by Finny (v5)
“As your shirt is purple,” Carter said. He sat back down on the couch, falling almost immediately into conversation with the girl next to him, as if she’d been waiting for him to finish a point.
“He’s an actor,” Judith went on. “Very dramatic. He actually had a small part in Cats.”
“The second-greatest play in the world,” Carter piped up from the couch.
“And what’s the first?” Judith asked.
“Phantom, of course!” Carter said. He told something to the curly-haired girl that Finny didn’t catch, but the girl laughed and nodded vigorously.
“Then Carter was, um, replaced in the play,” Judith explained, “which was very sad.”
“Tragic!” Carter said, and then immediately began talking to the girl again.
“That’s too bad,” Finny was starting to say, but before the words were even out of her mouth, a very muscular set of arms wrapped themselves around Judith’s waist. The boy they belonged to must have been several inches over six feet. He was wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt, and the sleeves looked stuffed like potato sacks. It took Finny a few seconds to get around to his face, but when she did, she noticed he had a particularly wide jaw, as if to complement Judith’s. His face was all straight lines and hard angles, like some masculine appliance, a drill or a big-screen TV. His wide eyes didn’t just glance at, but took hold of, everything they saw. Finny knew these were qualities a lot of women would have found attractive—the intensity, the assurance, the muscles and chiseled jaw—though Finny couldn’t help feeling a little threatened by them.
“Oh, hey,” Judith said, warmed by the boy’s touch. She looked up at him, like a young girl at a favorite uncle. “This is my friend Finny. Remember I told you about Finny? We went to boarding school together. Only for a few months, but she was my best friend.”
The boy released Judith, and Judith took a step to the side—a routine they’d obviously practiced: they were as proficient as ice dancers.
“Finny, this is Prince,” Judith said.
“Huh?” Finny said, thinking she hadn’t caught the second half of his name.
“Prince,” Judith said.
“Oh,” Finny said. “I’m Prime Minister.” When the boy just stood there, staring, Finny went on, “Sorry. Bad joke. It’s nice to meet you.”
She shook Prince’s hand, which enveloped hers. He shook amiably, though he squeezed a bit harder than Finny thought a guy should squeeze a girl’s hand, as if to prove the strength he held in reserve. He was wearing cologne. A musky-sweet cloud drifted from his body. At college she’d realized she was allergic to cologne. She let go of Prince’s hand.
“Great to meet you,” Prince said, and Finny could almost feel the vibration of his deep voice.
Finny sniffed again, then sipped the brown liquid in her glass. When she was done, she rubbed her nose with her knuckle, trying to get it to stop itching.
“Are you all right?” Prince asked.
“Yeah,” Finny said, “I’m just—” And then she sneezed on him. It came so quickly she couldn’t even put her hand up to muffle it. She felt the spray of it, and she knew he must have, too. Her sneeze was accompanied by a sound— yak—like a cat throwing up a hair ball.
“Oh God. I’m sorry,” Finny said.
But Prince offered a friendly smile and said, “‘Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world but accepting that they pass away.’” He wiped his hand on his pants.
“Huh?” Finny said again.
“Prince is into Eastern philosophy,” Judith explained.
“Buddhism in particular,” Prince said. “I used to be a very angry person. But I’ve figured out how to renounce. I’ve found equilibrium.”
“He was recruited for football,” Judith continued, “but now he’s honors in English!”
“‘But, soft,’” Prince began to quote, “‘what light through yonder window breaks?’” He spoke the words competently, though there was something chantlike about them. “‘It is the east, and Judith is the sun.’” He concluded the quotation, smiling in a way that could have been either self-deprecating or prideful, Finny wasn’t sure. She felt a pang of sadness, thinking of her father, who quoted much more convincingly than Prince.
Then Carter began to sing his own quote, “‘Mid-niiight, not a sound from the paaaave-ment. Has the moon lost her memmm-ryyyy?’”
The curly-haired girl seemed transfixed.
