by Rachel Cohn
To uncoil was not an option. What if El Virus chose her “sleep” time to strike? Her laptop and phone needed to be locked, loaded, and ready.
Very was not unaware that she could have her choice of guys (or girls, if the moment, or the right Ani DiFranco song, called). She certainly didn’t lack for time spent taking advantage of her own appeal. A whole university, a whole city, of crushes—Very was fond of every last one of them. But they were playthings.
The One Not Seen owned her heart. If only he’d come a-callin’ again.
She’d “met” El Virus in an online poker room that had quickly turned into a marathon IM session during her first term at Columbia, when she was still in the adapting-to-a-roommate phase of the freshman transition. The roommate part wasn’t hard; Very had shared a van or a tent or a motel room or, some years, an actual bedroom with her mother for most of her life, so sharing a small space wasn’t a problem. Lavinia’s snores versus Very’s night-crawling body clock was the real challenge. Wide awake while Lavinia snored, Very tapped away on her laptop from her side of their dorm room, entwined with her online soul-mate. Everything she’d ever tell nobody, she told him.
What Very knew about El Virus, the reliable facts: nothing. What she liked about him, anyway: He made her laugh. He pined for her without the benefit of ever having feasted on her red curl-tresses or the voluptuous breasts and hips that sent the boys into trance states when seated near Very—and her boob-spillage blouses—during lecture courses. The thought that Very and El Virus’s in-person chemistry might not match their electronic chemistry was of course considered—and discarded. Very and El Virus had promised: When the time was right, they would meet. They would not force it. She had college—she hadn’t lied about that fact. (Lied about being a spirited farm girl from Nebraska? Maybe.) Their fated meeting would happen when it happened. He had “issues” to work out first. Who didn’t, buddy?
So why the sudden hush? El Virus had been her secret man, a loud girl’s silent comfort. She might not have been faithful to him in body, but in her heart, she was all his.
Whatever happened to our love?
I wish I understood….
S.O.S., El Virus. Come back, Very willed her laptop as she finally started to drift into sleep. I don’t need just anybody. I need YOU.
The person she electronically received instead was her elderly great-aunt, whose voice announced itself through Very’s cell phone earpiece, inside Very’s ABBA-trance: “So. You’re nineteen today.” The voice might well have sung Happy fucking birthday to you, you silly, silly niece, for all the enthusiasm Aunt Esther’s voice conjured.
“Yessiree,” Very answered. “Nineteen.” She moved the laptop from her stomach up to her chest so she could play online Chinese checkers with a stranger somewhere in the universe during the birthday call with her only known relative.
Sure, today Veronica turned nineteen, but it was an occasion Very LeFreak found laughable rather than exciting. How could she only be nineteen? Very felt ninety, practically as old as Aunt Esther, for all the lifetimes she felt she’d already experienced. Mostly in Manhattan, but also in Baja, on Haight Street, in Goa, in Seattle—Cat and she had lived in all these places, depending on the climate that time of the year, or depending on that year’s Cat-man. So much living already—it was why Very had to keep on moving, wherever the whim should lead her. Get it all in now.
“Did you receive the sweater?” Aunt Esther asked in a tone implying irritation that the five-day turnaround time on a thank-you note she expected from Very for the birthday sweater had not been met.
“I received the sweater,” Very mumbled. Since Aunt Esther didn’t seem to have the words “Happy birthday” in the repertoire of her birthday-phone-call etiquette, Very decided she’d save the words “thank you” for the note to Aunt E. that she’d have Lavinia scribble and mail on her behalf tomorrow. It was like her aunt made the sweaters just to receive the thank-you notes.
