I pay no attention. I turn away so nobody sees me chewing while I pretend to gather up napkins from the coffee table. That’s when I hear a voice, his voice, that voice, saying, “Please, Dean, call me Ben.”
I freeze. Slowly, with little shuffles of my Danskos, I turn around and stop chewing.
It’s him.
It’s Ben. He’s in a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.
It’s Ben. Ben is the Master.
I fucked the Master.
No, the Master fucked me.
Hard.
Perfectly.
Oh shit. Oh shit!
He hasn’t seen me yet. Oh, sweet Jesus, God above. What if I just ran out the French doors right now, just bolted across the quad and locked myself in my room? Lucy could bring me food. I could say I’m in quarantine. My professors could send me everything by email! I’d never have to face him. He’d never have to know.
Except I can’t. I can’t take my eyes off him. And there’s nowhere to go. My mouth is full of artichoke cream. I’m in the crush of bodies, pinned next to the curve of the grand piano. I’m stuck, staring. At Ben.
Just the sight of him makes my whole body tighten, and I can feel myself getting wet. Let me feel you, beautiful. Let me feel it.
Osgood raises his glass and says, “Join me in our traditional Durham toast…”
At that moment, Ben’s eyes fall right on me.
His face says, Holy shit.
I clutch my cocktail tray. Oh God. What have we done?
All the fellows echo back, “Welcome, Master Beck!”
Ohhhhh. No.
10
When I see her, I can’t even move. I've got my glass halfway up for the toast, but I’m frozen. She’s got her hair in a lovely braid off to the side, with some of her curls spilling towards her face. Her face shifts from horror, to terror, to surprise, into a kind of soft Uh-oh! face.
What is she doing here? What the hell is going on?
The room roars alive with conversation, and she vanishes into the fellows.
I can’t follow. There’s a throng of people, so much white hair it’s dizzying, so many smiles and handshakes it’s exhausting. I’m also overheating under my jacket. I don’t even know what I’m saying to these people. Something about Radiolab and NPR and the book, everybody wants to know about the book. They ask me where I grew up, I say Las Vegas, they say the usual, Las Vegas! like it’s so exciting. It wasn’t. It was awful and poor and dismal. I don’t say my dad walked out on us, and I grew up in a trailer, a block away from the public library where all but the philosophy books had been stolen, lucky for me because I loved them. Or do I? I have exactly zero idea what words are coming out of my mouth. All I can do is search for her, search everywhere for that black hair, that body, those cornflower-blue eyes.
My throat feels tight, and I’m suddenly absolutely pouring sweat, like I have some sort of disorder or a fever. I take off my jacket and put it over a wingback chair by the fireplace. That’s my chair. My fireplace. My new house. Jesus Christ.
Vaguely, I hear the noise of that emergency door sounding in my memory. I have to get out of here. I cannot do this. What am I doing here? Fellows’ dinners and gold-rimmed champagne glasses?
Naomi. Must find Naomi.
I have this compulsion to find her, grab her by the hand, and make a break for it. So once the throng eases up slightly, I navigate through the masses of people, looking busy, brushing past white heads and horn-rimmed glasses, and conversations about things that I only barely understand.
Where is she? Where is she?
The Dean sidles up to me. “First order of business, Beck. Learn to mingle.” The guy acts like an eccentric, but I’m beginning to suspect he’s actually a profound asshole. He sat me down earlier today to warn me, of all things, about “avoiding scandal.” No scandals, Beck. No scandals. You hear me? No scandals.
“I have to… Have you seen? Is there a girl named Naomi working here?”
The Dean’s eyes flash, and he adjusts his ridiculous hair. “Miss Costa,” he corrects me. “Miss Costa is her name.
“Right, right, sorry. Miss Costa.” What a beautiful name. Naomi Costa. That puts cellar door right out of the running for sweetest-sounding words in the language.
