I’m horrible. I’m a horrible person. But that’s the truth. Gary is not Greg and, honestly, that’s the main attraction.
It’s the worst luck in the world that their names are so similar. I’ve gotten so I don’t say either name, ever. I’m just too scared of mixing them up. It happened once and I had to cough like crazy to cover it up. Greg bought me a pack of lemon-flavored cough drops the next day, which is crazy because doesn’t everyone like cherry flavored? Really? Lemon? Good thing I didn’t really need them.
“Hi,” I say, walking through the gloom toward Gary. He’s not alone. I’m not worried about being seen with Gary, because Greg never comes to the Four-O since it’s almost exclusively used by those who live on The Row.
Location, location, location.
Gary is sitting with Rob Thompson and Russ Bromley, both ROTC, all EE Taus, and this gorgeous guy with dark blond hair and blue eyes who looks like an angel, if angels looked like well-built, physically flawless men, which I think they might in certain religions.
Gary makes a motion like he wants me to sit on his lap. That is definitely not happening. Gary doesn’t exactly know about Greg, but he knows by now that I don’t do any public displays of affection. I don’t think he understands why, but he doesn’t need to know why. No PDA. No exceptions. I smile and walk over to a chair at another table, all set to drag it over.
Angel hops up and says, “Take my chair. I’ll get this one.”
“Thanks,” I say. I’m a little breathless, and not from moving the chair two inches. Up close, he’s even more devastating. “I feel pretty honored to be sitting at the EE Tau table.”
“Oh, I’m not in EE Tau,” he says.
“He’s in ROTC,” Rob says.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m Doug Anderson. Am I still welcome at the EE Tau table?” he asks me with a shy grin.
Doug Anderson. Diane’s Doug. No wonder she’s crazy about him. My heart flutters the tiniest bit and I say, “I hate to break it to you, but I’m not in EE Tau either. I guess my disguise fooled you.”
“I thought you were sporting a ROTC disguise,” he counters, sitting down next to me, his knee pressed against mine under the table, his blue eyes gleaming brightly. At my puzzled look, he runs his hands over his hair and says, “I think your hair’s even shorter than mine.”
“Doug,” I say, running a hand over the nape of my neck, “if you can’t say something nice about a girl’s hair, not only should you not say anything at all; you should start running before she beats you to death with her shoe.”
Gary snorts with laughter. Rob and Russ hoot and stomp their feet on the sticky floor. Doug smiles sweetly and says, “I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I do like it. It looks great.”
“Nice save,” I say. “I’ll keep my shoe on. For now.”
“Karen! Hi!” I turn to the blast of sunlight coming through the curtain that shields the open door of the Four-O, the sharp line between darkness and daylight quickly narrowing as the curtain falls back into place behind Diane. “What are you doing with the scum of ROTC?”
“Slumming for a free drink,” I say. “No luck yet.”
“I got it,” Gary says, signaling for the waitress.
“Thank you,” I say politely, distantly.
I haven’t told anyone about seeing Gary. Greg is my boyfriend. Gary is my secret.
How does Gary feel about this?
I haven’t asked him.
Three hours later and the bar is full of people I know well, know slightly, and know not at all. There’s something about finals week, some desperate joy mixed with exhaustion. What’s done is done. Either you passed or you failed, got the grade or got the boot. Either way, it’s over. For a few days, anyway, and then it starts all over again.
I’m cheating on my boyfriend, the man I plan to marry. I always do this, and I don’t understand why it always feels so inevitable that I do this.
“You okay?” Laurie asks me, leaning her shoulder next to mine. “How’d your final go?”
“I skipped the lab,” I say, laughing weakly.
“How many times?” she says, draping her arm over my shoulder.
“Every time,” I say. “I don’t know how I missed that. I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t know.”
“If you were going to flunk, they’d have told you before now,” Laurie reasons. “Nobody flunks without a warning shot over the bow.”
