Natalie had taken an unpaid internship at an off-Broadway theater, which was a relief to Sam; being two hours apart by train was a significant improvement over the six-hour plane ride that would have separated them if Natalie had returned to the Bay Area.
Sitting on Natalie’s bed, watching as her friend bustled around preparing to leave for New York, Sam mused over yet another fashion trend: the 1950s vintage dress and throwback peep-toe heels were charming in the kind of way that made Sam think of how many lonely housewives back then must have fooled around with each other while their husbands were at work.
“What will be expected of you in your capacity as an intern?” she asked, her foot wiggling back and forth to Natalie’s Top 40s playlist, which was currently featuring Alicia Keys singing “If I Ain’t Got You.”
“You know, I don’t know! I didn’t really think to ask.” Natalie rolled up a belt and placed it in the open suitcase on the bed next to Sam. “Copying scripts, probably.”
“Didn’t the job posting list the position’s responsibilities?”
Natalie looked confused for a moment. “Oh! I didn’t read a job posting. My dad went to college with the executive director, so when I mentioned to Papa that I wanted to be in New York this summer, he made a call. I’m not even sure if they’ve ever had an intern before; they’re a pretty small organization. Ooh, maybe I’ll ask to sit in on design meetings!”
How some people floated through life with such a devil-may-care attitude and still managed to get exactly what they wanted, Sam would never know. Given the number of discussions they’d had about whether Natalie should ask her father to pay the extra two hundred dollars per month so she could sublet a place in Manhattan rather than Brooklyn, it was clear Natalie was more concerned with her quality of life for the next three months than garnering meaningful career experience.
Natalie unceremoniously dumped the socks she’d been folding into the suitcase and put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you go judging me, Samantha Latham. I plan on having a good time this summer. I have something respectable to put on my resumé, and I’m going to live it up in the city for three months. That doesn’t make me a slacker.” She paused and cocked her head a little. “Two semesters of barely going to class and phoning in my papers makes me a slacker. But I worked really hard for Elizabeth’s class! And I promise I’ll photocopy the hell out of this internship for the eight hours a day I’m at the theater.” She slid some sheet music into a messenger bag and held it out. “You’re going to stop by Open Door every Sunday, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said, accepting the bag. They had visited the shelter weekly, Sam’s nervousness fading with each visit. Although there was a lot of turnover, she saw some familiar faces each week, and it turned out teaching scales suited her. For the past few weeks, her own private lessons with Natalie served double duty: Sam was now able to play some easy Bach pieces, and she was equipped to teach their students simple melodies like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” “I’m looking forward to it.”
Natalie leaned down and kissed Sam’s forehead. “You’re going to be a wonderful teacher.”
“Thank you,” Sam said, ignoring the way Natalie’s lips on her skin made her mouth tingle. “And you’re going to be a wonderful intern.” While Natalie made another trip to her closet and pulled out the last few shirts, Sam organized the socks in her suitcase so that they filled the gaps at the sides. Most of their classmates were taking it easy this summer, and she tried to remind herself that she preferred to spend her summer break poring over lab reports for Dr. West and not with Natalie enjoying New York. Looking up, she saw Natalie studying her and realized her face probably registered the flash of regret she was feeling. “I think maybe I’m a little jealous,” she admitted, sheepishly.
Showing significantly more care for her clothes than she had shown for her academic career, Natalie meticulously folded the shirts before placing them gently inside her suitcase. “Why on earth would you be jealous?”
Sam wasn’t sure how to answer. “Maybe I’m just tired of working so hard.”
Natalie moved on to the pile of tangled jeans in her laundry basket and began tugging the wrinkles out of them. “Sam, there’s no way you’d last three days at an internship where nothing was really expected of you besides copying stuff. You’d think it was beneath you and go crazy with boredom.”
“Wow, do you really think I’m that big a snob?” Even as she said the words, Sam supposed they were true; she would lose her mind copying things all summer, in large part because she knew her talents would be wasted with such a mundane workload.
