Vintage Attraction

by Charles Blackstone

  “Do you want to tell us what it’s about first?”

  T. J. looked at me disapprovingly.

  “I’d rather just read it, Mr. Hapworth.”

  God, she really was pissed off. “Okay, fine. Let’s hear it.”

  “Do I have to stand up?”

  “Do you ever?”

  We were silent as she breathed. It appeared to take a great deal of effort for her to ready herself to recite. She’d only used one side of a piece of lined paper. I could see through the translucence when she held it up that the text was dense enough to keep us occupied for a while. One of the thugs opened a bottle of Pepsi. The crack of the plastic top separating from the safety ring and the carbonated high-fructose hiss that followed jarred me. He leaned back in his chair, as if at a theater, settling in to see an action film.

  “‘His name was Conrad,’” Danielle opened. The sentence was likely an unconscious nod to the well-anthologized Joyce Carol Oates story we’d spent two classes at an earlier point in the semester, along with every other entry-level comp course around the planet, attempting to learn how to deconstruct.

  The discussion of Danielle’s draft began haltingly. A thug spoke first. He mumbled something I couldn’t make out. The thug was a boy I was fairly certain slept through entire lectures. I’d never completely seen his face, since he’d never taken off his sunglasses. I assumed his contribution was a derisive remark about the basketball team Danielle referenced. I offered “Okay, okay,” in a sharp, admonishing pitch, which was surprisingly effective in keeping everyone else from coming unglued. The thug offered no more and lapsed back into the silence we were accustomed to.

  Lindsay asked, “What happened after that?”

  Danielle seemed almost surprised to find that she had ended without concluding. She performed a short forensic examination of her paper. “I guess I stopped writing then.”

  “I wanna know what happened, though.” There were murmurs of concurring.

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t delete her number from his phone.”

  “Damn,” Lindsay said softly.

  The essay had very obviously shaken the guys. Either they were embarrassed by their gender collectively or felt inadvertently exposed for romantic misdeeds of their own. To mask their discomfort, they made obscene gestures. They mercilessly excoriated Danielle for being so naïve in the first place.

  I slapped my sweaty palm on the conference table. This immediately commanded Danielle’s—and everybody else’s—attention. “And you broke up with him.”

  She looked out the window.

  “This is what I’m trying to get at, people.”

  One of the thugs asked, “What is?” His question betrayed an earnest curiosity.

  “I can’t believe I just called you ‘people.’” I shook my head, in an attempt to return to diction that more closely resembled my own. “The point of this exercise, the point of writing these narrative essays, of writing anything, is to take something confusing from life and, through language, and distance, try to see if the character—”

  “You mean us, if it’s a personal essay,” T. J. said.

  “Well, that’s probably an ideological discussion for another class, but for our purposes at the moment, you, the character, whomever’s narrating, whatever, has an opportunity to reassess before . . . before . . .”

  “Before we fuck up again?”

  Out from behind her intricate canvas of freckles, Lindsey opined, “Guys like that always do.” She shivered, almost imperceptibly, as though shaking away an unpleasant recollection. “She was better off losing him.”

  “Actually, she didn’t say whether she did or not yet,” canny T. J. pointed out.

  “Professor Hapworth?”

  “Yes, Nikki?”

  “Can I go to the bathroom?”

  I groaned. “Nikki, this is college. You don’t have to ask my permission.”

  “But what if I have to go?”

  “You just . . . go.”

  Her cheeks reddened. She remained in her seat until I resumed speaking. It allowed for an exit that went mostly undetected.

  “Where was I?”

  “We can learn about ourselves from writing.”

  “Yes. Thank you. I mean, I’m oversimplifying here, but I think there’s something we can take away. Oh, yeah. I remember the point I was trying to make: Why is this important?”

  Silence.

  “Discovering, like, you know, that you thought you knew someone and then you didn’t?”

  “Have any of you seen Manhattan?” I asked the class.

