Better Than Running at Night

by Hillary Frank

  "No, Sam. Don't worry so much," I said. "You're doing fine."

  "Will you give me another chance to fix things?" he asked. "Maybe if we walk to the party together."

  "All right." I didn't want to disappoint him again.

  As we started down the snowy hill, Sam asked, "Do you mind going up to Dunkin' Donuts with me? It's still early."

  "Okay."

  I waited outside while he bought a few doughnuts.

  "For the party," he said when he came out. "I get hungry when I smoke."

  At my apartment, Sam wiped his feet on my doormat. Then he wiped them again. And again. And again.

  "You can come in now," I said.

  "I don't want to mess up your floor."

  "I think you got all the snow off a few wipes ago."

  He stepped inside. The door hit his backpack as it swung shut. "Nice place," he said, wrinkling the Dunkin' Donuts bag with his fingers.

  I gathered my dress and makeup and headed for the bathroom.

  "Don't do that," Sam said. "I'll go in there. You stay out here."

  "That'll be weird, though," I said. "You waiting in the bathroom."

  "I can wait outside."

  "It's pretty cold."

  "Then I'll wait in the bathroom."

  "No," I said. "I'm going in there."

  "It's outside or in the bathroom," he said. "Your choice."

  "Bathroom."

  "Just tell me when you're ready." He didn't take off his backpack or coat before entering the bathroom.

  I changed into a clingy black dress I'd bought on Main Street a few days earlier especially for this occasion. I thought of telling Sam he could come out now, but I didn't want him to watch me putting on my makeup.

  I wore bright red lipstick, the kind you only see on models in makeup ads. I did my eyes up with black eyeliner, but not in the tacky thick way I used to. I hoped I wasn't overdressed. But hey, it was a Valentine's party; I had to dress a little risqué.

  "Okay, I'm ready!" I called.

  The door opened slowly. Coat still zipped, backpack still gripping his shoulders.

  He blinked hard, then opened his eyes wide.

  "What?" I asked.

  "I know you don't want to hear this," he said, "but I don't think I've ever seen anyone look so beautiful."

  "Thanks, Sam."

  It's strange; that was the most direct thing he'd ever said to me, but it felt the least awkward. Flattering, even. I wanted to go back and hear him say it again.

  We made eye contact for a few seconds and this time I looked away first.

  No, I told myself. You can't think of Sam that way.

  Hearts in the Basement

  Almost everyone in the basement was dressed in red. Hearts dangled from strings taped to the ceiling. Ella Fitzgerald was singing "Lover, please be tender..."

  In a dark corner, a group of topless girls with red hearts painted on their nipples waited for a camera to flash. They were trying to coax a flat-chested friend into joining them. But she was either not as daring or not as drunk as they were, because she maintained her position against the wall, fully clothed, arms folded across her chest.

  I was so amused by this scene that I almost didn't realize the photographer at whom the well-endowed girls were puckering their lips was none other than Nate Finerman. Two of the girls, I realized, were Maura and Sloane.

  One girl busted her way out of the group and grabbed the camera from Nate's hands, pushing him into her former position. The girls immediately pounced on him, fighting over who got to be closest to the male of honor. Sloane wriggled her way to the center for one of the photos and stuck her vinyl miniskirt-clad leg across Nate's waist.

  At some point during the photo session Nate noticed that I was watching and he winked at me. He tried to walk toward me, but the girls yanked him back. When he attempted an escape, they tackled him to the floor. He poked his face out from among the girl pile and gave me a What can I do? face.

  I almost left the party at that moment, but when I turned around I ran into Ralph. He had a question he'd been dying to ask me.

  "Ellie, I've just got to know. Have you considered wearing your three-D project?"

  "No."

  "Well, maybe sometime next semester we can collaborate on an outfit. I love the idea of wearing your insides on the outside."

  Nate had finally escaped from the mountain of girls. He ran up to me and pulled me around so I wasn't facing Ralph anymore.