“No, no! I just think you won’t be happy settling for anything less than what you know you deserve. You’re brilliant and dedicated, and you should devote your talents to an occupation equal to them.” A pair of jeans halfway folded in her hands, Natalie paused and then said pointedly, “You should devote your love to someone equal to it.”
Her heart heavy, Sam swallowed. The weight on her chest made breathing difficult, and pressure behind her eyes forced her to look away. She didn’t want to have this discussion, not with Natalie.
Natalie rummaged around her backpack until she found two suckers left over from the Easter basket her mom had sent her. She popped a root beer one into her mouth and tossed a cherry one to Sam, who bit her lip as she slowly unwrapped hers.
“Sam?” Natalie asked gently. “You should go out this summer. Meet people. Date, even. Maybe you’ll find a cute lady scientist in the lab. Someone who shares your interests.”
Sam steeled herself to ask her next question, not sure which answer she preferred. “Is Tyler going to be in the city this summer, too?” If he was, then it would mean Natalie had been with one guy for over a month, which might indicate she wanted something more serious with him. If he wasn’t going to be in New York, that left Natalie’s social calendar (and, if Sam were being brutally honest, Natalie’s bed) free to be occupied by any number of new men.
Natalie twirled the sucker in her mouth, eyes sparkling. “Tyler’s of the past.”
Sam had always had a soft spot for Buffy, and the fact that Natalie could make references to esoteric lines from the show so easily was simultaneously adorable and infuriating: how could someone be so devoted to a TV show and so flippant about things like romantic partners and academic careers? “You know, you look a little like Buffy. You’re both a little too thin and wear leather jackets like nobody’s business.” She added, before she could stop herself, “And you both seem to burn through men who are completely bad for you.”
Giving no indication that she was offended, Natalie grinned. “I think the similarities stop at preventing multiple apocalypses.”
She started rambling about things she wanted to do together whenever Sam could make it down to the city, and Sam vaguely heard words like “Shakespeare in the Park,” “the Met,” and “Battery Park boardwalk,” but most of her focus was on Natalie’s not-so-veiled suggestion that Sam move on. Echoes of conversations she’d had with herself about a thousand times resonated inside her chest, and her heart felt like an anchor being dropped into a deep sea. In keeping with their first-ever conversation about sexuality, in which Sam had asked if Natalie was gay, they never explicitly addressed Sam’s obvious romantic interest in Natalie. It was probably better this way; certainly, it saved Sam’s pride. Apart from that one time in the theater when the faintest hint of desire maybe flashed across Natalie’s face, she had never given Sam any mixed signals or led her on in any way. Plus, the endless stream of men flowing in and out of her life clearly reinforced Natalie’s claim to heterosexuality. Ever since she noticed Natalie in their first RA meeting, the rational part of Sam’s brain, which was the only part that usually mattered to her, had been a broken record of instructions for moving on.
Alas, Natalie’s pull on her had rendered her incapable of rationality.
Natalie zipped her now-full suitcase
closed and nudged her empty laundry basket toward Sam, who would be keeping it and a number of Natalie’s other possessions in her dorm room for the summer. She made one last sweep of the empty room and, satisfied that nothing was left behind, headed to the door.
On the way to Sam’s room to deposit the laundry basket, Natalie was unusually quiet, and Sam felt guilty for not really listening to anything she’d said for the past few minutes. “Want me to walk you to the station?” she offered, although truth be told, she wasn’t sure if she preferred to say good-bye in the privacy of her room or if she’d rather have the fifteen extra minutes together on the way to the train. It was fitting, really, since everything about Natalie filled her with ambivalence.
