The Tourists

by Jeff Hobbs

  And I had to shut my eyes tightly—they were watering—but I had to do it without clenching my teeth.

  When I opened them Samona was walking toward me.

  I heard a woman’s voice—her voice—say my name.

  I breathed in. She looked firmly at me with her black eyes and extended her hand, which just hung there, limply, waiting for mine.

  I couldn’t hear anything as I finally shook it.

  She was shimmering and I was still floating and I was being penetrated by something—a memory, a song, a kiss, her walking away.

  So how was lunch with David and James? I can’t believe you’re a writer—how’s that going? Has the East Village really become so expensive? Are you still running?

  I was hearing her words and her voice as if they were separate things. My answers were more like deflections because I did not want Samona Taylor to know anything about me and the aimless failures that defined my life, and I did not want her to know the reason I was here at the party.

  “David told me you started your own business.” I finally cleared my throat.

  “Did he tell you that?” The smile on her face faltered slightly. “Yeah.”

  It was the wrong thing to ask because we both fell silent.

  I tried again: “This sort of reminds me of the Zeta Psi formals but without the kegs and the random hookups.”

  She laughed politely and touched my hand that held the empty Scotch glass, and then she brushed against my jacket and I watched as her arm fell back to her side, and it wasn’t until my hand was almost to hers that I realized this was happening—I was reaching for her—and pulled back roughly. The empty glass fell to the floor but didn’t break. We watched it roll in slow motion until it settled against the wall beneath the painting. She smiled politely, emptily.

  I was shaking again. It was a mistake being this close to her.

  “I think the random hookups are still here,” she murmured while looking across the room at different people. It was an innocent sentence but it jolted me enough to stop trembling.

  “Like who?”

  She sighed and craned her neck. “Well, there’s the lush alcoholic wife who always embarrasses her stiff husband.” She was staring at a couple I couldn’t see. “She’s not actually hooking up yet. She’s just stuck at this party and dreaming about the affair.”

  David was staring at us from across the room where he was locked in a conversation with Randolph Torrance, who saw who David was looking at and started leering for me to join them. Samona and I were standing near a corner where James Gutterson was motioning toward the monstrous canvas, making giant curves in the air with his arms and spilling wine with each overemphatic gesture.

  “It must be hard running a fashion print studio in this city.”

  This was me.

  “Yes. I know. David keeps reminding me of that fact. On a daily basis.”

  This was her.

  Some facts from eight years ago—some minor, some not:

  David Taylor is the track star who scores whatever points the team needs, and he’s admired by thousands across campus who have never met him.

  Samona Ashley is, at a glance, the beautiful party girl with a taste for amaretto sours, the arm candy for dumb handsome guys at dances, the dark-skinned exotic one who wears sexy dresses even to Student Activities Committee meetings, the girl who wins the campus model search (after entering it as a joke), the girl who wreaks havoc on the emotions of a huge swath of disbelieving Yale men because she seems so otherworldly but at the same time, because of that enigmatic smile, maybe—just maybe—attainable.

  So it is inevitable—at least natural—that two integral members of Yale royalty will, at some point, sleep together.

  What is less inevitable: that a drunken fuck will become something sustained—the propagation of shallow attraction and collective expectation conspiring into what is thereafter commonly referred to as a relationship.

  And though David Taylor and Samona Ashley are soon seen as a perfect couple in Yale’s tightly enclosed universe, those of us who are close enough to be aware of their problems constantly ask one another a basic question: whether this will—or more important, whether this ought to—last.

  There are the drinking binges that cause David Taylor to urinate in his sleep while in bed with Samona Ashley.

  There are the crabs that David “inherits” on an overnight trip from “unwashed” motel sheets.

  There is Samona’s intimate—what David Taylor calls a “creepshow”—relationship with her blue-blooded Episcopalian father, Keith Ashley, which consists of daily phone calls that often end in tears, and which leads to David’s suspicion as to why Samona dates only white guys. He ultimately shrugs it off as simply a “daddy” fixation, but this is tricky for David to do since Keith Ashley also has crewcut brown hair, pale skin, a high-pitched voice to go with his wiry stature, and was the SAE treasurer at Yale thirty years earlier. The eeriness of all their similarities is something David will never address out loud.

  There is the rage that this father-daughter relationship invites from Tana Ashley, Samona’s “crazy” Ghanaian mother whom Keith met while doing Peace Corps work in the seventies and whom Samona apathetically refers to as “Tana from Ghana,” and who has a talent for telling Samona she’s too fat during her daughter’s most vulnerable moments. The fact that Tana Ashley explains her harshness away by claiming to possess “unimaginable childhood secrets” does nothing to help Samona shrug off her onslaughts.

  There is Samona being diagnosed with bulimia, and the counseling sessions at the Mental Health Center that David sometimes accompanies her to, and sometimes does not.

  There’s the student body that wants to believe in the serene and perfect sphere that David Taylor and Samona Ashley inhabit, because it gives the girls something to aspire to and it lets the boys off the hook when it comes to the prospect of scoring a girl like Samona Ashley—there is a huge, collective sigh of relief when it becomes apparent that Samona is off the market. And even though rumors about them are constantly drifting around campus, they are ultimately ignored because no one wants to believe them. Besides, other people’s longings and fantasies have nothing to do with why David and Samona will stay together.

