Maize caught herself before succumbing to it. She wanted something to happen, but she squashed the desire whenever it reared inside her. She abandoned the hunky cashier’s aisle. She focused on the blackboard in math class instead of the nerd-boy. She stared at her bedroom desk rather than outside at the postman. She threw off the bedcovers and took a shower instead of remembering Robbie.
“Oh—I’m sorry. I guess you’ll figure it out,” was all Maize could think to say to Robbie that afternoon they’d failed to have sex, when he confessed his confusion to her. And then, flushed, with mussed hair, they’d gone back to doing their chemistry homework as if nothing had happened, and became friends. She seriously liked Robbie—he was brainy and funny and exceptionally well dressed—and if he’d stayed around longer they might have become close. Soulmates. He might have even replaced Lyla. But his parents split up and sent him away to boarding school before the end of the school year so that possibility vanished. They’d hugged each other goodbye and promised to stay in touch but they hadn’t. She was a storage unit for Robbie’s secrets, yet it meant nothing. Everybody moved on. They moved on and forgot. That’s what college was about, never looking back.
Now she neared a final traffic light. In four blocks she would make a left turn, following the interviewer’s instructions, but for now she idled. A restlessness jockeyed with the inertia the way it had when she was a child lying on the backseat and her parents were driving, their unhappiness drifting toward her like the chilled currents from the air conditioner.
Here’s the sign the interviewer told her to look for in his e-mail. Here’s the front gate with the guard station that has no guard inside it, which the interviewer joked about. She enters the interviewer’s garden apartment complex and checks her wristwatch as soon as she parks. Still two whole hours before her appointment. How is she going to pass all the time?
Within seconds the car heats up and she can barely breathe. She opens the door and stands there in the wilting sun, just stands there not knowing whether to turn left or right. She imagines she must look retarded.
She decides to check out the interviewer’s apartment complex. The buildings are brick and two-storied, with blue doors flanking a landscaped quadrangle. Teak benches line the courtyard, which has a large cement sculpture mounted at its center. A reclining figure with a human body’s shape—two arms, two legs, and a head like a child’s drawing of an adult, but no distinguishing details. She can’t tell if it’s male or female. There are no breasts, but still.
She paces the perimeter of the courtyard, reading the numbers on the doors and slowing when she gets to the interviewer’s (#7A) yet not stopping fully. She checks her watch again. She touches her blouse and glances toward the parking lot, where heat waves shimmy from the asphalt and the hoods of cars. She sighs loudly. Since this is the shady side of the courtyard, she decides to sit on one of the benches until the time is right. She swipes a dead leaf off the bench before she sits. She crosses and uncrosses her legs. A tiny red spider mite crawls onto the back of her hand and, when she tries to brush it off, it smears on her skin like dried blood. Nice. A balding man crosses the courtyard and eyes her warily on his way to the parking lot as if she’s a burglar. The sun flashes off the top of his bare head.
Last week, when she was in Hal Jamesley’s office discussing everything except college admissions, he made an observation about the balding middle-aged physics teacher who’d recently progressed from a bad comb-over to a ludicrous toupee. “That rug of his is so distracting,” Hal said. “Somebody ought to tell him. It’s like a Yorkshire terrier’s in the room taking a dump on the poor guy’s head.” Both of them fell into a paroxysm of laughter. Maize’s arm flew up and landed involuntarily on Hal’s forearm, which lay on his desktop, and though her first impulse was to yank it away she left it there, and Hal let her leave it there, saying nothing. He grinned demurely. He continued talking as though her hand wasn’t there, real and palpable, and she pretended along with him that it wasn’t there, keeping up her end of the conversation in what she hoped was a normal tone although their rhythm was thrown off. They each spoke in sharp bursts, galvanized by power surges while the other went dead, and when Hal’s soulful gaze fell on her she had to stop herself from whispering the dopey thing she said next, which was “Hair’s really funny.” It was a relief when another student announced herself with three rattling knocks on Hal’s door, giving them an excuse to separate.
“See you tomorrow?” he said when Maize grabbed her backpack and got up to leave.
She shrugged. “I guess.”
“It’s coming soon now,” he said. “Your applications. We have to get at it.”
* * *
The courtyard bench is comfortable enough. Birds chirp in the trees and a wind swells though the maples. The moment Maize allows herself to think, This is okay, and closes her eyes, a wave of fatigue sweeps over her. Her spine slackens as she tilts her head skyward, letting it rest on the seat back, and she breathes deeply. What a way to begin the college interview process! Lingering outside this guy’s apartment like a stalker! She could almost nod off. Last night she slept fitfully, jarred awake by weird dreams. Now one of them rides back to her until the random fragments of it regroup into a misshapen whole. She’d been in a foreign country detained by customs agents who suspected her of smuggling drugs inside her body. They’d thrummed their cold hands against her inner thighs, looking for packets of heroin. When they didn’t find anything they put her on an operating table and cut her up, piece by piece, fruitlessly searching for contraband until there was nothing left of her. Even when she was dead from mutilation they hovered over her with their scalpels, saying, “There must be something here,” and continued exploring. “Open the instep. Separate the kidney from the duodenum. There’s no point stopping now.”