As she opened her dorm room door, she was hit with a wall of humidity and loneliness, and she stood in the entryway at a complete loss. From behind her Natalie whispered, “Let’s say good-bye here.” When her voice cracked, Sam knew Natalie’s emotions regarding their impending separation were, if not identical, at least as tenuous as her own. Stepping inside so Natalie could set down her suitcase and backpack, she gazed at her best friend for a long moment. Tears swam in both their eyes, and then they were in each other’s arms. Natalie stroked Sam’s hair and sniffled. “I’ll miss you, you know.”
Sam could only nod against a trembling shoulder, not trusting her voice.
Natalie pulled away first and wiped a tear from underneath Sam’s eye. “Three weeks isn’t that long, and then you’ll be in the city. We’ll go to the Met. Try to have some fun between now and then.” She placed a soft kiss on Sam’s cheek, gathered her bags, and with a quick backward glance, was gone. For a minute, Sam wondered if Natalie had ever really been there, but then a chasm as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon opened up inside her, and it was the absence of someone she never really had.
All she could do was cry.
SUMMER 2004
The summer passed slowly, hot and sticky outside and over-air-conditioned inside the sterile lab. Even in areas without irrigation systems, the flowers, trees, and grass flourished, kept moist and brilliant by the heavy humidity that blanketed the East Coast. The lush colors contrasted sharply with the gray stone architecture of the dorms, academic buildings, hell, even the frats. Campus was largely evacuated, making the usually inviting stained-glass windows Sam walked past every day on her way to and from the lab seem a little creepy. Still, Yale wasn’t entirely void of life: various summer camps for teenagers kept the noise level in the courtyards of residential buildings about the same, and there were new banners advertising summer theater productions hanging from some of the lampposts.
Natalie proved impossible to reach on the telephone, and Sam suspected she spent most of her non-internship hours exploring the city and the men who populated it. During the forty-eight hours of Sam’s first visit, Natalie screened calls from three actors, a pastry chef, an investment banker, and two lawyers, all of whom she’d gone out with at least once.
When she returned to New Haven, Sam pledged to herself that she too would date. On a sticky Wednesday, when the moisture in the air was so thick Sam wondered why she had even bothered toweling off after her shower, she trudged to Science Hill, past the random combination of gothic and mid-century modern architecture that was always a bit jarring, to the Gibbs building and the elevator that would take her to Dr. West’s facilities. It didn’t really matter whether the building was Baroque or Bauhaus on the outside; all labs seemed to have the same antiseptic feel on the inside, she mused as she walked to her little corner and threw away a Starbucks cup she’d forgotten about the day before. She had just pulled her laptop out of her bag when Dr. West’s low, gravelly voice boomed behind her.
“Samantha. I’ve received some new tissue samples that I’d like to process right away, and Carrie and whatever-his-name-is are both in the middle of something.” Sam glanced over Dr. West’s shoulder and associated “Carrie” with the female graduate student wearing a Nirvana T-shirt. If Dr. West couldn’t remember the male grad student’s name, she supposed she didn’t need to either. “Can you put on hold whatever inane administrative tasks I’ve given you to keep you busy, and jump in?”
If felt oddly like being an understudy called to the stage. “Of course, sir.”
He walked away, making some vague hand gesture that Sam took to mean “follow me,” and she grabbed a notebook and scrambled to her feet. As she passed the two graduate students, the guy gave her a dirty look, but the girl grinned at her. Dr. West led her to a part of the lab containing equipment she couldn’t identify, but was pretty sure had never been handled by an undergraduate before.
Without preamble, Dr. West launched into a series of instructions that made Sam’s brain do gymnastics. Part overwhelmed by his faith in her, part in awe of the capabilities of the equipment she was being asked to use, and part fascinated by the way Dr. West’s absolutely huge fingers deftly and delicately moved as he pointed and demonstrated, she struggled to take notes fast enough, and it took her a second to realize he had stopped talking. When she looked up, he smiled at her.
