* * *
“How’s Jericho holding up?” Stu’s mother asked on the phone.
“He seems fine, Ma.” Stu returned his guitar to its stand.
“He doesn’t really know how to be in the world, does he?” she said. “He’s so sensitive.”
Stu thought she had it partly right. “Don’t you mean insensitive?”
“He feels things deeply,” his mother said. “Karen and I talk a lot. Jericho’s all she has, you know.”
“I know.” Worry had become his mother’s chosen pastime, her natural vocation—except, it seemed, when it came to her own son. After Stu turned eighteen, it was as though all of his choices had suddenly moved outside of her power to influence or even discuss. Likewise, any concern for his inner life or private doubts seemed to have evaporated. The only person who worried less about Stu was his father.
“Stuart,” he said, when Stu’s mother passed him the phone. “I hope you’re learning a lot.” His voice was gruff. Like so many men of his generation, he hadn’t learned how to carry on a telephone conversation. He half shouted, as though into a walkie-talkie or a tin can.
“Plenty,” said Stu.
“Like what?”
Stu hesitated. “Like, what is the nature of What Is? Is What Is all good? And what about What Is Not?” A short silence followed in which he felt faintly ridiculous.
“Anything you can take to the bank yet?”
Stu frowned, then remembered something that Rachel had said on the first day of class. “I’m learning how to think.”
“Uh-oh,” said his father. Stu could hear him handing the phone back to his mother. “Good thing the boy already knows how to tie his shoes.”
* * *
—
And yet, sitting in Rachel’s classroom, Stu felt a connection not to the philosophers themselves but to the followers he imagined sitting at their feet, suddenly alive to the mysteries of the universe, the mind, the soul. It was the first time in his life he had encountered thinking—the deliberate thinking of difficult thoughts—as a thing to be encouraged, rather than staved off or endured.
And with every class, he noticed that Rachel got a little more comfortable. Like a flower in the sun, as he’d written in the chorus of a song that was never quite finished.
“According to Heraclitus,” Rachel was saying, “you can’t step into the same river twice. Has anyone ever heard that saying before?”
A few people nodded in response to the question, including Sarah. Jericho was listening without taking notes. Truscott said, “Heraclitus just needed a better GPS.”
Rachel smiled faintly. “We perceive objects in their becoming,” she said. “Because change is constant. The river for Heraclitus is no different from everything else in its state of flux.” Her hand dropped to her hip as she beamed at the class. The more abstract and challenging her lectures, the happier she seemed to be.
“People, too,” she added. “It’s easier to see change in people than in a table or chair. We are all becoming.” She seemed to look right at Stu. “Nobody is static.”
* * *
At the beginning of November, Stu signed up for the Saturday-night open mic at Birdy’s, the campus bar. While he waited for the emcee to call his name, he made a concerted effort not to drink too much, even as more and more pitchers of beer arrived at their table.
Truscott scrutinized the performers. “Utter disaster but I’d shag her,” he said after the first act, a ukulele player. After the next act—a singer-songwriter who Stu thought was pretty good—Truscott put his head down on the table in mock despair. “Is she accepting donations for voice lessons?” he asked. “My bleeding ears. God.”
Jericho was silent, probably wishing he was back among his textbooks in their dorm room. Stu did his best to breathe normally and ignore the stage. He and Sarah ran their thumbs over the letters cut into the surface of the long wooden table, which was varnished well into the next century. There were dozens of names—sometimes twinned initials love-locked into a heart, but more often the gouged declaration of a lone male, usually with a three-letter moniker. LOU, BOB, and TOM had all been moved by the spirit of Birdy’s to commemorate their time there.
“Look at all the other legends who got their start here,” said Sarah. “Reed. Dylan. Petty. Posterity starts now.”
Stu laughed. “You’re drunk,” he said. They all were. But he liked the idea of doing something with his hands, which felt shaky. “Anyone have a knife?” he asked. But nobody did.
By the time Stu finally took to the stage, all of his friends were wasted.
“Crack a leg,” said Sarah, before bursting into giggles.
Stu could feel Truscott’s eyes on him as he tuned his guitar. Looking out at the crowd, he recognized Owen sitting at a table with a few girls Stu knew from his classes. He’d heard the writer had become a regular fixture at Birdy’s. Rachel was nowhere in sight.
Closing his eyes, Stu shook the dread out of his fingers and let the sense-memory of the music take over. His voice was nothing special but he could carry a tune. He opened his eyes and saw Jericho’s implacable face, then closed them before he had to encounter anyone else’s expression. He moved on to the next song without stopping to pause.
“I feel like I’ve been sorry for a thousand years,” he sang, and there was a catch in his voice that caught him off guard. As it was, his upper arms ached with how tightly he was holding them steady. The fact that his body was recoiling from performing made him wonder if the lyrics were personal after all, even though when he’d written them he’d imagined they were about politics, or other people: his mother, his father, workers at the plant.
He got through his four songs, and when he stopped, everyone clapped.
