by Laurie Boris
Sarah shrugged her shoulders. I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.
Ring.
Izzy crossed the lobby to the phone.
* * * * *
Sarah and Gwendolyn waited for Izzy. They sat opposite each other, on the bottom mattresses of two parallel sets of bunk beds. Neither of them spoke.
Gwendolyn looked like she could chew metal and spit tacks.
It was a long wait.
“Didn’t this used to be the kitchen?” Sarah finally said, in an attempt to break the tension.
“Housing shortage.” Even her voice was like a weapon.
Sarah nodded, and afraid to ask anything else, looked away. The room was immaculate—three beds made, one stripped, textbooks in tidy stacks on a row of desks, two metal armoires on the side wall where mud-brown couches used to be, a third in the opposite corner near the refrigerator, the only evidence of the room’s former use.
Before housing shortages and poetry slams, the room had served not only as a kitchen but also as a second lounge, more private than the one in the lobby. Sarah closed her eyes and remembered another time, another night in October, her sophomore year. She and Emerson, former lovers, had been testing the tenuous new friendship “they’d” agreed to after a flurry of letters the previous summer. When he’d knocked on her door, though, Sarah already had company. At the moment, she couldn’t even remember his name. Just that he was someone she’d liked well enough but didn’t love, and she’d felt annoyed with herself for giving in to him. Again.
“I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” she called in a loud whisper, not wanting to wake her date.
“You look pretty,” Emerson said when she came in.
She didn’t know where she was supposed to put a compliment from him at that stage, so she ignored it.
“Too bad you had to study tonight,” he said. “You would have liked the movie.”
At the beginning of the evening, she truly had intended to study, until what’s-his-name called. Then she started feeling guilty for blowing Emerson off so close to the first anniversary of Thomas’s death.
“You want to go out, get something to eat?” she asked.
It seemed like a perfect plan. She would get her shoes and leave the guy a note. Hopefully, by the time they got back he’d be gone.
Emerson smiled. “Yeah. Okay. You sure it’s not too late?”
“No, it’s—”
What Sarah’s plan hadn’t covered was her half-naked, soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend bursting through the door, slinging her over his shoulder like a Neanderthal, and taking her back to bed. By the time she’d stopped bitching the guy out for being such an ass, Emerson had left.
An ache spread across Sarah’s stomach as other incidents came back to her, all the times she’d hurt him. It had never been intentional, merely a result of his wanting to remain in her life in any capacity. He’d been a Good Samaritan caught in the line of fire. Of course he loved her; of course he wanted more than her body, if he was still willing to take the bullet.
She thought he’d gotten over it. He’d told her he’d gotten over it.
But he hadn’t. He was still waiting, always waiting, just for her to shoot him again.
This time, at closer range.
Emerson still loves me, Sarah thought, just to hear in her mind how it sounded.
It was too frightening to repeat and much easier to stay angry. How dare he think she’d come back to Syracuse for him?
But hadn’t she, really? Because she could always count on him for comfort and knew he would take care of her. How many years could that go on before he felt he deserved something more than “thank you” in return?
Maybe that’s what she let go too far.
Sarah heard the scratch of a lighter and opened her eyes. Gwendolyn was firing up a joint. She took a drag and then handed it to Sarah.
She stared at it a moment, the tidy roll-job dangling in between Gwendolyn’s lugubrious fingernails.
Then thought, what the hell.
The smoke was hot and burned her lungs. Sarah held her breath for as long as she could and exhaled slowly, trying not to cough. As she and Gwendolyn passed the joint back and forth, Sarah began to feel smoother. Emerson became a cloud of warm fuzz around her heart and slid to the back of her thoughts.
Then Izzy returned with a kind of dreamy, sleepwalking expression, a look of possibility.
“Just tell me you’re not in love with him,” Gwendolyn said.
Izzy had been happily lighting a second joint, but with her bubble poked, her lower lip trembled with defiance. “I could be. If I wanted.”
