Fact: It is impossible when said roommate also scratches constantly. Soon scratching is all you can hear. Scratching takes over your world.
Fact: At nine o’clock in the morning Nina would sit down to take her first microeconomics test of the term, and she was definitely going to fail if this ringing and talking and scratching kept up. And it was going to keep up.
If she wanted to get anything done, she would have to disappear, go bury herself somewhere. She packed up her books and her water and headed to the library.
Nina spent the next five hours in a lonely corner of the twenty-four-hour study room until the humming of the lights and the general desolation finally got to her. By the time she emerged, it was three in the morning. The path was empty, lit up brightly by the security lights. It was a gorgeous night, warm and fragrant. Nina took a deep breath, trying to revive herself a bit.
Behind her she heard a faint scraping noise. She turned around to see a bike turning around the corner of the path and coming right in her direction. Without thinking, Nina plunged her hand into her bag and grabbed for the pepper spray canister her mother had made her promise to buy on her arrival.
As it came closer, she saw it was just Steve. There was something weird about this—like déjà vu. Or maybe wish fulfillment.
“Hey, Nina. Where are you coming from?” he asked, coming up alongside her.
“I was at the library. Studying.”
“By yourself?” He glanced around at the shadowy buildings. Nina felt a rush of indignation, but then she realized that she was still holding the pepper spray canister. She released it and drew her hand from her bag casually.
“What are you doing out?” she asked.
He dismounted and leaned the bike against his hip. “I needed to get out. Being inside in nice weather feels really weird to me. My brother and I sleep outside for about half the year.”
“Outside where?”
“In hammocks, in the yard.”
“You sleep in your yard?“
“Sleeping outside is great. You feel different—you feel really good.”
“What if it rains during the night?” she asked.
“Then we go sleep on the porch. Sleeping in the rain is the best.”
“You ready for the test?” she asked.
“Kind of,” he said. “Not completely.”
“Me either.”
He rubbed his hair roughly, sending one chunk drooping over his eye. It was very cute. He seemed like an overgrown toddler. “Want to stay up? Only six hours to go.”
“You want to pull an all-nighter?”
“I have flash cards.” He pulled a stack of cards out of one of his cargo pockets.
“A man after my own heart,” she said.
They circled the campus for an hour, each taking turns quizzing from the cards. They wound up at the quad, the grand arcade of ornately decorated arches that bordered a wide plaza. It looked like an old monastery. They each sank to the ground and leaned up against a pole, facing each other.
“My brain is starting to go,” Nina said, closing her eyes.
“No!” Steve said. “You have to keep your eyes open. You’re dead if you close them.”
“Argh! I know.” Nina forced her eyes open wider than normal, but her eyelids were heavy. The test seemed distant and unimportant.
“Talk to me.” Steve said. “Tell me a story.”
“About what?” Nina yawned.
“Tell me about your home. Come on. Keep your brain on.”
“I live in a gingerbread house,” Nina said. “One of those Victorian houses, with the little peaks and the wraparound porch. It’s green. It’s old. There’s a new part off to the side where my mom’s office is.”
“What does your mom do?”
“She’s a lawyer. My dad travels a lot. Pretty much all the time. My brother, Rob, is a doctor in Boston. He’s an intern, anyway. I never get to talk to him. He lives at the hospital. So it’s usually just me and my mom.”
“We always have people staying with us,” Steve said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had dinner with just the four of us. We had this one guy who went to college with my dad who stayed with us for about two weeks. Right after he left, these two guys in suits came to our house and asked my parents a lot of questions. It turns out that he was under investigation for grand larceny and racketeering, and my parents were being watched by the FBI.”
“You were harboring a fugitive? Sounds exciting.”
“Not really,” Steve said. “We didn’t know he was a fugitive. He was really boring. He used to hog the TV every night.”
“What do your parents do?” she asked.
“My mom runs a studio where people can come in and paint their own ceramics. My dad is an accountant, which is kind of weird, considering his background. I don’t think he’s really good at it, because he’s always out of work. I’m here on scholarship because there’s no way my parents could pay for this.”
Nina was kind of amazed that he would just come out and admit something like that. Steve had a strange brand of confidence that Nina had never seen before.
“You know what’s weird?” he said, looking over the archways of the quad. “My parents always told me that people raised with a lot of money are obnoxious and spoiled and that they don’t care about important things. But that’s not true. I mean, you’re staying up all night to study. And when you talk in class, it’s obvious that you’re serious about the work you do.”
“I don’t come from money,” she said quickly.
“Compared to me you do,” he said plainly. “I don’t mean it in a bad way.”
Nina suddenly felt a bit odd about all the things she had at home. Her SUV, for a start. She quietly shuffled through her cards.
“I see sunlight,” he said. “It’s just starting.”
Nina looked up beyond the palm trees in the courtyard and saw that the sky had gone from black to gray to a vibrant shade of lilac.
“We made it,” she said, smiling.
“Yeah. See that? Feel awake now?”