“Miss Costa is probably in the butler’s pantry. Getting snifters for after dinner. That’s where I sent her anyway…”
I go into the kitchen. I still don’t feel comfortable here. I feel like a visitor in this vast bright room with black granite countertops and well-organized shelves. The trailer where I grew up had a barely functioning kitchen stove and a used mini fridge. I might as well be on Mars right now. Mars with a double sink, two dishwashers, and a huge cooktop. The fridge, it’s about eight feet high and it purrs, like a Ferrari.
Fuck. I can smell her. I can smell that lemony deliciousness through everything else in the air.
Wait. What the hell is a butler’s pantry? Is that like a pantry pantry? Or some kind of fancy, special pantry?
I have to find her. I have to find someone that makes sense. Who made sense yesterday and will help me make sense of today.
Now I’m like a wolf on the trail. That smell, I knew I’d never forget it. This morning, I woke up and she was gone. My heart just clenched when she wasn’t next to me. It wasn’t a one-night stand. It had been the earth flipping around on its axis. So I’d rolled over and pressed my fucking face into the pillow where she’d been sleeping. Never forget that smell, I’d thought. Never fucking ever.
There’s a lady cooking at the stove, this thin black lady with short white hair. She pulls a wooden spoon out of a pan and turns to me. “What do you need, honey?”
I think I must look like a wild man. That’s absolutely how I feel. “Did a girl…”
“Call me Letty,” she says, smiling at the sauce, “And if you’re looking for Naomi, she’s through there.” She points with her wooden spoon at a door.
I shut the door behind me. The pantry, it’s small and full of even more kitchenware. There’s a light above me, but it’s dim in here. She’s there in the corner, putting brandy glasses on her tray. When I come in, she doesn’t turn around.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper. It sounds more like a bark. “How are you even…”
She wipes her hands on her apron and turns to me. “I didn’t know. I swear to God, I had no idea who you were.”
Who I am? Who the hell is she? “What, you work here?” She nods her head. “And I live here.” She’s pointing up and over.
“And you stole my tie!” I grab it and give it a tug.
She reaches up and tugs it back. “I just…” And she claps her hands to her face.
“I love that tie,” I tell her.
“Me too!” she says through her fingers.
But now I’m in trouble, because I’m about six inches from her, and it’s literally electric. I’m burning for her. I think I can feel her burning for me, two coils on the stove. The passion I feel, it’s fucking irrational. She makes me feel fucking…unscholarly. Eros the core. “You didn’t answer my texts.”
She peeks out from between her fingers. “What texts?”
“These!” I pull out my phone and show her.
She makes this sort of outraged huff. “You put a four instead of a seven at the end!”
I stare at my phone. I think back to the notepad. “What are you, European? Who makes sevens like that? With the little,” I swipe my fingers through the air, “cross thing?” “I do!” she gasps.
I take her by the shoulders, pulling myself together. “So let me get this straight. You’re a student here,” I say, trying to get my bearings. “At Yale. At Durham. An undergraduate.”
She nods, with her palms to her beautiful cheeks. Her arms shift a little under my hands, and I squeeze tighter. I was pissed and now I’m melted.
“At least tell me you’re a senior. God, tell me you’re graduating early. Tell me you’re almost not a student anymore…”
>
She peeks out from between her fingers. “I’m a junior.”
“A junior!” I roar. “How old are you?”
“Shhhhh!” she says, putting her hand to my chest. “I’m almost 21!”
“Some law student!”
“You didn’t say who you were either!” she whispers back.
God, see, now… Those lips, that mouth. I think of how hard I kissed her, of that feel of her tongue against mine, fuck, even her teeth on mine. The heat of her breath on my cheek as we kissed. The way she tasted. “You’re hardly legal and we were throwing back absinthe!”
“It’s fine,” she says, pulling her hands from her face and sticking them at her sides. “Totally fine.”
“Bullshit!”
“Aren’t you some kind of nihilist?” she says. “Aren’t you supposed to be unflappable?”
We’re right against one another now. I’ve been moving towards her all the time, walking her back towards the cabinets. I’m pressing against her body, and she’s gripping the countertop with one hand. She closes her eyes. I listen to her breathing. I watch her breathing. I put one hand just under her breast. The feel of her ribs under my fingers.
