Too Soon for Jeff

by Marilyn Reynolds

  I work at the student union about 15 hours a week. Compared to the 25 or 30 I used to put in at the Fitness Club, this is a cinch. Really, it’s a great schedule. I have a lot more time to be spontaneous, but I don’t always have spontaneous ideas.

  The food in the student dining room is usually good, and I guess it’s healthy if you consider cornbread one of the major food groups. I’ve never eaten so much cornbread in my life as I have the past month, but it’s okay.

  I miss garbageburgers, Mexican food and Thai food. Brooker Springs’ contribution to exotic food is a ham­burger place that has chop suey on the menu. Well, if I get desperate for a taste of Thailand I can probably drive to Dallas. A big city like Dallas must have everything.

  Every evening after dinner I walk down by the lake. Kevin and Jenny Sue say I’m too much of a loner, but I’ve got a lot to think about. The wind in the pine trees and the gentle rippling of the water is soothing to me. I guess that having lived in a giant, sprawling city all my life, in the midst of smog and concrete, makes me appreciate being in a natural setting. At home we always had to drive to nature. Here it’s like we’re just in the middle of it.

  There’s a giant oak tree not far from the lake. It must be at least as old as the college. It’s huge. I like to douse myself with mosquito repellent and sit under the tree, my back resting against the trunk. That’s where I write letters home, when I write them.

  Thursday evening I’m standing at the edge of the lake, trying to skip stones, when I hear a movement behind me. I jump. It’s Nicole, from debate.

  “Oops. I didn’t mean to scare you,” she laughs.

  I laugh, too. “I was concentrating on my stone skipping technique and didn’t know anyone else was around.”

  “Want company?”

  “Sure.”

  She picks up a stone and throws it—five skips. An­other—four skips.

  “The most I can get is two,” I say. “And that’s about every eighth throw.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice,” she laughs.

  I like her laugh. It’s deep and free sounding. We stand a few feet apart, throwing stones into the water, talking. She tells me a little about life in Tyler, Texas, where she grew up, and I tell her some about life in Hamilton Heights. Soon our talk turns to debate, since that’s practically all we have in common.

  “I did Policy Debate in high school,” she tells me.

  “Me, too.”

  “I don’t want to start that here and get stuck with just any old partner.”

  “Me, either,” I admit.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” she says.

  “I’ve been thinking about you . . . So that settles it then,” I say.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure,” I laugh.

  “Tell me more about life in California.”

  “Like what?”

  “Tell me the glamorous parts.”

  Now I really laugh.

  “It is glamorous!” she says. “I watch the Academy Awards every year, and then the party at Spago. You can’t tell me it’s not glamorous.”

  ‘You know that movie, Grand Canyon?”

  “No.”

  “Well you should watch it. It says a lot about life in California.”

  “If it’s about the Grand Canyon what’s that got to do with California?”

  ‘You just have to see it.”

  “So show me.”

  “I will,” I say.

  Nicole and I spend much of the weekend in the library, gathering facts and statistics for Policy Debate. We work well together. She doesn’t have that photographic memory thing like Jeremy does, but she’s much better organized and that makes up for it.

  Monday we stop by Slokum’s office and ask him to sign us up as a team for the next tournament.

  “Good, you’ll do well together,” he says. And that’s it. When we teamed up with Rogers, he’d ask all kinds of questions about how we were gathering information, who would be in what role as a partner, how we were organizing statistics. With Slokum we’re totally on our own.

  I like Nicole. She’s as easy to talk and laugh with as my old friend, Stacy, but she’s more than that. I watch for her on campus now, and when I see her, my heart beats faster.

  Our first tournament as a team is in Dallas. We don’t make it into the Finals, but we come close. It’s a good beginning.

  “Come on,” I say. “We’re in Big D. Let’s go find a great Thai food restaurant.”

  “What’s that?” she says.

  “You know, like they eat in Thailand—mint and chili chicken, spicy peanut sauce, red curry rice.”

