A fitful, insomniac night of nonsleep followed. Groggy the next day, I read the Times, pretending it was a Sunday like all those in my life that had preceded it. I wanted to call Izzy, but it was still too early. She may have liked me, but I couldn’t risk startling her at eleven the morning after we last saw each other. Waiting, however wrenching, would prove, in some small but significant way, that I hadn’t completely lost my mind. Yet.
Late that night, my cell began buzzing. Before I checked the display, I hoped, illogically, that it was Izzy. Instead, it was her diametrical opposite, Talia. This time I’d be the one to not answer the phone.
2
It had been completely quiet for nearly an hour when the trill clanged in the next morning. I was on campus, on duty—office hours—and thus required by English department law to pick up. It could have been one of my students. Though undergraduates’ preferred method of communication was the grammatically indifferent e-mail, sometimes they rang up to relay elaborate excuses about the car trouble or roommate’s food poisoning that had forced them to skip a previous hour’s lecture. The incidence of trial depositions and relatives’ sudden deaths and funerals that caused them to be late for or absent from class was particularly high when a paper was due. I hefted the receiver. Talia. She caught me.
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“Are you pissed about me not calling you back last weekend? My phone died at the Riv.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Seeing Rilo Kiley.”
“Was he in my 212? The one with the orthopedic shoes who smelled like maple syrup?” She didn’t answer. “The plagiarist who always agreed with you?”
“I was at a show. Indie rock, Hapworth.”
“Oh, right. You went by yourself?”
“I went with someone. A boy.”
“Who? Which boy?”
“No one you know. So it was late when I saw your text.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said. It really wasn’t anymore. “And, for the record, it was, like, three weekends ago.”
“Can we have dinner tonight?” she asked.
“Where?”
“Marché.”
“I’m not dressed for it.”
“Come on, Hapworth. It won’t be too expensive. There’s a three-course prix fixe on Mondays.”
I was silent, still thinking about my clothes.
“Okay, fine, dude, I’ll pay,” she said. “By the way, what are you wearing?”
I pulled my sweater off. The blue button-down looked as though I’d been wearing it since Friday, and sleeping in it just as long, which were both true. I was only in front of students three times a week this semester, which meant I could often delay laundry, but since I was only teaching one class instead of three, there was considerably less money in the dry-cleaning budget. Things would be better in the spring—I thought—but for now I had to ration.
“My shirt has seen better days,” I said. “If I tuck it in, it should be okay.”
She laughed. “We really are going to have to work on you, aren’t we? What would you do without me?”
“Probably pretty much what I always do without you.”
When Berkal came back from his 161 section, he dropped a pile of index cards likely belonging to one of his research-paper-writing Comp Two students. He unbuttoned his blazer before he bent down to pick the cards up. I quickly seized upon an opportunity I wasn’t expecting to find.
“Hey, Berkal,” I said. “How was class?”
“It’s Berquelle,” he returned.
“Whatever,” I said. “I need a favor.”
“I’m so glad I’m not teaching this shit next semester,” he grumbled, dusting the cards.
“Hey, listen, can I borrow your blazer?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your blazer. Your jacket.”
Berkal bent his arms and showed off the corduroy elbow patches in lieu of responding.
“I need it.”
“For what?”
“To wear. To see . . . someone.”
“Be more specific or else no costume.”
Though it peeved me to have to share any of the details of my life with a colleague as undeserving as Berquelle, I always ended up telling him everything. He wasn’t even truly a colleague. He was a grad student with a teaching assistantship. In keeping with the rest of his GPTI cohort from the PhD program, at his classroom podiums and here in our office, he impersonated a professor, in the hopes of getting the routine down such that he could someday work an actual career out of it. When, with two shiny master’s degrees still sanguine in my sock drawer, I was an optimistic adjunct (before I had a chance to discover that was an oxymoronic state), I’d done the same thing. “I have to break up with Talia,” I said.