“Hey—hi there! You trying to find somebody?” a voice suddenly shoots from across the courtyard. Maize opens her eyes and looks in the direction of the sound but sees nothing at first. Then a head pokes out a window one story above her—a male head, she can tell even from this distance, whose handsomeness flares and makes its unexpected presence even more startling. The head has a dimpled chin and full nostrils and light brown hair. When the man leans farther out the window, his shoulders look broad and square.
“Bet you’re here for an interview!” he calls.
“Oh, yes—right. I am,” Maize calls back. She stands and faces his apartment, remembering to smile, taking one step forward. “Sorry. I’m not exactly here at the right time.”
“No worries! Down in a sec!” he calls, and his head disappears. When he opens the front door at ground level he’s dressed like a surfer boy: electric blue shorts, faded yellow T-shirt, a string of puka shells circling his thick neck. His long calves are dusted with hair that’s a shade darker than his head, his chest muscles ripple under his shirt, and he flashes a horsey smile full of white teeth.
He’s a gelled version of the jocks who hang outside the bakery, around the cheerleaders, ignoring Maize so completely they make her feel like she’s made of vapor. Just her luck.
Before she can apologize for being appallingly early he says, “Steve. How’s it going?” and plants a big dry hand on her forearm. He pumps her forearm once lightly and says, “Come on up.”
She follows him up a staircase, his beefy butt winking at her through the blue cotton of his shorts.
She’s winded when she gets to his living room at the top of the stairs, partly from the climb, partly from the lingering surprise, and partly from the look of the place. There’s a red futon with a white stain at one end, and a couple of folding chairs next to a huge silver TV and sound system on metal shelves. The walls are bare except for a college pennant from Steve’s alma mater and a basketball poster of a player suspended in air during a slam dunk. Dirty sweat clothes huddle in the corner near the window. She supposes the packing trunk near the futon is supposed to be a coffee table, but she’s not sure what to make of the electric guitar
that lies on top of it.
Steve catches her eyeing the guitar, which he moves onto the dirty clothes pile.
“I’m not just a computer guy,” he says. “I’m a musician, too. I play bass. See?” He picks up a framed photograph of himself from behind the pile of sweat clothes and shows it to her as proof. He’s younger in the picture and his hair is longer and wilder. “See? That’s from a gig with my old band.” Then he takes the picture back and stretches his arms over his head, flashing his solid midriff, distracting her from the slightly sheepish look on his face. “But hey—gotta pay the rent, right? You want something from the fridge? I’m getting myself a drink.”
He pads into an adjacent kitchen she can’t see and calls back to her from there. She hears the suck of a refrigerator door opening. “Let’s see: Coke, Corona, Gatorade, Heineken, club soda, Red Bull, tonic water, Bud Lite—no, scratch the tonic. It’s flat. Regular water.”
“That’s okay. I’m all right,” Maize says.
“What? Didn’t hear you.” He sticks his head out; his jaw is square and perfect and the cleanliness of the line, the incipient stubble on it, makes her sad. She could dress up and exercise and eat right for the rest of her life and she’d never have bones like that.
“Water would be great,” she says. She sits on the futon, in the center, away from the white stain, and waits. She fidgets at the sound of liquid cracking over ice. She’s nervous even though she doesn’t care about getting into this school; something hums around her like a bee that followed her inside. Maybe it’s the aftershock of being caught in the courtyard, loitering there with her mouth open and the befuddled look of a newly landed immigrant.
“Here you are,” Steve says, handing her a tall and not entirely spotless glass that has already started to sweat. He’s standing above her, his tanned bare thighs at her eye level, looking down at her.
She says, “Yes. Here I am. Thank you.”
“Sure thing.” He plops on one of the opposite chairs and a little of the liquid in his own glass sloshes out during the descent. Amber liquid. It’s beer, she thinks. This guy is drinking beer in the middle of the day during a college interview. Very professional, her mother would say with a smirk. But Lyla would say, Have a sense of humor, Maize, it’s fucking hilarious, and she’d be right. She can’t wait to tell Lyla about it later at the lingerie store.
“Yeah. So.” Steve takes a long swig of the beer, emptying about a third of the glass. “How you doing?”
“Fine. Thank you.”
“Having a fun senior year?”
“Sure, I guess,” she says. “It’s fine.”
“Had a blast my senior year. Almost as good as my senior year of college.” He puts a bare foot on the crate between them, letting his legs fall open, and she ignores the peek of white briefs under the blue shorts. “Blows my mind that it was nine years ago. Wish I could go back,” he says with a sigh.
“You do?” She can’t believe anyone would want to return to high school or remember it fondly. All she wants to do is forget about it like someone paroled after a long prison sentence.
“Oh yeah. Totally. You’d love my college. Believe me.” He smiles a timid, inward smile and stares past her out the window, as if his glorious past lies just beyond the courtyard. Then he blinks and reaches for one of the manila folders on the trunk between them. “So anyway,” he says airily, opening it. “Let’s see what we’ve got here. Gimme just a sec.”
“All right,” she says.
