The Last Enchantments (32 page)

“Can I get back to you?” I asked.

“I can give you a few days to answer and two or three weeks to get out here, but that’s it. No more, just because we’re trying to get this thing up and running and we’re already short on time. Look up my guy, Viskovitz. And take down my number.”

I wrote it down. “By the way, have you heard of a guy named Jim Sawyer?” I asked.

“Of course, in New York?”

“He didn’t call you, did he?”

“I’ve never spoken to him in my life. Why?”

“Sometimes he—he’s looked out for me once or twice.”

“No, no, this is a Kerry thing. I knew some of those Ohio people pretty well. Tucker, Monty, Steiny—”

“Oh, how is Monty?”

“I love that little guy. No idea how he’s doing. Anyways, think about it. We’d love to have you on board.”

“Cool. Thanks, Doug. I’ll be in touch.”

“Make it soon, okay?”

I hung up and stared at my phone, feeling a powerful ambivalence. I decided I would put the subject out of my mind for a couple of days. But part of me already knew that I would go.

*   *   *

The next week, three things happened that made me realize that the call was only a taste, after all, that whether it was in two weeks or three months or whenever it was I would actually have to
leave
Oxford. In the morning I turned in my long essay, the final piece of work I had to submit to the faculty; in the afternoon I got a slip under my door confirming that I could keep possession of my room until August 31 and not longer; and just before the business day ended at five o’clock, I got an e-mail from Franklin Cross, telling me my start date was September 3 and I should give them a correspondence address in London at least one week before that, appended with the details of firm-approved housing agents (they would pay), gyms (they would pay), and London Underground passes (they would pay).

I wrote back to acknowledge the e-mail and said nothing about the possibility that I might not take the job. How often I thought of that $190,000, how I spent it in my head! Yet each morning when I woke up it was with campaign thoughts. I had researched Viskovitz and already had a notebook a quarter full of plans for him.

The long essay I submitted, incidentally, was about Orwell and his imbrication of cultural and personal writing, history and autobiography, which I argued prefigured the generic uncertainty of so much late twentieth-century fiction. To this day the essay is considered a minor classic. No, I’m kidding, of course. I doubt anybody ever read it all the way through then, including my supervisor, and certainly nobody has since. I got honors for it, however. So did Anneliese. So did all the Chinese statistics students except one, who was rusticated for plagiarism.

I was there on the day when Sophie turned in her long essay, whose subject was Mauriac and Camus. I proofed it for her. She had promised again and again, to all of us, that when this piece of work was finished she would be free again to spend time with us, and of all people it was Anneliese who decided that we should trash her, to keep her to her word. Trashing was the tradition at Oxford when someone handed in their final piece of work: as they left the Exam Schools in their
subfusc
—black tie for men, white shirts and ribbons for women, academic gowns for both—you pelted them with flour, glitter, and champagne, or, in the case of the university’s more laddish contingents, disgusting variations, fish that had been left to rot, ketchup, vinegar, soap, milk.

In the morning Sophie texted me. Somehow she had caught wind of our plans.
Just don’t let them throw eggs.

Well, I can promise you that
I
won’t throw any eggs. I’m not in charge of Tom.

So Tom’s going to throw eggs!?

I don’t know what he’s planning.

At ten to three all of us walked through town together, plotting strategy. “We have to throw the water and
then
the flour,” said Anneliese. “That way it will stick.”

“Good thinking,” said Ella.

“Neither of you has any eggs, do you?”

“YES, WE GET IT, NO EGGS!” Ella said. “It’s not like she’s allergic to eggs!”

Anil was waiting for us on the corner of the High. He had a dozen yellow balloons that said
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
in big blue letters. Balloons were a tradition, too.

“You got birthday balloons?” asked Ella.

“You noticed that?” he answered, crestfallen. “I thought they would blend together and look blue and yellow.”

“Anil.”

We reached the Exam Schools just as Sophie was coming out, and her face lit up. “Guys!” she said. She ran toward us in her black gown, cap under her arm. She looked happier than I had seen her in a long while. “I’m done!”

Instinctively I opened my arms and she flew up and hugged me. “Congratulations!”

