by Leslie Cohen
“Can I see your room?” he said to me as soon as I was within shouting distance.
“Absolutely,” I replied, and then slipped in front of him. I walked toward the staircase that went down to our bedrooms, knowing that he was following me.
My bedroom was a menacing shade of dark red, the result of a painting expedition with my suitemates in which we painted all the rooms different colors, each more brutal than the next, not providing for the fact of hangovers. I often thought of repainting it in the middle of the night, like I couldn’t sleep there a single second longer. I lay in bed thinking about whether red walls were enough of a reason to have a nervous breakdown. I fell back asleep trying to decide. I didn’t decorate the room otherwise. Room decor in college was all about what you hung on the walls, and I could never find the right poster to attach to my identity. At the store, faced with five to ten images—a girl with an umbrella, the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park in the fall—I crumbled under the pressure. Instead, I relied on the bed being the centerpiece, my white sheets with tiny pink hearts on them. The sheets were for me to look at, in case I ever felt like I was living in hard times.
In our house growing up, my mother bought cheap furniture and spent her allotted money on soft sheets. She insisted that all that mattered was having a nice bed. Each year in college, as I went about setting up my dorm room, I imagined her walking into my new room, looking around at the bare, paint-chipped walls, the cold floors, and that dreaded blue mattress, the tag wrinkled and the stuffing jutting out in places. She’d cheerily insist, “Let’s make up the bed!” She’d unpack freshly ironed lavender and pale green sheets, and by the time she’d finished fluffing the last pillow, things would be looking up.
Jesse walked around my room, examining everything. Meanwhile, I was sitting on my bed, trying to gather myself. I was feeling my heart beat, a prickly sensation on my skin, the bitter taste in my mouth. It was the result of having him in my room, plus whatever espresso vodka could do to a person. He leaned over my desk, scribbled something on a piece of paper. He took the paper and taped it to the wall above my bed. I looked up. It had the words WALDEN POND on it.
“Walden Pond?” I asked.
“It’s a joke,” he said.
“A very English major–y joke.”
“You don’t get it?”
“I hate to admit this, but I’ve never actually read Walden.”
He gave me a surprised look.
“What? Is that bad?” I cringed.
“Kind of! It’s a classic. It’s about simplicity. Blank walls. You’re a very straightforward person. I like that about you.”
“Excuse me,” I yelled, jamming my fists into the bed. “I am complex.”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” he said, looking me up and down. “These walls are very blank for someone who wants to write about music. Where is your Rolling Stones poster?”
I should have said: I want to write about music not because of any one band or song but because music transformed situations and people and molecules inside of you. Instead, there was a brief silence and I said nothing.
“Thanks for coming to my party!” I said finally, with an enthusiasm that wasn’t natural. Thanks for coming to my party? What are you, eleven?
He looked at me curiously. “I was happy to come.”
More quiet filled the room, as he continued to look around.
“Nice hat,” Jesse said, pointing to the green-and-pink shower cap that lay on top of my bookshelf. I got off the bed to grab it, but he snatched it before I could, examining it with firm concentration. I sat back down, defeated. My friends had been trying to get rid of that shower cap for years, often sneaking into my room and hiding it under tissue paper in a bag they knew I intended to throw away. It was impossible to hide anything around here.
“It’s cool, it’s cool,” he said. “Very Martha Washington.”
“Thank you very much,” I said, with a smile. “That’s just what I was going for.”
“Can I confess something?” he asked.
“Okay . . . ,” I said, a caution in my voice. I stared at the square of carpet between my feet, which appeared to be moving. My eyes were playing tricks on me. The thread of the carpet was like quicksand, sinking further and further down into a single point. It happens the same way every time. Just for the night? It’s never that simple. This could really end badly. This could really end very badly. Why are you setting yourself up? What are you even doing here? Why did you invite him? So that you could sit here and let someone disappoint you? Good job! Go ahead! By all means! Get all excited and then thud. It’ll be over.
“I really like having class with you,” he said.
“You do?” I looked up at him.
“Yes,” he said, laughing. “Why? Is that surprising? You look like I just told you that your dog died.”
“I don’t know!” I said quickly.
He reached for my hand and pulled me up. I stood next to him as he wrapped his arm around my waist and turned toward my bookshelf. He asked if I wanted to read something with him. I stood there for a few seconds.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said meekly, stepping away from him and covering my mouth with my hand.
“From the alcohol?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “From that suggestion.”
I stared at the bookshelf and started to smile. I had him. He laughed.
“You’re such a nerd,” he said.
“I’m a nerd? You’re the one making Walden references and suggesting that we read together.”
“It was a romantic gesture.”
“I don’t like romantic gestures, typically.”
“Oh, please. Yes you do,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re some sort of exception. I won’t buy it for a second.”
“I don’t. I really don’t.”