  Those weeks Izzy and I were first dating, when we didn’t have to go to a food and wine festival or a dinner or a law firm or bank speaking engagement or a shortbread cookie launch party, we stayed in and watched movies on my couch. It was a phase we’d moved on from so quickly that we’d already taken to reminiscing it. She called it “When Our Love Was New.” We covered much of Woody Allen’s early oeuvre. In my mind now was the famous concluding scene of my favorite of his films. It was a part Izzy didn’t know. We’d gotten too tired that night to watch the second half and had never returned to it. I conjured the shots I had mostly memorized from having had in front of my eyes easily fifty times along the past twenty-nine years. As I did, Danielle, with her dark-blonde hair and tragicomically prosoponic face, began to channel Mariel Hemingway. She had even vaguely echoed the actress’s youthful soubrette register while she read her consciousness stream’s most vulnerable admissions to us.

  “Scorsese?” Stereo asked.

  “No, not exactly, Stereo. It’s an older movie, from the seventies, which I’m sure you haven’t heard of. Anyway, the film ends with this line: ‘You have to have a little faith in people.’”

  “So my essay sucked?” Danielle asked.

  “No,” I said. “It didn’t suck. It was actually quite engaging. But think about that line for a second.” It was a long second. “Does anybody see the connection?”

  “She could have forgiven him. If she really wanted to be with him.”

  “That’s the question. Did you really want things to be over?” I asked her.

  “Do I have to tell you in order to get full credit?”

  “Forget about the assignment. What did you do after the point where the story left us?”

  “You mean the narrator?”

  “Ha, ha. Yes, I meant the narrator. Does more of the story remain to be told?”

  “I guess.”

  “And do you guys know why?”

  “Why?” Danielle asked, in Mariel’s guilelessly chirpy voice.

  “Because there’s always more. That’s what the line means. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you take these silly English classes. That’s why there’s narrative. It reminds us, if we bother to read it, that there’s always another way of looking at things, because there’s always more to see. We just can’t always see it immediately. But if we don’t jump to conclusions, if we don’t make irrevocable decisions, if we give peace a chance—I think you don’t need me to tell you it’s . . . it may very well be the meaning of life.”

  “Mr. Hapworth?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you like me to read mine?”

  “Yes, Seth. Thanks.”

  “David.”

  “Dave. I’m sorry. I think I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

  “David. He’s Dave.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  I ended class fifteen minutes early. The quorum had lapsed into unanswerable restlessness long before that. I wanted them gone as soon as possible. I remained in my seat as my students tore pages out of their notebooks and passed their papers forward. They reorganized their backpacks, capped their pens, and left the conference table without pushing in their chairs. They mumbled good-byes or nodded in my general direction as they ma
de for the door. Lindsie flashed me a peace sign. I accepted it with an instinctive and regrettably dorky thumbs-up. I tried to keep my head down as they shambled out. I wished to avoid the looks. I knew the kids’ faces would reflect either disappointment or disgust. T. J. must have sensed I didn’t feel like talking. Usually he hung around for at least ten minutes of babble before decamping. He took off without remark. Lindsay and Lindsey were less willing to accept my detaching. They deflected my nonverbal cues and tactlessly issued frantic questions about previously collected exercises, looming deadlines.

  I sat in the empty room and put my hands over my eyes. It didn’t help. Even shielded from the world, my brain spun a myriad of scenes. There projected onto the TV screen behind my eyelids was a slickly edited montage of all that had happened to me over the last weeks and months, the waning triumphs and the recently fast-accumulating disasters. My e-mail to Izzy, meeting, falling in love, the movies, Ishiguro, the pork bao, the trips, buying the loft, buying furniture, moving in together, Chef Dominique and the neighbors driving us crazy, eloping, Talia, Pacer Rosengrant, my teaching career careering off the edge of a comp class cliff, all the wines drunk during and in between. The good, the bad—was there even a difference? Most of the mental video offered ugly junctures of the two. It all presented itself to me again so clearly. I desperately wished to change the channel. But I couldn’t. This was my life.

