Friends and Strangers

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  When they reached the heavy metal kitchen door, she inserted the key, pushed it open.

  “Dinner is served,” she said as she switched on the light.

  She went to one of the refrigerators and pulled out half a tray of leftover enchiladas from Mexican night on Saturday and three-quarters of an apple pie. Clive took a small bowl of mashed potatoes, looking guilty and gleeful, like the two of them were a pair of criminals.

  Sam glanced over her shoulder before carrying the food to the microwave. It felt illicit, opening the door, closing it, pressing the buttons, each of which let out a loud beep.

  Clive’s lips were on the back of her neck before she had a chance to turn around. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, his hands on her breasts.

  “Pull your pants down,” he said.

  Sam did so, watching the enchiladas spin. Her grandmother had once told her you could get cancer from standing in front of a microwave.

  Clive slid one hand down between her legs.

  “Spread them wider,” he whispered.

  She could hear him unzipping his jeans.

  * * *

  —

  By Wednesday morning, Clive’s alleged allergies had turned into the flu. He had a temperature of a hundred and two, the chills, a hacking cough. Sam went to class for three hours, and when she returned home for lunch, he had filled her trash can with dirty Kleenex.

  She kept thinking she felt achy, waiting for it to hit her.

  “Snuggle with me?” Clive said pathetically, and Sam curled her body against his like they were two Pringles in a can, all the while trying not to breathe.

  When she returned from her afternoon classes, he was propped up on pillows in her bed, watching TV. A chair had been pulled up beside him. On it sat a bowl of chicken soup, a dish filled with crackers, lemon wedges, and honey packets, a mug, and a large silver thermos.

  “What’s all that?” she said.

  “Tea,” he said. “Soup.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I went down to the dining hall for a glass of water, and one of your friends took pity on me.”

  Sam felt some small sense of alarm. “Which friend?”

  “Delmi. The cafeteria worker. She told me to get right back in bed and she’d bring this all up. She’s a saint. We spoke a little Spanish. She tolerated my bad accent.”

  “Oh. Delmi,” Sam said. Then, thinking it over, “That’s not really her job.”

  Clive just smiled back.

  At dinnertime, when Sam walked into the kitchen to thank her, Delmi was talking close with Maria. They were speaking Spanish, but Sam recognized one phrase, a favorite of Maria’s.

  “Hay pericos en la milpa.”

  There are parakeets in the cornfield.

  Two student workers were washing dishes, their backs to the room.

  Were they the parakeets, Sam wondered, or was she?

  “Hi, Sam,” Delmi said, with no trace of her usual smile.

  “You didn’t have to do that for Clive,” Sam said. “That was so nice of you.”

  “It was nothing,” Delmi said.

  She stared down at a cell phone in her hand, then showed Maria what was on the screen.

  “Clive said he talked to you in Spanish. He lived in Spain for a while.”

  Delmi seemed agitated. “Hmm? Yes, he speaks very good Spanish.”

  “I hope he wasn’t annoying.”

  “It’s fine, Sam,” Delmi snapped.

  Sam thought of what she and Clive had done in this room the other night. It felt fun and harmless at the time, but now she wondered if somehow they knew. She regretted her behavior. It was thoughtless. Gross.

  “Are you mad at me?” she said, sounding childish, feeling her face grow hot.

  Delmi looked up from the phone. “What? No! Of course not.”

  Sam brought food upstairs for Clive and herself. She told him what had happened.

  “Like she said, it’s nothing to do with you,” he said. “She’s probably just having a bad day.”

  Clive looked pale. When he closed his eyes, she could tell it hurt.

  Sam put a palm to his forehead, even though she could never determine anything that way.

  “I’ll get the thermometer,” she said.

  A few hours later, when Clive’s fever still hadn’t gone down, she took him to Health Services. The campus doctor kept looking from him to her and back again, as if trying to solve a riddle.

  * * *

  —

  Sam went to work on Thursday, as usual. Elisabeth had told her to take the day off, spend it with Clive, but Sam insisted.

  Privately, she felt eager for a break, but she didn’t say so out loud.

  She had never seen Clive sick before. He made a particularly pitiful patient. Sam tried to be nurturing, but as he coughed up phlegm and moaned throughout the night, she mostly wished he would go downstairs and sleep on one of the sofas in the living room. She felt an odd sense of surprise each time she opened the door to her room and found him lying there.

  She had once viewed him as if from a distance, even when they lived together. Now it was like she had a magnifying glass suspended over his every flaw. Without his brightly colored zip-up tops, his designer sneakers, the product in his hair, he suddenly looked like a middle-aged man; a dad in a white undershirt.

  Sam hoped the feeling would pass.

  Walking into Elisabeth’s house was a relief.

  Still, when Elisabeth asked how the rest of their week had been, Sam said, “Great, mostly.”

