Bad Habits

by Amy Gentry

  It occurs to me for the first time that it’s quite a coincidence, Gwen staying in the conference hotel the night before her flight. If she’s here to meet someone, the odds are good that it’s someone from the Program.

  Either way, I’ve accomplished my aim in launching her down memory lane. She’s out of breath, and I’m all caught up. I match her pace for the next flight up. I begin to pull ahead.

  11

  I drove away from Bethany’s hotel the next morning in a buoyant mood.

  I had awakened early, and by the time Bethany opened her eyes, I was already dressed and ready to kiss her goodbye. Closing the door of her hotel room behind me, I felt a lightness and calm so unlike our first time together that it was like stepping into a new skin. Almost as if I’d rectified some prior mistake. This time, I had controlled the encounter. I had chosen to go to Bethany of my own free will, sober and with eyes open. There had been no surprises. Glossing over my tears at the start of the encounter—​it was natural to feel overwhelmed at the beginning of any relationship, I reasoned, let alone one with so many complicating factors—​I lingered instead on our second round of lovemaking, the one I’d initiated. The sex that time had been more fun, even relaxed, and with my defenses lowered, I had been able for the first time to feel my power over Bethany. She had opened up to me afterward, become gratifyingly vulnerable. She would never have admitted it, but with Rocky wrapped up in Gwen, she needed me. If I kept my head, I could turn that to my advantage. It needn’t be high drama. I could learn from her, soak up her mentorship, and move on in a couple of years, grateful for her unique role in my education. To that end, I’d even attempted something rather daring: I’d recorded the whole evening. I’d had a feeling she would go into lecture mode at some point in the night, and she had, many times over. I was pleased with myself for holding something back from her in order to get what I needed.

  Of course, the audio was nine hours long and only intermittently useful. At home, I put my earbuds in and immediately blushed. Skipping those parts didn’t work; I kept missing things I was supposed to transcribe. I would have to listen passively to the whole nine hours first, preferably while performing some mindless chore, and mark the points to go back and transcribe later.

  The apartment hadn’t gotten a good deep clean since we moved in—​I’d been swamped with work, and Gwen, whose parents used a maid service, was an indifferent housekeeper—​so I got out the cleaning supplies and went to work. The physical activity was just distracting enough, and soon I slipped into the oddly hypnotic task of eavesdropping on my own night. Wincing at my weaknesses, thrilling to moments when I’d held my own, and finding, even with the remove of the recorder, that Bethany’s voice held its strange power over me.

  “Stop this,” Bethany said loudly in my ear. I jumped, feeling caught. The comment had been preceded by a particularly long bout of silence—​we must have gone to sleep at last—​and I had nearly forgotten I was listening.

  “You need to stop calling,” she went on coldly. “I have nothing left to discuss with you.”

  There was a pause. She was on the phone.

  “Get hold of yourself. I don’t care what you think you heard. The fact that you spent your time in Munich skulking around listening to conversations that didn’t concern you rather than studying is the whole problem.”

  Gwen appeared at the bathroom door, and I jerked the earbuds out. She was sweating and panting, just in from a jog.

  “I haven’t done that for ages.” She beamed. “I ran around the park, and then all the way to the campus track and around it a few times and back.” She bounded toward the kitchen. “What were you listening to just now? Want to go out somewhere for lunch?”

  “I can’t, I’m meeting Tess.” I didn’t elaborate. I was itching to get back to the recording and find out more. “Then I have to work on my paper for Grady’s class.”

  “I can’t believe that guy built his entire career on one Derrida essay. What a charlatan.” She opened the refrigerator and poured water from a Brita pitcher. “What’s your paper going to be on?”

  I forced my brain back to work mode. “The Exterminating Angel.”

  “Are you planning to rewatch it? I’ll see it with you.”