  Outside it was raining. Heavy, gray mist clung to the air, erasing the upper portions of tall buildings. My umbrella was, predictably, missing from my Timbuk2. I started walking quickly. I avoided the grassy shortcuts, which were already mud. My walk turned into a little jog. After only a few yards, a searing pain in my ankles slowed my pace back down to a purposeful trot. I reached University Hall, soaked. Inside I brushed water off the arms of my jacket, from the top of my messenger bag. I could feel my wet socks clinging to my feet and cold toes. My sneakers squished and splattered the elevator and the hallway.

  At my desk, I logged into the campus webmail. I wasn’t in the mood for the inane mass mailings to the adjunct teaching pool from Schultz that filled my inbox. I couldn’t help feeling like she was trying to send me an encoded direct message with subject lines like “Online Networking Tools and Finding Employment” and “Great Rundown of How-To’s for Cover Letters.” I selected her e-mails without opening them and changed their status marks to “read.” I was grateful that Berkal hadn’t come back to campus yet. The party wouldn’t start for a few hours. I wanted to do nothing but disappear in the silence and try to take a nap.

  But the tranquillity was punctured before long. Two knocks came to the door. A winsome coed brought the first of them. Her blonde hair, side-parted and gathered into a ponytail, appeared as annoyed by the rain as my own hair felt. Her clothes were dry, even though she wasn’t wearing a coat. The small pendant dangling from a thin gold string on her neck fell forward as she leaned over my shoulder to squint into the office. She almost, but not quite, pressed against me. Instead of asking the girl what she wanted, I just stared at her long-sleeved white T-shirt and jeans. I touched my hair again. I pulled away wet fingertips.

  “Is Dr. Berkal here?”

  I repeated the interrogation, aghast. “Does he make you call him that?”

  Her eyelids widened, as though she were shocked by my shock. “We can call him Stephen,” she said in a small voice.

  “But he said ‘Dr. Berkal’ was among the other possibilities?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t really remember.”

  “Because you know he’s just a PhD student, right?”

  She nodded.

  “So you can call him ‘Qualifying-Examined Berkal,’ or ‘Dissertation-in-Progress-at-Least-Officially Berkal.’ But not ‘Doctor Berkal.’ Not for another ten years or so. Okay?”

  “I can’t call him anything since he’s not here.”

  I felt my cheeks heating up. I attempted to chuckle. Only sputter came forth. “No, I don’t suppose . . . I suppose you’re right.”

  “Is he coming back?”

  I pretended like I didn’t know the answer. I inspected the index card taped to our door. “Um . . . it looks like he’s not in. It’s just me for the rest of the day.” I smiled then. “Anything I can help you with?”

  “What do you know about mood?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I’ll just come back later.”

  She turned to leave. I bellowed after her, “Don’t call him Dr. Berkal again, okay? And don’t let anybody else, either.”

  She didn’t respond.

  I closed the door.

  Before I could slump back to my desk, the other knock came. It was Talia. Her hair was damp. The heavy, wet dark of it made her face appear even lighter than it was. She’d already taken off her J. Crew mackintosh and laid it over the back of a chair someone left in the hall. She looked absolutely unhinging in a white, collared oxford shirt with a short black dress over it.

  “Dude, I think you traumatized that girl.”

  I ushered her into the office and shut the door. “What are you doing here?” I asked. We were alone in the small rectangle with a popcorn ceiling and dull tiled floor. She smiled archly, which was both frightening and exciting at the same time. I took my seat, but then got up and went over to Berkal’s floor lamp. I turned it on and sat down again. Talia looked at me like I was crazy.

  “Dude.”

  “It makes me nervous when you call me ‘Dude.’”

  “Like it makes you nervous when little girls call Stephen J. Berkal ‘Doctor’?”

  “Something like that. No. Nothing like that. I don’t give a shit about him.”

  “What was with the upbraiding, then?”

