Arc of the Comet

by Greg Fields

  His reading was interrupted by the heavy thudding of feet on the stairway. Rosselli had come home. The roommate threw open the door and stomped each foot twice on the entry mat. He started to tug off his thick beige jacket.

  “Son of a bitch, it’s cold. If it’s like this now, I hate to think what winter’s going to be like.” He sniffed the air. “Did some small animal die in the kitchen, or are you just cooking dinner?”

  Finnegan put down his paper and headed for the source of the aroma. “Spaghetti sauce. My special blend.”

  “Are we having a vegetable?”

  “Broccoli. I thought a paisan like yourself might appreciate an Eye-talian feed.”

  Finnegan set the table while the spaghetti boiled. It steamed the windows so that he could not see out. In the darkness there was nothing to see anyway.

  “Hey Dan, you want some wine with this?”

  “Do we have any?”

  “Rotgut Chianti. Chief Sunset Vintners, I think, out of Hackensack.”

  “What year?”

  “August.”

  “Let ’er rip.”

  Finnegan drained the spaghetti, heaped a large portion onto two plates and smothered each pile with his sauce. On a small plate he put the broccoli. He had made garlic bread, too, and he put that on the table. With the smell and the sight of it all, Finnegan almost caved in with hunger.

  “Let’s go, Danny boy.”

  Rosselli came out of his bedroom and sat down. Finnegan placed a steaming plate before him.

  “I should really be taking you guys out to dinner tonight. I’ve got something to celebrate.” Rosselli spoke between bites of his food. He had wasted no time digging in. Winter ran through his veins as well.

  “What’s that, big guy? Got a date with Easy Ellen Blackmore?”

  “Better. Dr. Schwartz is recommending me for a chemistry honors project. He wants me to work under him next year.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Why so disbelieving? I have my scholarly moments, too.”

  “Jesus, Dan, it’s not that I don’t think you deserve it. I’m just surprised. I didn’t think you’d be interested in anything like that, but that’s fantastic.” Finnegan’s genuine pleasure bubbled out. Perhaps he and McIlweath had had some influence on their friend. It was apparent to anyone who knew him that Dan Rosselli was far more motivated now than he had been when he first got to campus two years ago. Finnegan liked to take partial credit.

  “We’re going to do a project on x-ray crystallography. He says if we both bust ass we can finish by the time I graduate next year. It might be publishable, he thinks, but we’ll have to see.”

  “Med schools might find that impressive.”

  “They’ll fall off their chairs. Schwartzy’s a big name in the field.”

  “Christ, Dan, that’s super. When do you start?”

  “As soon as he arranges it with the department. I’ll get four credits a term for this, and it’ll be a well-earned ’A’.”

  “It’s not a Henry Rutgers project, is it? Not technically.”

  “No. This is a special independent study honors project within the Chemistry Department. They run it by themselves. It’s all research for about a year, and then I’ll have to write it up as a thesis. Have you and Tom heard about your Henry Rutgers applications yet?”

  “No. We’re up before the selection committee in January. I still have to finish my proposal abstract.”

  “How many credits is that?”

  “Twelve for the year. If this works out, I’ll only have to take two courses each term and I’ll still be carrying a full load. I can schedule them for the afternoon and never get up early again until the day I walk up to grab my diploma.”

  “You know, if you two guys get your Henry Rutgers, all four of us will be on some type of independent study.”

  “Well, you can’t call Lanny’s set-up ’independent study.’ There’s nothing even remotely scholarly about it. He doesn’t have to write anything, he doesn’t have to meet with an advisor. All he has to do is drive down to Trenton three times a week and drink the Governor’s bath water.”

  “Great work if you can get it.”

  “Yeah, Lanny’s always been an operator. He’ll wind up with more money and power than the rest of us combined.”

  “More women, too.”

  Finnegan chuckled. O’Hanlon had a new woman every weekend.

  “Grab me some cheese, would you?” said Rosselli. “Mac still in the pool?”

  “Undoubtedly. He won’t be home until 7:00 at least.”