“I’m getting there.”
By seven they were sitting together in the nearly empty dining hall, drinking coffee and laughing uncontrollably at the term marginal product. By eight they’d run through the definitions so many times that their responses took on a singsong rhythm.
They were the first to show up in class for the test. It wasn’t until she got there that Nina realized that both she and Steve were wearing the same clothes they’d worn the day before, but she didn’t really care.
It turned out that the test definitely didn’t merit staying up all night. It was really just a fancy quiz, which probably explained why no one else seemed excited about it. Steve finished first, and Nina looked up and found that she was upset to see him leaving and actually sped up and handed in the test without double-checking. It didn’t matter; he was waiting outside the door for her.
They looked at each other and laughed.
“That was ridiculous,” he said. “Good thing we stayed up, huh?”
When they got to Nina’s door, she wasn’t quite sure what to do. She didn’t really want him to go away, but they’d been together for hours and the whole point to their staying together had passed. Out of curiosity, though, she left her door hanging open to see what he would do. He stepped just inside of the doorway and leaned against the wall.
“You gave me the weirdest look when I was in your room that first time,” he said.
Nina felt a flush of embarrassment. She tried to cover it up with an overly dramatic yawn, then she began rummaging through her closet.
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
“Yeah, you did. You were staring at me like I was a nut. Do you know how long it took me to come up with an excuse to come down to your room?”
“Excuse?”
“An excuse to come talk to you. I’d been trying to figure out how to do it since the day we moved in. And you just stared at me like I was a mutant.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“So,” he said, “I guess I have to ask.”
“Ask what?”
But Steve didn’t say anything. He seemed to be questioning her with his expression, asking if it was okay to come closer. Nina answered by staying right where she was and smiling. That’s when Steve bent down and kissed her.
8
For the first few weeks it was like a game. Mel and Avery would “accidentally” find each other’s feet under the table at shift meetings or bump into each other in the pantry. They’d lean over to whisper something, and they’d brush the other’s ear-lobe with their lips. Everything was tiny and well disguised, but there were little electric moments everywhere.
At the end of the day, when they were alone, the next phase would begin. There was frequently an exchange of very fast test kisses, quick little brushes of the lips that, if a witness were pressed, might not hold up in court as real kisses. This seemed to be the way they asked each other if this was okay, if they should do it again. The answer was always yes, and then making out would commence.
For Avery the game was almost better than the kissing. She liked the slightly dangerous feeling that came from doing these things right under people’s noses. No one knew, of course, because they weren’t acting any different from the way they’d always acted.
One of the most amazing things was the fact that Mel had kept this information hidden for so long. Mel was notoriously bad at hiding things. She was the great revealer of surprise parties, the one who turned three different shades of pink when she tried to tell even the smallest lie. Yet she had managed to go an entire lifetime without revealing the fact that she liked girls—a lot. And she definitely liked Avery—a lot. Avery could tell that it took every ounce of strength Mel had not to be the one who always initiated the kissing.
A month after the big event they were sitting at a back table at The Grind, a coffee shop on Broadway. The Grind was run and populated by the Skidmore College students who hadn’t gone home for the summer. These were the intensely friendly people—the girls with the unwashed hair that they wrapped in colorful scarves or tied up in intricate knots that always looked like they were on the verge of coming undone, the guys with the beards or the out-of-control curls. They were also kind of unobservant and hopeless at giving the right change.
In Avery’s mind it was the perfect place to hang out. Only a few people from their school came in during the summer, and the ones who did weren’t the types who would be looking around and trying to spot the lesbians. The high-maintenance, gossipy, “I need my latte or I’ll die” people went to Starbucks, where they had a blender and could make frozen drinks. The Grind served lower-tech iced coffees, which were kind of thick and just a little too strong. It was a trade off Avery could live with.
She shifted in her chair, pulling up her leg to tuck it underneath her. As she moved, she ran her foot alongside Mel’s calf.
“Okay,” Avery said, her eyes gleaming once she noticed the effect her stealthy move had had on Mel. “Let’s review. What’s one way to tell that a band is really bad?”
“If it has five guys who do coordinated dance moves,” Mel said, reciting the answer just as Avery had taught her.
“The exception to this rule is?”
“The Jackson Five.”
“Who was in that?”
“Michael Jackson, before he was scary.”
“Right! You get a prize!”
“What?” Mel asked.
“You’ll get it later.”
Mel smiled. “You know,” she said, “it’s a month today.”
“A month what?”
“You know what I mean.”
Avery poked around at the ice at the bottom of her glass. “Weird,” she replied.
“So.” Mel kept her eyes down. “What … are we?”
“Um, finished?” Avery grinned and held up her empty glass. “Want to walk?”
They continued down to the end of the stretch of shops, to Congress Park. Two busloads of elderly tourists had just been deposited there, and they were making their way around the Greek pavilion and the cupolas that housed the springs and the decorative ponds. They took pictures of one another and happily fumbled with their cameras and video recorders.
