“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Wes didn’t even have to think about his answer, because he had rehearsed it in his mind on many occasions, although in this fantasy it had always been Delia who would be asking, in just the same benevolent earnest in which Lucy had spoken, and with just the same clear-eyed fascination in her eyes.
“A good person.”
“Why wait? Can’t you be a good person now?”
“I’ve been trying, but I’m not very good at it yet.”
“What’s holding you back?”
“I seem to be paralyzed by the challenge of doing the right thing. It’s not like it’s straightforward, the way you might think. There seems to be a trick to it, like a trick of the mind, or a trick of perspective, or something. It’s like trying to look at something through a whole set of reflecting mirrors. You think you’ve identified it, but when you reach for it it’s not there, it’s just a reflection.”
“What’s the problem? It’s not that hard being nice.”
“But there you see, being nice isn’t the same thing as being good. Anybody can be nice. My problem is figuring out how to do the right thing, the one right thing.”
“Maybe there is no one right thing.”
“Maybe. But you still have to try. At least I do. You know what it’s like? You know when you’re writing a paper, and you run it through the spell-checker? You’d think, right, that you’d catch every typo? But you don’t, there’s always typos left, because sometimes when you misspell a word it becomes another word, and the spell-checker misses it. A mistake like that is a lot harder to detect. There’s nothing wrong with the new word, except that it’s in the wrong place. It’s out of context. That’s me. There’s nothing wrong with me, at least I don’t think there is, but even so I appear to be some sort of a mistake. I don’t fit in with the rest of the sentence, with the way everyone around me seems to think, or live their lives. Whatever it is that makes me out of place may be a tiny thing, one little letter transposed, but it makes all the difference. Maybe I’m not even a spelling mistake, just the product of poor punctuation. I’m a question mark at the end of a declarative sentence. From now on, you should tell everybody that my new nickname is ‘Typo.’ Call me Typo.”
His monologue had left Wes feeling maudlin and exhausted, as if he had called his new status into being just by naming it. He also knew that uninhibited expressions of self-pity were no way into a girl’s heart, let alone her bed, which only compounded the gloom and colored the silence that suddenly seemed to envelop the two of them. Lucy put her drink down onto the carpet beside her and stared at him from under shadowed lids, her face bathed in a wash of ethereal blue from the night-light in the bathroom. Then she pushed herself onto her hands and knees and leaned in towards him.
“You are so adorable, Wes,” she said.
“My name is Typo.”
Then she kissed him, and it was really, really nice.
“Hey, where are you?” Lucy was standing right beside him in the window. “You were, like, a million miles away.”
“What did you think of the paper?”
“Honestly? I thought it was brilliant. Like, you-could-get-it-published brilliant. Way too good for high school.” She put her hand on his forearm.
“You know, you’re not my girlfriend. I mean, just because of last night, you’re not my girlfriend or anything.”
Lucy stepped back, her hands out in front of her like a crossing guard, and Wes could actually see the color drain from her face.
“Whoa! Where’s this coming from?”
“Isn’t that why you came here, all part of your plan? To claim me?”
Lucy collapsed on the bed, her face in her hands. She took two or three deep breaths. “Oh you’re a mean one,” she said softly, and Wes knew instantly, beyond any doubt or rational calculus, that he had got it all wrong, and that it was too late to take it back. His heart started racing and the skin on his face felt all prickly, and he strode over to his desk and began leafing through his papers because he hadn’t the slightest idea what to say or do next. He felt as if he were in a dream, the kind of dream where you suddenly remember that you did something horrible years earlier that you’d completely forgotten about until that very moment, like killing one of your parents and burying them under the floorboards. He heard Lucy rise from the bed and cross the room slowly, and waited for the sound of the opening door. But then he felt her hand in his, and he turned and she was right in front of him, not even crying, but her eyes were all crinkled up as if she were trying to see him through a dense fog.
“Let me ask you something Wes.”
Wes nodded.
“Would you describe yourself as ‘bookish’?”
“‘Bookish?’”
“I mean, you seem to have a lot of these preconceived notions about people, like you don’t know how real people think, like everything you’ve ever learned is from books. Bookish.”
“I guess. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I told you last night, don’t you remember? Don’t you remember anything about last night?”
Wes shrugged, too traumatized to dare to try to speak.
“I had a really fun time last night, Wes. You were super cool. And yes, I thought it would be nice to come over and talk about it with you. But the real reason I came over here was to tell you something else, something really simple that I thought maybe I could just kind of slip in to the casual conversation. And that thing is, if you ever, ever want that to happen again you’ve got to bring condoms.”
“Condoms?”
“Protection. I mean, I think it’ll be fine, but never again.”
“I thought . . . I figured . . . ”
“I know what you figured. But I wasn’t planning on losing my virginity last night either.”
“Your virginity?”
The door opened, and Wes’s father was standing in the doorway.
“Dad, for fuck’s sake, don’t you . . . ?”
“You forget something, Wesbo?”
“Dad! I’m . . . ”
“You forget someone? Like your sister, maybe? Who just called me in tears from the movie theater?”
“Shit!”
“Shit is right.”
“Hang on, I’ll go right now.”