“Or a flare fired from the deck,” I say. “Okay. Yeah. You’re right. But, Laurie, Diane is having a horrible influence on us, all those naval metaphors!”
We both burst out laughing.
“There is no such thing as too many naval metaphors,” Diane says from behind us. I tip my head back. Diane is standing behind us, holding two drinks, tequila shots by the look of it. “Watch your step or I’ll report you.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” I say, still laughing.
Laurie and I are roommates; we’re in the two-way in the middle of the second floor, near the back stairs leading down to the kitchen and the dining room. The kitchen, the domain of Melba, the day cook, is mostly off-limits to us. There’s an ice machine and a fridge in what I guess is supposed to be a butler’s pantry, and Melba keeps a big pitcher of orange juice for us in the fridge. I’ve always hated orange juice. I don’t anymore. I’ve discovered that if you pour anything over ice, it’s drinkable. Hence the appeal of alcohol.
I really am drunk.
I push my empty glass across the table and cross my arms over my chest. I’m done.
“Where’s Greg?” Diane asks from somewhere over the top of my head.
“Spanish final at three,” I say.
“Well, hell, it’s six now. Isn’t he ready to party?” Diane asks.
Diane is always ready to party, and it’s one of the things I love about her. Greg, on the other hand, is never in the mood to party, especially not with anyone in a sorority or fraternity—people, it has become very clear to me, he holds in contempt. “Born with a silver spoon in their mouth,” is something he says often, like every time he walks me home down The Row. Like I’m living with silver spoons.
“He’s got an English final tomorrow morning,” I say instead. “I’m sure he’s hitting the books hard.”
“Admirable,” Diane says. “From a distance. Too much studying up close . . .” She shudders. “I don’t want to catch anything.”
I smile and slink down lower in my chair. It’s a hard-backed, hard-seated chair, but when you’re a little bit drunk, it doesn’t really matter about the chair.
Diane brings her tequilas to Doug Anderson, angel come to Earth, and with much noise and cheers, they lick salt off their hands, shoot the shots, and suck a lemon wedge. Diane holds her shot glass aloft and dances a little dance around Doug, who watches her with a big smile on his perfectly gorgeous face.
She can have him if she wants him, and who wouldn’t want him?
“She’s got it bad,” Laurie says at my shoulder, her voice low, a thrum against my ear.
“And that ain’t good?” I say, quoting some song I can’t remember. “It sure looks good to me.”
Laurie looks at me. “How’s it going with Greg? You two okay?”
“Fine,” I say, staring down at the tabletop. It’s dark, scarred, and stained, like my soul.
More symbols, more metaphors, more similes; and there are only more English courses in my future. I may not survive intact, my brain forever after trained to think in symbols, my sentences burbling out in either iambic pentameter or haiku. Wouldn’t Greg love that? The thought makes me laugh, sourly. Like a tequila lemon.
See? Another simile. I’m drowning in them.
“Are you going home for break?” I ask Laurie. I’m not. It’s too far. ULA’s schedule is unlike any other college schedule; we get a two-week break
at Christmas, come back to school for a week or so of classes, then a week of finals. At the end of all that, in mid-January, we get a few days off before spring semester starts. Only those students who live within driving distance of LA go home for semester break. I’ll be stuck on a campus that’s mostly empty, sitting in my room reading English novels and watching Colombo and Kojak.
Laurie looks across the room, her gaze scanning the dark corners of the Four-O. Her eyes stop briefly on a group of guys hugging the bar, and then move on. “Missy and I are catching a ride with Joan. We’re leaving Saturday morning, trying to miss the Friday San Francisco traffic.”
Laurie lights a cigarette, her gaze going back to that group of guys at the bar. I think they’re Rho Delts.
I just keep watching Gary, wondering if anyone can tell that I’m with him, you know, in the biblical sense.
Okay, so I’ve had sex with Gary. I admit it. I also admitted that I’m a horrible person. That covers all the bases, doesn’t it? I’m all about covering my bases.
