The Paper Chase

by John Osborn

  As the ticket seller moved off to catch the student, Kevin slipped in. He melted into the back with the boys around the dance floor. He’d just stand there and watch. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. The band was building on one chord, gradually increasing the amplification. The note seemed to give the pulsing blue lights a thickness that covered Kevin, wrapping him up with the people around him.

  The girls were inside: a concentric but smaller circle. Some looked like the girls Kevin had seen walking in the Square. Little girl dresses coming down just over the crotch and tied in under their breasts. Slinky fabrics that stuck to them. Others were prehistoric and familiar, a little like Asheley. Not a trace of the braless children who bounced like balls along the sidewalks around the Square. Like polished stones on a bracelet they stood in nervous little groups, not a bead among them. A-lined skirts, matching sweaters, low-heeled shoes. And to finish it off, maybe a scarf or a gold pin.

  He felt comfortable. At home the clothes might be a little more starched, a little more hick. But basically it was the same. He wondered where this group came from. Not from Radcliffe. They were a scrapbook, a page from Mademoiselle. He began to feel alive and walked over to get a drink, leaving his briefcase on a chair.

  He hadn’t danced in so goddamned long. Asheley didn’t like to dance now. She thought people could tell about the baby. But out there was a herd of maybe fifty girls. All he had to do was go up to one, stick out his hand and grab. He tried to remember what he’d said, back there before Harvard Law School. “Would you like to dance?” Not very compelling. “Say, baby, let’s, ah, you know, go and dance?” No. He thought about the apartment and how they’d fixed it up like her parents’ house. How Asheley had made pillows for the sofa.

  A girl wearing a blue skirt and matching cardigan backed toward him, making room for the dancers. Her hair had streaked blond stripes and her hands, clasped behind her back, wore a gold charm bracelet. The band was coming to its maximum loudness, finishing with the chord, letting the electric guitars make their own music so that you felt you were in a car about to crash.

  She kept backing and he tried to move away. A circle of boys blocked him. Then she was there, her head only a foot away, her hands in front of him. She hit and swung around.

  Her face wasn’t half bad, a kind of puckered fresh face, like she’d washed it with Lavoris. She was switching from one foot to another and he read the signals as clearly as if she had actually spoken to him: Dance with me, all my girlfriends are dancing, I’m not half bad, really. He went blank and couldn’t move. Then he nodded toward the dance floor and took her hand.

  It took a few seconds to readjust, to plant his feet, start shaking his body. A few seconds to get so that he didn’t care how he looked and danced by himself away from everyone. He got it finally and it felt good. He let himself go with the lights and the music, turning his mind away from the law school.

  The band stopped, about to do a new number or a continuation of the old one. Who could tell? She was facing away from him but tapping out code with her fingers: You can take me back, but I’d like to keep dancing. I’m O.K., really.

  The band played slow. The boys who were afraid to dance fast started looking for girls. Kevin whisked her out, put his face down on her neck and tingled with the knowledge that he was touching her.

  The strobe light flickered and he thought he saw Ford. He dodged over to where the band was, tried to keep his face out of sight. In the move, his right arm slid around her, pulling her close, touching the outside of her breast. His hand shook as she nestled in.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” he whispered, but he didn’t let go of her arm and while he crept through the shadows she stayed with him.

  ***

  Anderson came up behind Hart, tapped him on the back and waved good-bye. The library would close in an hour, and Anderson was getting out early.

  Hart had made his mind up to begin reading again when someone coughed. The tables, big slabs stuck out from the walls like docked ships, threw the noise up forty feet to the vaulted ceiling rimmed with gold and then the sound fell back, touching every corner of the room.

  Though Hart had been at the table for three hours, he’d gotten very little done. The girls’ laughter as they were led from the mixer to the dorm, not the rock music, had driven Hart from his room. Hollow, forced laughter. The sentence Hart was looking at faded like all the others, lost in a museum of citation and detail.

  “… Sir, you cited Hennig versus Dorstal Radiation as 321 OS 435; isn’t the correct citation 322 OS 435?”