  “I’m having a hard day and everything is pissing me off.”

  “How was your class?”

  I responded truthfully. “I was a parody of meaningful instruction.” I had no other way of answering.

  She pouted her sympathy. Then she pulled the empty guest chair from beside the desk and positioned it close to my feet. I had to withdraw my legs when she plunked down. Our knees still touched. I wondered if she could feel my damp jeans through her black stockings. Thunder rumbled outside, thrumming the office. The weather sounded its percussion intermittently, but persistently. It gathered severity with each successive rise.

  She looked in the direction of the window, but there wasn’t anything there on the other side to see. The view was a sheet of gray. It was almost as though the glass had been painted over, or had never existed at all. “It’s shitty out there.”

  “If the elevators go down, we’ll have to sleep here tonight.” Another bass drum sounded a round measure.

  “No, we won’t,” she said with a scoff. After a moment of silent contemplation, she took a pink mini iPod from her bag. She shook loose the snarl of blue waterproof headphones attached to it. “Has that ever happened before?” she asked in a less certain tone.

  “Probably.” I heard miniature sounds coming through the earpieces. “Indie rock?”

  “Exile in Guyville.”

  “I love that album.”

  “I know you do. Why do you think I was flying into Chicago at night?”

  “‘Watching the lake turn the sky into blue-green smoke.’ The first scene of the story you brought to my workshop. The character was listening to ‘Stratford-on-Guy’ as her plane descended. I remember.”

  “I wrote that to get your attention.”

  “It worked.”

  “Do you think anyone’s ever had sex in the offices?”

  I winced. “I hope not in this one.”

  She laughed. She reclaimed her eyes momentarily and powered off the iPod. “So you know of such things.”

  “I’ve heard some rumors. I’ve taught here a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Too long.”


  “Working on your PhD?” she teased.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “How do you think it would go down?” she asked me then. “Like over here?” She pointed at eroded tiles on the floor. I found a dark spot I hadn’t noticed before on a square. It might have been a circle of spilled red nail polish or a chewed stick of cinnamon gum tamped again and again over the last few centuries. “Or there?” Yeah, sure, I thought. What said cupidity like Berkal’s desk? “If I had to choose,” she said, “I’d do it there, up against the window.” I shrugged, pretending this was still just a theoretic anthropological discussion. With each option she presented, the languorousness in her voice compounded. The whole thing was turning me on. Even though she sat so close, there was still distance separating us. I concentrated on the distance. I was grateful for it. I sought refuge in the scarce inches keeping us discrete. It was probably best. It wasn’t a good idea for me to answer Izzy’s conjectured betrayal with tangible reprisals. At another moment in my life, sure, it would have made sense to exploit this deliciously coincidental opportunity. If we were in high school. If I weren’t almost thirty-eight. If Izzy and I weren’t married. If my name weren’t on a fucking mortgage that I couldn’t even begin to pay if she stranded me. Regardless of romantic inclination or disinclination, I could no longer just succumb to temptation. I couldn’t just throw my life at the mercy of desire.

  I stared at the empty mug on my desk. It was one Izzy and I had gotten together, driving back to Chicago after the weekend in Kohler, at a roadside pie, cider, and Christmas tree ornament shack off the highway. That Sunday outside of Milwaukee, when our love was new, the fall afternoon sky was leaden with dusk. We planned to collect a souvenir from each speaking engagement city or food and wine festival we’d visit. So far we had just the one mug, which we began with there at Apple Holler.

  “Do you want some coffee?” Talia asked.

  “No. Do you?”

  “No.”

  I considered it a small victory I was able to resist the urge to press myself against Talia until we lost ourselves in symbiosis.

  “My head hurts.”

  Her touching of my forehead coincided with the next menacing thunderclap. Her fingers gave palpable form to the electricity that I followed as it burned through the fog. The blinding current flared in the sky only a millisecond. Long after it was gone, lightning continued to torch and singe the inside wall of my chest.