  "Hey, sexy," he said.

  "I want to go," I whispered.

  "Why?" he asked. "You just got here!"

  "Nate, I just have to go."

  "Oh, come on, wait for me," he said. "I want us to leave together. It is Valentine's Day and all. Plus, it's the last night before you leave. Let's hang out just a little longer."

  "Well, okay," I said. "But not too long."

  "I've been thinking all day about being with you tonight. We'll mingle a while and then meet up." He kissed my forehead.

  Ralph was gone by the time I turned back around.

  I wandered the basement, looking for familiar faces. It was painfully evident that I didn't know many people. And this was a pretty small school.

  I found Sam sitting alone in a corner, smoking a joint.

  "Hey, Ellie," he said with squinty bloodshot eyes.

  "Hey, Sam." I sat down next to him.

  "You want a hit?"

  "No, thanks." I did, however, share his last doughnut. Boston cream.

  "Saved it for you," he said.

  I hoped my face wasn't as red as it felt.

  He balled up the Dunkin' Donuts bag and stuffed it in his backpack.

  "What do you keep in there?" I asked. "That thing looks like it weighs you down."

  "Just stuff. I like to be prepared."

  He put out his joint and slid it behind his ear. Then he rooted through his bag and pulled out his Diskman and headphones.

  "There's this," he said. "And these." A handful of batteries. "The Diskman eats them up. And I keep this around in case I run out of batteries." He yanked an adapter out by its wire. "None of it would be any good without these." There must've been at least a dozen CDs. All Phish and Grateful Dead, as far as I could tell.

  Then, of course, he had his rolling papers, tobacco, and lighter.

  Next was his monster-size hardcovered sketchbook. He showed me a page with a tallied list. There were three categories: dough nuts, muffins, and bagels. Each flavor had a single mark beside it. Except one. Boston cream had three.

  "You finished?" I asked.

  "Tonight," he said, beaming.

  "That's a lot of stuff to carry around all the time."

  "It gets heavy sometimes," he said. "But it's comforting to keep the things I need with me wherever I go."

  Nate found me. Said he wanted to leave. Held his hand out to help me up.

  "We'll finish this conversation later," I told Sam clearly, so Nate would hear.

  "Right on," Sam said after lighting up again. He waved good-bye with his joint.

  Nate and I walked slowly up the rickety basement stairs and didn't say anything until we got outside.

  "There's cream on your chin," he said without looking at me.

  I wiped it off and licked it from my fingers.

  "There's a nipple mark on the corner of your mouth," I said.

  It was smudgy, like the kiss marks you get from your grandma.

  He wiped at the wrong side.

  "No, there." I pointed closely at the mark, but didn't touch it.

  He never wiped it off completely.

  "So have you been hanging out much with that guy?" Nate asked.

  "I guess," I said. "Sam and Ralph were the only other people in my Foundation class, and Ralph is a little hard to handle at times."

  "That Sam guy probably thinks he can get girls by being all quiet and mysterious, but it's all an act. You know that, right?"

  "Maybe," I said. "Why don't you like Sam? You don't even know
him."

  Our shoes crunched on the snow. Like it was a snack.

  "You know, I just have a hard time seeing people with fast food," he said. "This is so embarrassing to admit because I know it sounds crazy. But it's especially hard seeing them with you."

  "Sam didn't have fast food."

  "Dunkin' Donuts!" he cried. "They may not serve burgers, but they're just as much fast food as Burger King. They have a drive-thru, for crying out loud!"

  "You watched us eating doughnuts?"

  "I just happened to see. Why, were you trying to hide it?"

  "Of course not!"

  Nate packed a snowball with his bare hands.

  "This doesn't make any sense," I said. "You know I have more sympathy for your problem with fast food than anyone, and I'll always feel weird walking into a McDonald's because of your dad. But if I want a doughnut, I'm gonna eat a doughnut!"

  "I just thought we had an understanding," he said, still packing his snowball.