  She gives me a blank look.

  “I’m starving for spicy,” I tell her.

  “I know a great Mexican food place,” she says. “My sister lives here and sometimes, when I visit, we go to this great place called Stevie’s.”

  “Stevie’s?”

  “All I can say is it’s got great food.”

  “Okay. Mexican sounds good, too.”

  We get in my car and start driving around.

  “We’re close. I know we’re close,” she keeps saying. “Turn left!”

  I cut across lanes to the sound of blaring horns and turn left, onto a dead-end street.

  “Oh, this must be Stevie’s,” I say, pointing to the iron gate which blocks the entrance to a junkyard.

  “Calm down, calm down,” she says. “Now I know exactly where we are.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “No, really. Go back up this street.”

  I follow her directions and then, after eight or nine circuitous blocks, she tells me to stop.

  “But Nicole, there’s nothing here but apartments. You promised me Mexican food,” I say.

  “This is where my sister lives. She’ll tell me how to get there. Come on up and say hi,” she says.

  I’m not wild about this side trip to meet Nicole’s sister, but I’m stuck now. We walk up the steps and see mail and newspapers piled up on the porch. At first Nicole looks puzzled, then remembers that her sister is in the Bahamas on a ten-day cruise she won for selling the most cars at the dealership where she works.

  “Your sister’s a car salesman?”

  “Yeah, and my brother’s a decorator. So what?”

  “So nothing,” I laugh. “Don’t get all paranoid on me. I was just asking.”

  She laughs, too. “My dad always makes such a big deal of it, like couldn’t they just switch jobs or something—I guess I get kind of protective of them.”

  Nicole fumbles around under a potted plant, pulls out a key and opens the door. She gathers up the newspapers and mail and walks inside.

  “Come on in,” she says, putting the papers on the kitchen counter and writing a note to her sister:

  “Dear Katie—My debate partner and I stopped by to get directions to Stevie’s. I forgot you were off on a luxury liner. Hope you’re having a great time! Love you—Nick

  “Great apartment,” I say. The living room has high ceilings and huge front windows that give a view of the Dallas skyline. Bright colored dramatic paintings of things I can’t identify hang on the other two walls.

  “State of the art sound system, too,” Nicole says, opening double doors which conceal a complete stereo system and a giant TV screen.

  I check out the titles on some of the hundreds of compact disks which are neatly shelved next to the stereo unit.

  “Nice CD collection,” I say.

  “I’m sure Katie would be happy to know you approve,” Nicole laughs.

  It turns out that Nicole can figure out how to get to Stevie’s now that she’s in her sister’s familiar neighborhood. We pig out. It’s a different kind of Mexican food than I’m used to in California. I guess it’s what they call Tex-Mex. But it’s good.

  All along our plan has been to go back to B.U. after dinner.

  “I’m having such a good time, I don’t want to go back to school yet, do you?” I ask Nicol
e.

  “No,” Nicole says. She has deep brown eyes, but some­times they get almost a yellow light in them, and then I think maybe she has some special feelings for me, too.

  “Remember the first day we talked at the lake, and I promised to show you that movie Grand Canyon, so you’d stop bugging me with questions about California?”

  “Bugging you! I wasn’t bugging you, I was trying to draw you out. You seemed like such a lonely guy.”

  “Anyway,” I laugh, trying to sound more casual than I feel, “do you think your sister would mind if we watched that video at her place? I’m sure we could find it in any video store.”

  Nicole looks at me a long time as I nonchalantly move beans from one side of my nearly empty plate to the other. Finally she says, “I’m sure Katie wouldn’t mind, as long as we don’t mess things up.”

  “I promise to be as neat as Mary Poppins,” I say, grinning.