He immediately lifted me off the floor and then placed me down onto the bed, his body hovering on top of mine, his face inches away. He was waiting for me to look at him. I knew that, but I don’t give in easily. So I darted my eyes everywhere but up. I will not look. I will not look. I looked. He leaned down and kissed me. Gone. My head was spinning. The room was shifting out of focus.
There was a loud knock at the door.
“You guys!” I heard Kate yell and Maya laugh. Then, I tilted my head back and saw Kate’s hand reach across the doorframe and turn off the lights. She slammed the door closed and held it shut.
“We’ll leave you alone once we hear the sound of you guys fucking!” she yelled.
“Your friends are out of control,” he said.
Neither of us went to turn on the lights, and for a few minutes, we kissed in the dark. Then he got up, and I heard him walking toward the door. Is he trying to open it? Is he leaving? He locked it.
The sound of the lock prompted something within me. I sat up, shifted my dress so that it went farther down my legs. He came over to me and I tried to settle down. He began removing the necklaces I was wearing, one by one. I could feel his fingertips against my neck. When he was finished, his arms tightened around me.
“What is this thing that you’re wearing?”
“I thought you liked it.”
“It’s not very you,” he said.
“Thank God,” I said, smiling. “I need a break from that girl.”
I saw him reach into his pocket, the flash of his phone next to me. Then, suddenly, the light came closer to my dress.
“What are you doing?” I said. He groaned.
“Nothing,” he replied, and then the light disappeared. “Shit. I have to go.”
“What?” I immediately thought of repeating the news to my suitemates, with a gust of emotion. He just left!
“I have something that I have to do,” he said.
“Okay . . .”
“Don’t get insulted. Let’s just say I make deliveries, but it’s the type of thing where when someone wants what I have to offer, I have to be available to bring it to them,
at all hours, even if I’d rather be . . . doing something else.”
“Do you mean . . . What do you . . . How did you . . . What?”
“Pick a question, darlin’.”
I managed to spit one out. I had a feeling he was talking about drugs and the distribution thereof, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I didn’t want confirmation, so I talked around the subject. “How did you get into this?”
“Craigslist.”
“Really?”
“No.” He laughed.
“Oh.”
“Same reason I work at the library. I need the money. I’m a poor kid from Nebraska and I’m about to become an even poorer struggling musician. Whatever. Boring story. You’ve heard it all before. I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Oh, how he overestimated me. I hadn’t the foggiest clue what he was talking about. I watched him get ready to leave and then stood at the doorframe with him, prepared to say good-bye. I pictured myself rejoining the party upstairs until everyone left, coming back downstairs and peeling off my dress, going back upstairs and eating a bowl of cereal to sober up. But then, we started kissing again. He broke away. “Where am I going?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” he said. “Can I interest you in a walk across campus?”
I smiled. “Is this another one of your romantic gestures?”
“Definitely not.”
“Okay, then I’ll go. But if you say one thing about the moonlight, I’m leaving.”
“Deal.”
The night started to go by quickly after that. I remember asking him to pick out a coat for me because I couldn’t go outside in just my dress. “Which one of these coats looks like it’s ready for a night on the town?” I said.
“You have a personification problem,” he replied. “But probably this one.”
I ended up in the hallway, carrying my polka-dotted raincoat. We were upstairs, telling my suitemates that we’d be right back. On my way out the door, I looked back over my shoulder and saw Maya in the corner of the room, moping. “Give me a second,” I said to Jesse. I went to her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m sad about Todd,” she said to me, turning her bottom lip over.
“Okay. You need to get your mind off this. Just hook up with someone else,” I said, in my infinite wisdom. “How about that guy?”
“Which guy?”
“That one.” I pointed to the guy with the bridge name on his T-shirt, the one who I’d seen at a hundred other parties and whose presence had irritated me earlier. He now seemed utterly harmless. In fact, I was feeling magnanimous—I was about to do this guy a favor.
“Why him?”
“Because he’s cute, and who cares?” I gave her a long look.
“Okay, fine,” she said. I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her over to him, made a quick introduction, and then fled, leaving the two of them midsentence.
* * *
Once outside, with the fresh air blowing in my face, I felt like I could breathe again. I wasn’t totally aware of where we were going, but I didn’t care. When we got to the steps of Low Library, they were empty. Everyone was at the bars on Broadway. We had the whole place to ourselves. I flew down the steps, going faster and faster. Whenever my suitemates and I crossed campus at night, we always ran down the steps of Low as fast as we could, our hearts pumping with adrenaline and alcohol.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Jesse held my hand as my body sprang forward, almost falling, laughing. He yanked me back to standing. “You’re a mess,” he said, shaking his head. When we got to the cobblestone path that bisected the campus, he dropped my hand.
“I love this campus at night,” he said, looking around. “Without all the people.”
At night, the campus did have an adventurous, romantic feel to it. It was just the northern edge of Manhattan, but it felt like a modern-day Athens. This enclave of lofty institutions—a theological seminary, a music college, the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, Grant’s Tomb—and Columbia was the center point, an elevated plateau.
