* * *
Jesse’s chemistry class was divided into sections that met in smaller classrooms once a week to discuss the week’s lectures. To limit the possibilities that a large lecture hall provides for cheating, they also took their tests in section. The black-haired girl wasn’t in his section, but if she was, he thought, it would have made it much easier to strike up a conversation. They also had lab once a week with the same people from section; there would have been countless ways to talk to her during lab. But as it was, Jesse would have to find some other pretext for approaching her.
Jesse had taken his exam and probably done poorly, though he always left a multiple choice test with some hope. Having guessed on many of the answers, and feeling he had a knack for knowing when a sequence of letters was obviously incorrect—A-A-A-B-A, for example, probably needed a C or D to mix things up—he imagined that he just may have guessed himself to a B-. After the test he relaxed on the lawn and read The Sun Also Rises for his Modern Lit class. As he read he wondered how some people did it, wondered what it took. Here was Jake Barnes, rendered impotent in WWI, or so the common interpretation of the book said, and he still had a cool swagger about him, a confidence that would allow him to talk to any girl in any damn class. Shit, Jesse thought as he closed his book. Why couldn’t he be more like Jake?
After reading he stopped by the cafeteria to grab an early supper—he played it safe this time and had a couple bowls of cereal—then went to the Campus Center to see if Mike and Farhad, two guys that lived on his dorm floor, were playing pool, which they said they might be. No luck, but there were some open tables so he decided to hit a few racks.
Jesse’s mind followed its typical course as he played a game of 8-ball against himself. He imagined the black-haired girl was in his chemistry lab, working next to him, their counters a cityscape of test tubes and beakers. They would consult with each other about their work—wait a minute, the solution in his beaker turned green when it was supposed to be clear—and she would laugh amicably at his absent-minded mistake. Then he imagined he was playing pool with her, playing in a way Jake Barnes might have played with Brett Ashley, not minding the game so much, but basking in her company, a world of meaning swirling behind unspoken thoughts.
Jesse was so lost in his daydream that he didn’t notice the two girls who had entered the pool room until they spilled a tray of balls onto the table next to him, the clunking of the balls on the slate table startling him. He looked at them as blood flushed his face, sweat filled his pores.
He determinedly resumed his game. What was the big deal, after all? Just two people playing pool. What did it matter that they were two attractive girls? He didn’t even have to acknowledge them. He wouldn’t feel the same pressure if it were two guys. But there was an undeniable pull within him. He glanced at them, once, then again. They laughed, didn’t pay him the slightest mind. Good, he thought. I’m just playing pool here. No reason to think about anything else. He lined up a straight shot into the side pocket, but before he got it off someone bumped into him.
“Oops, sorry ‘bout that,” one of the girls said casually. Almost simultaneously Jesse stammered, “Excuse me…ah, no, no problem.”
“Go ahead,” she said, standing back so he could take his shot.
He leaned over the table feeling like a stadium full of people were watching him. Why did I say “Excuse me,” he thought. That was stupid; she bumped into me. Oh, just take the shot. Make the shot. But did it really sound that stupid?
He cocked his arm and followed through, the tip of the pool stick grazing the side of the cue ball, the cue ball traveling about three feet and hitting no other balls.
He stood up and faced the girl. “One of those days.”
She pursed her lips and nodded her head. A sign of understanding? Is that what that gesture was? Or was she patronizing him? Jesse stood near the end of his pool table. One of those days. That was a hackneyed thing to say. How do you respond to a remark like that? Weary old men who’ve never had an original thought in their lives say things like that. Greeters at WalMart say that, probably get a laugh out of it. Young guys looking to pick up girls don’t say that. Or was he overanalyzing it?
Jesse felt an urge to get the hell out of there, but he forced himself to finish the balls on his table—as nonchalantly as possible—and then promptly collected them from the pockets, returned them to the disinterested student working the counter, and made his exit without looking back.