“Webber,” Carter said to Prince, as if he’d asked.
“Okay, Carter,” Prince said. He smiled again in that practiced, good-humored way—it seemed to be his response to a fork in the road of any conversation—though Finny noticed a vein pulsing in his temple, almost to the beat of the bassy music in the background.
“Don’t get upset,” Judith said to Prince.
“I’m not,” Prince said. He leaned over and kissed Judith on the temple. As he did it, Finny saw one of his large hands gather into a fist, then relax, like he was trying to pump the last dregs out of a tube of toothpaste. Finny sipped her drink.
Then Prince said to Carter, “‘Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.’”
“Am I really your worst enemy?” Carter asked.
“Jesus, Carter,” Prince said. “Let’s give it a rest. Have you ever heard the saying ‘Do not speak unless it improves on silence’?”
“Oh, it always improves,” Carter said, and turned back to the curly-haired girl.
“Listen, though,” Prince said now to Judith, wrapping one of his substantial arms around her waist, “I have to head out.”
“Okay,” Judith said, leaning into him.
“Bye, babe,” Prince said, sliding his hand onto Judith’s hip, giving her a peck on the lips.
“Bye,” Judith said.
Prince walked out of the apartment, forgetting to say anything to Finny.
“By the way, your boyfriend is a douche,” Carter said to Judith now. “And that anger management program is not working.”
“He’s just kidding around with you,” Judith said.
“He seems nice,” Finny said to Judith, balancing that heavy tray.
“Just so you know, his real name is Milton,” Carter told Finny. “But now he’s Prince, the football player formerly known as Milton. He got into Columbia because he’s a Hollibrand, which is basically as good as a Kennedy around here. And incidentally, Mr. and Mrs. Hollibrand are very good friends with the Turngates. Did I miss anything, Judith?”
“I think that’s about it, Carter.”
“Oh, and one more thing,” Carter went on. “If you ask me, he’s a closet homo.”
Finny was laughing. She was starting to like Carter.
“Well, no one asked you,” Judith said, and took Finny by the arm, leading her back toward the entryway where Finny had come in.
“So, you ever talk to Sylvan anymore?” Finny asked. The question had just popped out. It was the first time she’d ever asked Judith about Sylvan.
“Um. A little,” Judith said. “I saw him one weekend. He came down. We hung out.”
“Oh,” Finny said. She tried to catch Judith’s eye, but Judith looked away.
“Let’s go see what they’re doing in there,” Judith said, and took Finny toward the closed door on the other side of the entryway. As they walked, Finny placed her glass on the end table from which Judith had plucked it earlier. The music was loud behind the door—some kind of electronic music, echoing chords and a persistent, rhythmic static. The voices were nearly shouting. Finny wasn’t sure if some kind of argument was going on.
Judith opened the door. It was a moment Finny would think about for many years to come, a moment when her life seemed to change course, like a car pulling off a highway.
At first there was nothing terribly surprising about the room. Four disheveled-looking boys in different variations of black-on-black wardrobes were seated in a circle next to a large canopy bed with a pink comforter, which Finny guessed was Judit
h’s. The boys were all drinking from coffee mugs, and talking heatedly about something intellectual. “It’s not an issue of pragmatism,” one of them said. The room smelled faintly of smoke.
Behind the bed there was a couple making out on a hard-backed chair. The girl had an ample backside, which was pretty much all Finny could see of her, because she was straddling the boy, who looked skinny and had a large tattoo of something like an anteater on his neck. The boy had his hands pushed up under the girl’s shirt, and she kept making exaggerated sounds of surprise. They didn’t even pause when Judith and Finny came in.
Then Finny looked into the back corner of the room. What she saw there made her stop in the doorway. She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice caught in her throat. Sitting by himself, his chin propped on his hand, nodding off in a cushioned chair, was Earl Henckel.
