was quiet, everyone out at one of the Harvard-Yale parties. I went to my room and wrote you an e-mail:

It's polite to say good night to someone. Especially someone who's done a lot of favors for you and is looking out for your best interests.

A few minutes passed. You didn't reply. I followed up with a stronger message:

P.S. I've been thinking it over. TB abused his power and he'll continue doing it, if not with you, then someone else. I'm emailing the Ad Board now. It's the right thing to do.