Aunt Esther was a retired, widowed schoolteacher who passed her days watching television and knitting sweaters. Very had hated being deposited in her aunt’s home to ride out her teen years after Cat died, but the premium satellite TV hookup and the handmade sweaters had almost made the creaky-old-Connecticut-house-with-a-batty-old-lady experience worthwhile. As she was extremely ancient, nearsighted, and color-blind, with hands that often shook, Aunt Esther’s sweaters looked like they’d been created by a geriatric stylist tripping on acid. Sewn together with psychedelic knit patterns that were sometimes stitched with random pieces of fabric—often from Goodwill military shirts or items once worn by the son Aunt Esther had buried many sad wars ago—the sweaters were lopsided, often patch-worked together with yarn rather than thread (easier to see), with arms typically made from two completely different patterns. Each sweater had a label—attached to the back of it by glue gun—that proclaimed, in shaky ballpoint handwriting: This sweater has been knit for you by ESTHER. As fashion, the sweaters fell somewhere between butt-ugly and absolutely brilliant. Very adored them. One day, when she had the time, she’d try to sell the product line to Bergdorf or Bendel.
“Should I expect to see you soon, dear?” Aunt Esther asked.
Why? Very thought. Very was an orphan. She didn’t owe visits to anyone, not even to her only known relative. She and Aunt Esther had been victims of circumstance.
So when you’re near me, darling can’t you hear me?
Very hit the Stop button on ABBA and let herself lose at online checkers so she could give full attention to her aunt on the phone—and eavesdrop on the conversation taking place outside her dorm-room door. Very heard Lavinia’s voice assuring their resident advisor that Very was sick in bed and no, now wouldn’t be a good time for Very to discuss the keg (empty, but still) that had been found in an underage student’s dorm room down the hall after Very’s birthday party last night.
“Should I expect you for Passover dinner later this week, dear?” Aunt Esther asked.
Very considered the question. Maybe a little time-out was in order. A breather from school and parties, from El Virus–pining, from Bryan-dodging. And, bonus: Aunt Esther made truly great soup, and cookies. And further, admittedly, the lady was pretty decent company to watch TV with, in no small part due to her 50-inch plasma TV, best use of a tax refund ever. That TV had consistently proven itself Very’s most qualified nonhuman babysitter during her high school years, soothingly keeping Very company at a low surround-sound hum so she could focus on her schoolwork. But that had been back in Very’s youth, when she used to focus on silly things like schoolwork.
Yes. Very would take haven in New Haven—a brilliant plan. And a religious excursion could let her beg off the talk with the RA for at least a few more days. Their last talk had been the “Final Warning” one to Very. The next talk’s edict would be … Never mind, it just wouldn’t happen.
“Sure,” Very told her aunt. “I’ll come. But I can never remember how this Passover thing works. I don’t have to fast or anything, right?”
As if the shock of losing her independent life with her mother wasn’t enough, there had been Very’s deliverance upon Aunt Esther’s doorstep in New Haven after Cat’s death, seeing the mezuzah inserted outside Aunt Esther’s front door, and only then realizing … We’re Jewish?!
CHAPTER 3
There’s Got to Be a Morning After
(Your Birthday/Your Mistakes)
If she was Jewish(ish), Very might have had a bat mitzvah when she turned thirteen. Instead, she and Cat had been living in a remote beach-resort town on the Arabian Sea in India, where her mother was “homeschooling” her via the Internet (basically, Wikipediaing the Important Facts from the History of the World, and ordering appropriate-level math textbooks from Amazon) and where there probably weren’t other Judaic tribe members available to celebrate Very’s passage into womanhood. Not that there had been much cause for celebration at the time. Very had prematurely ushered herself into womanhood just prior to her thirteenth birthday, wh
ich had elicited no proud moments of maternal joy from Cat.
So later, at the age of nineteen, Very asked one of these tribe members—Ruth Goldberg, who walked into the study lounge on their dorm floor at ten in the morning on the day after Very’s birthday—what the experience had been like. “Hey, Ruth. Was your bat mitzvah, like, the best day ever in your life?”
Ruth observed Very lying on the lounge sofa with a blanket over her body, a laptop visibly tucked under it. “Did you sleep in here last night, Very?”
“Kinda.”
“Why? Did you throw a loud party, so Jennifer kicked you out?”