  “Sure. How about tonight?” Watching Much Ado About Nothing together seemed to have unlocked something of our high school relationship, a comforting return to normalcy I hadn’t realized how much I was missing. “Invite Connor over, we’ll make a night of it.”

  She drained the water glass and refilled it one last time before closing the refrigerator. “I’d be curious to read the paper, too, if you need a pair of eyes.”

  “That’d be great,” I said, honestly. “I can return the favor any time.”

  “Thanks. Maybe you can take a look at my paper for Bethany’s class. I’ve been working really hard to crack it.” She frowned. “They say your critical faculties improve much faster than your writing skills, and the gap can feel really painful.”

  It was both a shock and a relief to hear Gwen admit to having trouble with a paper. If even Gwen was struggling, maybe the writer’s block that had been growing worse and worse with every passing day was more common than I thought. What’s more, she didn’t seem particularly distressed by it, so maybe I shouldn’t be worried either.

  I pulled out my phone to check the time and frowned. I’d missed a call from my mom while I was cleaning. I opened my banking app quickly and checked the balance; my transfer had definitely gone through. Could she be asking for more, so soon?

  My mood instantly darkened. This problem, at least, wasn’t all in my head. If I had to keep funneling more and more money to my mom, I’d have to find some other source of ready cash than Bethany, or risk losing the fragile balance of power I’d finally achieved with her last night. It was one thing to promise me anything when she was trying to get me into bed, but Bethany didn’t know what that meant in reality; had no idea how much my family could take and take. If my mother was relapsing, she could turn money into pills faster than I or anyone else could make it. Mom and Lily’s needs would quickly outstrip any passing need Bethany had for me. There were relationships that could not be dissolved, no matter how much you wished they didn’t exist. But love wasn’t one of them. Once Bethany saw me for the bottomless pit I was, it would all be over in a heartbeat.

  When it was over with Bethany, I’d lose the Joyner, and everything else would go with it. I’d never find another job near campus that paid as well for as few hours as Nona—​but even if I did, I already knew that trying to juggle the Program with a job like that didn’t work. I had a dread of student loans. It seemed obvious to me that only someone who didn’t really need them would feel confident enough in the future to take them out. Once at Urbana, when the hot water heater broke down at home, I’d tried. I’d gotten as far as reading the promissory note before walking out of the student loan office. With my mom and Lily to take care of, I knew I’d never be able to pay them back. My life was already so compromised in the present moment. I couldn’t bear to put my future self in chains.

  Without the Joyner, I’d have to go home.

  “I can’t.” I turned my phone over so I couldn’t see my mother’s message waiting to be played.

  “Oh,” Gwen said. “Well, don’t worry about it if you don’t have time.”

  I had forgotten all about Gwen’s paper. “I meant, I can’t right now. I’m supposed to be meeting Tess at two.”

  “Say hi for me,” said Gwen.

  I ran out the door so fast I forgot to bring my earbuds. I’d have to listen to the rest of the recording later.

  * * *

  Well into the second hour of our late lunch, I had found, as yet, no convenient time to pass on Gwen’s greeting. I’d finished my sandwich, but Tess’s lay nearly untouched in its basket.

  “And the nerve to suggest it’s all because I’m poor.” Tess rattled the sugar spoon in her coffee. “I get by, thanks. I scrapped it out in L.A. I thi
nk I know how to live in my own neighborhood.”

  “Margaret’s the worst.” I thought of her magnanimous glow when she told me to round up my hours. “I’d like to get Lorraine out for a drink sometime. I bet she could give us an earful.”

  “Give you, maybe,” Tess said darkly. “Don’t forget, my quote-unquote ‘hostile and threatening behavior’ was”—​she imitated Margaret’s stuffy Julia Child-esque voice—​“ ‘witnessed by my assistant, Lorraine.’ ”

  “Well, I’m a witness, too, and I can testify that you didn’t sound ‘hostile and threatening.’ You barely even sounded angry.”