Then she reaches up, runs her hand along my neck, which she knows makes my whole body shiver, and says, “It didn’t happen.”
The fuck it didn’t. I’m rock hard against her leg. I press into her to make sure she can feel it. “It happened.”
The need for her, it takes over my entire body. I wish it didn’t. I wish she was just some woman, some girl. But she isn’t. The way she moves, the ways she looks up at me. The freckles. Her eyes widening. The hollow at the base of her throat.
We’re just inches from each other. “I want you,” I say to the place between her ear and the corner of her jaw.
She shudders. “What are we going to do…” It’s a bare whisper, the air just slips from her mouth to make the words.
“This.” I pull her face to mine and kiss her. We’re back in that place again, in the stone stairwell, and the breath from her nose heats my cheek. My hand starts sliding down her body. She’s gripping my neck hard, digging those beautiful fingers into me.
But then she pushes me away. “We can’t,” she says.
“Aren’t we already?” I say. From where I’m standing, feeling what I’m feeling, I don’t think there’s any goddamned choice. “Naomi…”
She shakes her head. She fixes her hair. Totally unnecessary. But those painted nails, moving all over her naked body.
“I’m Miss Costa,” she says with an audible swallow. “You’re Master Beck.”
And just like that, she slips out from my grasp. Leaving me alone in the butler’s pantry, rock hard against the brandy glasses.
11
These clogs make my escape an awkward and noisy one, especially because I’m about to burst into tears. It’s a problem I have, getting teary. I've heard it’s cute, but actually it’s just annoying. I clap out of the butler’s pantry like a Swiss milkmaid, and Letty has this look on her face like, Oh, honey!
“Oh, God,” I say. Does she know? She saw us both go into that pantry. Ben roared, “A junior!” loud enough for the bell ringers to hear him in the Harkness Tower. Letty surely must have heard.
“Letty…” I brace myself on the countertop. Trying to focus on her, and yet absolutely sure Ben is going to pop out from behind me any moment, and I’ll drizzle down onto the marble floor like a chocolate fountain.
“Mmmhmm!” Letty says and stirs her sauce with a particular kind of knowing flair.
“Letty,” I say. “Please…”
But she just smiles and rolls her shoulders. “I know nothing. I say nothing. I just make my sauces and go home.”
False! The truth is, she knows everything that goes on around here, absolutely everything. Her nickname is The Vault, and now she knows there’s something going on between Ben and me. Master Beck. Master Beck! Not Ben. Never Ben.
Letty looks up. She winks. “You’re safe with me.” God! I give Letty a squeeze. “Thank you, thank you. But it’s nothing. Seriously. Nothing.”
Again the eyebrows. “Oh, honey. The lady? She doth protest way too much.”
Shit, shit, shit. I know. It’s not nothing. It’s something. Something like a road flare in an enclosed space.
I head out into the foyer, and I realize I’m shaking, trembling even. Dean Osgood blocks my way, needling me with those beady eyes. He’s got dandruff on his shoulders. I have no idea how that is even possible. “Problem?”
“Nothing. I have a migraine. You know how I get them.”
He cocks his head like this is the first he’s heard of my migraines, which, of course, it is.
“Seriously. Dark room, two Excedrin, I'll be golden tomorrow.” I press my fingers to my eyebrows like Lucy does when she’s got a headache coming on.
“I find you highly suspect,” he says. “You’re always up to something. Philosophy is risqué, Miss Costa. You know I think so. It makes people act rashly. We cannot have people acting rashly, understood?”
Dean Osgood, he’s the Darth to my Luke. He’s the Senate to my House. Every step of the way he’s giving me trouble and always has, like it’s his duty. Like it’s his obligation. Like it’s good for me. Which, right now, it most definitely is not. “Please, Dean. I just need to lie down.”
He nods, one curt gesture, and I’m out the door. I run diagonally across the grassy quad. But when I get to the big door that leads to my stairway, I realize yet another epic disaster: I’m locked out. I’ve left my keys and my ID behind. They’re in my purse, which is hanging in the hall closet, in Master Beck’s house.