Or almost everyone. When he opened his eyes, he saw Sarah’s lips on Jericho’s. He was so startled he almost jumped when Truscott grabbed him by the shoulders as he stepped off the stage.
“You’re good,” he said, as Stu swung off his guitar. “Let’s collaborate. Come over tomorrow night.”
* * *
—
Their collaboration already had a name by the time Stu arrived at Truscott’s off-campus apartment.
“Let’s call it Green Screen,” said Truscott. He ranged around the room, closing windows and turning on amps. “Let’s hear what else you’ve got. Anything new?”
“Since last night?” But Stu played a new song he’d written over the summer, and Truscott listened with a faraway smile playing on his face.
“Lovely,” said Truscott. “But a bit conventional, don’t you think?” He got up and plugged in a series of guitar pedals. “What we’re going to be doing is well beyond boy-meets-girl. I mean, pop is already in its death throes.”
“I’m not sure it’s entirely done for,” said Stu.
Truscott continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “I’m not much into lyrics myself, mate,” he said. “Better to say nothing than rhyme heart with apart, know what I mean?”
Stu didn’t think he had rhymed those words during his set at Birdy’s, but suddenly he wasn’t sure.
“Check it out,” said Truscott. He grabbed a pick off the table and started playing a dense pattern of syncopated power chords over a looped drumbeat. When he was finished, he threw his guitar down on the couch. “I want to make music that makes people go crazy,” he declared, pulling on his hair as though it was itching him. “Change the way they think. Cut in on their boring inner monologues and force them to confront their pathetic, privileged lives.”
Stu was dubious. But Truscott had singled him out, had seen something in him, something that Stu was starting to realize he had been waiting for someone to see. Never mind that with Truscott he wasn’t quite sure what it was.
Later, his ears ringing and his enthusiasm kindled in spite of himself, Stu returned to his room. When he got there, he found the d
oor slightly ajar and heard Sarah’s voice coming from behind it.
“I really like you as a friend,” she was saying. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea.”
Stu backed away from the door and went to watch television in the lounge. When he came back to the room an hour later, Jericho was alone, reading Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
“How was your night?” Stu asked.
“Fine,” said Jericho. “Boring.”
* * *
—
On Monday, Jericho wasn’t there at the start of class.
“Where’s Loverboy?” said Truscott.
“Oh hush, you,” said Sarah. “I’m worried about him.”
Stu yawned. Jericho had spent all of Sunday night with the light on, reading and barking, as Stu dozed in and out of a fitful sleep. When he awoke, Jericho was gone.
“Did you keep the poor boy up past his bedtime?” said Truscott. “Naughty girl.”
“I was wasted,” said Sarah. “That kiss shouldn’t have happened.” Her cheeks flamed as though she’d been slapped. “I feel awful.”
She looked down at her notebook as Jericho came in and took his seat. Stu noticed his friend was wearing the same clothes as the day before but was missing his socks.
Rachel picked up from where she had left off last class. “Did everyone manage to read Parmenides’s On Nature?”
There were two distinct thuds as Jericho’s shoes fell to the ground one at a time. Half of the class turned to stare as he tucked up first one bare foot and then the other into his cramped plastic chair.
At the lectern, Rachel raised her voice above the murmuring Jericho had set off. “Parmenides is in some ways the most difficult Presocratic philosopher because there is so little consensus about his work. And all we have left of him are fragments.” She moved to an overhead projector in the centre of the room, where she began to arrange transparencies. “But metaphysics effectively starts with Parmenides, as well as all subsequent investigation into the differences between appearance and reality.”
Stu flinched as Jericho snorted. Ahead of him, Sarah sank down lower in her seat.
“Parmenides maintained that all appearance of change is an illusion,” said Rachel, flicking off the lights and projecting a translation of one of the fragments onto the screen. “We may think that things are changing, that the world is in motion around us, but Parmenides believed that knowledge gained from the senses is unreliable.” She twisted a knob to bring the text into focus. “He only trusted logic. And—”
“He was right.” Jericho didn’t bother raising his hand. “The world is a lie. Just like all the lousy people in it.” He was bristling with tension, his tone combative.
“That’s interesting,” said Rachel. “I wonder—”
Jericho cut her off again. “So why do we even bother?” He began smacking the surface of his desk. “War.” Smack. “Famine.” Smack. “Heartbreak.” Smack. “Everything bad in the world has always been here and it’s never going away. Change isn’t possible.”
Stu realized he was holding his breath, as were most of his classmates.
Rachel stepped away from the lectern. “That’s a good point, Jericho.” She was composed but watchful. “Can you elaborate?”
“Isn’t it clear?” Jericho’s eyes flashed with disdain. “If nothing can change, what’s the point of anything?”
Rachel’s eyes zigzagged over the rows of tense faces, assessing the collective patience of the rest of the class. “I think a lot of people would agree with you. Some philosophers as well.”
Jericho snorted again. “Forget it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“I think it matters, Jericho,” said Rachel, before segueing back into her planned lecture. “I’m glad you do, too.”