  “You better believe I was angry,” she said. “But I’m not stupid enough to show it to someone like her. I tried to tell her I already had a therapist—​divorce and the film industry put me through it, you know?—​but she kept interrupting me, telling me to go see the university shrinks, saying not to be proud if I needed help. I raised my voice so I could finish a sentence. And you know what they think when one of us gets loud.” She finally turned her attention to her sandwich, picking it up and taking a savage bite. “Angry black woman on the rampage.”

  I was shocked. “No one thinks that.”

  “Did we read the same letter, Mac?” She pushed her coffee mug aside and folded her hands patiently in front of her. “I hate to tell you, but it’s right there on the letterhead. That university seal—​shovels and pickaxes. Who do you think built this university that we weren’t allowed to set foot in for forty years? D. Stanley Handler was a bona fide, caliper-wielding, Reconstruction-hating, eugenics-loving racist.”

  “Well, yeah,” I started. “But so was everybody, back then.”

  She gave me a sour look. “The place hasn’t changed much. Last year Rhonda Oakes—​you know, the actual Af Am prof?—​got crazy-black-womaned right out of the Program. She’s the whole reason I came here. And with nobody to work with, I’m looking pretty disposable now, too.”

  I nodded. “Okay. If you’re right, that’s awful. But there must be something you can do about it. You can’t give up.”

  She looked at me for a long moment, unblinking. Then she breathed in deeply. “Nobody’s giving up, Mac. I’m not sitting around waiting to be committed because some white lady thinks I’m crazy.”

  “Maybe if you went straight to the Dean yourself—”

  “I’ve already made an appointment for Monday. I’m getting letters from my past professors and colleagues attesting to my work ethic, a letter from my accountant about my financial standing, and a letter from my own therapist stating that I am in good mental health. Is that good enough for you?”

  I sat in silence, stunned.

  “I told you I was taking care of it. I do not sleep on this stuff. Just—​what gets me is that it’s been going on from the start. You read that letter. They’ve been waiting to trip me up since day one. They don’t think they have, but they have.” She snorted. “ ‘Rejected faculty mentorship.’ I have a pretty good idea what that’s about.”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “Oh, I know you’re tight with her. She’s got you gunning for the Joyner, right?”

  I blinked backward, as if she had feinted toward me or made a sudden loud noise. “Bethany?”

  “I’m not asking you to quit her. Go get your prize. But Bethany offered me the Joyner, too, you know. I didn’t bite, because I’m not dying to be owned body and soul. So, there’s my ‘motivational impairment.’ ”

  “Look. Bethany’s not always easy to work with, but she wouldn’t do something like that.” I thought back over Bethany’s work, looking for proof of what I’d just said. “I mean, she writes about ethics. Doesn’t she?”

  She stared at me expectantly.

  I finished, unnerved. “I just don’t think she’d go out of her way to retaliate against a first-year for some perceived slight.”

  “I hope you’re right, Mac. For your sake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing.” She looked away, then back at me, seeming to debate something internally. “Just—​I’ve seen it before. It’s an old Hollywood tradition, you might say. They call it the casting couch.”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes it works out for the actress. Sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, it’s dangerous.” She went back to stirring her coffee. “It’s your business, of course. I just hope you’re having a nice time while it lasts.”

  I let the coffee shop noise pulse around us as it sank in. She knew. Tess knew about Bethany and me. My heart pounded, my hands sweated, the room felt oppressively narrow. Had Tess guessed after bumping into me on the way home from Bethany’s? Or worse, had she heard it from someone else? Who else knew? I told myself that Tess didn’t pay attention to department gossip. But still, I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose as panic rose like gorge in my throat.

  “Mac?”

  “Just let me know if you need my statement for the Dean.” I grabbed my coffee mug and put it in the bus tub on the way out the door.