  “I cited what as what?”

  “… Please, sir, I want some more.”

  “Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!”

  “For more!”

  Hart saw Kingsfield walking to the edge of the podium, his eyes fixed, glaring. Hart saw Kingsfield explode with distant and uncommon authorities. Saw himself falling into a quicksand of cases. He saw his exam, with a nice rosy F on top of it.

  “Good try, Hart, you’ll get the hang of it sometime.”

  “I’m sorry, Professor Kingsfield, I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Good try, Hart.”

  “I want you, professor, I want you.”

  The library lights flickered, signaling it was ten minutes till closing time. Ford closed his book and threw a wadded piece of paper at Hart. When Hart moved, he saw his hand had sweated through his paper, ruining a page of notes.

  They walked out together and then took turns opening the tunnel doors. Passing the telephone, Hart shuddered.

  “Why don’t you call her?” Ford said. “What the hell. This is a lousy night for studying. ”

  “No,” Hart said. “I can’t. Anyway, she doesn’t like begging.”

  “What does she like?”

  “Forget it, will you. She doesn’t like nuts. Anyway it’s not her. I don’t want to call her.”

  A student wearing a jacket and tie came into the hall. They heard laughter from the student’s room as he staggered toward the bathroom, holding a glass. There were screams from a room further down the hall.

  “Let’s go,” Ford said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  “Yeeeeeeoooooweeeeeee…………”

  Hart screamed into the night and jumped off the dorm steps, landing face down in the snow which muffled the last part of the scream. But it was half-hearted and lying there he felt as bad as he had before he jumped.

  “You’re feeling good?” Ford asked, his hands stuck down in the fleece of his Antartex.

  “No,” Hart said from the snow bank. “It’s the snow, I don’t know.”

  He pulled himself up and brushed off his parka. He’d gotten it at home. A big, quilted, dacron filled jacket. Red so it could be used hunting, which Hart never did. With six pockets tucked under the seams and both buttons and a zipper. It was the nicest thing he owned.

  With a hand on Ford’s shoulder for balance, Hart knocked his boots against the steps. He liked the solid way they hit. The buildings should be hills and he and Ford should be going hiking.

  They crossed the freshman yard onto the sidewalk of the main street and waited for a break in the traffic. The light turned red. A shiny Corvette stopped and an old Volkswagen gently skidded into the Corvette’s rear end. They crossed in front of the cars. The drivers had jumped out and were screaming at each other.

  “Sue the bastard!” Ford yelled when they reached the safety of the opposite sidewalk.

  They stopped in front of a sandwich shop. Inside the plate glass window, Hart saw milling people. He and Ford sat at the counter, alongside an Indian couple. Not American Indians, but Indians from India. The girl wore a sari and over it a heavy woolen coat two sizes too big. The Indian got a hamburger for his girl and offered her the ketchup as if it were a present.

  Then the hamburger was gone.

  Hart swiveled around. On the sidewalk this guy, maybe six feet tall, held the hamburger against the window
and flipped the bird. It took Hart and Ford a while to understand that he’d come in and actually stolen a hamburger. People began to turn around.

  “How about that?” Ford said. “How about that?”

  The Indian girl cowered behind her man, who was mumbling something that Hart thought was maybe a Hindu prayer. The prayer had no effect. The guy still stood there not running or even looking like he was going to run-and flipping the bird.

  “I’ll be damned,” Ford said, and turned back to the counter. Other people were turning too, as if the event was over, and soon Hart was the only one still facing out.

  “I’m going to talk to him,” Hart said. “Order me a cheeseburger.”

  Ford grabbed at the red parka.

  “No, that’s not ….”

  But Hart was gone, zipping up his parka and sliding his hands down into his pockets.

  “Why’d you take it?”

  The guy turned when he heard Hart’s voice. He was taller than Hart had thought and wearing a yellow windbreaker with some kind of insignia on it.

  “Waddyamean?”

  “The hamburger.” Hart smiled, moving closer. “Why’d you take it?”