“What’s wrong with all the people?” I said.
“Everything.” He shuddered.
“What’s everything?”
“Don’t you see how people walk around here? Like they’re in the darkest state of their lives, like they’re so terribly burdened?”
“I guess.”
“And I’m just here to help them have a good time.”
I didn’t say anything in response. All I could think was: he sure doesn’t look like a drug dealer, with his preppy clothes, tortoise-rimmed glasses and button-down shirts. There was innocence to Jesse, to the way he raised his eyebrows in class whenever somebody said something of interest to him, the way he ordered a scone at the coffee shop and then looked at it curiously and said, “Call this a scone all you want, it seems very muffin-like to me.” But then there was this.
“Hey,” he said, with restraint in his voice. “Can I ask you a question?” He touched my wrist, and we stopped walking.
“Okay . . .”
“That poem you wrote? Was that about your mother?” His eyes were looking so acutely into mine that I almost felt like I didn’t have to say anything.
Almost.
He knew. Of course he knew. Who was I kidding? It happened senior year of high school, but everyone here knew. I was the girl whose mother died on September Eleventh. Most people didn’t bring it up directly. Most people simply assumed that I’d rather not talk about it, that I was okay with being silently deserving of their kindness and left it at that. They didn’t want to get into it. They treated me like a bomb that might explode at any moment. It was too sad, too impossible to confront fully, so why mention it at all?
“My mother died when I was ten,” he said. “That’s why I’m asking. I know it’s none of my business, but . . . I guess I’m always looking for someone to talk about it with, as lame as that is.” He started walking again, vaguely shaking his head at the ground.
I stood there for a few seconds and then ran to catch up to him. I grabbed hold of his hand. He sort of smiled, but there was weight to his expression, an understanding. I felt a thrilling sensation in my chest. There is something so damn attractive to me about someone who has been in pain. It makes that person seem strong and capable of handling all the shit that life can throw at you. When my sympathy kicks in, so does my fantasy that I and I alone can take care of and repair this person. Somehow, I feel uniquely qualified to do this. Other girls don’t know. They don’t understand. I know. I get it. I want someone who’s been tossed around a bit, who has made mistakes and paid the consequences. They just seem more qualified for the job. Basically, I have no desire to be the first thing that messes up someone’s life. Give me someone who has suffered, like really suffered, and then it’ll be easy for them to deal with me. They’ll say “Her? Oh, dating her is nothing, compared to a funeral.”
We kept walking. All that could be heard was the gentle sound of running water from two fountains on the steps of the library. No noise from the rest of the city was permitted to creep in. The only light was emanating from lampposts dotting the campus. They lit up the columns in front of every austere building, the flagpole with its pale blue banner waving.
The wind picked up. We were leaning against each other for support. I was feeling like something significant was about to happen, or maybe I’d walk back to my suite alone, stop and get pizza along the way. Anything was possible.
We passed a sculpture of Alexander Hamilton, the facade of the library, with its arcade of columns, the names of writers and philosophers etched onto it—Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire. In the silhouette of famous names, collegiate life had its own traditions, oddities, mischief. Yes, along with the greatest thinkers of history, there I was. In the middle of a drug deal. Maybe.
“So you don’t like anyone here on this whole campus, huh?” I
said, giving him a light shove. He fell dramatically to the side.
“I like you,” Jesse said, and then turned to me. “Clearly.”
“You’re only saying that because you want to sleep with me.”
“That is one hundred percent my motivation in saying that.” I couldn’t tell if he was being sincere.
“I knew it!”
“Get out of here.”
“I wish I could.”
“I bet you do,” he said. “Hey, the musician and the music writer. That’s pretty cute, huh?”
There was a lot of nonsense flying around. We walked until we got to 114th Street, a tree-lined row of town houses. I could see taxis shooting up and down Broadway, the backbone of the area—where bars, dusty stationery stores, understocked pharmacies, upscale and dilapidated eateries lined up next to one another, where books and cheap prints were sold on the street along with socks and electronic gadgets ten years past their prime.
I could see a group of people lighting cigarettes outside a dorm on the corner. They were sitting on the sidewalk, but I could hear laughter and see the shadow of their forms. Morningside Heights was an assortment of oddballs—a middle-aged man with newspapers in his pockets, an older lady with a brush stuck midway through her hair. You had to be nice to these people, despite their quirks, because it was nearly impossible to distinguish the run-of-the-mill eccentric who lived in the neighborhood from the—surprise!—it’s your philosophy professor.
“Wait here,” he said, standing in front of one of the town houses. He put his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t move from right here, okay?”
I nodded.
I watched as he ascended the stairs. When he got to the top, he stopped and looked back at me from the arched doorway. He rolled his eyes. Go! I mouthed. Hurry up! The house was dark, save for the three windows on the third floor, which were lit up. I tried to get into the moment. It was exciting! It was dangerous! I was the lookout!