  There is the perfect timing: David is tired of chasing tail (or being chased) through the bars and clubs and frat houses of New Haven, and he’s tired of the semi-limp fucks and the morning-afters that end with the inevitable walk of shame back to his room in Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

  And Samona, after a string of relationships with selfish men who only want to nail the princess and be able to say they’d slept with a black girl, responds to something in David: he’s sweet, he’s possessive, he comes from a modest background but has a clearly defined and sincere dream of what he desires his life to be that involves more than moving to a city to make a shitload of money. Samona Ashley has never been with a man who maintains this earnest kind of focus and drive.

  There’s my last image of David and Samona together: the two of them at graduation, sharing a joint during the commencement address.

  And there is the element that completes that image, which at the time seems innocuous, but soon—as I tell this story looking back over everything that has fallen apart—will unveil itself as prophetic: Ethan Hoevel sitting in the row directly behind them with his sad-faced Irish mother and his scowling, bearded older brother.

  Ethan Hoevel is glaring at Yale’s perfect couple with an intensity I don’t understand.

  I know this to be an accurate representation of the events.

  Because before the ceremony begins, Ethan and I merge randomly on intersecting stone walkways in the sea of black gowns, and I look into his green eyes, and they’re saturated with unease, and I know that one thing I can do for him before our lives diverge again is sit beside him, silently, during the ceremony.

  And on that June day so many years ago, in the space between the two foldout chairs we’re sitting on, hidden out of sight
beneath our graduation gowns, Ethan Hoevel has forgiven me and is holding my hand.

  As usual, I had been at the party too long, and my reasons for coming had gotten lost somewhere along the way. I was getting very wasted and listening to James Gutterson talk about the market and how tanked out it was and how everything was going to fall apart soon, how it already was falling apart, blaming it on greedy day traders and corrupt accountants and first-years just getting their sales license who were always clicking the sell box when they were supposed to be clicking the buy box for Christ’s sake, and don’t even get him started on young women in what they call business casual (which resembled what Heather Locklear used to wear on Melrose Place) who hadn’t learned yet that it took balls to be a trader.

  “It’s just a shit world,” the British guy was saying drunkenly, spilling his gin martini onto Randolph Torrance’s floor. “And it’s all going to collapse into shit and rubbish some night while we are all asleep and…would anyone care to do some blow?”

  I was so pumped full of Vicodin and Scotch that I was trying to stop myself from drooling. I was vaguely aware that Van Morrison’s Greatest Hits was playing. My tooth was full-out throbbing and soaking it in alcohol wasn’t helping anymore. And I was so hungry—there were no hors d’oeuvres anywhere, just some bowls of mixed nuts I couldn’t eat because of the tooth—and then predictably the hunger became anger: anger at Stanton taking me to the tapas bar in hopes of—what? And anger at Ethan for being involved with a guy like Stanton, and for lying to me about Samona (where was she? I’d lost her somehow), and I was angry at David Taylor for inviting me to this party as some sort of charitable outreach, or was it a failed attempt to recapture what we had all (no, wait, what you had) lost on graduation day?

  And then I was floating toward the door when I noticed someone standing there in the dark, surveying the room.

  This person was wearing ripped jeans and a black Gucci shirt that fit well over his thin, muscled frame, and a cashmere peacoat that fell just above the knees.

  The entire room paused as the women (even the married ones) scanned him suggestively and the men rolled their eyes and exchanged grimaces—futile attempts to dismiss the stylish elegance of this party crasher which had, the moment he’d entered the room, toppled their cool facades.

  It was Ethan Hoevel.

  “Moondance” was playing and I felt in danger just being there.

  I moved back into the darkness and watched as Ethan finally picked Samona and David out of the crowd and sauntered toward them.

  The British guy had found me and was saying, “People are doing blow in the bedroom, and our host would like you to join them.” But he was blocking my view and I just tilted my head and said nothing until he left, making a frustrated sound and clearing his nose.

  I watched as Ethan Hoevel shook David Taylor’s hand.

  I watched as David Taylor put that hand on Ethan’s shoulder.

  David was squinting, trying to remember this oddly familiar face, and then I saw the moment in which he did.

  Because of where Samona now found herself in this world, her smile did something it had never done before. Her smile showed exactly what she was thinking.

  David Taylor was looking around the room, and I slowly started backing away when I realized he was looking for me.

  But he didn’t find me because I was pressed against a wall in the darkness and moving out the door, knowing exactly why it was that the smile Samona Ashley Taylor had been perfecting her entire life—the smile that haunted you by hiding her every thought and feeling under the slightly curled lip, the smile that had lingered in my mind for eight years—was now failing her.