  “Youwannit?”

  The hamburger fell beneath the boy’s legs. He straddled it and swung out in a huge arc. Hart couldn’t get his hands out of his pockets. The fist smacked down along his forehead, his feet slid on the ice and he fell over.

  “He’s crazy,” Ford said from nowhere, pulling Hart by his shoulder, watching the yellow windbreaker and, for some reason, the hamburger in the snow.

  Inside, the Indian girl had another hamburger. People were sitting where Ford and Hart had sat.

  “Let’s go,” Ford said. “Hell, you’re blocking the sidewalk.”

  For a second, it looked as if they would go. Hart half turned toward Ford. But then, as Ford moved ahead, Hart seemed to detonate backward, turning in the air like a diver coming off a board. The boy swung as the red flashed toward him and his fist sank deep into the dacron, missing Hart’s body.

  All one hundred and fifty pounds of Hart landed like shrapnel. One arm locked around the guy’s neck, one knee tucked in, slamming into the guy’s chest, and the other leg, trailing, gave Hart a final kick off the ground-propelling him up as if he were climbing a wall.

  The force knocked them back together. Like dancers they hit the window and were sprung back out by the recoil of the glass. Hart landed on top. His fists slammed into the windbreaker, caving it in like a dying air mattress.

  “Yashee,” the boy screamed-meaning you shit, but the words blending together in a cry. And then he gurgled as Hart’s fist came down, mashing his tongue into his teeth. Womp: Hart’s elbows like pistons landing in the fat.

  The guy rose off the ground, pulling Hart with him, as if the force of Hart’s blows were driving hand holes in the yellow windbreaker and the stomach it covered.

  They grabbed Hart’s arms and started to pull him back.

  “NOT HIM, NOT HIM, THE OTHER ONE, THE OTHER ONE,” Ford screamed. But too late and before they let him go the guy got in one blow alongside Hart’s nose and then collapsed back into the snow like an overturned garbage can.

  Hart saw they had been fighting in the street. The lights of the honking cars frightened him. Ford steadied him and led him away.

  “Listen, they might run over him,” Hart said. “We’ve got to get him out of the street.”

  “They are,” Ford said. “For Christ’s sake.”

  And then they were away from the Square and into the quiet Cambridge streets and old houses.

  “Do you want the hamburger?” Ford said. “I picked it up while you were fighting.”

  “No, you can have it,” Hart mumbled.

  “It’s pretty cold,” Ford said, and dropped the hamburger on a doorstep. “How do you feel?”

  He felt all right. That was the surprising thing. He actually felt slightly better.

  “O.K.,” he said, moving closer to Ford. “I don’t feel all that stupid.”

  “You’re going to feel lousy tomorrow, you crazy ass. Your face will puff up like a balloon and your muscles will ache for a week.”

  “That’s O.K.,” Hart said.

  “You know,” Ford said, “I’m really glad I got to know you. I don’t want you to think this is sentimental. I mean, you’re crazier than hell.”

  Kevin sat across from her, not knowing what to say and not saying anything. He was scared and churning. They were so close in the room, almost on top of each other. Her on the chair and him on the bed. The clutter of her things bottles of cosmetics, posters and pictures-made the room seem smaller than Hart’s and Ford’s rooms at the law school. Hart and Ford, he thought. He heard a girl laughing down the hall.

  “I’m studying to be a teacher,” she said. “You stay here for two years and then go somewhere else.”

  He nodded. Her legs were huge. He hadn’t noticed, dancing with her. Looking down on them they seemed thin because of the angle. But with her across from him it was different, and he saw they had no taper, and that she knew it too because she tried to hide them one behind the other.

  She leaned forward, trying to push the legs back. It brought her close and he knew that just by sitting there, not saying anything because he was scared out of his mind, he was making her lose ground. It made him aware of everything he did.

  She pulled on the blue knit sweater. It looked like she’d bought it because of an ad, not wanting to confirm what she must have known: that it was too small, made her wrists stick out long and thick. The charms tinkled. She was fighting the silence.

