Robert wondered if he was really awake. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
He heard loud chuckles and snorts; two more guys stood by the other bed. The boy standing over him smiled; his mouth was full of blindingly white teeth. “I’m your roommate, Sanford Trace. Tracey for short.”
“Oh,” Robert said, propping himself up on an elbow. “Guess I was asleep.”
“You missed orientation.”
“What was it like?”
“I have no idea,” Tracey said. “I missed it, too. Something about blue and brown beanies, no members of the opposite sex past the lobby, the usual.” He paused, furrowing his brow. “Do you mind if I ask where you slept last night?”
Robert stared at him, puzzled.
“Forgive me, Robert, but you stink.”
Tracey’s two friends laughed loudly.
“I suggest a shower,” Tracey continued, as Robert finally stood up and stretched, moving away from Tracey, wondering if his comment was merely humiliating or a little bit funny. He wasn’t sure, but decided not to be angry.
“Anyway, I stopped by to get the introductions over with before I go back with those two wastrels over there.”
“Back to where?” Robert asked.
“Harvard,” said the small guy who sat now on Tracey’s bed, flipping through The Fountainhead. He was awash in color—madras pants, a striped shirt half tucked in, and canvas boat shoes. “I’m Mark, by the way. Mark Pascal,” he continued. “This clown over here is Cates. First name is Benoit, but we only call him that when he’s misbehaving, or his mother is visiting.”
Cates, tall, thin, brown-haired, with a deep tan and copious freckles, was, like his companions, very bright in his red-and-white-striped polo shirt, white shorts, and tennis shoes that were scuffed just enough to prove that he, in fact, played tennis, but he was much less animated than either of his companions and less inclined to smile. Still leaning against the wall, Cates nodded almost imperceptibly in Robert’s direction, and then added, “This is a damned small room for two people. We’ve got a freshman suite three times this size.”
“If you’re going to live with Tracey,” Pascal said, sounding like an overzealous tour guide, “then you’re going to be clean, whether you like it or not. Just ask Van Dorn. You had him taking how many showers a day?”
“Who’s Van Dorn?” Robert asked.
“My roommate at school,” Tracey replied, “and I never forced Van Dorn to take a single shower. He took it upon himself to, um, improve his hygiene.”
Pascal continued flipping through The Fountainhead. “You read all these books, Tracey, and they still wouldn’t let you in, huh?”
More laughter. Robert wondered what exactly they all had to be so cheerful about. “Let him in where?” Robert asked.
“Harvard again,” said Pascal. “Sanford Trace is the only one in five generations to get the ding.”
“I got lousy grades in high school,” Tracey announced cheerfully. “Who the hell cares? We’re off to have a few beers. Why don’t you get yourself cleaned up and come meet us?”
“I have to be somewhere at eight.”
“Somewhere, eh?” Cates asked, standing up straight and glancing toward the door. “Very mysterious.”
“So meet us after that,” Tracey persisted. “You can bet we’ll still be there. Come on. One drink? For roommate goodwill and all that.”
Robert was certain his new roommate was only being polite, if you could call his manner polite, but he didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot. He had noticed how Cates and Pascal had directed most of their comments back to Sanford Trace, as if for his approval. He could not help but feel a little fascinated by the kind of person who would inspire such behavior.
Tracey now stood at his desk, scribbling something on a piece of notebook paper. “I’m writing down the directions to the bar,” he said, “so maybe we’ll see you later.”
“Maybe you will,” Robert replied as the three boys left, first Tracey with his easy, confident gait, then Cates following quickly, hands in his pockets, his mouth set in what seemed to be its natural frown, and finally Pascal, still absorbed in The Fountainhead, which he now took with him as he slumped out of the room, shoulders hunched.