Chapter17
The Party, After Finny’s Discovery
“I didn’t know it was the Earl,” Judith was saying a minute later when the three of them had congregated in the study next to Judith’s bedroom. It was a small room, with a desk that wrapped around three of the four walls, and a rolling desk chair behind Finny. There were some built-in bookshelves above the desk. A message in bubbly letters floated across a computer’s black screen: Judith’s Computer, Don’t Touch. The windows of the study were shuttered, the door closed, and in this quiet space Finny felt almost completely removed from the world, suspended above the music and conversation of the party, the horns blaring and trucks rumbling on the streets.
“I guess we were introduced when you came in,” Judith went on. “But how would I know it was you?”
“You guys never met, did you?” Finny said. Earl was just staring at her, speechless.
“No,” Judith said. “Remember, it was that time I came to visit you in Maryland, and I stayed in with your brother when you went to see Earl.”
“Oh my God,” Finny said to Earl now, staring at him again in disbelief. “I just can’t believe it’s you.” And she hugged him, put her arm around his shoulder, brushed his stubbly face with her fingers—anything just to touch him, to make sure he was real.
“It’s me, Fin,” Earl said, shaking his head. “This is unbelievable.”
When she stood back and looked at him, she was amazed at the transformation. It was still Earl—the manly face and torso, the slight blush in his cheeks, the pudgy fingers, the adorably stubby legs—but he looked like he’d aged so much. His skin seemed darker, weathered, and his sandy hair longer, flopping on his forehead, so that sometimes he had to brush it away with his hand. He had the faint shadow of a beard, and he seemed to stand a little straighter, his chest puffed out like he was being challenged to a fight.
“Who’d you come with?” Judith asked. “Not that I’m not thrilled you’re here. I’m ecstatic. I’m just wondering how this all happened.”
“It’s weird,” Earl said. “I didn’t even realize where I was going. I was just having a drink with a friend, and he said he wanted to stop by this party. He told me your name was Judith, but I guess I didn’t catch your last name. His name is Paul Lilly.”
“Sure. Paul,” Judith said. “He’s an English major at NYU,” she explained to Finny.
“I actually don’t know where he is,” Earl said. “He was talking to some people, and I just got in from France so I’m ridiculously jet-lagged. I decided to go off and close my eyes for a minute.”
“I saw you sleeping,” Finny said, smiling at him.
Earl laughed. “Did I snort when I woke up?”
“It was hard to hear over the music,” Finny said, “but I think so.”
Judith seemed thrilled by everything Finny and Earl said to each other. She watched them like they were the most entertaining movie in the world, a budding smile on her lips.
“You know what?” Judith said. “This is silly. Why am I standing here getting in the way? I’m going to leave you two alone to catch up.”
“It’s okay,” Finny and Earl both said at the same time.
But Judith shook her head. She pulled Finny and Earl into a three-way hug. When they let go, Judith said goodbye and blew a kiss to them both. She walked out of the study, and Finny heard the music and voices swell for a moment. Then Judith shut the door behind her, and they were alone again in their quiet space.
Finny turned to Earl. “This is strange,” she said.
Earl nodded.
“I feel like when you’re a teenager and your friends lock you in a closet with a boy you like. Not that that ever happened to me. But I’ve heard about it happening.”
Earl smiled. Even though he was exhausted, Finny could see the effort he was making with her, how much he wanted to please her. They stood there for a minute, looking each other over, marveling at what they saw. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, more like the hush in a museum when people are looking at beautiful paintings. She didn’t feel shy; she knew he understood. There was so much to say, and she couldn’t think of where to start.
At last, though, and without speaking, they fell into each other’s arms. This time they held each other tightly, with more conviction than they had in front of Judith. Finny started to cry. Earl smoothed his hand over her back. He kissed her neck, her cheek, her forehead, her lips. His mouth against hers was like some longed-for taste, a food she remembered from childhood, a feeling that had been part of her so long she couldn’t remember a time before it.
“My God,” Finny said again, pulling her lips away from his, her hands still holding his face. She felt quivery and strangely light. “Why are you here?”