“Yes,” Berkal said. “It’s been, what, a couple of months?” He grinned tauntingly. “She might want you to move in with her.”
I let this go. “We haven’t been exclusive. Anyway, I’m done with it. I met someone else the other night.”
He sat on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms. “Craigslist?”
“No,” I said stiffly. “As a matter of fact, the Internet had nothing to do with it. Maybe it had a little to do with it. I was at a wine tasting.”
“How did you end up there?”
“Do you know Isabelle Conway?”
Berkal threw his head back. “The sexy sommelier from TV? No, not personally.”
“I had a date with her.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Fine, don’t believe me. So I can have it?”
The blazer, once on me, hugged my chest and stomach tightly. The sleeves hung down and covered my extended hands a little more than they were supposed to.
Berkal sized me up after I sought his opinion. “You’re a college professor. Everyone expects you to be unshaven and disheveled. It’s part of the charm.”
“Adjunct professor. Adjunct lecturer, if you want to get technical.”
“When are you supposed to see her?”
“Seven.”
“You have plenty of time.”
“Not really. I have to go shopping first.”
“For what? I thought you said she was on the Pill.”
“A bouquet. What do you think? Roses? Carnations? I can’t show up empty-handed.”
Berkal rubbed the chin-end of his goatee. “You’re planning to break up with this girl, and you’re contemplating a botanical hand prop?”
“I’m not a complete asshole, Berkal. I just—”
He cackled. “You just what?”
“You know what I was thinking, when I was driving Izzy home?” I swirled my coffee cup, as though a wineglass.
“Izzy, as in Isabelle Conway, as in the sommelier from TV you had an imaginary date with?”
“I need this to work because . . . because I need my adulthood to begin. Look at me. I’m thirty-seven years old. I don’t have job security. I’m living in a city I didn’t grow up in. I’m not even committed to a real apartment lease. Don’t you think it’s time I was in a real relationship with someone with whom I could actually see spending the rest of my life?”
Berkal shrugged. “Good luck breaking the news to Talia.”
“She’s twenty, Berkal. She’ll understand.”
“She’s twenty, Hapworth,” he mocked. “Precisely why she won’t understand.”
A few hours later, and only about a mile from campus, I was hunched over a corner of the long bar at Marché. As West Loop architects in North Face jackets and entrenched lawyers strode from their loft offices with commuter fervor on the other side of the windows, I tried to select a glass of wine. The list presented a thicket of mysterious amalgamated grape variety choices Izzy hadn’t talked about the other night. Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon-Muscadell
e, Marsanne-Viognier, Malbec-Tempranillo—which one was I supposed to choose? I ended up with a Belvedere on the rocks. (Grey Goose, Izzy had alerted me the other night, was more appropriate for car dealers.)
Talia entered the restaurant, in a long, ruffled gossamer dress. Instinctively, I hid in my jacket pocket the green plastic swizzle stick I’d been oaring through the vodka. She made her way past the host stand and to the bar. Tension circumscribed her round, pale face and the glossy-lipped smile with which she acknowledged my wave. Her hair was down, seeming to intensify the patches of blonde, rose, pomegranate, and Northern Spy apple I’d come to know over the summer as more than simply the mottled auburn I appraised from an appropriate distance across the classroom during the spring term. The dense colors of her highlights became further magnified in the sharp light that descended from the ceiling and spotlighted the bar. Her arrival caused me to feel a surge of self-consciousness from which I wasn’t certain I’d recover. While she officially was no longer an undergraduate, and I no longer her creative writing teacher, or anyone’s, I was still a little frightened when we were in such close proximity. Even though we’d slept together, her eyes could still pierce mine with a rather ferocious and almost blinding blue ice.
“Can I get you something?” I asked. I turned to try to signal the bartender so I’d have to stop following the plunge of Talia’s neckline to abundant breasts.
“Let’s just go sit down.”