Quickly Robert unzipped the duffel. His clothes, which had been folded carefully by his mother, were now a wrinkled mess. In one corner she had shoved a series of bath towels and washcloths, thin and scratchy, some of them belonging to an elderly Kupferberg cousin who had recently died of a heart attack. When someone died in his family, everyone divvied up their towels and sheets, and no one was faster to the scene of tragedy, her arms laden with empty shopping bags, than Stacia. He took a towel, a fresh shirt, and some underwear with him, too, and a bar of soap and some shampoo that had come from a much larger bottle and been transferred into this smaller one, with a scraped-off label, doubtless as part of some new system of his mother’s for shampoo economy. Then he walked out the door and down the hall to the bathroom.
The place was a dazzling white, the tiles sparkling under the glare of artificial light. The urinals were empty, and so were the stalls and showers. Everyone must have been at dinner or out with their families. The floor’s occupants had hung their towels on rows and rows of hooks. A long shelf above the towels held their shaving cream and razors, hair cream and toothpaste. A trusting bunch, Robert thought, already they were treating the place like home.
There was one hook left if Robert cleared the way by moving aside the slack of so many big, thick aggressive bath towels. And there would be his, probably once brown but now barely beige, the edges unraveling, fringe hanging from the bottom. He snatched up the towel and pulled; it gave way almost immediately, and he threw the pieces into the trash. He would buy a new one, first chance he got; even if it came from Woolworth’s, at least the thing would be new. He looked only momentarily over his shoulder before grabbing the bath towel of one of his neighbors and heading for the shower.
HIS MEETING WAS FOR students who would work in one of two campus cafeterias. He arrived a few minutes late. A large crowd of boys stood in the entrance to the kitchen. Robert placed himself with a group of stragglers in the corner. They introduced themselves. Zinnelli was from outside Providence, Rhode Island, a place called Warwick. Goldfarb was from Brooklyn. “Flatbush Avenue,” he said, with a New Yorker’s confidence that Robert would know what that meant. The boy next to Goldfarb was Cyril Dawkins. He was the only black student Robert had seen all day. Dawkins stood with his shoulders squared as he shook Robert’s hand; his father, he told them, was a Marine. He folded his hands in front of him and spoke not another word.
To their right was a huge metal box. “Demonstration on that thing,” Goldfarb said. “That’s the rumor, at least.”
“I’ve used one of these before,” Zinnelli said. “My pop’s bar, we have this kind. It’s old. They must have the bigger, modern ones back there.”
“So why don’t they train us on one of those?” Goldfarb asked.
“Because they don’t want us to break anything important on our first day, you dingleberry,” Zinnelli replied.
“I have no idea what a dingleberry is,” Goldfarb said, and Zinnelli told him to look it up.
Like Robert, the boys’ shirts were part polyester to make washing and ironing easier. They wore lace-up oxfords because loafers were impractical and provided less support. They slouched against cupboards and walls and tried to look casual, though all were in various states of nerves. Nobody wanted to do anything wrong on the first day. Nobody wanted to do anything wrong, period; they had gotten this far by never being wrong.
The kitchen supervisor finally arrived. She was a small, compact older woman in a gray cotton dress and a hairnet. Her name was Agnes; she had an accent that reminded him of Cece, and the accent made him think she would be a kind boss. Agnes told them that the dishes had to be rinsed first, and then she pulled a hose down from over her head. The box opened and closed by a lever, allowing the boy who
was washing to stack the bottom with plates and silverware. When she’d closed the giant box again, she pressed a button underneath the sink. The box traveled on a metal track down the length of a long sink, oozing steam. She warned them not to stand too close when they pulled the handle, and not to grab the clean plates right away or they’d burn their fingers. She insisted on the use of rubber gloves for anyone on scraping or loading, and most particularly on pots, where you had to hand-wash the huge cookie sheets and industrial-size pans that were too large and encrusted with food to trust to mechanization. There was a sink for this in the back with boxes of steel wool. Gloves would be provided.
Agnes left to get a sign-up sheet. While they waited for her, a few of the others attempted to do the elephant walk, taught to them at the orientation Robert had missed, and Zinnelli asked no one in particular if they minded if he smoked, even though there was a sign directly over his head announcing that he couldn’t, and he never actually lit the cigarette. Goldfarb looked at Robert and asked if he, too, was planning to go premed. Cyril Dawkins remained silent.