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit,” I say to the big locked door, yanking hard on the handle and rattling it. “Shit!” Oh now, look! He’s reduced me to a single-word vocabulary. That’s about right. Fantastic.
I grab some gravel from the nearest flower bed, from under the rhododendrons and the azaleas. I pitch it up at Lucy’s room. I've got a terrible arm and totally botch it the first time, slinging it into the gutter with a clatter. I grab a bigger stone, this one about as big as a marshmallow, and throw it as hard as I can at her window, which is right next to mine. Ping goes the rock and ricochets off onto the slate roof.
Her little head pokes up and she opens the window. “Oh, hello.”
“Let me in!” I say. “I left my ID.”
“Shouldn’t you be working?” She’s hanging out the window now, braid first. There are hints of Rapunzel.
“Just let me in! This is no time for Q & A!” I hiss back to her.
“Please?” “Please with sugar on top, and I’ll even write your papers for English!”
“Deal!” she beams and vanishes back into the dormer.
I’m so exposed out there, and I’m going to have to wait a while. She’s got to come down four stories of winding stone staircase to get me, and she plucks down them like a foal that’s just learned to walk. The Master’s House faces right out onto the quad I see the fellows inside moving around, getting ready to head to dinner, like they’re inside a big fishbowl.
Suddenly, Ben’s face appears at the French doors. He doesn’t do anything, just watches me.
And then ever-so-gently places his forehead against the glass.
I’m going to die. My heart is breaking, and yet it’s so overwhelmingly full. Everything is spinning, and my hands are getting clammy like I’m going to faint. Imagine, fainting, just because he looked at me. Unfortunately, I don’t have to imagine it because I think it’s about to happen.
I dart into the Japanese Zen garden. If I’m going to pass out, let it be in private. The garden is made into the little corner of the courtyard, donated by somebody or other. There are stone walls around it, high ones, so it closes out the world. In the middle is a Japanese elm. I sit down on the bench in the corner.
Call me Master, I need to be your Master, beautiful, I need to be everything to you.
And me. Yes, Master. Please, please, please
. Be everything.
Oh. My. God. I stick my head between my legs in the imminent-car-crash position.
What am I going to do? What am I going to do? I’m so screwed. Being with him, it’s like being on fire. Which means that now there’s a fire on the first floor of Durham and I’m stuck in the attic.
“Well, this is romantic,” says Lucy from the entrance of the garden.
I look up at her. I can feel my lips trembling. Just a friend in the world, that’s what I need. “Lucy…”
If she gives me another Mmmmm, I just can’t be held accountable. I’ll tell everybody that she wears contacts and if she doesn’t, she has to wear the world’s thickest glasses, which make her look like a cartoon. But she doesn’t.
She opens her arms right up and holds me tight. No questions asked.
12
After spending the night shoving pretzels in my mouth, watching Wuthering Heights and muttering, “But they should be together! Why, why, why!” and flopping around on my bed, I am now in front of the Master’s door, about to knock. It’s 6:58 am. College is dead quiet. Without my ID, I can’t even have breakfast. This has to be done. I have to face him.
Also, I’m burning up to see him.
The knocker is a weirdly misshapen lion’s face. I lift it up and lightly tap the door three times.
Though I've showered and hope for some semblance of togetherness, I feel like a total mess. I regret so much that I walked out of that pantry. Regret that I didn’t grab him, look him in the eye, and say, Let’s do this, because I can’t help myself, and neither can you. Regret that the man I want is the man I absolutely, positively cannot have.
I knock again. I count the number of stones under my feet. Up above me, a squirrel throws an acorn and it clunks off my forehead.
Of course, that’s when he opens the door, when I’m pressing my hand to my head and whispering, “Asshole!” at the tree.
“Hi?” he says. He looks up. The offender is gone. The acorn ricocheted off into the flower beds. I probably look like a lunatic.
Professed Page 5
