Loner

by Teddy Wayne

  When I stood up Sara was far enough away, with her back to us.

  “There goes your girlfriend,” you said, blowing smoke in her direction, wearing the impish smile from when you’d said veritas.

  “Huh?”

  You pointed with your chin. “Sara.”

  “Oh,” I said, acting like I’d only just noticed her.

  We pulled up to Sever. “Later,” you said, grinding your cigarette underfoot.

  “Later,” I echoed, without the usual pang of loss when we parted ways. Now I could behold you from afar, on a screen, whenever I wanted.

  In the privacy of my room I pored over your Facebook profile. There was no fodder for our budding relationship; you hadn’t listed any favorite cultural interests or other groups, and the posts you’d written on your own wall were spare and logistical. So much for my plans of bonding with you over my deep knowledge of esoteric films or bands.

  Instead I waded into the waters of your photogenic past, skimming over close-ups of food and panoramic sunsets to linger on images of you. The majority depicted your life before Harvard: European cities, what appeared to be your family’s wraparound-porched oceanfront vacation home, a couple from childhood (wobbly on skis; crying on Santa’s lap), you and high school friends posing with tipsy hilarity at bars and nightclubs—entered with the benefit of fake IDs, I assumed, or city-girl know-how, or just because you were young and eye-catching and this was your Manhattan birthright.

  The latest batch had been taken here, in dorm rooms and parties, with your handpicked beautiful people nothing like the ­factory-outlet Marauders. Several of the group shots featured you in intimate proximity to a guy I didn’t recognize from your Annenberg crowd. He looked older than the rest of your cohort, the adult at the kids’ table. His body language conveyed, more than mere ease, a sense of ownership: sturdy leg resting on coffee table, outstretched arms over sofa, squintily satisfied smirk.

  Liam Barrows, he was tagged. His own Facebook page was private. All I could find on him was a single quote two years ago in the Crimson: “ ‘The changes to the dining hall will have little effect on my eating habits,’ said sophomore Liam C. Barrows, a resident of Adams.”

  So he was a senior; that’s why he looked so much older than your friends. He could have anyone in the college, yet he’d zeroed in on a helpless-to-resist freshman girl, the sole demographic open to me. How greedy—like a billionaire winning the lottery.

  When I came home from the library that night I heard music from Steven’s room. “Always on My Mind” was playing on repeat. It was irritating, and I wondered if he had left it on accidentally. After the seventh cycle, I rapped on his door.

  “One minute” came his voice from inside. The volume dropped and he appeared. His face was as pink as raw hamburger, his eyelashes matted and wet.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Ivana and I,” he croaked, “we . . . we . . .”

  He swallowed without finishing.

  “You broke up?”

  He closed his eyes and nodded as if confirming a death.

  “Sorry to hear that,” I said, and I was: his relationship with Ivana had kept him out of the suite.

  The ends of his lips sagged gravely as he fought off tears. It was disconcerting to see him this way. I’d known Steven only to be relentlessly chipper about everything: the weather, whatever was on the menu, all the people he knew. (“Isn’t he awesome?” he’d declare about each acquaintance who stopped by our table to say hello.)

  He waved me into his room and crumpled into the bean bag chair, where he delivered a long-winded, unsolicited account of how his and Ivana’s romance for the ages had met its demise.

  It wasn’t him, it was her. She didn’t want to be tied down her freshman year and thought they should see other people. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. She loved him but this was the best thing for both of them. Each cliché prompted vocal ruptures and a welling up. I responded on cue with my own platitudes lifted from movies and TV shows: he’d done nothing wrong, there were other girls out there who would appreciate him more, it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

  “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known, inside and out,” he said. “And she really got me.”

  Up to this point I’d managed to affect a look of sympathy, but here I nearly laughed. Forget the absurd notion of her contending with you for that title: Ivana was, by even the most charitable judgment, so distant from the winners’ circle, way up in the cheap seats, that one might almost suspect Steven of mockery.

  “She’s cute,” I said, “but the world is filled with cute girls. You’ll find someone better.”

  “I don’t want anyone better,” he said. “I want her.”

  “I mean better for you.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want another relationship.”

  “Well,” I said, “you’ll feel better in the morning.”

  He nodded through his phlegm production. “I should call my mom back,” he sniffled. “But thanks for being here for me.”

  “Sure,” I told him.

  As I headed toward the door, he stood and intercepted me with a hug. “You’re a good roommate,” he said.

  “Not at all,” I said, wriggling out of his embrace and ducking back into my room. “Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind keeping the music down.”

  Steven recovered like an inflatable clown punching bag. “I realized we’re not one hundred percent compatible, and I should find someone more suited to me, and so should she,” he told me two days later. “And don’t worry—we’re going to make sure nothing’s weird between us, so we can all hang out like before. Ivana and I decided the most important thing is the unity of the Matthews Marauders.”

  Thank God for small mercies.

  On Friday evening Sara and I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She kept asking what I thought about the European collection, assuming I was now an expert in the visual arts thanks to my Renaissance to Impressionism class. I answered to the best of my midsemester survey-course abilities but gave evasive or fabricated responses to questions that flummoxed me. To compensate, I pointed at a subway advertisement during our ride home.