He already felt that he knew these people. Goldfarb had the same glasses as his uncle Fred and cousin Harry, the only style offered on the Utility Workers’ vision plan. And Zinnelli, pretending he was about to break the rules, though of course he never would. These boys were the strivers at the public magnet high school, bused out of their communities because they were smart, arriving home each night, trying to blend in with their neighbors and families whom they secretly wanted only to abandon. He knew them because he was one of them. It was painful to see these things and realize how other people would see him. At home none of this would have been painful—none of it would have occurred to him. Now he wanted to hide from them, but he could not.
Quickly he signed up for three shifts in the coming week, knowing that Goldfarb would partner with him—there was no need to even ask. He walked out of the building with Goldfarb, Zinnelli, and some others. They paused on the steps.
“Any takers for a pizza in Porter Square?” Zinnelli asked. “I know a place where you can get an extra large for two bucks.” Word spread fast and about half of the original trainees walked together toward the college gates. Robert told Zinnelli that he’d like to go with them, but he had other plans. Goldfarb looked dejected. Zinnelli finally lit the cigarette he’d been holding for so long and said, “Suit yourself.” Robert walked with them toward the Red Line, but when they’d gotten about a half block from the school he let the others get ahead, watching their swagger as they moved up College Avenue. Stopping at the traffic light, he heard a noise and glanced back over his shoulder, watching Cyril Dawkins soundlessly rush away in the opposite direction.
It was barely light as he came up from the T stop. Harvard Square was teeming with noise and activity. A guitarist on the corner played a bad rendition of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” his guitar case out for change. Students lined sidewalk cafés, walked arm in arm, or simply plopped themselves on the curb. A skinny guy sat Indian style on a blanket, quietly hawking issues of Life and Look. He was the first man Robert had ever seen with long hair. By his junior year, almost every guy on that square would have followed suit.
No one he knew had ever traveled beyond Atlantic City, New Jersey. Why bother, his parents had always said, when all that the world had to offer was right on Bustleton Avenue. Here was immediate proof of what he’d always suspected but never known for sure: where he came from was unvarying and gray, polluted by the smell of the nearby refineries, circumscribed by the disappointment of too many people living too close to each other. Where he was going now, he told himself, was fresh and open, filled with music, color, and endless possibility; the air smelled fresh and everyone was young and beautiful.
In reality, where he was going was down an alley that smelled of urine, past a coffee bar and a Dumpster, to a storefront with an illuminated beer mug. Inside, he heard the din of loud voices and smelled generations of fry grease mixed with cigarette smoke. He began to cough. Three girls sat at the bar drinking shots, but most of the patrons were young men.
He found his party, relieved when Tracey waved him over. On the table were several pitchers of beer and a few extra empty glasses. In front of Tracey, Cates, Pascal, and a fourth boy whom Robert didn’t know, were plates littered with the shiny remains of hamburger buns, stray bites of uneaten beef, and the occasional lonely French fry. Robert took the empty seat between Tracey and Mark Pascal, then poured himself a glass of beer, hoping a drink would stop the coughing.
“You all right?” Tracey asked, patting him on the back.
“It’s the smoke,” Robert said. “Happens sometimes.”
Tracey had been smoking a large cigar, and he looked at the lit end as if contemplating life without a dear friend, then ground it out on the table. He introduced the guy sitting next to him: this was the formerly dirty but now scrupulously clean Van Dorn, Tracey’s high school roommate. He had a broad, strikingly homely face, with thin lips and narrow gray eyes that tilted downward on either side of a flat nose. He was enormous, and he shook Robert’s hand, enveloping it, his fingers thick as sausages. Cates mentioned someone named Harkness who hadn’t shown for orientation, and then there was the matter of four others who were expected the following week. As they spoke, Van Dorn refilled Tracey’s water glass and mopped up some spilled beer by his place. Was this something Tracey demanded in a roommate? Robert sure wasn’t cleaning up anyone’s stains; he didn’t care how nice his clothes were.