Greg.
Gary.
Horrible person.
Yeah, bases covered.
Laurie doesn’t answer me; she’s looking again at the far corner of the bar, smoking her cigarette slowly and casually. But her eyes aren’t casual. I look over at the guys she’s looking at: three of them, one of them really tall with longish hair. Pete.
“What’s going on with Pete?” I ask, tilting my chin in their direction.
Laurie shifts her gaze away from them and reaches across the table to flick her cigarette ash into the ashtray.
“Nothing much,” she says, her hair sliding forward to hide part of her face from me.
“Did you guys have a fight?” I say, looking him over.
“No. We’re okay,” she says. “We’re just not serious.”
“Oh,” I say. What else is there to say? I’m always serious. I don’t date if it’s not serious. I don’t understand nonserious dating. What’s the point if it’s not serious?
Laurie shrugs and takes another drag off her cigarette. She’s switched from Winstons to Virginia Slims recently, though I don’t know why. Living with a smoker when I don’t smoke doesn’t bother me; my parents both smoke. I’m used to living life in a haze.
I think that was another metaphor.
“He’s a nice guy, but we’re taking it slowly,” she says. “You want a beer? I’m buying.”
I shake my head as she stands up and walks to the bar, about five feet from where Pete Steinhagen is standing. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her since she started moving. She hasn’t looked at him once since she started moving.
I know what that means. When a girl is too careful around a guy, it can only mean she really needs to be careful around him.
I don’t think that sounds as profound as it actually is.
“Karen,” Gary says. I look up. He’s standing next to me, his crotch at my eye level. I tilt my head back and look up at his face. He’s got a very nice face. “Do you want to get some air?”
I look around the Four-O for a few seconds, watching to see who, if anyone, is watching me. No one seems to be. Look how careful I’m being. I’m always so careful. I always have so much to be careful about.
“Why not?” I answer, scraping back my chair.
Gary and I leave by the front door, passing Missy and Cindy Gabrielle as they’re coming in. We nod and say hello, but Gary is pressing me through, his hand on my back, and so I keep moving. It’s dark outside, except for all the streetlights and headlights and taillights streaming up and down Figueroa, and the light over the door of the Four-O, but still, it’s pretty dark. And it’s cold.
Gary is wearing dark blue cords and a light beige cotton crew-neck sweater. He doesn’t look cold. I’m wearing a skintight pair of JAG Jeans and a red V-neck sweater. I’m freezing.
“It’s freezing out here,” I say.
“How do you ever make it in Connecticut?” he says.
“I wear a coat. And gloves. And earmuffs.”
Gary smiles, drags me over to a parked car in front of the Four-O, leans his butt against the fender, and nestles me against him, his thighs bracketing mine. I’m not cold anymore.
“You’re a great coat.”
My head is tucked under his chin so I can feel the smile disappearing from his face. I tuck my arms up in front of me and press against his chest, nuzzling my face into his neck.
“I need to tell you something,” he says.
“Don’t hold back,” I say, kissing his neck.
“I, uh, graduated.”
I lift my mouth from his skin and look up into his eyes. “Are you sure? You don’t sound sure.”
“I’m sure. I graduated. Early. This month. I won’t be coming back for spring semester.”
He’s looking down at me, his hands on my waist, almost like he’s holding me tight so that I won’t fly into some sort of girly, screaming rage. I mean, why would I do that? He flirted with me, slept with me, and ditched me. It’s not like he didn’t know he was graduating a semester early three months ago. It’s not like he didn’t know it two months ago, when I first slept with him. Or three days ago, when I had sex with him in the carrels at Darvey.
I feel a little sick, to be honest.
Sure, I feel my heart crack right down the middle. Sure, I want to cry and hit him a few times. Sure, I have to bury the daydreams I’d nourished of him proposing before he graduated in June and of the life we might have had in one of those little Texas oil towns. It won’t be hard, once I get used to this dream being dead. I’ve had other dreams die, dreams that looked just like this.