  “What would you like to do?” she asked. “I don’t have any dope.” He looked toward the posters on the walls. She shuffled, rearranging herself, taking advantage of the reprieve from his eyes.

  “Maybe we should go back,” she said. “I mean, there really isn’t much to do here. Do you want to go back?”

  His eyes traveled around the walls before they came to her. She tightened as they moved, drew together, waiting for him. The knowledge that the balance was so much in his favor shook him, forced him. He had it now. He might go through the rest of his life and never have it again. The baby would finish it.

  He looked to the right and she looked with him, worrying about which decoration had caught his eye. He put out his hand in the blind spot her eyes left, reached her face, curled his fingers around her neck. He didn’t let her look up and stop him with an expression. He moved her head forward to his chest, reached his arms around her, pulling her off the chair and onto the bed. Kept her head tucked in, her face away from him. She came like she was almost glad. Like she’d rather hide under him than let him inspect her.

  Reaching down, his mind wasn’t clear and it got worse. It was only the times she moved, tried to stop him, that he remembered it wasn’t Asheley.

  SPRING

  34

  KINGSFIELD SLAMMED his hand down on the lectern and the lectern amplified the sound, holding it in its wooden heart and then booming the noise across the room as if someone had fired a shot in the mountains. Hart snapped to attention. Kingsfield had called on the student directly to Hart’s right.

  It was unsettling to have someone so near answering a question. It put Hart into Kingsfield’s peripheral vision. Along with the other students near the boy, Hart bent down over his book and started preparing the next case.

  He tried to look unconcerned yet attentive as he read. It was important to look unconcerned. Kingsfield fell on nervousness like a tick.

  The professor slammed the lectern again and involuntarily Hart’s head snapped back. Kingsfield had called on the student directly to Hart’s left. Hart began to read in earnest. Obviously, Kingsfield was focusing on Hart’s area. The facts of the next case formed in his mind. He relaxed slightly. He’d be ready if Kingsfield called on him.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake to sit in his seat. In the morning before class, Hart had gone walking, splashing through puddles, exulting in the goo
d weather. The walk had taken him to Susan’s and he’d stood outside her building hoping she might come down. If he’d sat in the back, he could have thought about her.

  Kingsfield slapped the lectern, canceling the lifeless answer of the student to Hart’s left. All right, Hart thought, call on someone on the other side of the room. You’ve soaked the students here. But Kingsfield called on the student directly in front of Hart. The boy started to answer reluctantly and badly.

  Hart slumped, uneasy because he’d jumped when the student had been called on. What the hell was Kingsfield doing? It was as if the professor were circling him, drawing a tight ring around his seat. Hart’s body began to ache, solidify into a rigid position.

  He tried to bring the facts of the next case to mind. The facts slipped away from him. Was that it? Was Kingsfield trying to scare him into forgetting the facts? And then, once he’d forgotten, nail him before the class?

  No, he told himself, stop thinking crazy things. It’s just luck that Kingsfield has called on the students around you. Even so, Hart glanced at the clock, wishing it would hurry to ten. Go, clock, he said, get your ass to ten.

  Kingsfield’s index finger chopped the air, as if he were drawing an imaginary red line down an imaginary paper. He dispatched the student in front of Hart. Hart braced. Kingsfield was looking at him. With a supreme effort, Hart was able to recall the facts of the next case. He could answer.

  Kingsfield called on the student behind Hart. Like a knife thrower, Kingsfield had tagged the students around Hart but left the center inviolate.

  Hart began to sweat. The cases he’d carefully prepared dissolved. Jesus, what had he done? No one called on students in a circle. What was it? The unfinished paper? Susan? Susan was gone. Why the hell hadn’t he sat in the back? Kingsfield would get him now, now that the cases had been scared out of him.

  The professor silenced the student behind Hart. He leaned over the lectern, focusing on Hart, the center of a ring of tired rejects, each of whom had been singled out and found wanting. Hart’s mind filled with the names of those tired students, but he could not recall a single case.