We found ourselves across the street from McCarter Theatre, one of the tallest buildings on campus, and decided it would be an awfully good idea to hurl rolls of toilet paper off the roof.
We went into the nearby Wawa and bought enough toilet paper to serve a large family well into the future, and then we crossed the street to the theater. I remember looking up at the fire escape—a ladder leading straight up into the sky—and having second thoughts. I overcame them. We adventurers must push fear aside.
With one arm around a pack of toilet paper and the other locked around the ladder rungs, I started to climb. It was at least ten or twelve stories to the top and slow going. I didn’t look down. Nolan and Evan stood lookout at the base of the ladder and failed miserably, because suddenly a deep voice was shouting at me to come the hell down off that ladder.
I looked down. My friends and a uniformed campus policeman and a few other passersby were all looking up at me from below. Way below. For a moment I froze. Then I dropped the package of toilet paper and began a slow descent.
The moment I was back on firm ground, the police officer shined his flashlight in my face and asked if I was a student.
I told him I was.
“Let me see your student ID,” he said.
He shined his flashlight on it, then on my face again.
I grinned widely.
“This isn’t funny,” he said, “so shut your fucking mouth.”
His manner startled me. University police, called proctors, were extremely well-trained men, gentlemen really, who knocked on dormitory room doors when parties became too loud and reminded us to please keep it down. They carried flashlights, not guns, and weren’t prone to gruffness. What we didn’t know then was that the prior spring a student had fallen nearly to his death while climbing this exact fire escape, while in this same inebriated state. He was still in the hospital, and the family had filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the university. Our small prank therefore loomed large in the eyes of campus police.
We were freshmen, though, and ignorant of any number of things that later would seem like common campus knowledge.
“Sorry,” I said.
“I don’t care about sorry. I care that you coulda been killed, or killed somebody else.”
“With toilet paper?” I asked.
“You throw something off the roof, hit a car that’s going by, car swerves off the road and hits a telephone pole or a student, you’re damn right with toilet paper. Or you fall, hit your head, who do you think takes the blame for that? You? Some spoiled, snot-nosed freshman? No, not hardly.” His voice was raised, and a few other students had started to look on. “Anyway, I’ve seen your ID, and I know you’re underage. And I also know you were all told about academic probation during your orientation.”
Princeton was swallowing up a good deal of my parents’ life savings, and the possibility of jeopardizing my education sobered me right up. Suddenly I felt like a spoiled, snot-nosed freshman. “I wasn’t . . .” But I didn’t know what to say. How do you explain that you’re so happy to have actually found a few friends in a place so foreign from the place you used to call home, and that to celebrate your good fortune you wanted to rocket rolls of toilet paper from the town’s highest building into the starry autumn sky? “The thing is . . .”
“Please.” Evan had stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “Will wasn’t ever planning to climb all the way up or throw toilet paper off the roof.”
The officer had shut off the flashlight and put it back in its holster. Now he crossed his arms. “He wasn’t, huh?”
“No. He was just seeing if it was possible to climb the fire escape. He wasn’t going to go any higher. And that toilet paper . . . well, we’d bought some at the Wawa because they’d run out at the dorm. Which is where we’re heading. Home. To bed.” He lowered his head deferentially. “I promise.”
The officer stared at him for a while. Without uncrossing his arms, he said, “What’s your name?”
“Evan Wolff.”
“You a freshman, too?”
He said that he was.
The officer watched him some more, deciding.
“I want the three of you out of my sight. And you”—he pointed a thick finger at Evan—“are in charge of seeing that he”—he pointed at me—“goes straight back to his room and goes to bed. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Now give me that,” he said.
I handed over the bag of toilet paper, and we all said thank you, and then we got the hell out of there. We’d laugh about the incident the next day, but truthfully our run-in with the campus policeman left me feeling uneasy, and I vowed not to behave like some privileged jerk again.
On the walk home, I made a point to thank my lawyer.
“You really want to thank me?” Evan said. “Then treat me to a round of golf next week. I’m broke.”
I knew he was into golf. I’d never even picked up a club and couldn’t understand why anyone would want to.
“I’ve never played before,” I said.
“Perfect,” Evan said. “Then we’ll be betting a dollar a hole.”
A few days later, Evan, Nolan, Jeffrey, and I were working our way through eighteen agonizing holes at Springdale Golf Club. The experience was unspeakably frustrating, and I resolved—after handing over eighteen dollars to Evan—to give up the game forever. It was too hard, and too expensive. A complete waste of time.
CHAPTER 8
I returned to room a, unlocked it, and went inside. Marie sat against the wall, the blanket covering her feet.
“Feeling any warmer?” I asked.
She looked up at me and shrugged.
“Mind if I sit down?”
She shook her head.
I sat across from her, not too close. “We thought you might be hungry, so we ordered you a pizza. Everything on it. The works.”