An intricate architectural infrastructure of columns that had been gessoed with decades-faded Le Monde front pages ensconced our table. I took the seat facing elegantly rusted shelves of baubles that filled an entire juxtaposing southern wall. Across from me, Talia cautiously—yet appreciatively—accepted the orchids I’d had sent over ahead of us. She peered into a small vent at the top of the brown paper and cellophane. “Wow,” she said flatly, though her face bore the first immoderate smile of the evening, “are you asking me to prom?” After she put them aside, we studied our menus for an overly long time. Periodically I lifted mine up, screening out my face. I felt like I was sinking, that my store of resolve was dwindling by way of a small leak. My power to steer this breakup in an auspicious direction seemed to spill out through an invisible hole in my pilling khakis. I couldn’t possibly have still had feelings for her, could I? I needed another drink.
“Do you want a cocktail?” I blurted. “Or some wine?” I had hoped she’d want to order a bottle, so I could show off a little of what I’d recently learned. Then I recalled the impenetrability of the list I wrestled at the bar. Perversely, I almost wished Izzy were here to make a recommendation that would pair well with our plats principaux.
Talia looked at her empty glass. “I don’t really want any wine. I kind of have something I should tell you.”
“I have something to tell you, too.”
But before either of us could start, our waitress was back. Talia ended up asking for a dirty gin martini with the olive juice on the side. I’d been chewing my ice and was grateful for the opportunity to order more vodka. The waitress peered in the direction of the flowers and asked, “Is tonight a special occasion?”
“Um,” I began. “We’re, I—”
“I’m moving to Iowa,” Talia said. “For grad school.”
I almost choked on the cube in my mouth. “You got in?”
“Congratulations,” the waitress said.
I was so relieved, but probably looked utterly shocked.
“To you,” I toasted Talia when we lunged our glasses.
“To your glowing letter of recommendation.”
We ate with little fanfare. She didn’t seem particularly taken with any of the courses we had. The vinaigrette on her pear, walnut, endive, and soy Gorgonzola salad was too salty. The dairy-free butter substitute she put on a swatch of baguette tasted tangy, slightly spoiled. Talia declined a fork of my Caesar, saying, “Dude, there’s anchovy in that.” I didn’t solicit her ratatouille nor offer any of the asparagus or mushrooms I’d been careful to keep from coming into contact with my salmon.
We were nearing the end of the meal when I said, “I’m really glad, you know, that”—I extended my hand, as risky a gesture as it was, across the table—“we’re here. You’re going to Iowa next fall, and that’s—that’s really outstanding. The fiction program is nearly impossible to get into.”
As I spoke, the scenes of the afternoon our harrowing flirtation materialized were indelible in my mind. It began when she’d picked me up in a salt-dusted red Volkswagen Jetta with out-of-state plates. The sedan’s plush interior smelled like Crayolas. She brought us to a bagel place in a strip mall on the edge of campus. We were there to discuss ideas for her next story, if anyone happened to ask. She’d taken my hand when we left. I still could feel how my fingers felt laced between hers. Now she put her hand on top of mine and patted firmly, conclusively.
“Spring semester,” she said. “I’m starting early to take an instruction practicum. I’m moving now. I might as well, right?”
I nodded, the corners of my mouth struggling not to ascend.
“I guess we’ll always have University Hall.”
My cocktail was empty again, so I lifted my water glass. “To Iowa. You’d better write your ass off.”
“I could say the same to you.”
I smirked. “I’m not a writer. That’s ancient history.”
“You’re not an artifact,” she said, and unfixed herself from her chair.
While she was off in the bathroom, I sent the waitress for the check. The bill was astronomical—almost half a week’s salary—and we hadn’t even gotten wine. I scratched in a hyperbolic tip, just in case Talia happened to open up the leather presenter and inspect the figures. She returned and saw the completed credit card receipt peering out from the presenter. “Dude.” She brought a hand to her little jaw. “You didn’t have to do that.” I shrugged. “What was it you wanted to tell me before?”