  They finished their meal quickly despite the conversation, for both were rapid eaters. Rosselli cleared the plates and washed them hurriedly, a chore he detested. After he washed the dishes his roommates usually noticed specks of dried food on the plates or greasy fingerprints on the glasses. Rosselli did a lousy job, but no one ever cared enough to do them over.

  Finnegan went back to the living room and settled into the apartment’s only easy chair. Unlike the couch, whose springs often proved adversarial, the chair sucked in its guest. Finnegan let himself be absorbed. On his way into the room he had flipped on the old television, and after a few seconds it warmed enough to give a picture. The black void lightened, images came clear. Some nights he and Rosselli would watch the six o’clock news, but tonight Finnegan did not feel overly serious. He had turned the channel instead to a syndicated rerun of an old comedy series he had watched as a boy. It still could make him laugh if he were in the right mood, and tonight he was, all parts coming together.

  Conor Finnegan on this evening felt relaxed, confident, and, for a young man of twenty, quite secure. This shaky old place was home, and these roommates the brothers he never had.

  Dan Rosselli soon joined him. He had changed into his standard evening garb, a tattered set of green surgical scrubs he had appropriated from a local hospital while interviewing for a summer internship. They hung loose on his large frame, like pajamas.

  “Donning your ’After Six’ wear, I see.”

  “The finest in evening attire. What’s on?”

  Finnegan told him, Rosselli agreeably flopped on the couch, and they passed the next half hour in mindless, communal silence.

  Lanny O’Hanlon scaled the stairs shortly before seven. “Jesus Christ,” he said as he opened the door, “I had to park my car three blocks over. There’s no freaking room on this street anymore.”

  “What do you expect, Mick?” replied Rosselli. “The automotive population went up considerably when we moved in. How do you think the natives feel?”

  “They’ll be glad to see us go. How’re you guys doing?”

  “Danny discovered today that he’s a scholar,” said Finnegan, and Rosselli repeated his good news while O’Hanlon leafed through the Times.

  “You sure you’re not just going to do research on new recipes for Italian food, there, Chubby?”

  Rosselli responded with an affectionate profanity.

  “So what’s new in Trenton?” asked Finnegan. “You been named Secretary of the Treasury yet?”

  O’Hanlon snorted. “Not for a while. I spent the whole afternoon reviewing bills on God damn pothole repair appropriations. New Jersey’s got more freaking potholes than people.”

  “The state’s going to fix them? That’ll be a nice switch.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, pal. They do it every year, in spring after the snow melts. It’s just that the roads are made so shitty they fall apart as fast as they get fixed. What do we have to eat?”

  O’Hanlon threw his suit coat into the bedroom, aiming for a chair but missing and pitching it instead onto his desk. He pulled off his tie as he walked to the kitchen.

  “Conor took a stab at homemade spaghetti sauce,” Rosselli called after him.

  “And you ate it?”

  “Both of us.”

  “Jesus, you’ll both probably be camped on the toilet all night. Conor, do me a favor and sleep with your ass facing the hallway tonight.”
O’Hanlon went to the refrigerator and took out the spaghetti. He sniffed at it, accepted what he smelled and threw it into a pan to reheat. Once it started to steam he slopped it onto a plate, grabbed a bottle of beer and headed back to the living room. Finnegan began to say something about his choice of dinner, but O’Hanlon cut him short. “I’ll take my chances. Where’s Aqualad? Still in the pool?”

  “Apparently.”

  “He’s usually home by now conjugating his verbs.”

  “How can anybody like what he does?” asked Rosselli. “I mean, Latin for God’s sake.”

  “Spoken like a true scientist,” said Finnegan. After an hour or so of television and banter, O’Hanlon went into the bedroom, and Finnegan and Rosselli began their work.

  McIlweath was indeed late this evening. Where customarily he would be home shortly after 7:00, tired and reserved, dragging his books to the living room to sit near the window, he did not appear this evening until nearly 9.