  “Look at that ad,” I told Sara. “See how it shows just the woman’s mouth eating the candy bar? It’s isolating the one non-taboo main orifice, which takes in an edible object that becomes a phallic substitute. Now check out that bank ad. Male mouths are rarely eroticized. Instead, they’re used to imply speech or some other kind of power.”

  “That’s pretty insightful,” she said. “Most guys don’t pick up on stuff like that in everyday life.”

  I shrugged. “I guess I’m not like most guys.”

  “Yeah.” She kissed my cheek. “You’re definitely not.”

  When we reached Matthews my eyes traveled up to your fifth-floor window, warm with apricot light. You were home.

  Our plan was to watch Dumbo; when Sara had found out I’d never seen it she insisted upon a screening. But first she had to finish editing a high school student’s college essay. The tutoring organization she volunteered for matched Harvard students with Boston-area youth from underserved communities.

  “I wish I could disable the thesaurus function from my kids’ computers,” she said. I looked up from my Dickinson book and at her screen, where she’d highlighted a sentence: “In college I will continue to prevail over my trials and tribulations and conquer adversity as I metamorphose my dreams into a reality.”

  “That’s really bad,” I said. “I hate to say it, but are you really doing a favor helping someone who writes like that go to a good college? Won’t they be in over their head?”

  “First of all, she’s not trying to get into Harvard. Second of all, it’s over their heads. And when you feel like criticizing someone, remember that all the people in the world haven’t had
the advantages you’ve had.”

  “I used ‘they’ because I didn’t know the writer’s gender. And I haven’t had all the advantages. Compared to some people.”

  “You have, hugely,” she said. “And I said ‘all the people,’ not ‘all the advantages.’ It’s the beginning of The Great Gatsby. Don’t you remember the opening line?”

  “It’s been a while since I read it. I think it was, like, seventh grade,” I lied. “It’s the last book on the Prufrock syllabus. I’ll be rereading it soon.”

  “You’ll be breeding it soon?”

  “I’ll be re-read-ing it soon.”

  “You’re a real mumbler, you know,” she said.

  We were lying on the bed, about to start the movie on her laptop, when you came out of your room. That was our riotous Friday nightlife on display for you: Dumbo, my Dickinson anthology on the floor, tickets for an upcoming performance of the Boston Philharmonic thumbtacked to the corkboard. Just a couple of unruly college kids.

  “David,” you said as you passed by. Sara and I looked up, both incredulous that you would address me. “Do you know what this week’s reading is?”

  “Emily Dickinson,” I replied.

  “Cool.” You stepped into the hallway. “See you in class.”

  It was completely unnecessary for you to ask me, right then, as you were leaving to go out. You were throwing your weight around, letting Sara know she had some competition.

  “I didn’t know you were in class together,” Sara said a minute into the opening credits.

  “We didn’t realize it until this week,” I said. “It’s a pretty big class.”

  I followed her to it during shopping period. If I could have, I would have signed up for her other classes, too. I stayed up all night writing an essay for her while I lied to you. I’m only here because she sleeps in the next room.

  Feeling Sara’s gaze on my face, I yawned.

  “Did you guys sit next to each other or something?” she asked, yawning contagiously.

  Yes, because I waited for her late arrival, and she intentionally rubbed her elbow against my arm, and she asked me to walk her across the Yard, and I saw you but tied my shoes so you wouldn’t see me.

  “No, we just saw each other when we walked out,” I said. “Look, the movie’s starting.”

  I snuggled closer to her and she dropped it. Sara teared up during the sequence when Dumbo’s mother cradles him with her trunk through the bars of her cage.

  “I should’ve warned you,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I always cry during this scene.”

  The awakening of an erection. I was disturbed by the lack of obvious stimuli—the main on-screen visual was the animated elephants’ non-pathetically phallic trunks—but when Sara’s tears grew more pronounced, I noticed, so did my penis. To allay it, I looked at the nearby Anti-Imperialist Marxism in Latin America. (I’d gotten about a hundred pages into it by now, all during sessions on Sara’s bed; it was more interesting than its dry title promised, an engaging primer on both specific Latin revolutions and the precepts of Marxism.)

  “You didn’t find that sad?” Sara asked when the movie ended.

  “It’s an animated kids’ movie,” I told her.

  “You never seem to get moved by any of the movies or plays we watch.”

  “Who gets moved by plays?”

  “I do.”

  “Guys don’t cry during plays,” I said.

  She studied my eyes, as if plumbing their depths might solve the mystery of me. “You don’t even laugh all that much. Like real laughs.”

  “I laugh at your jokes,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. I always at least smiled at them, but it was a forced response to the concept and effort, and I often had to remind myself to emit a polite chuckle.

  “I should hope so.” She tapped my forehead with her finger. “Knock, knock.”

  “Who’s there?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” she said. “Who’s in there?”

  S’ohw ni ereht?

  “No one,” I said in the automatonlike voice. “I’m actually a robot. I have no soul.”