As class ended, Rachel handed back a quiz and Jericho mumbled something about the grades. “I need to go see Professor Levinson,” he said, blinking behind his glasses at Stu’s A minus. His own test, which had received a B, lay on the edge of his desk, as though he were afraid to touch it.
“Just because I got a better grade than you?” Stu wasn’t really insulted; he was relieved Jericho was talking to him.
“Not just because, but yes.” Jericho picked up Stu’s test and examined it. “Something is disordered in the universe.”
“So go.”
“You’re coming with me.” Jericho was counting up the marks allotted for each question. “She needs to look at them both in case she made a mistake.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“This is numerical, Stu,” said Jericho. “Not personal.”
* * *
—
Office hours started half an hour after class. As they walked over to Rachel’s office, Stu said, “What was all that shouting about? That was nuts.”
“Was it?” Jericho peered at him. “I want to learn what really matters. Things I can use. Like, if the Presocratics are wrong, why bother studying them?”
“I don’t know, Jer. Maybe we’re taking the wrong courses.” A similar thought had crossed Stu’s mind more than once since he’d started college, though he would never have had the nerve to express it. On the contrary, he’d worried that even thinking it was a sign he didn’t belong there. “By the way, I’m sorry about what happened with Sarah. I know she still wants to be your friend.”
“I know,” said Jericho. All the cold contention from earlier returned to his voice. “She told me herself.”
“Right, of course,” said Stu. He hadn’t intended to be condescending. “I’m sorry.”
“You know, you’ve changed since we got here,” said Jericho. “You’re a little bit nicer now. And smarter.”
Stu suspected Jericho knew he still felt guilty for the times he’d ignored him in high school or ditched him for his more popular friends. “You’ve changed, too, Jer,” he said. Though he wasn’t sure it was true.
When they arrived at Rachel’s office, the door was partially open but they heard someone inside and so waited on a bench in the hallway. Stu recognized the voice of Gretchen Howe, Sarah’s mother.
“I’m not saying you need to pick sides,” Gretchen was saying, “but it would help to have a unified front at the meeting.”
“You’re talking about challenging the Chair of the department.”
“He won’t be the Chair forever, Rachel. And we have a duty of care to our students.” Gretchen’s voice got louder, as though she was pacing closer to the door. “The whole atmosphere of that party was unacceptable—the drinking, the casual innuendos. I’ve had enough of it, myself.”
There was a pause before Rachel answered. “I don’t think that codifying relationships between students and faculty is going to change anything.” In the hallway, Stu felt a film of sweat on the back of his neck. “Or teach our students what we want them to learn about freedom and responsibility.”
“I wonder what you’ll say by the end of the year,” was Gretchen’s dark response. She took her leave without noticing them, striding past in a swoop of batik shawl and clattering heels.
Rachel gave them an unsteady smile as they came in.
“Is everything okay?” said Stu.
“Fine. I’m just new here.” She held out her hand to take their tests. “And apparently I still have a lot to learn.”
* * *
Essays piled up as the term went on. When Stu stayed up late in the computer labs working on papers, Jericho just kept on reading, a constant fixture in their increasingly rank dorm room. Stu was grateful for the nights he played music with Truscott, though Green Screen practices had begun to require ear plugs. They had tricked-out amps and a wall of pulsing, clamorous, exhilaratingly unpredictable sound. Stu wasn’t sure he liked their growing set list, but he enjoyed playing it. Jamming with Truscott felt like a kind of harmless violence, a cathartic re
lease of all his academic anxiety.
Stu tried to joke about it with Jericho when he came home. “Truscott calls it ‘texture,’ but I think the technical designation is ‘long-term hearing loss.’ ”
Jericho barely cracked a smile. He had started missing classes and, Stu felt sure, assignments.
“You okay, bud?”
His roommate spared him a dark glance. “Is it okay with you if I’m not?”
The phone rang, and when Jericho didn’t react, Stu answered. It was Sarah, calling to ask if he wanted to study together. The midterm exam for Rachel’s class was the next day.
“You could come to my dorm if you want. I have a single and it’s quiet here.” She paused. “Jericho, too, if he wants.”
“I’m going to Sarah’s to study,” Stu said after he hung up the phone. “Do you want to come?”
“Do what you want,” said Jericho, his voice frosty. “Like I care if you guys date.”
“It’s not like that, Jer,” he said. “We’re just friends. And she invited you, too.”
Jericho remained silent and flipped the page.
“Suit yourself,” said Stu. “See you later.”
“Later,” said Jericho, without looking up.
* * *
—
Sarah had a dorm room even though she could have lived at home. “It’s a compromise with my parents, to keep me in school,” she said.
“Nice,” said Stu, though he was shocked by both the extravagance of the expense and the implied bribery. “I like what you’ve done with it.” There were half a dozen thriving plants, some colourful wall-hangings, and a collage of photos mounted above her desk. Stu thought he recognized the brother she’d pointed out at the party in a few of them, but most were snapshots of young children. “Who’s this bunch?” he asked, pointing.
“I’m a nanny in the summers,” said Sarah. “My specialty is knock-knock jokes.”
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