I thought I was going to marry my eighth-grade boyfriend; I didn’t bother to think about what he’d do for a living, but we’d live in Connecticut and have two kids and spend every Christmas Eve with my parents. I felt so mature, willing to give up Christmas Day to his parents.
I thought I was going to marry my tenth-grade boyfriend, that we would go off to college together and live a pretty life in a pretty town somewhere in New England. He cheated on me and then I cheated on him, and a year after doing that to each other over and over again, we finally broke up for good.
I thought I was going to marry my senior-year boyfriend, but he went to college in Ohio and I didn’t.
I know what this particular chain of pain feels like, every link of it.
I think I’m going to cry.
But I won’t. I just won’t. I can’t, because that would make it all worse, you know? It would make it all true, like I really am a slut and he really never cared about me at all, and no one wants me forever because I’m not pretty enough.
Gary doesn’t want me.
No. No, it’s not that. It’s that it didn’t work out because the timing was off, and I don’t really want him anyway. Not really.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have liked living in Texas anyway.
“Congratulations,” I say, stepping away from him, crossing my arms over my chest. “I wish you’d told me sooner. I could have gotten you a nice gift.”
Gary takes a deep breath. His shoulders relax. He takes another deep, loud breath. Feeling better, are we? All the potential drama averted?
What a coldhearted bastard. I can’t believe I ever thought I cared about this guy.
“It just worked out, a last-minute kind of thing.”
“Really. Congratulations.”
I take another step away from him. What was I thinking? Snuggling against a guy, a guy who is not my boyfriend, in front of the Four-O. Like everyone in the world couldn’t see me?
In the biggest jinx of all time, the jinx of all jinxes, as if just thinking that thought made it happen, Greg drives by. He’s in the passenger seat of his roommate’s car, a white Ford, which I happen to know on sight because th
e paint job is so bad that even I can spot the car a mile off. I see Greg’s face, a flash of white in the neon darkness of LA. I see his scowl; I see the car slow, swerve slightly, and then keep going. There’s no slowing down here, not on Figueroa, not in front of the Four-O. But they can always go around the block and drive by again, or find a parking spot, or something. Something bad. Something that forces me to have a confrontation with my boyfriend about why I’m standing outside a bar talking to a guy who is really just giving me the most coldhearted brush-off of all brush-offs.
“You know that guy?” Gary says, looking after the Ford.
“Yeah. I do,” I say, watching to see if the Ford tries to make a U-turn. It doesn’t. Gone for good, or coming back?
That was another metaphor, wasn’t it? I can’t take any more metaphors right now.
I’m not going to tell Gary how I know Greg or who Greg is. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, will it?
“Look, have a nice life,” I say to Gary. “Good luck in the desert.”
“Thanks,” Gary says, stepping close to me, looking like he wants to hug me or kiss me or something. “You’re great, Karen. You’ve been great.”
How? Like in bed? Like I was a good lay, thanks a bunch, gotta run?
I’m not going to cry. I’m not.
“Thanks,” I say. I’m trying not to be sarcastic, but it’s an uphill battle. “So, I’ll see you around. Or I guess I won’t.” I laugh, keeping my distance, but Gary keeps closing the gap. What does he expect? One for the road?
What is not going to happen, besides one last quickie, is that I let Gary see that this hurts. He’s not getting one more thing from me. There’s always another guy out there, right there, close by and ready to scoop up. When one drifts off, another steps up to home plate, ready to go all the way, hit all the bases.
That was a rotten metaphor. I can’t believe I even thought that.
I’m not alone. I’m never alone. Guys can smell when a girl is alone and desperate, hunting for some guy, any guy to want her. I’m never hunting. I’m never desperate. I’ve always got one guy, at least one guy. There’s always another guy, right? Always some guy who . . . who what?
Sorority Sisters Page 10
