“She’s like a vulture hunkering above him,” I breathed. Melanie and I stared at each other in delight, and the Vulture was christened into being. This made it her karmic right to come right up to the two of us and glower.
“These are my housemates,” George said. He nodded at me. “This is the American.” The American. As if he wasn’t.
“I’ve heard about you,” Fiona said. She had rather obviously heard unpleasant things.
“I’ve heard about you,” I replied, easily.
“I also heard you that night you threw the party without asking our permission,” she continued.
“‘Our’?” Melanie queried politely. “Sorry, but you don’t live here.”
I noticed that when Melanie said it, no one turned purple or started shouting. I was going to have to learn tone control.
“That’s hardly the point,” Fiona said primly.
That was more than I could bear, and I broke for freedom, looking back to see George talking very close up in Melanie’s face. Fiona was simply looking vulture-ish and peeved. Melanie glared at me, then returned her mild attention to George.
“Who’s the ginger bloke?” Toby asked. He pronounced it with a hard g, to rhyme with “ringer.”
“My horrible American housemate,” I said. As if I wasn’t.
The alcohol supply was getting low, something I noticed only when an extraordinarily wasted Welshman started raging about it. This meant it was time to break into my private collection. Toby and I climbed the stairs to my room.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Beer, red or white wine, or vodka? I think I have some orange juice somewhere.”
Toby just flopped down on my bed and sighed deeply, as if exhausted.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked mildly, cracking open a beer.
“Lager, please,” Toby said, and I threw him one. I settled into my chair and lit a cigarette.
“Where’s that Cristina?” he asked, sitting up.
“Her crush turned up, they talked only to each other for ages, and have now disappeared.” I grinned. “We can only hope for the best.”
Toby considered. “It’s not going to happen. The bloke hasn’t actually made his position clear. He’s not going to. He wants Cristina panting after him. He’s a wanker.”
“So far he’s been compelling and exciting,” I argued.
Toby looked at me over his can of lager. “A wanker,” he repeated. “I’m a bloke. I’ve also behaved like a shit with every girl I’ve ever been with, so I’m an expert.” He smiled at me. “Trust me.”
“Right,” I scoffed.
“Go on then,” he said lazily, leaning back again. “Give us a fag.”
“You don’t smoke,” I reminded him.
“I do when I’m pissed,” he contradicted me. I never felt that it was my place to lecture people on the evils of tobacco, given my raging addiction. I just shrugged and tossed him one. He lit it and puffed away, almost pensively.
“Enjoying it?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say,” Toby said. “I don’t know how you can smoke as much as you do.”
“Years of practice.”
We finished the cigarettes, and then each took a bottle of wine.
Toby laughed. “They might be rioting by now. With no drink.”
“Hopefully they’re all too drunk to actually riot about anything.” I locked my door and traipsed down the stairs.
Toby and I were laughing when we walked back into the party, directly into Suzanne.
“Oh,” she said, looking back and forth between us.
“I’m going,” Toby said. He had to shout a bit.
The kitchen was even more packed than it had been earlier. Melanie and I were crowded into the corner, where I had gone to flee Suzanne and her wounded expressions. She had turned them on Toby in the absence of me, and I’d been more than happy to leave the two of them to it for the bulk of the night.
“Going?” I made a face at him. “It’s early.”
“It’s two in the morning.”
“As I said—early.”
“I,” he said grandly, “am a committed student, Alex. I have a great deal of reading to do tomorrow morning.”
“What about you and Suzanne?” I probed. “You looked pretty cozy over there.”
Toby shrugged and made an unreadable sort of face. “I don’t know. She left. She’s having a bit of a strop.”
“Did you make your position clear?” I asked lightly, remembering what he’d said about Cristina’s Physicist. An arrested sort of expression flickered across his face, then disappeared. Maybe it was the music, which was currently a terrible pop duet involving faded British stars.
“I have no position,” he said. “On Suzanne,” he clarified after a brief pause.
“All right then,” I said. “Call me tomorrow if you want to get some lunch. I’ll probably be getting up around then.”
“I can’t believe how lazy you are,” Toby said, smiling at me. “It’s why you Americans will never amount to much, all that lolling about and lying in till the afternoon.”
“Weren’t you leaving?” But I was smiling.
Which is when he leaned over and kissed me.
That’s right.
I might have concluded that in the presence of so many cheek-kissing Europeans, Toby had had a few too many and gotten carried away in the spirit. But this was no brief peck. Nothing parental or platonic about it. It was an “okay, baby, I’m going to bed, I’ll see you there” kind of a kiss. The fact that there was no tongue didn’t make it any less carnal.
I was so stunned and so unprepared that I didn’t react. At all.
“Okay,” I said in a perfectly normal voice. “Bye.”