  “Where’ve you been?” asked Finnegan as McIlweath took off his coat. “The library?”

  “Yeah. I had to pick up some books. How’re you guys doing?”

  Rosselli again recounted his news. Finnegan, who had been reading St. Augustine, saw the makings of a diversion, even though he had been reading for no more than half an hour. As Rosselli finished, O’Hanlon came out of the bedroom where he had been perusing a magazine.

  “I’m heading out for a beer. Anyone want to come?”

  “Not me, Lanny. I just got home. There’s work to be done.”

  “How about you, Buddha?”

  “Not tonight,” replied Rosselli. “I’ll save my celebration for the weekend.”

  “Rooms?”

  Finnegan hesitated. He really was too relaxed, too much at ease, to concentrate on his work. His conscience rumbled. “Where you going?”

  “Olde Queen’s.”

  “Go on ahead. Maybe I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “Okay. Don’t wait up, boys,” and O’Hanlon was gone, his footsteps fading down to the bottom of the stairs.

  Finnegan went back to St. Augustine. Rosselli sprawled on the couch, a chemistry text and a notebook open in front of him, teetering on the sofa’s edge. Finnegan read for another hour, his attention fluttering as his mind ran free in a forest of amusements, first peering down one path, then running in another direction, then investigating a third only to return to the center again. He absorbed very little of St. Augustine.

  All the while he kept expecting McIlweath to come down the hallway to assume his normal position by the window. Perhaps the absence of his friend at his customary station diverted his concentration. There had evolved among the four of them a rhythm that transcended speech or action. They had grown together symbiotically. When one deviated from the rhythm, even in the subtlest of ways, the others could perceive it even though nothing had been articulated. It was more than McIlweath’s position at the window; Finnegan felt rumblings of some sort.

  He put down his book and headed down the hallway. McIlweath lay on the bottom bunk in the small bedroom, music playing softly. A Latin book, The Complete Works of Catullus, sat unopened alongside him. McIlweath’s hands were folded behind his head and he stared upward at the bottom of the top bunk.

  “How’re you doing, Mac? “ asked Finnegan as he entered the room. “I haven’t talked to you all day.”

  “Tired of St. Augustine?”

  “I was tired of St. Augustine the day he was assigned.” Finnegan pulled the chair away from McIlweath’s desk and sat on it backwards to face his friend. “You know, I’m sure it’s an important piece of work, but it bores the hell out of me.”

  “That’s part of what he intended, wasn’t it? Whatever it takes to keep a young man from the fallen path.”

  “You feelin’ antisocial tonight, Mac? You usually don’t stay in here.”

  McIlweath continued to look up at the bed above him. “Not antisocial, Conor. Just quiet. We all have our moods.”

  “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  McIlweath chuckled. “No. God, no, there’s nothing wrong. You just get thoughtful sometimes, you know? When you’re not supposed to. I just didn’t feel like doing anything so I thought I’d lie here a while and listen to some music. Maybe I should have gone with Lanny.”

  “Yeah. Well, drinking with Lanny beats St. Augustine.”

  “Or Catullus.”

  Finnegan rose to go, but as he stood McIlweath rolled over to his side, propped on an elbow to face him.

  “Hey, Conor.” Finnegan stopped, and turned back to look at him. “I’ve met a girl.”

  “You have?” Finnegan sat back down at once. This would be worth hearing.

  “Actually, I’ve known her all year. I just got the chance to talk with her tonight.”

  “Tell me. Who is she, and where’d you meet her?”

  “Listen, Conor, before I go on, I want to ask you to keep this quiet.”

  “Keep it quiet? Christ, Mac, it’s no disgrace, being with a girl. That’s part of what we’re all after, remember? What are you afraid of? Is she a beast?”

  “No, of course not. But you know how Lanny and Dan are. If they think I’ve got something going, I’m never going to hear the end of it. They’re going to have their own expectations, too, about what I should be doing and all that. They’re pretty base sometimes.”