“Oh,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me. Please.”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
So simple a task, and I’d messed it up. “We’ll get you another—”
“Forget it.” She scratched her neck. “I’m not really very hungry.”
“I’m happy to order another one.”
“It’s okay. I’ll just pick off the meat. Picking off the meat isn’t such a big deal, all things considered.”
Sitting this close, I could tell she was a smoker, and I was glad to learn this fact about her. It made her seem a little older, a little less fragile—a little less like we had irrevocably tarnished something that’d been flawless.
“So, what did you think your day was going to be like when you got up this morning?” I asked.
She looked around the room, at the microphone stand, the monitor, the headphones lying on the floor. “I guess pretty much like this.”
She didn’t smile, but I felt grateful for this small joke.
Normally, when nobody is speaking, there are plenty of sounds all around us, the ongoing accompaniment to our lives. We might pay them no mind, but they’re always present: a clock’s ticking, a refrigerator’s humming, cars passing by, leaves blowing down a sidewalk, a plane high overhead. We don’t know real silence until we’re exposed to it. Here in this small recording room, sheets of thick foam covered the walls. Carpet covered the floor. Even the rain, audible in the control room, couldn’t penetrate the thick ceiling insulation in this part of the studio. The only thing to hear was our own breathing and our blood pulsing past our ears.
I credited this unnatural quiet with helping me to forge fast connections with the musicians who came here to record. Without that connection, you can’t ever hope to see the project you’re working on together with a singular vision. A lot of the recording process is talk. What are we going
to do in this next take? What are we trying to achieve? And the studio itself helps us with these conversations. With the background noise gone, we hear one another with greater precision. Timbre, inflection, intensity—these are the raw elements that first the ear, and then the brain and the gut, transform into feeling and understanding.
I hoped that the studio would come to my aid now, and that Marie would hear in my words the full spectrum of regret that I was feeling.
“We’ve got another friend coming,” I said.
She didn’t react for a moment, and I got to hear my blood some more.
“He’s a lawyer,” I continued. “We’re hoping he’ll be able to help us straighten all this out.”
More silence. Then: “And you’re telling me this because . . .”
“It means this is going to drag on a little longer. At least another hour or two, until he gets here.”
“Oh.” She had been joking with me a minute ago, but now her eyes got wet and she wouldn’t look at me. “I was supposed to go straight home when my shift ended at eight.”
“Your grandmother is probably getting worried.”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll bet she’s isn’t. She’s probably glad I’m not home.”
“I see,” I said, not seeing at all.
“She’s been on my case to take the SATs. This morning we had a pretty bad fight about it.”
“Is that such a bad idea?”
“Yeah, it is. I don’t want to go to college. I want to move to New York and be an actress.”
I nodded. “Acting’s a really hard business.” In the midst of all this, I could give advice. Sure I could.
“I’ve had leading roles in my high school musical the past two years.”
“Are you a triple threat?”
“What’s that?”
“Singing, acting, and dancing. If you can do all three, you’re called a triple threat.”
“I can’t dance too well. I’m a good singer, though. Really good. People tell me all the time. Even today, I’d just started my shift at noon and was sort of singing to myself, I don’t even remember what it was, but I was singing and didn’t know there were any customers in the store, but there was this lady who came out of the restroom and she was like, ‘You know, you should be on Broadway.’ And I could tell she meant it. It wasn’t just some dumb compliment. So, yeah, I can sing.” Her eyes weren’t watery anymore. “Is this where you work?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a recording studio, isn’t it?”
I told her it was. “And a record company.” I said it to see whether I still believed it.
“Has anybody famous ever recorded here?”
I told her I had no idea.
She looked outside the glass door into the main recording room. “Why did your friend kidnap me?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“That’s not a good answer.”
“Maybe. I don’t think it’s such a bad answer, either. Haven’t you ever done anything and not known why you did it?”
“I guess. But even then I think I usually know.”
“Then you’re smarter than the rest of us.”
She chewed on that for a minute. “When you’re out getting the pizza, would you buy me a pack of cigarettes?”
“Sure,” I said.
“You aren’t going to tell me I shouldn’t smoke?”
“No,” I said. “All things considered, I’m happy to buy you cigarettes.”
“You know, you don’t seem like the kidnapping type.”
“I’m not the kidnapping type.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are.” A hard point to argue. “I wouldn’t tell anyone, by the way. I know that’s why you’re all freaking out and offering me money and stuff. All the things I said in the car, I only said them because I was so scared. But I can keep a secret. My friends, they don’t ever worry about telling me their secrets, because I view a secret as a sacred trust. One of my girlfriends, I’m not going to tell you her name, but anyway, she told me about an abortion she had when her boyfriend knocked her up. She didn’t even tell the guy, but she told me. And I promised to keep it secret, and I have. So I know you probably don’t believe me, but I’d keep this whole thing a secret and nobody would get in any trouble.”