“Never mind, I’m on it. I can see you’re busy. But don’t let it happen again, man.” And his father was gone.
Lucy was standing by the window, looking out. Wes wondered what he should do. If it were a book, or even a movie, he would probably walk up behind her, put his arms around her and whisper “I’m sorry” in her ear. Is that what she would expect him to do, or like him to do? On the surface, it seemed like it would be the right thing to do: a sincere apology, a token of atonement, an invitation to emotional intimacy—an unbroken series of successful gestures. But the more he considered it, and the longer the silence between them was extended, the less appropriate, the less adequate, the gesture seemed to be. He was sorry, that much would be true and he believed Lucy would know that, probably without his having to say it, but because he was sorry for too many things, also things that had nothing to do with Lucy, apologizing to her would be sort of meaningless and the easy way out, putting all those problems in one box and labeling it the “Wes is a jerk” problem. It would be a kind of lie, too, because she wouldn’t know what he was really apologizing about, and he didn’t want his very next words to her to be a lie. And he didn’t want her to be in any box with other problems that didn’t have anything to do with her. She should be in a box all her own and remain the Lucy problem. Wes could deal with that problem, and he thought he might even be able to solve it.
“I like Elliot Smith, too. I also listen to Elliot Smith.”
Lucy was silent for a moment before answering. “That’s good. I like Elliot Smith. No secrets.”
“And Lou Reed.”
“That’s good too.”
“I didn’t know you were a virgin. I’m sorry.”
>
“You’re sorry I was a virgin, or you’re sorry you took it for granted that I wasn’t?”
“I was one too. I didn’t think.”
“See, I knew that about you. The whole school knew it about you. Funny though—nobody’s gonna be high-fiving me come Monday morning.”
“Oh.”
“I’m probably going to leave now. That would be the smart thing to do, don’t you think?”
“Can you stay a little longer?”
“What, so you can find a thousand different ways to say you’re sorry? Listen, Leslie, Wesley, Wesbo, Lezbo—I know you’re sorry. I mean, look at you, you look like a puppy that somebody beat with a stick. It’s okay, I know you’re sorry. But I’d really like to hear you say something smart for a change, and I don’t think that’s gonna happen here right now. Why don’t you think, I mean really think about what you want to say to me the next time we see each other, and make it count? Wouldn’t that be better?”
“Maybe it would. Can I see you tomorrow?”
“Too soon. Anyways, I’m canvassing for Obama in Pennsylvania tomorrow.”
“I could come with you.”
“You’ve got a paper to write, remember? See, being a grown-up is all about priorities, Typo. It’s all about deciding what’s important to you, because it can’t all be. You can’t be a perfect person and a grown-up at the same time.”
“What do you know about it? You’re sixteen years old.”
“I was raised by grown-ups. I know more about grown-ups than I ever wanted to know.”
Wes’s phone rang in his pocket, and he let it ring. Lucy came up to him, put one hand on his shoulder, rose up on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss on the cheek before she slipped out the door, and with the touch of her lips on his skin he felt something give way inside him, though he knew even as he felt it that he was too stupid to know what it was. And yet, the funny thing was that it didn’t make him feel sad at all; in fact, the realization that he was too stupid to understand himself made him feel positively elated, the way he’d felt when Lucy had made fun of him. It was as if a great burden had been lifted off his shoulders—not the burden of struggle, but the burden of responsibility. It was as if someone had come along and anointed him, saying “This is too much for you. Shed this heavy burden, Wes, and begin to live,” or something corny like that. Better, it was as if he were a Librarian of Babel who, after a lifetime’s work, had finally found the exit. Wes thought for a moment that this must be what being in love felt like, but then he remembered that he had been in love and that it didn’t feel anything like this at all. And then Wes remembered his dream of the godlike calf—this was exactly what it had felt like in the dream when he’d understood that he was in heaven and that he’d never have to do anything again for all eternity but brush the calf. And although she was not his girlfriend, he had Lucy to thank for this feeling, Lucy whom he’d kissed and kissed the night before.
They had necked seriously and tenderly for a long while, then Lucy had stood up and gone into the bathroom. Wes had risen to follow her, but she gently closed the door in his face. “I need to pee really badly.” For some reason that he could no longer remember—the three industrial-power drinks inside him had something to do with it—Wes had wandered off. He had no idea what time it was, or what was happening in the rest of the apartment, and was surprised and a little irritated to find that the party was still going on full swing in the living room, although the lights were off and the music had been lowered and changed to slow dance numbers. A few couples bumbled around in tight clinches, and several more were closely entwined with each other on the sofas and behind the curtains. The place stank of cigarette smoke and sweat. A little wobbly on his legs, Wes leaned against the doorjamb and peered into the gloom, not quite sure what had brought him there except the vague need to clear his head or maybe to get another drink, and then his eyes fell on Delia, sitting by herself in the corner of a white couch, in the other corner of which some kid was all over some chick with his hand up her green polo shirt. It was so horrible to see Delia there like that—Delia, the most confident and self-possessed girl on the Upper East Side—that Wes felt that he should probably move away under cover of darkness, except that she was staring directly at him with an unreadable expression on her face. It was like finding yourself being watched by a ghost, or a cop. Wes raised his hand in an ambiguous gesture that, he understood even as he was doing it, could be interpreted either as a greeting or as a signal to cease and desist. Delia nodded solemnly, which Wes took as an invitation to join her, and one that was perfectly impossible to refuse.