While he reads she considers what he said: You’d love my college. She’s noticed that third-rate colleges and party schools say things like that in their literature, emphasizing the student-teacher ratio and the picturesque campus and the social activities and whatever else helps sell the place, while first-tier schools are politely standoffish like the popular kids in school. She bets the interviewers from the good schools hedge their bets, saying things like I’m sure you’d be happy at any number of institutions. But she wouldn’t be happy at this guy’s school even if all the other colleges rejected her. It has fraternities and sororities and a physical education requirement, and graduates who hang sports posters in their living rooms. Her mother is such a fool for making her apply.
“Whoa. Tons of extracurriculars,” Steve says as he reads. “Nice. They’ll really like to see you’ve got school spirit.”
School spirit!
“So let’s chat about what made you apply here,” Steve says.
My mother, she nearly says. Perhaps he would laugh. Instead she says, “That’s hard to say. I don’t really know.” She shrugs for emphasis. “A lot of people say it’s a good school. I mean, it has a good reputation.”
“You’re right. It’s a cool place,” Steve says. “But I guess what I mean is, you know, what exactly made you, Bethany, apply?”
The shock hits her like a wave of cold air and makes her sit more erect. The name flies out so fast she wonders if she imagined it. “Excuse me?”
“By the way—do you go by Bethany or just Beth?” Steve says.
“Excuse me? What?” She must look even more dazed than she did in the courtyard. “I’m not Bethany.”
“Beth, then.”
“Um, no.” She puts her hands on her knees, about to stand and announce herself. She leans forward a bit, staring into his blue eyes and then at his full lips. The scent of him this close—beer and some sort of woodsy cologne—drifts over and distracts her. She should be thinking about the most graceful way to explain. Instead she notices he’s beautiful, even if he’s dim. As beautiful as Bethany/Beth or even more so. Anything she could say at this point (You’ve got it wrong, there’s been a misunderstanding, I’m really mortified) will require her to admit that this mix-up is all her fault. She’ll have to explain why she was wandering in his courtyard two whole hours early, like a geek who shows up to class before anyone else and lines up her pens and pencils on the desktop. She’ll have to explain about Bethany’s skiing accident and her mother. It will be so involved—the complications of it will fall over them both like dust motes in the room—that there will be no graceful way of explaining.
She stands and says, “Sorry. Could I use your bathroom for a minute?”
“Sure thing.” Steve points left.
His towels are as unkempt as the underwear on the carpet. She turns the cold-water tap and lets it run hard while she stares ahead. She studies herself in the medicine cabinet mirror. Her face is pale, with beads breaking at her hairline. She leans into the sink and splashes her face with water, thinking this will make her more clearheaded, but it doesn’t work. Now she’s panting a little. She sits on the toilet after putting down the seat and flips the door lock next to her knees. She could just stay there. She dries herself with a green velour towel hanging on the back of the door before she realizes it’s Steve’s bathrobe. There’s the same woodsy smell (maybe it’s his soap?) and she buries her head in it for a second, taking a sniff and messing up her hair. She hears herself breathe into the cloth.
When she leaves the bathroom Steve is rotating his head in a slow full circle, with his muscular arms stretched behind him and his ropy legs flexed in front. He doesn’t stop rotating his head at her return, as if to show her how relaxed this interview will be. She allows herself to glance at his shorts and the little bulge inside them.
“Hey there,” he says. “Everything okay?”
“Yes. It’s fine,” she says. “Sorry for the wait.” As she moves toward her place on the futon, her skirt brushes against Steve’s forearm; the heat of it brands the back of her thigh. “I’m really sorry about this confusion.”
“It’s cool, Beth,” he says. “So let’s get back to that question.”
What question? “All right,” she says. She sits, looks at him and the floor between them. “But first I have something important to tell you.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
She looks up at him now. He takes another sip from his glass and leans forward, smiling hazily at her from the b
eer buzz or something else. It’s the same smile she’s gotten from men at the mall a few times, before she walks away from them, secretly hoping they’ll follow her but horrified at the thought that they might. Only Steve is better-looking than the men at the mall. She has never been alone with a man this good-looking, paying such close attention to her like a student poised to take notes, as though he’ll later be tested on everything she says. She leans forward herself, and finds that she’s whispering rather than speaking normally across the narrowed distance between them.
“It’s really kind of funny,” she says.
“What?” Steve leans back a bit, chuckling once, prepared to be amused.
She counts a few of the puka shells around his neck to focus her thoughts. A wooziness sweeps over her, carrying away her need to perform or project herself. She has nothing to lose. She can just be herself.
“My mother’s the reason all this is happening,” she says.
“Uh-huh? Is that right?” Steve says. He leans back farther.
“She is. I’m not a good match for this college, to tell you the truth. It’s not one of my top choices. But it’s nice meeting you, anyway.”
“You mean you’re not interested in my school?”
“Not really, no. To tell you the truth. But there’s something important I need to clear up—”
“Don’t sweat it,” Steve says. “Your honesty’s cool, you know? I totally appreciate it.”
“No—but that’s not what I meant to say.”
The Intimates: A Novel Page 3