  "Are you jealous?"

  "Are you kidding?"

  "No," I said. "I feel like you're looking for excuses to be mad about me hanging out with another guy, which is so stupid."

  "I'm not saying I'm jealous," he said, passing his snowball from one red hand to another, "but even if I was, why would that be stupid?"

  "Because I'm making myself not be jealous."

  "Why?"

  "So we can stay together."

  "Who are you jealous of? Clarissa?"

  "Sometimes it's Clarissa!" I shouted. "But right now it's Sloane! I thought you were staying away from her!"

  "I was!" he yelled. "I am!"

  Then he threw the snowball with all his might, screaming "Aaaagh!" It hit the side of a house across the street and exploded into white powder.

  I was fighting back the tears.

  "Ellie, can't you see that since we've been together I've been trying harder than I've ever tried to be honest? Ever since I met you, I've been trying not to mess around. And I know it would really hurt you if I did because messing around is the whole reason you don't know who your dad is. But sometimes a guy's just gotta have some fun. It doesn't mean anything to me, and it's not so bad anyway. But I've been trying my hardest! For you! And it hasn't been easy!"

  "What do you mean by trying?" I asked, concentrating on not crying.

  A car passed us, headlights illuminating our stillness.

  "Do you really want to know?"

  "No," I said quietly. "Not really."

  "Well, I guess this is a Valentine's evening down the drain."

  I nodded. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, tears would start spouting.

  "Let me walk you home," he said.

  We walked slowly beside each other without talking. When we got to my door, he asked if I wanted him to come in. I shook my head no.

  "I'll see you when you get back then," he sighed. "You'll be back Friday?"

  I nodded.

  "Have a good trip." He sounded defeated. "Call when you get in. All right? Make sure you call."

  He took my hand in his and brought it to his lips for a kiss. His hands were still cold and a little wet from the snowball. His lips were warm.

  "Okay, bye," was all I could say.

  Going Home

  In the morning I caught a train to Manhattan.

  Towns whizzed by the windows as the train whistle blew.

  I was trying to draw my view from the window in my sketchbook. I wanted to capture the movement, like in Ed's fish assignment. I thought that concentrating on such a difficult task would keep my mind off Nate.

  It didn't.

  I kept losing interest in the window blur and thinking about Nate's body. I sketched his back, with the rib cage tattoo. I wondered what it would look like if his entire body was tattooed with the underlying bones. I tried drawing a few parts like that, but it was hard to do from memory. Arms and legs were so complicated.

  Maybe I should've made up with him last night, I thought. After all, he had said he was really trying to change for me. If he thought I didn't appreciate that, maybe he'd stop trying.

  I drew the back of Nate's leg. I made his gastrocnemius flexed, the way it looked when he stood on his toes.

  I thought about how I'd yelled at him. I should've been more calm and tried to work things out. I had let my emotions get the better of me.

  Maybe I should've just stayed at the party and kept talking to Sam.

  I looked out the window and tried to draw the passing trees. But what I ended up drawing looked like Nate's hair. I pressed harder with my pencil, to block out the Nateness and make the image more treelike.

  The heavy lines only made my drawing look more like thick tufts of hair than like thin branches. I tried erasing certain parts but that didn't work either. Then I erased the whole thing. That just left me with a lighter version of the original drawing. I didn't want to look at it anymore.

  I drew a big X over the page, then scribbled and scribbled, covering up the hair.

  But I had to stop before concealing all my old marks; the pencil's tip broke and the remaining wood shards ripped through the paper.

  Absolutely Bananas

  "It's a great way to lower your sex drive," Dad said, patting me on the back. "You teenagers have such raging hormones, they need all the help they can get."

  "Oh, give it a rest," Mom sighed. "Don't turn her into a stoner, all right?"

  We were sitting in the kitchen, waiting for our pizza delivery.

  My dad got up and paced around the table.

  "I don't think you get it," I said. "I tried it once and I didn't even like it."