  We leave the restaurant and find a video store about a block away. They have the movie we’re looking for. We buy some microwave popcorn and Cokes for later and head back toward her sister’s apartment. My mind is racing. I don’t think anything is really going to happen. We’ve never even kissed. We lean next to each other and touch shoul­ders sometimes when we’re working in the library. We really are only friends. Still . . .

  “Sometimes I get these monstrous headaches when I watch a movie,” I lie. “I’m going to stop at this drugstore up here and run in for some aspirin.”

  “I’m sure Katie has aspirin,” Nicole says.

  “Yeah, well, I always use a certain kind,” I tell her as I turn into the drugstore parking lot. “Be right back,” I say, jumping from the car and sprinting to the entrance, pray­ing she doesn’t decide she needs something, too, and follow me in. Where are they? Where are they? Finally I spot them and grab a three-pack of condoms, checking to be sure they’ve got the lubricated tip.

  On my way to the cashier I decide I’d better get some aspirin. How stupid that would be! I make my purchases, slip the condom package in my inside jacket pocket and leave the aspirin in the bag. When I get back in the car, Nicole checks the bag.

  “These are just plain old aspirin. I thought you needed a special kind.”

  “No,” I say, thinking fast. “I need the plain old kind but I bet your sister only has specialized aspirin. Besides, I’d hate to take her last two and then have her come home from her vacation, late at night, with a splitting headache, and find no aspirin left in her supply. Maybe she’d have a hangover, or . . .”

  “Okay, okay,” Nicole laughs. “Enough about the damned aspirin.”

  Back at the apartment we put the tape in the VCR and stretch out on the floor, close but not touching, our heads propped against giant pillows, and start the tape.

  “Why is that helicopter always flying around like some­thing out of Vietnam? Is that supposed to be some big symbol of something?”

  “I don’t know. There’s always police helicopters flying around out there. I could hardly sleep the first few nights in the dorms because it was so quiet. No helicopters, no sirens, no gunshots.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “Where you live?”

  ‘Yeah.”

  “God. That’s awful!”

  “Watch the movie,” I say.

  Somewhere about half-way through the movie, when Danny Glover and his new friend, Jane, I think, are falling in love, Nicky moves her head over and rests it on my chest. When the two teenagers are kissing good-bye after camp, I reach up and stroke her hair. It’s soft and fine feeling. I look down at my hand, stroking her hair, and think how blond her hair is, how I like how it looks as I move my fingers through it.

  When the movie is over we lie close, talking for a long time. She tells me there’s no such thing as gangs where she grew up. I tell her about the kid who was shot last year, two blocks from Hamilton High. And about the kid who was caught with a gun on campus. She tells me about how some kids were caught drinking beer in her high school parking lot.

  “Maybe there was a lot going on there that you didn’t know about,” I say.

  “I’d know if there were police helicopters flying over my house when I was trying to sleep, and if some kid was shot near my school. I’m surprised all the good people haven’t left L.A.”

  “One of them did,” I say, gently tipping her head up and kissing her on the lips.

  “Um, I’m glad one of them did,” she murmers, returning my kiss.

  She puts her head back on my shoulder. “Really, why would anyone stay there?”

  “It’s L.A. There’s a lot going on—music, theater, film, sports, skiing, surfing, lots of good colleges. Besides, why should the good people leave and let the bad people take over? Good and bad, it’s not that simple, you know, but I think good people have to hang in there.”

  “I hope this good person hangs in here for a while,” she says, kissing me again. This kiss is longer, more serious. I touch her lips with my tongue and she parts them, slightly. My mind is saying don’t rush things, don’t rush things, but my body is straining toward her, urgently wanting more. I kiss her neck, her throat, she takes my head between her two hands and holds my face in front of hers, inches away, stopping my kisses.

  “What are we doing?” she asks in a whispery voice.

  “Getting better acquainted?”

  “How much better?”

  “Much, much better, I hope.”

  I kiss her again, pulling her close. Head to toe, our bodies touch. I slip my hand under her blouse, feeling her warm softness. “God, I love the feel of your skin,” I say.