Gwendolyn shook her head slowly at Sarah: a conspiratorial gesture between two older women who knew better about life and love than some dumb, untested freshman.
Only Sarah didn’t know better, or didn’t want to.
She wanted to believe what Rashid had said about his arranged marriage. That in time you could fall in love with whomever the circumstances of your life had chosen for you.
Then she’d never have to hurt Emerson again.
Chapter 21
Sarah dreamed of Emerson falling.
He stood on a diving board set out an open window. “You don’t love me,” he said. Aching with sadness, she reached for him, wanting to tell him it wasn’t true. But her arms weren’t long enough, and the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. Then he stepped off. He floated to earth, an oak leaf carried on the wind. She watched him grow smaller and smaller until he was nothing but a swirl of wheat-colored hair. She leaped out after him but didn’t float. She plummeted. The wind rushed at her face, whipped her hair, and tore at her clothing.
Seconds before landing, she woke in a sweat, staring at the springs of the top bunk. Her heart pounded. As she tried to catch her breath, she began to remember what happened the night before.
How many joints did they smoke? How long did she cry?
Izzy came in wearing a bathrobe, a thick green towel slung around her shoulders. “Hi,” she said, smiling.
This is the difference between eighteen and almost thirty, Sarah thought. After smoking pot until all hours, Izzy was dewy and beautiful, while Sarah felt like something that had crawled out from beneath a junked car.
Izzy rubbed at her wet hair with the towel. “I’m way late for bio. But take your time. The door will lock behind you. Just kind of don’t call too much attention to yourself, ’cause we’re really not supposed to leave guests unsupervised.”
Sarah nodded. No problem there. She was clumsy, she broke things, and people, but with a past full of questionable boyfriends and bad decisions, she was an old hand at sneaking out.
“You have somewhere else to crash, don’t you?” Izzy’s eyes flowed with compassion. “I mean, it would be so cool if you could stay here, but...”
Sarah tried to think. She had time. Her temp assignment didn’t start until the next morning. Emerson was on double shift again. Rashid would be busy in the lab. She had all day to figure out what she should do. “I’ll find a place,” she said.
Again Izzy burst into a smile. “I might know one! Wait right here!”
She raced out the door, came back what seemed like seconds later, and handed Sarah a piece of paper.
“Here. Call this number. A friend of Gwennie’s is giving up her apartment off campus, ’cause her roommate left school and she can’t handle the rent by herself. She wants to move in with her boyfriend, anyway, and Gwennie doesn’t think the landlady’s found anyone to take over the lease yet. Since you have, like, a job, you might be able to afford it.”
Sarah’s head spun. All she heard of the garble was “apartment” and that she might be able to afford it. “Thanks.”
Izzy started flinging on clothes. “I hope it works out for you.”
“You, too,” Sarah said.
* * * * *
It was a long walk, up all those stairs to the quad, made longer by the Indian summer heat. Sarah took off her cardigan and tied it around her waist.
She climbed so slowly that students, perky and bright like Izzy, wove around her. Flashbacks hounded her, of sneaking out of Emerson’s dorm room, other dorm rooms after that, and a variety of men’s apartments. Whatever past indignities crawling home ungroomed had entailed, at least a mountainside of stairs hadn’t been involved.
When she reached the bricked terrace of the new law building at the top, she needed to stop and rest. She kept her back to the dormitories, to Van Buren Street, to Onondaga Lake, unable to bear turning around and getting smacked with one last reminder of how horrible she’d been to Emerson, whose only transgression, she’d realized the previous night somewhere between the third and fourth joint, was wanting to love her. And if that wasn’t available to him, just to be her friend.
She felt suddenly lightheaded and queasy. Hunching over, she kept her head down, hands on the tops of her thighs, like a spent runner. Students streamed by, giving her odd looks. Eventually one might ask if she needed help. Low blood sugar, she’d say, but she didn’t want any more pathos from strangers.