  * * *

  I couldn’t face the apartment right away. The thought of trying to work on my paper so soon after finding out that Tess knew about Bethany nauseated me. Instead, I wandered restlessly through the neighborhood and beyond, losing track of time, walking quickly to keep my limbs from going numb with the cold. It wasn’t until dusk fell between the brownstones that I realized how late it was and started walking back. By the time I opened the door, it was well past 7 p.m., and Gwen and Connor were in the kitchen cracking each other up over the remains of a pizza. I’d forgotten all about the movie. At least it would distract me from thinking about Tess.

  They giggled through the opening credits. “You guys, I have to take notes,” I said. “Are you high?”

  “I might be,” Connor said. “A little.”

  “Gwen?”

  “It’s all him. I’m only on a runner’s high, I swear.”

  “If I make popcorn, will it shut you guys up?”

  “Yes!”

  We trooped to the kitchen, where Gwen and Connor watched me heat kernels on the stove and exclaimed in delight when they started to pop. We headed back to the sofa with a bowl of the fluffy white stuff, and I got my notebook back out. True to his word, Connor, seated between Gwen and me, made no more noise, but stared at the screen transfixed, moving his hand from the popcorn bowl to his mouth and back mechanically. As the movie wore on and the dinner party guests succumbed one by one to despair at not being able to leave, eventually devolving into feral animals, Connor sank into the sofa, leaned his head against my shoulder, and went to sleep.

  As the credits rolled, Gwen stood and stretched languorously. “I’m going to bed.”

  “So early?”

  “It feels late to me. I’m dead from running.” She winced theatrically mid-stretch and limped down the hall with one hand on the back of her thigh.

  Connor stirred on my shoulder. “What time is it?”

  “It’s only nine thirty, but apparently I’m the only non-wuss.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of a disco nap?” He burrowed his face into my sweater and said in a muffled voice, “I’m ready. Let’s party.”

  I moved a few inches to the right and let him slide down the back of the sofa. “Sorry. I have to start working on this paper tonight.”

  “Oh, come on, you have all day tomorrow. Hang out with meeeee.”

  I sat back down on the sofa in despair. “Okay, but just for a little while. I really do have to work tonight.”

  “Don’t you like me?”

  “I adore you.”

  “Better than work?”

  He started tickling me, and I screamed. “Stop, stop!”

  Connor’s limbs were so long that he was somehow able to hold my arms down and tickle me at the same time, which struck me as unfair. “Connor, stop! I like you better than work, I swear!”

  He froze, still pinning my arms. Our faces were very close together.

  “Better
than Gwen?”

  I blinked. “Connor.”

  “Enough to . . .” He let my arms go, looked down at my mouth, and pressed his lips to mine. Then he drew back a little and waited.

  “What? Of, of course I like you, Connor . . .” Then my face grew hot all over as I caught up to what had just happened. “We’re friends.”

  “Oh.”

  I closed my eyes for a long moment, and when I opened them, I saw a completely different Connor in front of me.

  “I didn’t know . . . you liked me like that.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it.” His tone was aggressively cheerful. “It’s the Asian male thing. No one ever sees us coming.”

  “Wait​—what do you mean?”

  “Uh, white people think we’re all asexual? It’s cool, it’s cool.” It clearly wasn’t.

  “No! I swear it’s not that. At least I hope not. I just thought—”

  “Wait a minute.” He had been studying my face, and now his expression changed. “You thought I was gay?”

  I wanted to protest that this was a completely reasonable thing to think, under the circumstances. But what were the circumstances? When had I formed this impression? On the retreat, I realized. Based on—​a pink vest? A scarf? I’d thought I couldn’t blush any harder, but I was wrong. Even my eyeballs were scorching hot.

  But Connor was laughing. “Fashion. I get it. Gay men hit on me all the time, it’s very flattering. But I’m not. I’m really not. At least, I’m straight for you, Mac.” He was sitting cross-legged on the sofa now, one leg folded up against the sofa back, looking at me earnestly. “Are you, ahem, straight for me?”