“Oh, just that I wanted to pick up dinner,” I said, looking up at her. I was aware of Talia’s tense shifting from present to past as I spoke. Really, it had occurred long before now. “It’s getting late. You probably should get those in some water.”
She reached for the bundle of orchids, which had been languishing in the empty seat on her other side. “Hapworth,” she said, “I’ve had a really good time.”
“Me, too,” I said.
We stood outside, in front of the revolving door, waiting for a taxi. Talia handed me the cumbersome parcel to hold while she took a plastic Urban Outfitters child’s wallet from her bag. She began wrenching free a credit card. Her averted eyes allowed me a puerile chance to check her out. In doing so, I was again put in mind of the occasion of our unofficial first date at the bagel place. The counter barista had been so transfixed by the sight of her chest her open coat and low-cut top had afforded that he delivered Talia her change and the cash she’d paid him for her coffee with a tremulous hand. When she said to the lanky kid with Brillo-pad hair who reminded me a lot of myself at that age, “Um, dude, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to pay you?” it only made things more awkward. I recalled how rapidly the patches of freezer-burnt skin on the kid’s face reddened, in the time he reached to recollect the pair of dollar bills she held out for him. Everything had worked out according to plan—better than according to plan, since I hadn’t really arrived with a plan. I knew I’d finally found the right time to call Izzy. But standing there I also found the familiar and unfamiliar abundance of Talia’s physicality eliciting a shade of incapacitation similar to that of the nerdy barista’s on my own cheeks now.
It was inordinately frustrating that despite how I felt about Izzy, Talia still had some kind of hold on me. Things with me and the host of the city’s most watched cable-access television show couldn’t have been more promising in juxtaposition with this sexual perversity in Chicago. How had I gotten so attached to a twenty-year-old vegan with dy
ed hair, a music blog, Facebook page, and a Brazilian wax? During the semester, both because of how I felt and of the inevitable institutional repercussions for feeling, I was wary of even venturing close enough to hand back assignments, but when she began to come on to me, I didn’t resist. I couldn’t. She wore ethereally iridescent purple and blue thongs. She sprayed thrift-store sweaters with anachronistic Exclamation perfume. She had a Mac. She read Pynchon and kept T. S. Eliot and Nabokov on her bedside table in off-campus student housing. During our illicit months together, we drank wine (the French provenances she always pronounced unflinchingly), made out in my Mustang, in her Jetta, ate at pancake houses, fucked breathlessly and without condoms. Once, when I was sick, she bought and prepared me instant asparagus risotto—the outcome of which was far more successful than when she tried to cook without a boxed mix—and hot lemon Theraflu. I could argue about philosophy and summary-to-scene ratios in short stories with the precocious underclassman poised to graduate in just two years, three fewer than the average UIC English major. But our connection, like everything else within the speciously protective confines of academia, was, even then, already finite. At the time, being with Talia was everything I needed, but I didn’t want it anymore. No matter how drunk I ever got, I knew how I operated: I stumbled into entanglements, tumbled from one romance with a girl I’d offhandedly select to the next, haphazardly—I always had—but when I fell in love, I catapulted. I was in love with somebody else. And luckily for me—as far as I could see then, anyway—things with Talia were over for good.
The taxi into which I helped her climb took off and vanished into the night before I’d finished saying good-bye. I was left standing at the curb. I realized that I was still holding the paper-and-plastic-bound bouquet. The orchids, through the vent, looked a little less energetic than they’d been when the clerk first armed me with them. It didn’t matter that Talia had relinquished the gift. With her gone, and out of my life, the flowers had served their purpose. I deposited the bundle into a black-painted sidewalk receptacle.
Unencumbered, and commensurately emboldened, I revolved back into the restaurant. From an inconspicuous corner by the coat check, I dialed Izzy from my cell phone. I made up something preposterous about having just finished a meal with a visiting poet and some of the faculty and not feeling quite ready to make my way to the Blue Line station to begin the four-mile trek home.
Vintage Attraction Page 5