“You’ll be fine. Come get me if you have any questions. Don’t bother asking Carrie or what’s-his-name—they haven’t been trained on this stuff yet. I keep my door closed because I focus better that way, but my door is metaphorically always open to you.” He patted her on the shoulder as he left.
Alone with the whir of the fluorescent lights, Sam reviewed her notes, wiped her hands on her pants, and dived in.
After a handful of charming interactions in and around the science complex with the female grad student working in Dr. West’s lab, Sam asked Carrie over for a drink one night; halfway through a bottle of merlot, Carrie leaned over and kissed her. Her lips were full and warm, and little tingles spread through Sam. At the end of a long evening spent making out, Sam said through a haze of happiness, “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Cooking dinner for you, if you’d like,” Carrie said, trying to return some of her brown curls to their original position and adjusting her shirt a bit.
For the remaining half of the summer, Sam basked in the glow of learning someone new. They bought each other little presents to break up the long days spent processing data and burned CDs to fill the silence of the lab. Their nights were spent exploring New Haven and each other.
As a first-year Ph.D. student at UCLA, Carrie was only in New Haven on a summer research grant, and when August ended, so did their relationship. But they had enjoyed each other’s company and grown to care for one another, and they promised to keep in touch. Sam was happy to have connected with someone, to have touched and been touched, and sophomore year began with her confidence higher than it had ever been.
SOPHOMORE YEAR:
FALL 2004
“I don’t understand the impulse to cavort around in as little clothing as possible when the temperature is near freezing and there are plenty of respectable, creative costumes that would keep you warm.”
From her position on the couch in her dorm room, which was mercifully a single that she no longer shared with Tracy, Sam could see Natalie’s reflection in the mirror hanging by the door. As Natalie fluffed her hair and reapplied lipstick, Sam refrained from pointing out that “candy striper” was an awfully uncreative choice for a costume. Why didn’t women in college ever go with the “old lady next door” look?
Natalie preened one last time, spinning around and checking her backside in the mirror. “I’ll wear a coat, silly. I’m only going to be cold for the walk to the frat house—it’ll be boiling once I get inside.”
“So who’s the lucky fella tonight?” Sam forced her voice to sound even, casual.
“I’m, uh, not ready to talk about it yet.” When Natalie’s cheeks reddened, Sam was surprised; she’d never known Natalie to be embarrassed—or secretive—about someone she was seeing. Typically, she cavorted about campus with her new suitor, holding hands and kissing and being altog
ether more public than Sam would have ever been comfortable with.
Sam cleared her throat but still croaked her response. “Sure, of course. Tell me later. Or not. Whatever.”
In the year they had cultivated their friendship, Natalie had fooled around with a slew of men and boys, but she hadn’t really fallen for any of them. Sam’s stomach churned as she thought about losing Natalie to a serious relationship, and she fumbled for the throw pillow on her couch, looking for something soft to hold in her lap.
“Really, it might be nothing. I don’t know.” When Natalie turned to her with compassion in her eyes, Sam’s skin crawled. Above all else, she certainly didn’t want Natalie’s pity. “I hope you enjoy the book.” Natalie inclined her head at The Scarlet Letter, now resting atop a stack of science textbooks and under a couple of oatmeal raisin cookies she’d brought over. “I can’t believe you didn’t read it in high school.”
Rubbing her temples, Sam murmured, “Everyone has holes in their cultural literacy.”
Natalie gathered her coat and purse from Sam’s desk chair and walked toward the door. “I still think you’d have more fun at the party than home alone reading.”
If only Natalie’s invitation was more, well, inviting. “Thanks, but I’ve been looking forward to a night by myself with a good book since the semester started. Have a good time.”
They stared at one another from across the room, and Sam wished there were more to say. Finally, Natalie nodded, turned, and left.
By page ten of The Scarlet Letter, Sam realized she couldn’t remember a single thing she’d read, and she turned off the light in her room, crawled into bed, and stared at the ceiling, wondering who Natalie was out with and what they were doing.
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