  “It’s a joke,” I added when she didn’t react.

  “I feel like there’s a lot you bottle up inside,” she said gently. “I wish you’d let it out with me.”

  “Would you really want some guy who’s uncontrollably weeping all the time?” I asked, thinking of Steven after his breakup.

  “Maybe you’ve got a point,” she said with a short laugh. Then a hesitant undertone crept into her voice. “I told my parents about you.”

  “What’d you tell them?”

  “How smart and thoughtful you are. How you’re the one person here I feel like gets me.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “They want to meet you.” She chewed her bottom lip. “I thought maybe you could visit Cleveland over winter break.”

  “Sure, that’d be fun,” I said, imagining the bleak prospect of being snowbound in Cleveland with the Cohens. “Let’s talk about it closer to the break. My family might be upset over losing time with me.”

  “Do your parents know about us?” she asked a minute later, shyly averting her eyes.

  “Uh-huh.” I hadn’t spoken to my mother since that phone call before the Ice Cream Bash and had relayed only bare-bones, predominantly academic data about my life over e-mail. “Well, just my mom. I figured she could tell my dad.”

  “And what did you tell them about me?”

  “The same stuff, pretty much,” I said. “Smart and thoughtful. Quotes Great American Novels to buttress her arguments.”

  She mussed the part in my hair. “Buttress,” she said, smiling. “I should disable your thesaurus function, too.”

  She left for the bathroom with her toiletries. Reliably hygienic Sara, who always brushed and flossed and rolled on clinical-strength antiperspirant before bed. Sara Cohen, who wanted me to visit her and her family in Cleveland, the only one who wanted me to let everything out with her.

  There was a lot you bottled up, too. I knew hardly anything about you beyond what I’d seen on the Internet. I didn’t even know what your room looked like.

  Without having thought it through, I found myself turning your doorknob.

  I remained inside the doorframe. The swath of light that seeped in from Sara’s room outlined a path to your bed, where creamy sheets lay rumpled under a white comforter. The walls were bare except for a single canvas painting with an abstract design. A Turkish rug sprawled across the floor, a few articles of clothing strewn about it.

  Sara would be back soon. As I shut the door, something slipped to the floor on the other side. Your robe. It had slid off the peg attached to the door. After hanging it back up, I buried my nose in the interior folds, the material that had recently been in contact with your nude skin. Rubbing the belt, my fingers came across an imperfection. Upon closer examination, I discovered it had, at one end, its own small VMW monogram.

  I extracted the belt from the robe’s two loops, balled it up, and stuffed it in my pocket as a souvenir.

  I was already between Sara’s pink flannel sheets when she came back. As we carried out our nocturnal routine I thought of the silk resting in my pocket. When I ejaculated, I spasmed six times on her stomach, as if discharging a revolver of all its bullets. Sara reached for the shirt she’d demoted to a rag for the cleanup of these skirmishes. It featured an illustration of a feathered quill crossing a blade with the cursive inscription THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD. She regularly laundered it, but it built up a mushroomy odor between washings as it putrefied in its airless bedside-table drawer, and the blue cotton was now marbled with semen stains. The penis mightier than the sword, I thought with creative kerning each time it came out as I pictured the nib of a retractable ballpoint pen emerging like an uncircumcised penis.
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  The next morning I hid the belt in my drawer. But before I left for brunch I snipped an inch off the tip where the small VMW monogram was stitched, tucked it into the fifth pocket of my jeans, next to the Lactaid pills, and throughout the day I stroked it with my index finger.

  I anticipated your reaction when I’d eventually “find” the belt under your bed. You wouldn’t remember the missing monogram by then; you’d simply be grateful. How irksome it was to lose one small but integral piece from a larger item—a screw from an IKEA chair, the drawstring of a hooded sweatshirt, an ace from a deck of cards. Once it was gone, it could feel impossible to make the thing whole again, as if it were permanently doomed to a semi-functional life.

  Chapter 9

  You shuffled in especially late to the next Prufrock lecture and didn’t sit near me. I caught your eye when class ended, but you were the first out the door. En route to Sever you ran into your black-haired friend Suzanne Marsh (Ilchester Place, London; Marymount International School London). The daughter, according to Google, of a famous British artist. The two of you procured cigarettes from your bags and stopped near University Hall to brazenly smoke within spitting distance of the school’s administrative offices. So you had time for her but not the guy who wrote your paper.

  As I approached, a student with a clipboard buttonholed me.

  “Want to sign this petition to improve the benefits of dining service workers?” he asked.

  “For the dining service workers? Sure,” I said, loudly enough for you to hear me, and scrawled my name.

  “If you give your e-mail we’ll send you updates on this and other movements, too,” he told me.

  “Cool,” I said, writing down a fake address before sidling up to you. “Can I get one of those?” I asked, pointing to your cigarette.

  You took a long drag and handed me your pack and lighter. “Suzanne—­David,” you said, and exhaled through your nose.

  “Ah, famous David,” said gap-toothed Suzanne. It wasn’t clear if this was sarcasm or if you’d actually discussed me with her.