“Hardly!” In fact, Very had spent the night in the study lounge out of respect for Lavinia, who’d had trouble falling asleep while sleepless Very had been typing too aggressively on her laptop. Also, Lavinia often giggled in her sleep, along with snoring loudly, and since it was too tempting to wake her to say What’s so funny and am I involved? Very had decided to be a good roommate and give Lavinia some peace. Somebody ought to get a decent night’s sleep. Very said, “So this bat mitzvah thing. Was it great?”
Ruth Goldberg said, “The memorization part was hard. The party after was pretty great, though, and having all my family there from all over was really special. The only bad part was when my cousin Jonathan decided to try to get my best girlfriend alone in a supply closet at the temple during my service, and her very loud shriek of ‘Ewww!’ was heard by everybody there, including my great-grandma with the hearing aid.”
“But … did you feel closer to God?”
“Who?”
“G-o-d.”
“Oh yeah, Him. Sure, I guess. I also felt closer to getting the really cute dress I’d been eyeing at Bloomingdale’s because of all the gift cards I received.”
“Thank you, Ruth. You’ve been so helpful.”
“If you really want to know about the experience, why not send out a meme? Get a broader perspective.”
“Exactly!” Very said. She reached for her laptop, which had been resting on her stomach while she’d been resting her eyes, and typed her query into The Grid: “My Jewish sisters and brothers. Please, tell me your tales of mitzvah-ing circa your thirteenth year.” Very closed the laptop, covered it with the blanket, and moved her sleep mask down from her forehead to cover her eyes. She hoped to get a few moments of shut-eye before returning to the laptop to read the sure-to-have-accumulated responses that would fill the gap in her Judaic knowledge, and do so in a warm, anecdotal way rather than through some sterile textbook accounting of the details.
“Very,” Ruth said.
“Hmm?”
“Are you really trying to sleep in here? This is a study lounge. I came in here to study. Other people will come in here to study.”
Very’s hand gave Ruth the thumbs-up. “Okay by me.”
Ruth Goldberg said, “It’s hard to talk in here if you’re trying to sleep. A friend was going to meet me in here to review for a Biology quiz.”
“You won’t bother me,” Very chirped, completely unaware that it was she who’d be bothering Ruth, and not the other way around. “Thanks, though!”
Amanda Yamaguchi arrived in the study lounge next. “Very! I’d recognize that hair even with the sleep mask over your eyes. Sorry I missed your b-day party over the weekend. Is there going to be a makeup party?”
“Possibly a Thursday party this week,” Very said. “Lavinia is doing some research study for her Psychology class—you know, one of those deals where participants get, like, five dollars to fill out a survey about their masturbation habits or something. But it’s surprisingly hard to get people to show up for these things even when they’ve signed up in advance, so I might throw a party for anyone who does it, and then everyone can pool their five bucks, and one person—say, the best karaoke-er of the night—will win the loot. Like a lottery, but with beer. I haven’t quite worked out the details, but check The Grid. I’ll post there as soon as it’s finalized.”
“Cool, I’ll be there!” Amanda said. “And can I borrow your Lit Hum notes from last week?”
“You can, but they probably won’t make sense, since I zoned out during class and ended up just drawing slightly porno cartoons about Aristotle and Plato.”
“Oh.”
Very reached into her pocket for her credit card. She held it out for Amanda. “But if you’ll run over to Tom’s Restaurant and pick me up an order of eggs and home fries, your breakfast is on me.”
Amanda took the card from Very. “I’m there! Well-done or over easy?”
“Over easy, ‘course.”
“Meet you back here in twenty.”
“Awesome. And if you can find someone with decent Lit Hum notes from last week who’ll loan them to us, even better.”
A male voice Very knew all too well responded, “You can borrow my notes.”
Very rolled over onto her side so her backside was facing the latest person to arrive in the study lounge. “That’s okay, Bryan. But thanks anyway.”
What, was he trying to be nice since he hadn’t bothered to give her a birthday present?
The previous Halloween, Very had gone all out for Bryan’s birthday. She and Lavinia had thrown a Halloween-night birthday party for Bryan and his roommate, Jean-Wayne, who lived one floor below their own dorm room. It was the party after which Very and Bryan had stayed up all night creating The Grid, the online social hub that had solidified their friendship, and their campus celebrity.