“I know you believe that,” I said.
“I believe it because it’s the truth.”
“Marie,” I said, “this would be a very, very hard secret to keep. I couldn’t do it. Neither could my friends. And that’s what matters, isn’t it? Not what you’d do, but what they can imagine themselves doing if they were in your shoes.”
“Your friends should have a little more faith in other people.”
I smiled.
“Will,” she said, “can you do something for me?”
“What’s that?”
“Give me your hand.”
I didn’t want to touch her. I wanted to cling to whatever propriety I could. But suddenly she leaned toward me and her two hands were surrounding my own. My wife’s hands were slim and soft. She took great care of them, and they always smelled faintly of moisturizing cream. Marie had the hard, sweaty paws of a high school kid.
“I want you to pledge to me,” she said, looking me in the eye, “that you won’t let your friends cause me bodily harm.”
Bodily harm? Exactly like a teenager, I thought. She’d found a way, even under these circumstances, to be overly dramatic. I was completely charmed.
“I’ve already told you, nobody’s going to hurt you.”
She yanked her hands away. “When you said it before, you were just being nice. You hadn’t really thought it through. Now . . .” She took my hand again and sat up a little straighter. “. . . I want you to pledge it and mean it.”
“Marie, I promise. You’re safe.”
“Then pledge it.”
“All right. I pledge that you’re safe. I pledge that you will not come to any bodily harm.”
She kept holding my hand until she had reached some sort of decision about me. Or maybe it was simply more teenage theatrics.
“I believe you, Will,” she said. “You’ll protect me.”
I was nearly out the door when she called my name again. I turned to face her. “She’s not all bad,” she said.
“Who isn’t?”
“My nana.” For the first time, she smiled a little. “She wears pink all the time—sweaters, hats, gloves. And even though she’s over eighty, her hair is still black. And she doesn’t dye it or anything. It’s kind of cool. Anyway, I just thought I should say that. Because I don’t hate her or anything. I mean, she raised me. I don’t take that for granted, you know. I actually think about it a lot. She probably thought she’d have a normal person’s old age, and then suddenly she’s got me to raise.” She shook her head, as if thinking what it must have been like raising a girl like her. “So I don’t hate her. She’s just old. Her mind is sort of going. But I actually really love her.”
“I’m glad,” I said. I turned to leave again, and again she stopped me.
“Hey, Will?”
“Yes?”
“Marlboro Lights,” she said.
CHAPTER 9
The sun had set. Streetlights were lit. Up and down Lincoln Avenue, shops and restaurants and apartment buildings still stood. Drivers took no notice of me. Neither did the pedestrians who walked under umbrellas or darted from awning to awning in the light rain. Away from the studio, Friday evening was unfolding with impossible ordinariness.
When I tuned the car’s radio to the news, instead of reports of a kidnapping, there was talk of power outages in Hudson and Essex Counties. Delays easing up at the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.
But it looks like we’re on tap for a pleasant weekend! said the woman’s voice.
I listened and waited. Business news. The Dow closed down fifty points for the week. The Federal Reserve was rumored to be cutting interest rates again.
And after the break, have you ever suspected that your dog might be a genius? Ernesto Sanchez interviews the headmaster of a new school for gifted pooches—
I shut off the radio and noticed, in the space between the seats, my Albright-for-Congress hat. I’d removed it before going into Antonello’s for dinner. Remarkable, I thought, how one minute you were optimistic enough to print your dream on a hat, and the next moment . . . this.
What if I were to keep driving? Just disappear? I played with the idea of starting over, new home, new identity. Maybe grow a beard. Become the captain of a Caribbean fishing boat. I understood right away how absurd this was, but I allowed myself a brief mental getaway to Fantasyland as I drove the very real streets of downtown Newfield toward the railroad station and into the parking lot. Only when, several minutes later, the train came into view and groaned to a stop did I reluctantly shake off images of palm trees and white sand.
I believed it was rotten of us, fooling Evan into coming. But he was a lawyer, a good one, and nothing seemed more valuable at that moment than his sage advice. I arrived just as the train did. Evan stepped onto the platform along with the dozens of other passengers returning from their long workday. He had on khakis, an orange golf shirt, and a Mets cap and was carrying his suitcase and golf bag. Unlike the rest of us, Evan was a serious golfer. His father had played varsity in college and made sure that Evan had grown up playing, too.
We shook hands, and I took his golf bag from him. As we walked to the car, he told me that Meghan, his new girlfriend, had just landed a gig as lighting designer for the revival of Fiddler on the Roof. I’d only met Meghan once, at a dinner party Evan had thrown around the holidays, and had liked her immediately. She had an honest, toothy smile and a habit of swearing like a sailor when telling stories. A vast improvement over his last girlfriend, the actuary.
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