  “Sometimes?” Finnegan shook his head and gave a quiet laugh. “The ’Use-Once-and-Throw-Away Boys.’ Anyhow, what makes you think I’m any different?”

  “Because you’re the closest friend I have.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Her name’s Anne Newbury. She swims on the girls’ team. I’ve noticed her since the first workouts, but I’ve never spoken to her. I mean, not one word.”

  “Until tonight.”

  “Right. After I showered and got dressed I went back to the pool for my goggles. I left them on one of the benches. When I came out of the locker room she was there, too. She was about to turn off the lights.

  “We just started talking then,” he continued. “We said it was strange how two people could swim together for weeks and not even know one another beyond a name.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Who we were, where we came from. You know, our families, that sort of thing. What I was doing at Rutgers, how long we’d been swimming. Small talk.”

  “Small talk. What about her, then? Her name’s Anne. What else?”

  “She’s a junior, too. Her father’s a full professor in physics. Her mom’s a gourmet cook. She lives at home with them in Piscataway.”

  “The central question: what does she look like? Tell me she’s gorgeous.”

  “I think she’s very attractive.”

  “You say that almost defensively.”

  “Well, she doesn’t have what you would call classic good looks. She wears glasses. I never knew that until tonight. Her hair’s light brown, down to her shoulder about. Blue eyes, broad forehead. Slight body.”

  “And you’ve admired her from afar for weeks. Sounds typical of your Romantic infatuations, Mac.”

  “Yeah, I know. But she’s always attracted me. I don’t even know why. It seems as if there’s something vulnerable in her. She’s been protected all her life, and it shows. I can’t explain it any better than that. She’s traditional, and that appeals to me. And she’s obviously very bright.”

  “How can you tell all this after so short a time and so few words?”

  “Just instinct. She’s very quiet. All the other girls joke around a lot, but Anne’s different. She never joins in, almost like she doesn’t know how, or doesn’t trust herself enough to be witty or clever. I guess that all adds up to a hunch, but I don’t think she’s real comfortable with people who aren’t close to her. She seems timid.”

  “That’s perceptive.”

  “I told you I’d been watching her for a long time.”

  “So what comes next? Did you ask her out?”


  “No. We just talked. For about an hour.”

  “Are you kidding me? You sat alone by an empty, musty pool for an hour, wet towels in the corner, the romantic whiff of chlorine in the air. Didn’t you at least ask if she wanted to get something to eat? You could have run over to the commons together.”

  “No. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was thinking about it, though.”

  “Mac, you’ve got to do better than that. Jesus, if you’re attracted to her, and she’s crazy enough to sit on a wooden bench by a smelly pool and talk to you rather than go home to eat her dinner, you’ve got to ask her out. All the signs are there.”

  “I can’t, Conor. At least I couldn’t tonight. What if she turns me down? I’ve never been very good with women.”

  “How in Christ’s name are you ever going to find out unless you take the initiative? If you never ask, then it doesn’t matter if she would turn you down. You’re in the same place, and that place is by yourself. And if she’s as naïve as you think, she’s never going to come to you. In any event, if she turns you down then you won’t waste any more time worrying about it and you can move on to your next quixotic fantasy.”

  McIlweath said nothing, so Finnegan continued, gently. “I think I can understand you, Mac. You were the same way in high school with what’s-her-name.”

  “Kim.”

  “Yeah, Kim. You admired her ever since I knew you, but you never did anything about it. You didn’t want to risk it. As long as you kept your distance, you kept the remote hope that something might come about of its own accord, but if you made your move and she turned you down, then that was the end of hope, end of fantasies, end of Romantic idealizations.

  “But you can’t do that anymore, Mac,” he continued. “I haven’t had an evening out with a woman in months. There aren’t enough women at Rutgers to afford the luxury of fantasizing them out of your life. If you’ve got one in tow, act on her. Take a chance. Believe me, the real thing beats fantasy every time. And if this girl’s intelligent enough to give up her dinner to spend time talking with you in a fairly disgusting setting, then I don’t think you’ve got a whole lot to worry about. Just do it.”