Friday-night energy was palpable as he walked down his dorm hallway. A pop dance tune blended like vinegar and water with an alternative/metal song coming from the other end of the hall. Jesse put his hand on the doorknob to his room, but a familiar sound stopped him; heaving grunts and moans came from inside the room. Todd was a big person, probably about 6’2”, barrel-chested with a gut to match, and Meredith, having billowy curves Jesse had occasionally gone to bed dreaming about, was no Kate Moss. An image of a stampeding herd of some large African mammal—usually wildebeest, but sometimes elephants—entered Jesse’s head whenever he heard them having sex.
“They’ve been at it almost an hour,” Mike said, leaning his head out of his door, which was adjacent to Jesse’s. “You can hear everything through these walls.” He knocked on the white-washed cinderblock. “I feel like I’m sitting on the bed with them!”
“An hour’s nothing,” Jesse said as he followed Mike into his room. “They’ve gone a whole weekend before. They only got up to eat and use the bathroom. I had to sleep in Farhad’s room.”
“You’re a better roommate than I am,” Mike said.
Jesse just shrugged and helped himself to a Busch Light from a cube refrigerator that doubled as an end table. He sat on the worn, imitation green leather couch that divided the room—on one side Mike and his roommate’s bunk beds lay flush against the wall; on the other side unmatching Salvation Army furniture created a small living room-like area.
“Speaking of Farhad, you guys didn’t play pool today?”
“Nah. Farhad smoked right after lunch. I think he passed out in his room hours ago.”
“Was he playing that Hendrix song again?” Jesse asked, referring to Farhad’s newly discovered habit of playing the first couple bars of music to Jimi Hendrix’s “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” over and over and over again when he got stoned.
“I don’t know,” Mike answered. “That weirds me out. I didn’t want to find out.”
“He does do some strange things.”
“He’s a strange doood.” Mike mimicked the way Farhad spoke the word “dude,” elongating the vowel sound, his lips forming a tight O. Then, “Let’s play a game of Madden, you can pick the teams.”
Jesse and Mike played a game of John Madden football on Mike’s Playstation, Jesse taking the ’89 49ers and losing badly to Mike’s ’04 Browns. As they played the evening progressed like a typical Friday night: various people meandered into the room, rumors of a party here or there circulated, a foundation of a couple beers was laid into the bloodstream.
The rumbling from next door eventually stopped and Todd poked his head into Mike’s room. “Where you been,” he said to Jesse. “I was looking for you.”
“I hate to think where you were looking,” Jesse answered.
“A guy from the athletic office called, said something about a job you applied for. He said he’d be working at the gym tomorrow afternoon if you want to stop by. Ask for Ray.”
Jesse acknowledged Todd’s message with a disappointed groan, mostly because he wasn’t looking forward to a boring and low-paying work study job, but also because Dennis Northcutt juked Ronnie Lott and scored on a fifty-five yard touchdown reception.
Jesse had applied for several work study jobs, not favorably anticipating any of them, but the one at the athletic center was at the bottom of his list. Checking IDs at the front counter might be okay, but the job description also listed cleaning the locker rooms and shower and bathroom stalls. This seemed to be getting far
too up-close and personal with other people’s sweat and secretions for seven and a half dollars an hour.
He managed to forget his employment troubles as a small group of people from his floor ventured outside and moseyed along the lively city streets in search of a party. They were first denied entrance to an upper classman’s apartment. A guy wearing a tight-fitting designer t-shirt highlighting the V formed by his taut abdomen and muscular chest surveyed the group, said “Ahh, no” before they could even speak, and shooed them away like they were stray cats begging for food. They were more successful at their second stop, and were led down to a dim and musty basement where they jostled through a thick crowd to fill red plastic cups with cheap keg beer.
They commandeered a small area around a support beam as throngs of people moved like ocean currents around them. Music came from somewhere, though it was so muffled by the din of the crowd you couldn’t make out who it was.
As Jesse swilled his second cup of beer, he wondered if Hemingway would have put himself through this. He worked as a writer for a newspaper at 17 and drove an ambulance in WWI a couple years later. He drank out of wine skins on the lush Spanish countryside. But cheap keg beer in a dank cellar so loud you had to shout to speak to the person standing right next to you? Very doubtful, he