  Elisabeth was effusive in her likes and dislikes. She had spoken several times about how fabulous Isabella was. But she hadn’t said anything about Clive. It was an itch Sam wanted to scratch—to ask, What do you think of him? But she was afraid to know the answer. Weeks ago, Elisabeth had said Sam should bring Clive over for dinner while he was here, but now he was here and no invitation had been extended.

  She passed an easy day with Gil, watching him toddle around the living room, doing a load of his laundry while he napped. Sam held each item up before tossing it into the machine. His sweet little shirts and pants and socks. Sometimes, in Gil’s presence, she felt like she would explode if she had to wait much longer for a baby of her own. Other times, Sam felt like she was still a baby, so far from all this.

  Her cell phone rang, her mother calling. Sam answered as she finished the laundry.

  Her mother sounded tired, and a bit sad.

  “I’m working as much overtime as I can,” she said. “Six nights last week.”

  Sam thought of what her brother, Brendan, had told her about their father’s job.

  “How’s Dad?” she said.

  “He’s okay. It’s not the best time for him right now. The economy is good, which usually means his business is good. But for some reason, no one is putting additions on their houses. It’s just the season, probably. Things will pick up in the spring.”

  Sam wanted to believe her, but she felt uneasy.

  They talked a few minutes longer and then said their goodbyes.

  Hanging on a clothing rack in the laundry room was a dress of Elisabeth’s with the tags still on.

  It had been there all year. Sam had seen it plenty of times. But now she felt that prickle at the back of her neck. She wanted proof of something. She walked toward the dress, looked at the price. Five hundred and fifty dollars. Elisabeth had never even worn it.

  Next, Sam went to the powder room on the first floor. She looked up the price of the peony-scented hand soap online.

  Forty-six dollars.

  Sam felt her mother’s eyes rolling in her own head.

  Elisabeth had said she got it at a drugstore. But the Internet revealed that the soap was exclusively available at Neiman Marcus. (Needless Markup, as Sa
m’s mother called it.)

  Gil was in his high chair (seven hundred dollars), eating a mashed avocado, when Elisabeth came home.

  She was on the phone, her face screwed up in annoyance, a stack of mail in her hand.

  She smiled at Gil, then said into the phone, “But I still have three vials left over from last time. Why do I have to order new ones? I told you—it doesn’t expire until June. Okay. Good. Thank you. The syringes will be included, right? And the extra needles? Good. No, no, it’s okay. Thanks for your help.”

  She looked sheepish as she hung up.

  “I have something to tell you,” she said. “I’m going to try to get pregnant again. You’re the only person I’m telling besides Andrew. Not even Nomi knows. She’ll ask me about it constantly, and I want to keep the process as mellow and low pressure as possible.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Sam felt flattered to be included in the inner circle, but then she supposed it was necessary, since she spent so much time in this house.

  “I know I’ve told you that I don’t want more kids,” Elisabeth said.

  “What changed your mind?”

  “I haven’t changed my mind. But we have the two embryos, and Andrew wants to put them both in at once. Twins! I want zero additional children. Since neither of us could persuade the other to come over to our side, we decided to meet in the middle. One more kid—potentially.”

  Was this how it happened? Could the decision to bring a life into the world be reduced to a calculation, a compromise?

  “There’s a very high chance that it won’t work,” Elisabeth said.

  Sam thought she sounded hopeful.

  “We’re going to start the shots next week. I’ll be monitored by a doctor here. If all goes well, I’ll go to the city in a month for the embryo transfer.”

  Her kids would be so close in age. Gil wasn’t yet a year old. If Elisabeth had been purely a friend, Sam would have asked if she was sure.

  Clive was asleep when she got back to the dorm. He looked so sweet. By Saturday, he would be gone. Tomorrow she would try to block that out and enjoy the small amount of time they had left. Sam was never more in love with him than on the last night.

  * * *

  —

  On Friday, Clive’s fever broke. He was well enough to shower, get dressed, feel hungry again. Sam found herself touching him constantly, clinging to his T-shirt.

  “Don’t go,” she said. And, “I’m psychically willing your flight to get canceled.”

  They went into town for dinner. She thought he looked particularly handsome, even under the fluorescent lights of the cheap Thai restaurant. When he asked if they should go to Herrell’s for ice cream after, Sam shook her head and said, “I want to get you home.”

  Clive nodded. “I think that could be arranged.”

  Back at the dorm, voices floated out from the living room.

  “What’s going on down there?” Clive said. He was constitutionally incapable of missing a good party once he knew it was under way.

  “Nothing interesting, I’m sure,” she said.

  It felt natural to be with Clive in Maddie’s apartment, or on the streets of New York City, or even downtown, eating Thai food. But on campus, Sam still felt self-conscious. She didn’t want to lead him down the hall and squirm as he tried to make conversation with a bunch of college girls.

  Next year they would live in the real world again. The age difference wouldn’t matter as much.

  They climbed the stairs to her platform.

  Isabella came running. She had mostly ignored them all week. But now she shouted, “Sam! Oh my God! Sam!”

  Sam’s heart rate quickened.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “What happened?”