Sticky, tired, and smelling like an ashtray, Sarah finally dragged herself to Hendricks Chapel, hoping they still had a coffeehouse in the basement lounge. More than anything, she wanted to huddle into one of their big, overstuffed chairs and be gloriously ignored, get a coffee and something to eat and just sit for a while until she felt well enough to move on.
Two students holding little white takeout bags exited the side door of the chapel and she wanted to hug them. She went in and asked for a large coffee and a giant bran muffin. It was no surprise that things were more expensive than she remembered, and the workers had suddenly become very young. But the bigger insult was that all the comfortable furniture had disappeared, replaced with charmless armless plastic chairs and long, institutional tables.
She sighed, too tired to let it bother her. As uninviting as the lounge had become, at least it was still a place to sit and be left alone. She parked in a vacant corner, wolfed down the muffin and savored the coffee, closing her eyes between sips.
With a clear—or at least clearing—head, she decided to call the number Izzy had given her. Maybe she could look at the apartment on the way home. One thing she was certain of: she shouldn’t be living in Emerson’s house anymore. Her anger had ebbed, and she was willing to admit that she might have led him on. A little. Just enough.
But given how he felt about her, it still wasn’t a good idea to stay. There would be too many potential awkward moments. Sharing a bathroom. Late night donut breaks. Dirk Blade in the laundry room, fondling her panties.
For a crazy second Sarah considered moving back to Boston. She could find another job, another roommate. Hopefully she wouldn’t run into Jay, Dee Dee, or anyone else she knew before.
Don’t look back, she told herself.
So what am I doing here?
She opened her eyes to find the hole in the lid of her coffee and then looked past it to the line at the cash register. From out of a crew of gangly boys, all elbows and shins and the latest styles, Sarah’s gaze landed on a man: dark-haired, pleasantly pudgy, a head shorter than most. His tailored dress shorts ended just below the knee, exposing nice, honey-brown calves. Not until he thanked the cashier for his change did it register in Sarah’s mucky brain that the man was Rashid.
She tried to will herself invisible. He pocketed his wallet, tucked a newspaper under his arm, and picked up a cardboard cup of coffee and his briefcase.
And of course spied her immediately.
He looked crisp in the heat, his pale yellow shirt a pleasing complement to the warm tone of his skin.
“I have a few minutes before my next class.” His gaze drifted toward his perfectly broken-in Docksiders and back to her face. “May I join you?”
She shrugged.
He parked in the chair next to hers and spread the New York Times on the table. Then went to work on his coffee. He poured in a packet of sugar and stirred five times, counterclockwise, with a wooden stick.
“When did you come home last night?” he asked.
Rashid was normally asleep by ten and up by six. Apparently he’d left too early that morning, or too quickly, to notice she hadn’t been home.
“Pretty late.” It was too hard to explain: the old dorm, black fingernails, a lovesick youth, a kiss in an elevator, a taste like burnt rubber in her mouth.
And Emerson. Maybe Rashid could say it right in Hindi. Or Arabic or French. Because there weren’t enough words in the English language to explain her memories away or apologize to Emerson for the way she had mistreated him.
“Before I went to bed I left him a note so he shouldn’t worry.” Rashid still looked at the paper as if they were two spies who didn’t want to appear to be conversing. “I said you ran into an old lady professor, and the two of you went out for drinks and to catch up. You see, even though I’m not a writer I can be creative when necessary.”
It was sensitive of him to make the professor female. “You’re a good friend.” She sighed. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch last night. It wasn’t your fault.”
Startled eyes lifted to meet hers. “But it was! What I told you was not my business to tell.”
She looked away, noticing the peeling wallpaper at the edge of the floor, the ratty carpet, and Rashid’s smooth brown leg with its wisps of dark hair, which ended abruptly just above his sockless ankle.
“Maybe I already knew,” she said.
His tone grew impatient. “If you already knew, then why did you chew my head off and run away?”