Toby turned and left. I briefly wondered if it had even happened. Maybe it was just a strange flash from those weird dreams I’d had about him that night. Maybe I needed to drink less and pay more attention to my unhealthy sleep pattern—
“He kissed you,” Melanie observed from beside me.
“Yes,” I said. Maybe I was dazed. “I noticed that.”
Six
All of a sudden, it was Week Eight. I wasn’t really sure where the term had gone. I could remember the first days so clearly. Then everything seemed to have picked up speed. Each term began with Week Zero, during which time everyone milled around without classes and I got myself into trouble with Aryan Karl, who looked like the concentrated version of Billy Peterson, who broke my heart in the sixth grade. Then came the nine weeks of classes, though normally the final week was packed full of exams and papers and other such fun. It was as if I looked up from my desk one day and it was December. I couldn’t believe it was time for Christmas already.
First, however, there was my final seminar of the term. Having been a profound coward all term, I had failed to volunteer for the opening presentations Sean liked students to make in our theory classes. He liked them, we’d decided, because he was a sadistic bastard and also because he could have a quick chuckle at our stupidity to begin each class. Everyone had had their inevitable turn at the chopping block. When Sean had pretended not to know who was left, who hadn’t presented, I’d imagined briefly that I was saved. No such luck.
“Alex,” he’d said. He looked almost affectionate as he gazed at me. “I believe you have yet to have a go.”
I had been staring at a big book entitled Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism for hours—days maybe—but it wasn’t going away. I was going to have to make a presentation in front of the one person I could be certain (a) already thought I was an idiot and (b) I would freeze in front of because (c) I had such a huge crush on him I could hardly breathe through it. More than this, my mother kept leaving increasingly emotional messages on my voicemail about my plans for Christmas vacation and how her home was not a hotel, Robin had disappeared off the face of the earth, which I was interpreting as her suddenly hating me, and I was strangely nervous about going home to New York in the first place, b
ecause what if everyone thought I’d changed? Or worse—what if they didn’t? And oh yes, Toby had kissed me, which I refused to think about, much less discuss with anyone. He had probably been drunk, and I knew better than to accord drunken incidents any meaning. Melanie wisely refrained from mentioning the subject beyond a single morning-after raised eyebrow, and Toby himself behaved as if nothing had happened. Which it hadn’t. Why couldn’t anything ever be simple?
It seemed as if it were always dark. The days were short and grim and very cold. There was too much work and too many social implosions. Cristina, for a start, had suffered a complete sense-of-humor failure.
The night of our party, she’d spent the entire evening with the Physicist, having a fascinating conversation that spanned all kinds of topics, for hours on end.
“This man is so intelligent,” she told us. “The way his mind works. I could listen to him talk for days.”
They sat up talking of philosophy and physics, poetry and passion, economics, politics, ethics, graduate school, history, literature. They fell asleep curled up around each other on the Physicist’s narrow little bed. It was very chaste, very beautiful. She didn’t see him again for a week. As each day passed, she became more and more withdrawn.
“Go pound on his door,” Melanie advised.
“I really can’t,” Cristina said. “I was the one who followed him around that night with stars in my eyes. It is up to him to find me if he wishes. He knows where I live too.”
That was the week of Thanksgiving, a tremendously odd thing to celebrate in the midst of the mother country. I made a celebratory chicken pasta and forced Melanie and Cristina to share the meal with me. It didn’t take much forcing—we were all pretty much whores for any meal prepared by someone else.
“It’s about being with those you care about,” I said, raising a glass.
“Salud!” Cristina said.
“Cheers,” Melanie chimed in.
Our glasses clinked together and we all grinned.
This touching moment was, predictably, interrupted by George and the Vulture. The Vulture sneered down the length of her nose. Quite a sneer, in other words.
“Quite a celebration, Thanksgiving,” she snapped. “Did you Americans kill the Indians before, during, or after the meal?”
“I never celebrate it,” George sniffed. “It’s barbaric.”
I refrained from giving voice to my suspicion that George’s American life was probably singularly lacking in celebrations of any kind, if his ability to irritate others on this side of the Atlantic was anything to go by. I glared at his girlfriend instead.
“Who is ‘you Americans,’ exactly?” I demanded. “Do you mean the English expatriates who fled the religious intolerance over here? Or all the British second sons and commoners who were after a better life? Where do you think Americans came from?”
The Alex Brennan Thanksgiving Address: we all killed the Indians, so shut up, eat your turkey, and save the PC sermonizing.
“I think that’s glossing over the facts,” Fiona retorted snippily. She was, she had informed Melanie grandly, a student of political philosophy. “I study political philosophy,” she intoned as if on cue. “And I think you’ll find that—”
“Fiona,” I cut her off wearily. “I think you’ll find that we all agree that the United States was a British colony until roughly 1776.”