“Hey. You’re still here. What time is it?”
Delia shrugged indifferently, but shifted her weight in such a way as to make it clear that she expected Wes to sit close beside her. When he did, he felt the heat and even the imprint of her buttocks on the cushion beneath him. Wes left a slim gap between them, but Delia immediately pushed her left thigh against his right and reached across his lap for his hand, which she held in both of hers with a kind of peremptory, proprietary authority as they rubbed shoulders. The smell of her shampoo was still strong, but somehow cloying now instead of intoxicating. Wes turned his face away, moved and embarrassed by his own sense of shame and betrayal.
“I feel like you’ve been avoiding me.”
“What? No, not at all. I just got, you know, caught up. Actually, I’ve been looking for you, now that you mention it.”
“You know, Wes, I came to this party to hang out with you.”
“You did?”
“It’s not like there’s anybody else interesting here, is it?”
“Guess not.”
“I only agreed to come because I thought Jillian would be here.”
“Who’s Jillian?”
“Lucy’s sister. I knew her at Dalton before she went to college. Then when she called to say she couldn’t make it, it was too late to back out. I didn’t want to hurt Lucy’s feelings. So I asked her to invite you.”
“No, that was James.”
“That was me. You’re here because of me. You were always here because of me.”
At that moment, the phone in Wes’s back pocket chimed a text message, and Wes, only too glad for the distraction, retrieved it with a trembling hand.
“want 2 dance?”
Even as he read it, Wes raised his eyes to see if Delia had noticed, and found himself looking straight at Lucy, who stood in precisely the same spot in the doorway where he had been standing only a minute earlier, leaning against the jamb with Blackberry in hand, smiling warmly and wiggling the fingers of her free hand in invitation. In a panic, Wes tried to click himself out of the text application, but managed instead to swipe the keyboard with his thumb and send a reply, signaled by an identical chime. Lucy looked down at her phone and frowned, then back at Wes with a quizzical, wounded tilt of the head. Wes had absolutely no idea what he must look like to Lucy at that moment, with Delia maintaining a firm grip on his left hand, their bodies pressed together from shin to shoulder. It can’t have been encouraging, but Wes felt himself powerless to rise and follow as she slipped away into the darkness of the hallway. Delia nudged his shoulder.
“Where are you?”
“Sorry. What was it?”
“What was what?”
“What were you saying?”
“Jesus, Wes, what’s the matter with you tonight? Can you focus, please? I’m trying to tell you something important.”
“Right, sorry. You know what, though? It’s so hot in here and I’m really, really thirsty. Can you just hold it for one second and I’ll be right back, I promise. You want anything?”
“No, I don’t want anything. But come right back, please.”
Lucy was not in the kitchen, and she was not waiting for him by the bathroom. He thought she might be in her parents’ room, where she had taken him earlier to heap scorn on her mother’s collection of designer shoes and handbags in the walk-in closet, but the lights were out and there w
as a rumble of perfunctory grunting from the direction of the bed in there. There were a number of closed doors down a secondary hallway, but Wes did not feel emboldened or entitled to try his luck. Finally, his head spinning, he paused for breath in the dark, the sounds of the party a distant murmur, like a memory perched just over the borderline of awareness. Wes had no idea what he was doing. He tried to identify the remains of any rational thought to cling to, but all he could find were random snippets. When Delia had asked “Where are you?” he had, for the briefest instant, interpreted the question as literal, and even then he had been at a loss to answer it. Now, with the words echoing in what felt like a vast, empty chamber, all he could think of was Dorothy looking into the crystal ball. I’m here in Oz and I’m trying to get back home! But the crystal ball was his mind, all its infinite number of rooms now howling with wind-swept vapors and half-glimpsed visions—Elvira Gulch, Delia, Natasha, Lucy, Sonia, Prince André, Nora, Pierre, myriad pages torn from myriad books from all the world’s libraries or one great universal library, all tossed and turned on the storm with nothing to grab on to. “Where are you?” had no meaning in a place like that, no meaning at all for a person like Wes, if there even were such a person. But even putting it that way had an immediate calming effect on Wes, because if there were no such person as Wes there was no need to get exercised over his struggles and travails. It could be like suddenly realizing that you were in the middle of a dream, it was all nothing but a dream. This had never actually happened to Wes in real life, but he could sense how liberating it might be in the face of a disaster or an impossible task, a plane crash or stealing a witch’s broomstick. Say this were a dream, this standing in a darkened hallway with your heart pounding, your hair reeking of second-hand smoke, flying monkeys around every corner, and an iPhone suddenly materializes in your hand, its many-colored screen pulsing like a heart, like a soul, like your own soul in the night. You need not even be in your own dream. You could be a mysterious figure, unknown even to yourself, in the dream of a character in a novel that has not yet been written. Where are you now? Wes raised the device to his chest and began to type.
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