Mel walked along quietly. Avery could almost feel the question coming out of her pores, jumping over and invading Avery cell by cell.
“Mel,” she said.
“It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”
This was a huge, obvious lie.
Alongside the path a woman in a flowing purple dress was sitting on a folding stool, stringing red and pink beads together and smiling to herself. At her feet were two flat, velvet-lined cases of beaded necklaces, earrings, and silver rings. Avery stopped and knelt to look them over.
“How much are these?” Avery asked, pointing to a selection of plain silver bands.
“Fifteen dollars.”
“We should each get one,” Avery said. “Friendship bands.”
“You want two?” the woman said. “Two for twenty-five. It’s a beautiful day. Why not two for twenty-five?”
The woman smiled at them, and Avery felt a wave of recognition. She knew. Avery was sure of it. The woman was giving her a coded message of affirmation.
Avery picked out a band for her left thumb. They had to find the tiniest band for Mel’s index finger. It looked like it took a huge effort for Mel to keep her hands from shaking. She reached for her purse.
“It’s okay,” Avery said. “Early birthday gift.”
Mel’s birthday was in May.
“Know what?” Mel said when they were just out of the woman’s earshot.
“What?”
“I have the best girlfriend in the world.”
Avery squinted at one of the ponds, which was brightly reflecting the sun. She didn’t reply for a minute.
“So do I,” she finally said.
Labor Day
August 14
TO: Mel; Avery
FROM: Nina
ARGH! I wish, I wish, I wish that you could just come here for a day or something and meet Steve because it is almost impossible to explain how much I love him. Here is some evidence to show you just how great he is:
1. Makes me call him whenever I work late at the library so he can come over and walk me back to the building.
2. Rode his bike into town at 11 p.m. the other night to get me Pamprin(!).
3. Has never slept with anyone because he wanted to wait for the right person, and he says he thinks it is me, but only if I want—and he’ll wait until whenever I’m ready, even if that means when we both get here for school next year (!!!!!).
4. Ave: He is a huge Elliott Smith fan. That’s good, right?
5. Mel: He can’t watch that part of “Finding Nemo” either.
August 15
TO: Nina; Avery
FROM: Mel
OMG. I thought about this all day at work. Keep him!
August 19
TO: Avery; Mel
FROM: Nina
RED ALERT!
MIR (mentally ill roommate) has been missing for two days. She left for class on Thursday morning and never came back. Our RA is freaking out because they are kind of extra responsible for us since we’re the high school group. I am not freaking out so much. I sleep better knowing that a naked cork-eater is not sneaking around at night, stealing my underwear.
August 19
TO: Mel; Avery
FROM: Nina
UPDATE:
Sadly, MIR has returned. Not in M hospital, as hoped. She went to San Francisco. EWSPFHSL staff totally furious with her. She brought back a v. small turtle, about three inches big, which she keeps in a takeout container on the floor by her desk. She didn’t feed it, so Steve rode down to Whole Foods on his bike and bought it organic lettuce. He says that h
e is going to take it from her if she doesn’t start treating it right and will find an ecologically appropriate place to set it free, where it hopefully won’t get eaten by something.
He is so good.
August 20
TO: Nina; Mel
FROM: Avery
I drove past school today. They finally took down the HAVE A GOOD UMMER sign and put up the WELCOME BACK STUDENTS one. I guess they bought a new S.
August 20
TO: Mel; Nina
FROM: Avery
Hey! Four hours later the S thief was back. Sign now says, WELCOME BACK TUDENTS. LONG LIVE THE S THIEF!
August 24
TO: Avery; Mel
FROM: Nina
36 hours until my flight. Going to be v, busy for the next day and a half. V excited to come home, but leaving Steve is hard. So hard. I can’t think about it or my head will explode. Need serious I Power. At 9:15 tonight (your time) I will call you to take T position and say the chant. I need you!
9
“I like your hair,” Mel’s mom said, reaching out and feeling Avery’s bobbed locks. “You’ve colored it. It looks good darker.”
“Thanks.” Avery nodded, not looking thrilled at being petted. She hunched up her shoulders.
Avery was just trying to make it a little more bearable for Mel by coming along for dinner at her mom’s house, but Mel could see that she was already regretting her decision.
Mel was five when her mom met Jim Podd. Apparently her parents had been growing apart for some time, and this was the final push her mom needed to make the move out of the house. Jim already had two boys, so it was decided that Mel should remain with her father.
The oldest Podd, Brendan, was now about to start his freshman year at Cornell. He was also a known hacker and software pirate and had a padlock on his room. Richie, his brother, was a fifteen-year-old skater—friendly enough, but erratic and uncontrollable. Things tended to get broken around Richie. Lastly there was Lyla, the one child Mel’s mom and Jim had on their own. The only thing Mel had ever seen Lyla do was watch television. She had a TiVo in her room. She would only eat plain white rice, chicken nuggets, or hot dogs (boiled—not grilled), so she always had a special plate made up for her.
The Bermudez Triangle Page 5