  "Which is absolutely fine," Mom said, glaring at my dad.

  Dad paced his way out of the room.

  Mom leaned in close and touched my arm. "So, I'm dying to know—are you seeing anyone?"

  The doorbell buzzed.

  "I'll be right down!" Dad shouted into the intercom in the hallway.

  "I've been dating a guy," I said.

  "That's great!" she said. But her face looked relieved, like what she really wanted to say was, "Finally."

  "It's all right."

  "Just make sure you use protection," she cautioned. "You never know where people have been."

  And sometimes you do, I thought.

  Dad came back with the pizza.

  "Sorry to dwell on this raging hormones thing," he said, "but I can't imagine growing up as a kid in the nineties. You have to worry about birth control and AIDS. It would drive me absolutely bananas."

  Lying Awake

  I thought about Nate that night. I wanted to think about feeling him in bed, about his soft thick hair against my skin. But every time I tried, I pictured that snowball smashing against the building.

  I wanted to make myself forget the images of him at the party and of our fight.

  They wouldn't melt.

  Exciting Isn't Everything

  "Were the sixties a total blast?" I asked my mom.

  We were chopping vegetables for dinner that night.

  "A total blast?" she asked. "That doesn't sound like something you'd say."

  "It's something my friend at school said. I think he wishes he could've been alive then."

  Mom chopped two carrots for every one I got through.

  Grandma and Phil were coming over.

  "You know, those days were exciting," Mom said, slicing a pepper. "But exciting isn't everything."

  The Other Relatives

  "Looks from the mother, brains from the father," Grandma said when my mother told her I'd gotten an A in Foundation class. My report card had come that day.

  "Mom!" my mother yelled in defense.

  "Marsha, you know you never did well in school." Grandma always had a way of shutting her up. She turned to me and raised one eyebrow.

  We were all sitting at the table. Mom and Dad at each head, Grandma and Phil across from me. Beside me was an empty chair.

  The chicken was in the oven.

  On the t
able was Mom's traditional assortment of vegetables and dips. I think this premeal snacking was Phil's favorite part of family gatherings; I've never seen anyone else eat chopped liver with such gusto. Mom had placed a dish full of it by Phil's plate.

  Grandma and Phil weren't really married, but he was my Grandpa's identical twin and he agreed to take care of Grandma after Grandpa died. Now Phil shared her bank account and her bed.

  "Ladybird," Grandma said.

  "Bug, Mom. Not bird," my mother scolded.

  "To you she may be a bug, but to me she is a bird." She never missed an opportunity to mock my mother's hippie days. "Lady, have you heard about the call? The one from the PBS?"

  "We thought we'd let you tell her," Dad said.

  "Okay, well I'll do it then," Grandma said.

  Phil spread some chopped liver on a celery stick.

  "A few days ago I got a call from the PBS. They want me to do a talk on the television. About the Holocaust."

  Grandma was a Holocaust survivor. She rarely talked about it with us. As far as she knew, she was the only surviving member of her family.

  "Are you gonna do it?" I asked.

  "Well, I don't know."

  "I told you, you shouldn't," Mom said. "It upsets you too much."

  "But it would be a great educational tool for generations to come," Dad said.

  "They'll find other people," Mom said.

  "Not if everyone has this attitude," Dad said.

  The oven timer rang. Mom got up to get the chicken.

  Phil dipped a carrot in his chopped liver dish. It was almost empty.

  "Save some for dinner," Grandma warned him.

  "Of course," he nodded. "What would I do without this woman?" It was the first time he'd spoken since we sat down.

  "I don't know what you should do about PBS," I said.

  "Right. This is what we were speaking about," Grandma said.

  "I just can't imagine going through something as awful as the Holocaust. I mean, it sounds like this is a good cause. But who am I to say whether it would be good for you or not?"

  Mom came back with the chicken and started serving Phil.

  "People, they go through the tough times and they make it okay," Grandma said. "My husband passed on, but I'm all right."