Neither Bryan’s nor Jean-Wayne’s birthday fell on Halloween. In fact, their birthdays weren’t even close. Bryan’s was in early September, Jean-Wayne’s in late November, but Halloween fell in between and therefore was excuse enough for a party.
At the beginning of their first semester, the two sets of roommates—Very and Lavinia, Bryan and Jean-Wayne—had evolved into a tight circle at Columbia’s John Jay Residence Hall, an all-freshman dorm made up mostly of single rooms, with a few doubles scattered among the various floors. Very and Lavinia lived in room 745, Bryan and Jean-Wayne in room 645. Conveniently, both rooms were situated at a most choice social location—next to the kitchen lounge, home to the all-important microwave allowed on each floor. (Some people harbored private microwaves illegally in their rooms, but most students just used the permitted one in the kitchen.) Soon after freshman orientation, Very and Lavinia had learned a most important lesson in luring cute boys—or anybody, for that matter—to their room for socializing: No one could resist the smell of microwaved Chewy Chips Ahoy! cookies. They tasted better than homemade Toll House cookies straight out of the oven, required way less work, and tasted better still when topped off with the spliff that the boys one floor down sometimes procured somewhere in the stairwell—where the dorm’s petty dealer dealt—on their jaunts to follow the trail of the upstairs girls’ yummy freshly baked chocolate chip cookie smell. (Lavinia abstained from the weed but was always willing to pop the cookies back into the ‘wave for an extra twenty seconds upon the burnouts’ request. A real sport.)
Not that it was hard to make friends in Jay, cookies or no cookies. Their particular residence hall was known as one of the more social dorms on campus, where students typically left their doors open for passersby to drop in at any whim to hang out or—doors sometimes closed and sometimes not—make out. Also, the building was home to John Jay Dining Hall, which due to its central location on campus could always be counted on as a prime meeting-and-greeting place, convenient as well since one could find an assortment of great breakfast cereals available for consumption at any time of the day or night. Cap’n Crunch = Primary Food Group, in Very’s optimal food pyramid.
Very and Lavinia, soon after moving in and discovering they weren’t of the I-hate-the-very-sight-of-you roommate variety, had organized the furniture in their room to maximize its socializing potential. They crammed their beds side by side in the far corner of the room to leave open the rest of the space for cheap throw pillows and beanbags tossed on the floor for visitors. Very kept the Chewy Chips
Ahoy! cookies in stock at all times, despite Lavinia’s responsible concern that SnackWell’s was a healthier option (true—but also not so tasty), and Very kept her laptop’s tunes set to Shuffle for listeners to enjoy the manic mixes that grooved from soul to punk to funk to space opera to honky-tonk twang. Lavinia took care of keeping the room stocked with napkins and drinks for guests, and Clorox wipes for spills, to keep their room as tidy as it could possibly be for a near way station.
The Halloween party the girls had thrown for the boys was a surprise party, though not in the sense of people jumping out from behind closet doors and from underneath beds to yell “Surprise!” Their dorm room was too small for such surprising, although Very, who often fantasized about transmogrifying herself into a feral jungle cat who lunged in surprise attack on her prey and then smothered her victims in tender, lickful kisses as compensation for peeling off parts of their flesh, wouldn’t have minded such a dramatic surprise-party option for greeting Bryan and Jean-Wayne when they arrived at their b-day extravaganza.
Instead, the boys’ surprise had been the roommate clique’s first flash mob, of sorts.
Very had organized the campaign online to include many of the residents at Jay. The plan was that at exactly 11 p.m. on the night of the party, participants should return to their rooms, and those who had the forbidden microwaves should turn them on, and those who didn’t should turn on their highest-voltage electrical appliances—hair dryers, TVs, etc. Just before 11 p.m., Lavinia went downstairs to do her part, while Very led Bryan and Jean-Wayne to the window of her room, which overlooked West 114th Street. Then, at exactly 11 p.m., the lights in the dorm room—no, in the whole building—flickered off and on, then went off entirely, as did all the other appliances in the building. Total building power outage.