“Because I didn’t want to know that I knew.” She smiled sadly when she realized how that must have sounded to him. “Is that completely insane or what?”
His expression softened and his gaze drifted even with hers. “No, it is not so insane. There are things I know that I wish I didn’t. Truths I’m very well aware of that I’d prefer not to be reminded about.”
Sarah bit her lower lip. His response sounded suspiciously like the preamble to a confession. “You didn’t tell him what you said last night, did you?”
“Excuse me?” Rashid appeared to be reeling his focus back in. “Oh. No. I didn’t. How could I, we have not seen each other since yesterday at breakfast.”
“But you won’t tell him...?”
Rashid was watching her with his entire face. “Of course not. That, and all of this we have said just now, we will keep between us. Yes?”
He put out his hand. His palm was warm and soft. Like in Boston, he was not quick to let go. Sarah felt a sinking in her stomach. More secrets, more lies. She thought she’d left that behind when she started her new life.
He added another packet of sugar to his coffee and stirred again, only four times.
Chapter 22
The apartment became the only bright spot in Sarah’s day so far. It was furnished, unexpectedly sunny and well maintained, but it wouldn’t be vacant until the weekend. With a fifty-dollar check, a quick detour to the pharmacy for emergency grooming supplies, and the good luck not to be a college student, Sarah talked the landlady into holding the place for her until the end of the week. She wanted to make sure Rashid had been serious about loaning her the money and that her temp prospects looked good enough to meet the monthly payments.
By the time she returned to Emerson’s house, she longed for a shower, clean clothes, and a nap. That would still leave her a few hours to figure out how she could manage to stay there until the apartment was available, how she could pretend nothing had changed, and how she was going to leave.
Figuring out how to stay would be the easy part. Rashid practically lived in the lab lately. Emerson was still on double shifts. The Jordanians rarely inserted themselves into the other residents’ lives. She’d never see much of anyone.
And if she did, hell, she’d pretended before.
Still, she tiptoed in and left the mail on the hall table. There was nothing for her except an envelope from Dee Dee, probably another whiny letter asking what she was supposed to do a
bout Jay, who kept leaving messages on Dee Dee’s answering machine. Sarah didn’t have the mental space to think about that.
She dragged herself up the stairs and into her room. Emerson’s spare room. She had to stop thinking of it as hers. Except for the creak of her footsteps, the place was quiet, too quiet, so she turned on the radio. She dropped her cardigan on the floor as she pushed off her sneakers. Outside the meager window, a neighbor raked his yard. So odd, she thought, the contrast between the autumn leaves and the warm weather. Then, after closing the yellowed blinds, she yanked off her T-shirt, flung away her bra, and unzipped her jeans, letting them hang open.
She looked for the last of her clean towels in the closet that wouldn’t stay closed, a closet that wouldn’t be hers for much longer.
Finally, she found one.
When she turned around Emerson was standing in the doorway.
* * * * *
Emerson had closed his eyes for only a few minutes and woke to the sound of Sarah’s radio. His stomach clenched. When he’d read Rashid’s note, he’d been desperately afraid the “lady professor” was Sarah’s version of a lie of kindness and she had met someone new. When she didn’t come home, he’d been sure of it. His mental self-flagellation kept him up the rest of the night. Sheer terror kept him home from work.
He had to know the truth but didn’t dare ask. He convinced himself that if he saw her, he’d know. It would be written on her somewhere, perhaps, or at least he’d be able to read it in her eyes.
Her door was open, her back to him. Her beautiful back. He stared, transfixed and melting inside from the sight of all that smooth skin, remembering in an instant what it felt like to touch and taste. As she reached to the upper shelf of her closet, he scanned the long, soft arc of her, the sweep of her hair, the curve of her left buttock at the top of unzipped jeans, sliding off her hip.
Nothing written there, Dirk told him. But better go in for a closer look, just to be sure.