All talk was of Harvard. The Harvard dorms were a joke, but for sophomore year they’d apply to houses. Eliot was deemed the best, along with Lowell, but Dunster was to be avoided—full of theater people. They discussed the Harvard/Yale game—no discussion of the Harvard/Tufts game—and the various fraternities. All the while, the group ordered rounds of whiskey shots to chase down the beer. Robert thought politics might bring him into the conversation, and asked what they thought of Westmoreland requesting more troops to send to Southeast Asia. No one offered any opinions.
“Don’t mind these illiterates,” Mark Pascal said, shouting to be heard over the noise. “They don’t read newspapers.”
“Johnson promised to end the war,” Robert said. “He doesn’t seem to be ending anything.”
“I don’t really want anyone to end the war,” Pascal said.
“Why not? You want to go to Vietnam?”
“Not as a soldier,” Pascal replied. “A war correspondent, writing from the thick of it.” Though small, Pascal seemed older than the others. He was losing his hair and had the pallor of someone who didn’t get outside much.
“You a journalist?” Robert asked.
“I’ll be starting on the Crimson. And I’m applying for a summer job at the Globe, too, just in the mailroom,” he said, then added, “My father’s apoplectic.”
“Why?”
“He wants me to go into his business, real estate,” Pascal said. “It’s all a trap, ask Tracey. Our fathers hate their work and want us to be just like them, as if we haven’t been watching.”
“What’s Tracey’s family do?” Robert asked, lowering his voice; Tracey was absorbed in his shot glass, playing a game with Cates and Van Dorn, but Robert felt strange asking someone else when the man himself was sitting just on his other side.
“Ships. Commercial, military,” Pascal said. “At least that’s where they started, but now they’re diversified.” Robert nodded, pretending to know what that meant. Pascal leaned closer and whispered in Robert’s ear. “Tracey’s family is the military-industrial complex.”
Robert wanted to ask Pascal more, but a ruckus had started on the other side of the table. Cates was trying to get the phone number of a waitress, but she rolled her eyes and rushed away.
“Cates is a philistine,” Pascal said quietly, “but he does have one advantage.”
“What’s that?” Robert asked, sneaking a glance at their already inebriated subject.
“His sister. A real stunner. Women! Th
ey’re a beautiful mystery, aren’t they?”
With an attitude like that you’ll never get laid, Robert thought, though he was grateful for Pascal’s attention. The others made no effort whatsoever. Why had Tracey even invited him?
“Your parents have something in mind for you?” Pascal asked.
“No expectations, really,” Robert said. “Except that I graduate. And don’t go to war.”
Tracey turned abruptly and faced him. “A bunch of pacifists in your family, Vishniak?”
“No,” Robert said, “cowards.”
Everyone laughed. He had made them laugh by selling his family down the river. There was something satisfying in their approval that also made him feel a little sick. He took a fortifying swallow of beer. They began to talk about girls. Cates stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. Van Dorn lit one, too, then offered the pack to Robert, who declined, but Tracey accepted.
“Notice how they all start sucking down nicotine at the mention of a female,” Pascal said. “Oral fixation.”
“Thank you, Freud-by-numbers,” Tracey snapped. This was the most spirited comment he’d made all night. He looked at Robert. “Anyway, Vishniak can’t take the smoke. So don’t aim it in his direction. Van Dorn, why don’t you open the front door? It’s hot as hell in here.”
Cates took a second cigarette from Van Dorn’s pack on the table. Now he had one in each hand. “Yes, sir!” Cates said, saluting Robert. “I’ll blow it up your ass instead, sir!”
Robert pointed his middle finger at Cates, then saluted him with it. There was more laughter, and he felt that he’d passed another test.
Cates stood up slowly, pushing back his chair, and glared at Robert. His eyes bore into him and his posture signified a dare. Robert stood up, too, just as he would have at home. He leaned on the table, trying to look menacing, and waited for something to happen.
“Hey, moron,” Cates said. “It’s not High Noon. I’m just going to the john.”
And now all of them were laughing at him. He had misread something. Or perhaps not. For whatever reason, Cates already did not like him. Robert sat down sheepishly.
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