  “Listen to this voice mail I just got,” Isabella said. “Oh my God, my hands are shaking.”

  She set her cell phone to speaker. Clive and Sam leaned their heads down to listen.

  Hey, little ho. This is Inez, Joseph’s baby mama. You stay away from him, or I will claw your motherfucking eyes out. I’m not kidding. Don’t try me, bitch.

  At first Sam thought it must be a wrong number.

  “Who’s Joseph?” she asked.

  “The stripper’s assistant!” Isabella said.

  “He has a baby mama? Who refers to herself as his baby mama?”

  “Apparently.”

  “And he never mentioned this.”

  “Nope!”

  “But didn’t he get your name tattooed on his arm?” Clive said.

  Sam felt touched that he remembered a detail like that.

  “It was my initial,” Isabella said. “The letter I.”

  “Inez,” Clive said, nodding. “What a bastard.”

  Isabella laughed. “For real,” she said.

  Sam wondered if Clive had won her over, at last.

  She took his arm. She was lucky to have found her person so early in life. Most of her friends would be searching for years.

  * * *

  —

  In the morning, they were frantic, trying to get ready in time for George’s arrival.

  “What time is your flight again?” she asked.

  “Half ten,” Clive said.

  Sam could never remember if it meant half past the hour or until.

  “We need coffee,” she said as he struggled to close his suitcase. “I’ll meet you out front, okay?”

  Sam went to the kitchen.

  She pushed through the swinging door and found Maria and Delmi, not working, as they usually were when she entered, but looking down at something on the counter. Their heads snapped to attention when Sam walked in.

  Maria put whatever it was behind her back.

  “Come,” she said.

  She led Sam into the pantry.

  The smell of the coffee conjured up memories of breakfast in her childhood home, and Sundays in bed with Clive in London, and early mornings here in this kitchen, talking to Gaby as they cooked at the start of the day.

  “Look at this,” Maria whispered. “Delmi heard a rumor it was coming.”

  Sam took the thin newspaper from her hands, its pages folded back.

  There it was. Her letter, taking up half the page, which was divided in two by a vertical line down the middle. On the other side was a response from President Washington.

  Sam’s heartbeat quickened. She tried to look surprised, confused even.

  “What is this?” she said stupidly, a smile forcing the edges of her lips upward.

  “It’s trouble,” Maria said.

  A jarring response; the opposite of what Sam expected.

  “What? Why?” she said.

  “Read it,” Maria said.

  Sam did.

  Dear Student,

  Thank you for your concern. And to the Collegian for providing this forum.

  While it is impossible for me to address your specific accusations without knowing to whom you are referring (or indeed, if the individuals you’re referring to are actual people, or if your complaints are of a more general nature…) I want to assure you that service employees are a valued part of this community, truly the lifeblood of the college. We are grateful every day for their tireless efforts. If that has not been properly conveyed, we must remedy the situation. To that end, Barney Reardon, head of Residence and Dining Services, and I have invited the support staff to join us for a frank and candid conversation about working conditions today at 5:00. The meeting will be closed, but details will be shared in these pages at a later date.

  Thank you for caring enough to speak your truth.

  Sincerely,

  Shirley Washington

  Sam looked up at Maria. “But this is a good thing, right? She’s going to listen. She’s great, I’m tell
ing you. She’ll make things better.”

  Maria sighed. “Some girl comes to this realization every few years and raises the issue with the college, and then nothing happens. There was even a big campus protest about it once. Maybe twice? I hope they don’t do that again. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. This meeting today, they say it’s mandatory. I don’t want to go. Barney Reardon has never been out to help us. I don’t see that changing now.”

  They heard footsteps outside the pantry and walked back into the kitchen, toward the sound. A sophomore whose name Sam couldn’t recall was tying on an apron.

  Maria’s expression conveyed that the conversation was over.

  “Hi, Sarah,” she said. “Could you put out the cereal first?”

  Sam walked out of the kitchen and through the dining hall.

  The room was filling up with students, some in pajama pants and hoodies, sitting down to plates of scrambled eggs and waffles; others with coats and backpacks on, filling travel mugs with coffee, toasting bagels to eat on the way to class. All of them thought it was a day like any other.

  It bothered Sam, though what did she expect? She and her friends didn’t tend to start their day with intense conversations about what was in the college paper either.

  She made her way outside. It wasn’t until the breeze blew the flimsy pages in her hand that she realized she was still clutching the newspaper.

  George’s car was in the driveway, Clive already sitting in back.

  The two men were talking, smiling, as if this was normal.

  Sam made a point of climbing in front.

  Her head was a jumble. Her heart raced.

  “Where’s the coffee, love?” Clive said.

  “What?”

  George started talking, but she couldn’t make sense of what he said.

  When he stopped for gas, Sam followed him with her eyes as he walked to the pump.

  She said to Clive, “My letter is in the paper today. President Washington wrote me back, and she is going to meet with all the support staff to discuss the situation. Look.”