“I’m trying to be a writer,” Earl said. “I’m still figuring out the best way to do it. But I thought New York would be the place to start. I took some time off work. I wanted to come here for a few weeks and see if I could make it.”
He explained that he’d met some Americans last winter in Paris, after he’d finished school and was deciding whether to come back to the States, whether to go to college. Earl had a job in a restaurant, cleaning chickens and stocking the bar and washing dishes. He wasn’t sure if he really needed college to do what he wanted to do. The friends said he could come to New York anytime, crash at their apartment in the Village. They were NYU students, and had cheap student housing. They loved to argue about books and French movies. They’d all grown up in the city, attended Fieldston or Horace Mann or Bronx Science. Earl decided to take them up on the offer this year. He needed to get away from home for a bit, to look around and see what was out there for him. He’d flown into New York the night before.
“So here I am,” Earl said.
“And for how long?”
“Maybe a few weeks. A month. Longer. It depends.”
“On what?”
“On what I see, I guess.”
“Well, what do you think so far?” Finny said, standing back from him, striking one of her silly hand-on-hip poses.
But Earl simply said, “What I see is great, Finny.”
She kissed him then, put her arms around him and squeezed like she used to. “Oh, Earl,” she said, feeling those familiar gears begin to turn.
After a little while, Earl said, “Do you think we should go back to the party?”
“I don’t want to,” Finny said, “but maybe we should.”
“I’d love to just go get coffee with you somewhere and talk.”
Finny hesitated. “Me, too,” she said. “I’d just feel bad, since I came all the way up here to spend time with Judith. I wouldn’t want her to think I was ditching her.”
“That was really nice of her, leaving us alone to catch up. She seems like a thoughtful person. A good friend.”
“She is,” Finny said. And she realized Earl had done it again, built someone up from the scraps of her personality, into a beautiful shape.
“You have a good sense for people,” he said. “I think my dad is as happy as he’s ever been.”
She laughed. “They’re adorable together, Earl. When I go over, he pours
the coffee, and she tells him to wash his hands before he touches hers. Then when he falls asleep, Poplan brushes the crumbs off his sleeves and shakes her head in this severe way, but you really know she loves him. And then he plays the piano for her, or tells stories and she never interrupts him. It’s exactly the way a marriage should be.”
Finny was going to say more, but a prickly thought snagged her.
“Earl,” she said, steadying herself, “there’s something I need to ask you.”
“Yeah?”
“I want to know what happened. Why’d you stop writing and calling? I found out from your dad you’d been in town and didn’t even tell me. It really hurt me when I heard that. And then tonight again. You’re sitting there in my friend’s bedroom, and I didn’t even know you were in the country. Couldn’t you have written? Your dad knows my address.”
“Finny,” Earl said, but for a moment he couldn’t say more. He stood there, with a look of such pain that Finny began to feel sorry for him. Yet the splinter of his betrayal was still lodged in her.
“When I heard that from your dad, I almost died,” Finny said. It was dramatic, she knew. And yet the words conveyed something of the horrible, sick feeling she’d had, like she’d been on top of a high building that was beginning to crumble. She’d never forget that moment; at the time, it had seemed the start of some awful, irrevocable decline.
“You have to understand,” Earl said now. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“Then why—” Finny began.
“I just thought—” Earl interrupted, then stopped to look at her. “I just thought it would be better. I didn’t want us to go through high school waiting for something that might or might not happen. I wanted more than anything to write you, to pick up the phone and call you every day. But I couldn’t bear to think I was messing up your life. I wanted you to be able to live your life, not wait for it. That’s not the way you should be spending your time. You’re too good for that. And I didn’t know what was going on with you now, so I didn’t want to just barge in assuming you’d want to see me. I figured I’d take my time, find out from my dad and Poplan what you were up to. You have to understand, I didn’t know what the right thing was. You were the first person I’d loved like that.”