  6

  THE NIGHT IN the spring of 1996 starts in a dorm room in Trumbull Hall with a “pregame party” consisting of Cuervo shots and cans of Busch while a group of us listens to Bob Marley’s Greatest Hits, and we talk about how Meyerson’s cold-war class is a total bitch because all the junior girls are just there to mess up the curve, and how Nick has been sleeping with Karen even though he’s dating Jessica but everyone thinks Nick is gay anyway and it’s a pretty twisted situation.

  And then some of us move to an eighties-themed dance party in a quad which is mostly groups of girls jumping up and down every time they hear a song they recognize. Since the DJ is taking requests, this is happening pretty much with every song. The dance party is sponsored by the college which means: no booze.

  So a few of us relocate to the Purple Cow party at Zeta Psi which is supposed to have cases of champagne but it’s all gone and punch and keg beer is what we’re looking at, and there are some girls with mud on their faces dressed up in football pads—initiation for the women’s ice-hockey team which most of us don’t know exists. There’s a big confrontation at the door because someone’s talking to someone else’s girlfriend and one of them is a drama guy and the other is a football guy and you know that’s not going to be fair so people have to get in the middle since the drama guy (Adam?) has just been talking to her, nothing more, and the football guy (Daryl?) is piss drunk, though after the situation gets resolved and Daryl’s passed out somewhere, it is circulated that Adam has, in fact, fucked his girlfriend.

  Dancing at Kavanaugh’s Pub: a decent jukebox and specials on margaritas, but pretty boring and consisting mostly of freshmen since they don’t card.

  Somehow it gets to be 2:30 in the morning.

  Then we’re at Sigma Alpha Epsilon—Late Night—and it’s MGD in oversize red plastic cups, and I can’t find anyone that I’ve been hanging out with that night and don’t really know who I’m looking for anyway since I can’t remember who’s been where, so I’m thinking that the night will be over soon and when was the last time a night had ended any differently?

  And then Samona Ashley is sitting next to me on the armrest of a tattered sofa and I can’t help noticing that our hips are touching, actually pressing together while “Sweet Child o’ Mine” grates through blown-out speakers, and I flash across all the moments I’ve been this close to her without being drunk enough to say something. There was the “safe-sex tutorial” during freshman orientation, where I thought the way she was smiling at everything new around her was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I managed only to offer a strained grin during the “condom on the banana” illustration before she looked away. There was the Introduction to Art History class we shared first semester sophomore year, where for two hours twice a week I’d gaze toward wherever she was sitting, glancing over her shoulder at the crooked doodles she’d draw, trying to tune out whatever athlete or frat boy happened to be flirting with her. There was the early evening during exam week when I’d been jogging on the New Haven Green and seen her on a bench, alone, highlighting a textbook, and I’d just kept running past her, noticing how she’d looked up at me courteously but choosing not to return the look. And through all these moments I was only wishing that I could be the kind of guy who just sits casually on a bench next to someone like Samona Ashley and effortlessly makes her laugh—it always starts with making someone laugh; the kind of guy who could then get to know her better, make her fall in love with me, structure each day around her, bring her into my world while becoming absorbed into hers; the guy who could make his life serene that way and erase all the bullshit striving and angling and confusion and pining that saturate this time.

  But since I’m not that guy—since I never move closer than a few desk chairs away—I don’t get to know Samona Ashley through the first three years of college, and she never becomes anything more than the center of a hollow dream.

  And yet, now as she’s nodding off beside me at the SAE party—she has sat down next to me, alone—and she’s saying, “So where else have you been tonight?” and this seems focused in my general direction and I reel off the list of places that I remember in no particular order and mumble, “Most of the night sucked but this is kind of cool,” and her eyes meet mine for the first time—she’s drunk and stoned; I understand this but don’t c
are—and though it is obviously a struggle to hold her head up and her eyes are glazed, she looks at me long enough so I can see how deeply black and beautiful her eyes are up close, which is when I realize that Samona Ashley, a girl I’ve only seen before across crowded rooms with her arms around other guys, is talking to me right now and her face is just a few inches away and I am smelling her hair for the first time.

  She’s sliding off the armrest when I catch her, and she says my name and smiles—what could be a suggestive smile, what could be anything—then murmurs thank you and then somehow her lips are touching mine and this is a kiss—Samona Ashley kissing me, and I’m kissing her back and tasting beer and some kind of lip gloss, and five seconds later we’re still kissing and my hand is on her hip and hers is on my chest and I’m hoping that since it’s late and it looks like this party’s winding down, she will go home with me, and the only other semblance of thought occurring over and over is: this is so simple, this is so easy…

  But one of the SAE brothers bores through the room saying something about police and the guys living in the house gather together near the front door (David Taylor is among them) and then Samona isn’t kissing me anymore. One of her girlfriends is motioning for her to drop the cup and leave with her and then the party officially ends and we’re all out on the street without our red plastic cups.

  And the last thing I see that night—the thing that ultimately sends me home—is Samona Ashley talking to David Taylor on the stoop outside the house.

  I hear a few weeks later that the night at Sigma Alpha Epsilon was the first night they slept together.

  After that, I will see her at random places and I will not be able to keep myself from thinking that my most memorable experience during four years at Yale took place in five seconds on the night she fucked David Taylor.