Then I felt a firm thwack in the middle of my back.

I turned, and Tom was there with two cartons of eggs. “You don’t get off without a pelting.”

Then Anneliese, Anil, Ella, Timmo, and Peter, all of them so recently my allies, started to spray Sophie and me with champagne, toss water in our faces, burst open bags of flour over our heads, dust us with handfuls of glitter. Tom roved around the perimeter, throwing eggs.

“Tom, you asshole!” Sophie yelled.

“Eggs are a tradition!” he said. “You’ll thank me when you see the pictures!”

“Oh, Christ,” she said. “Anneliese’s taking pictures, isn’t she.”

Then there was a whoop and a massive red streak in the air. It was Jem and two of his friends.

“Ketchup?” I said. “Fuck.” I wiped it out of my eyes.

“Congrats, Bake,” he said. “You dick.”

Sophie and I huddled together until everything they had brought was clotted in our hair and grimed into our clothes. “Motherfuckers,” she said in her proper accent, smiling.

We were disgusting, but by the rules we had to stop at the King’s Arms and sit outside in the heat, the flour and champagne turning into a coat of cement on our skin. Afterward we went off and showered, then reunited at the porters’ lodge and went punting together in a large, loud group, returning at eight, sunburned and drunk.

There was a bop that night, the Saturday of Trinity Seventh Week. Masses of undergraduates had finished in the previous days.

“I can’t believe I’m here another three years,” said Ella as we watched them from the bar. They were all dancing outside on the terrace and the lawns, finding mischief with each other early in the night.

“I’m sure they’d all be jealous. Anyway, I’ll be back to visit.”

“If I’m going to bops in two years, please shoot me.”

“Please shoot me if I’m not.”

She looked at me. “Are you going to say anything to Sophie?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not tonight.”

Ella and I did a shot then; Tom showed up with Jess; Anneliese and Sophie were already dancing and laughing together outdoors. Soon enough we started to dance, too. I remember the songs so well: There was “Angels,” by Robbie Williams, and we all yelled the chorus together (“Nothing like a bunch of pissed mates screaming ‘Angels,’” Jem observed), and there was “Back for Good,” obviously.

The bops ended at midnight. (Coming from New York, where that was the time when Alison and I would leave the apartment, that always seemed touchingly provincial.) For the last song the DJ put on something slow, that one by Alphaville, I think. Sophie and I had been dancing in a group together all night, and earlier she had bought me a beer and sat at the bar with me, talking and giggling, but only now did we find each other among all of the nineteen-year-old couples swaying on the lawn and dancing together, just the two of us.

Her skin was warm and soft. I put my arms around her waist. Neither of us talked, but she rested her head on my shoulder, her face against my neck.

When the song ended neither of us let go. “I might be leaving sooner than I expected,” I said in a low voice.

She looked up at me. “For where? For London?”

“No. For the States.”

“In how long?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“What about your job?”

“There’s a different job I might take.”

“I was so looking forward to all of us being here this summer,” she murmured. She stayed in my arms, though no new song had come on.

My heart started to race. “Could anything happen between us, if I stayed?” I asked.

There was a long pause. “No,” she said at last. Then she squeezed me in her arms and stepped back. “I’m sorry. It’s not possible. All that is over for me.”

“Is it too soon after Jack?”

“It’s not that. Please don’t ask me again, Will. I don’t like to hurt you.”

I went home that night in a daze of grief. I woke in the same daze. The trouble was that I believed her. I spent the day heartsick, lying in my bed, immune to distraction, a lump in my throat the whole while. Finally at four o’clock (when it was still just ten in Ohio) I called Doug Bryson and took the job.

“Welcome aboard,” he said.

“I have a bunch of ideas. I’ll e-mail you. I think there are persuadables in Pine Heights.”

“The trailer parks? We’re polling fifty-five there.”

“I think it could be eighty. He just has to soften up on guns a bit.”

I could hear Doug smile. “Get over here as fast as you can.”

America was where they kept real life anyhow. I didn’t want to go back; in particular I didn’t want to miss the chance of seeing her at random every day, and at moments it felt as if that would be enough, my aspirations had so diminished. In more sensible moods I knew the best thing I could do was leave.