  She moves her hand along the inside of my thigh. I think I will burst.

  “Nicole. Oh, God, Nicole.”

  “Wait,” she says. “Wait.”

  She moves quickly into the other room and when she returns she is wearing a robe, open in front. God, she is beautiful. I’ve got my shirt off and my pants unbuttoned. She lies back down beside me, close. I reach for the condom I already took from the package while she was out of the room. When she sees it she says, “Don’t worry with that. I’m on the pill.”

  I kiss her again, caress her body where I know she wants to be caressed. When she whispers, “Come on, come on,” I again reach for the condom. “Don’t you trust me when I say I’m on the pill?” she asks, pulling slightly away.

  “I trust you. But I don’t trust the pill,” I say, pulling her close again.

  “You don’t have some California disease, do you?” she whispers, leaning close against my body, moving her leg over mine.

  “No. You don’t have some Texas disease, do you?” We both laugh, and then we get very serious.

  I awake early in the morning, my arms around Nicole, her head resting on my chest. God, I like feeling close to her, body to body. And not just the body stuff either. I never get tired of her humor, or her conversation. I feel great this morning, until Christy’s words come back to me, telling me I’m not a good lover. Maybe that hurt me more than I cared to think about at the time. Not that I’m trying to be any macho stud or anything, but no guy likes to think he’s a klutz in bed.

  Nicole stirs and I kiss the top of her head. “Good morning,” I say.

  “Mornin’ Sunshine,” she says in her most exaggerated Texas drawl.

  “Nicky . . .” I start. I want to ask her if I was okay in bed, but I can’t figure out how to say it without sounding dumb.

  She wriggles closer to me. “I liked last night,” she says, planting quick kisses on my lips, cheeks, forehead.

  “Really?”

  “Really, for certain, for sure.”

  We lie together for a few moments, under a fluffy down comforter, as sunlight filters through the room’s gauzy curtains.

  “I’ve only done this with one other guy in my whole life,” she says.

  “Want to tell me about it?” I ask.

  “Umm. Not right now I guess.” She moves her lips to mine and we are ve
ry quickly ready to do what we did last night.

  “It’s a good thing I bought a three-pack,” I say, feeling her body close against me.

  “Yeah, Jeffrey Dean,” she laughs. “A boy’s always got to have aspirin on hand.”

  Chapter

  22

  Most couples have their own special song, but with me and Nicole it’s a movie—Grand Canyon. We’ve already watched it twice since the first time in Dallas. I don’t want to say I love her yet, because we’ve only known each other such a short time. But I do love her, whether I’m saying it or not. She makes me smile all over when I see her walking toward me, or when I watch her practicing a debate presentation.

  I don’t exactly know how to tell Nicole about Ethan. Not that I’m ashamed of him, or that we’re making lifetime plans or anything, but we got very close very fast. I don’t go blurting my personal story out the first week I meet people. But then, after that night at her sister’s place, it seemed like maybe I’d been hiding something from her. So I ask to meet her by the lake after dinner. We stand at the same place we stood a few weeks ago, skipping rocks. I’m getting better, but not much.

  “There’s something I want to tell you,” I say.

  Her eyes widen, and she stands very still. “You’re sorry you got involved with me,” she says.

  I pull her toward me. “No. Never . . . There are just some things I want you to know.”

  Then I tell her about Ethan, and Christy, and how I want to be a better dad than HANK40 has been. She’s very quiet through it all, then asks to see pictures of Ethan. We walk to the dorms and I get the album from my top dresser drawer. She sits on the edge of the bed, checking him out. In one of the pictures, Christy is holding Ethan. Nicole looks at Christy for a long time before she turns the page.

  “He looks like you,” she says. “Is he healthy now?”

  “He seems to be,” I say. “The doctor says some things don’t show up at first. Like he could have trouble learning when he gets to school. Or maybe he won’t be very well coordinated—it’s too soon to know about some things.”