Then, a day later, as if to confirm it, America reached out and grabbed me back. I think it was the most surprised I’ve ever been.

I had been doing laundry in the MCR and played a few games of table football against Giorgio and Anil, Anneliese as my teammate. The four of us were planning to go to Hall afterward, but I ran back to the Cottages to fetch my windbreaker first, because it was a chilly evening, raining.

There I saw that I had a visitor: standing on my stoop, a slim rolling suitcase at her side, was Alison.

*   *   *

Two days after Alison arrived, a miracle happened. She missed it, unfortunately, because she was having lunch in town with a friend of her father’s. It happened when Timmo, Anil, and I were sitting in the MCR together, playing FIFA 05, and Timmo’s mobile rang.

“Timmo,” he said, his invariable and vexing salutation on the phone, then, “Yes, Timothy Cooper. Why?”

He was silent for long enough that Anil and I started to stare curiously at him. Finally Anil whispered in an urgent tone, “What is it?”

“Thank you,” Timmo said to whoever was on the line. “Thank you … okay … every day … yeah … I’ll wait for the e-mail. Thank you!”

“What the fuck was it?” I asked.

He grinned. “This is huge.”

“WHAT?” Anil and I shouted in unison.

“It was
Big Brother
.”

“Holy shit.”

“Oh my Lord,” said Anil with an awe in his eyes usually reserved for religious and sexual experiences.

It was the happiest day of Timmo’s life. We ran around finding everyone we could and telling them the news (“Timmo’s going to be on
Big Brother
!” I shouted at Sir George across First Quad, giddy with excitement. “Ah, excellent,” he said with a puzzled smile. “Bring him to Hall.”) In the MCR it was a bombshell. That night we sat in a group of fifty and watched past seasons of
Big Brother
on DVD while Timmo, in a chair inches from the screen, took assiduous behavioral notes.
The Sun
called him because they wanted to have capsule profiles of the new housemates prepared, and
The Cherwell,
Oxford’s student paper, heard the news and interviewed him at length.

His master’s course was done, and there were only five days between the call and his departure (he was a replacement for a housemate who had to go into rehab). His idea of doing a PhD was gone, of course. As he packed to leave on his last morning, Tom, Anil, Ella, and I sat in his room.

“What put you over the top?” I asked. “It was the video, obviously. I don’t know why I’m asking.”

“It was the push-ups!” he said. “There’s a gym in the
Big Brother
house.”

“A gym,” muttered Tom, whose indignation was running high.

“Nobody in the cast they chose would have used it, and they wanted to”—he frowned, trying to quote verbatim—“they wanted to make sure every part of the house was also part of the show.”

“What do people from the show do afterward, usually?” asked Ella.

“Aside from astrophysics and peacekeeping missions,” Tom said.

“Depends,” he said. “Some of them don’t do anything. Some do local appearances in pubs and bars and that. Some of them do big stuff, of course. Who could forget Chantelle and Preston?”

The unironic delivery of these last words was too much for Tom, who stood up and began to pace the room.

“What do you want to do?” Ella asked.

“I’d do appearances, I guess,” he said. “Five hundred quid and unlimited drinks, sleep with a bird, just for showing up in Rotherham? Yes, please, money for old rope.”

Anil was getting agitated. “But Timmo,” he said, “certainly you’ll be coming back soon? To Oxford?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Please come back,” said Anil. “You have friends here.”

“Yeah, don’t get too famous,” said Ella.

“I won’t be back if everything goes well.”

Anil looked despondent. “Really?”

“Forget about Timmo, Anil,” I said. “Ella, start doing push-ups.”

Timmo was the second person voted out of the house, as you’ll know if you followed
Big Brother.
(Also, may God have mercy on your soul.) Then he was recalled by fan vote and went on to finish third. For a few weeks he was famous, and nowadays he has his own radio program and hosts a
Big Brother
talk show on TV, both with a zany, pattering guy from the previous season of the show named Chicken, who uses Timmo as a straight man. I have to say, Timmo’s good at it. Chicken calls Timmo “Professor” because Timmo went to Oxford—and yet, as Chicken points out very often, never says anything smart.