Cristina interrupted at this point to utter a malevolent-sounding stream of incomprehensible Spanish. Given the fact that we were sitting in a room lit only by candles, and Cristina herself was slouched into a chair and glaring evilly, the effect was like something out of a horror film. It was chilling.
“Good riddance,” Melanie sniffed, as Fiona and George made a dramatic exit.
“My life is shitty enough,” Cristina snapped. “I don’t need those two compromising my appetite.” She knocked back her wine with a graceful flick of her wrist.
“Yeah,” I agreed, darting a worried look at the former social butterfly. “Why does she think she can talk to us like that in our own house? What’s that all about? I don’t think she’d like it if I busted up into her house and started getting in her business.”
“She is unlikely to live in any house,” Cristina said, topping up her wine from the bottle in the middle of the table. “That one is more likely from beneath a rock.”
Melanie and I dragged her out to the pub that weekend.
“You might as well have tequila,” I said. “It pretty much cures all ills.”
“Or renders you utterly insensate,” Melanie agreed. “The next best thing.”
Cristina had spent the entire week in the same Angel of Death mode as at Thanksgiving. It wasn’t that I was opposed to it—quite the contrary. Most of the people I loved dearly were equally morose and embittered. It was just that Cristina had previously been so upbeat that the abrupt change was alarming.
We claimed a corner of the crowded pub, and Melanie demanded Cristina and I fetch the drinks. It was hard to even get near the bar, but I had been weaned on far more frightening mob scenes. I weaseled my way in, and turned back around slightly to look at Cristina.
“I don’t know why you’re so glum,” I said. “You don’t know anything yet. For all you know, you and the Physicist could be declaring your love for each other by the end of the night.” I should really learn not to make statements like that.
“True,” Cristina said, although she didn’t look convinced.
I passed her the drink she ordered, then paid. I loved the whole lack of tipping in bars. After all, why did they deserve a tip for handing you a bottle of beer? How hard was that? This was not something I planned to take up with the bartenders back in New York, however. Better to just pay them and attempt to curry their favor. The wrath of a New York City bartender was never something to be taken lightly, as I had cause to know personally. There were places I could never enter again, thanks to some youthful antics best left forgotten.
I was thinking about some of those antics, all of them unsavory, when I nearly tripped over Cristina. Who had come to a frozen standstill in the middle of the pub. Confused, I followed her gaze, and found the Physicist standing with another woman, laughing.
“Cristina, we can just leave,” I said into her ear.
She said nothing. So I watched with her as he left the other woman near the entrance and sauntered toward the bar. I watched the exact moment he spotted Cristina and the odd look that flickered across his face. He changed direction and walked toward us.
“I’ll see you at the table—” I began in an undertone.
“Don’t you dare leave!” she hissed.
The Physicist ambled over and stopped directly in front of her. I stared off into the middle distance and pretended I couldn’t see him. He flicked his dark, surprisingly intense gaze over me, and then returned it to Cristina.
Okay, I thought, I could see how that was kind of hot.
“Hello, Cristina,” he said. For some reason I was surprised that he was British, and that his voice was so clearly posh. Cristina was stiff.
“Hello, David,” she replied in a cold tone. David, I thought. Such a nice and normal name. I hadn’t actually known he had a name, previously.
“I wanted to see you,” he said. “I meant to come round.”
“Well,” Cristina said crisply. “Clearly, you didn’t really. Since you didn’t.”
“I had a really nice night, Cristina,” David said quietly.
“I did also,” she snapped.
There was a pause. I felt as if there were all kinds of things happening that I didn’t understand, undercurrents and messages and an awareness that passed me right by. The two of them stared at each other for a long, wordless moment. Cristina was the one who broke it, worrying her drink with her free hand. I saw her lips tighten, as if to ward off words she didn’t want to utter.
“I’ll see you,” David said gently, and moved off into the crowd.
“Let’s go,” Cristina snarled, and swept
back to the table Melanie had been holding down all this time.
“What’s happened?” Melanie asked, sounding a bit alarmed at the sight of Cristina’s face.
“What just happened?” Cristina demanded. “Did he feel obligated to speak to me? And if he did, what was he saying? ‘I meant to come round’?” She lit a cigarette with jerking motions and nodded at me. “You heard him. What did you think? What the hell was he doing?”
“I don’t know,” I said cautiously. “I don’t think he was actually being nasty, Cristina. I think he was trying to be nice.”
I related the exchange to Melanie as Cristina fumed and smoked her cigarette.
“Or in any case,” Melanie agreed, “not trying to be horrible.”
“Is he still standing over there?” Cristina asked me. “With that girl?”
I looked. He was laughing, angling his body down toward the woman in much the same way he’d done in our kitchen, with Cristina. “He’s still there,” I confirmed. “And if that’s his girlfriend or even his shag for tonight, I have to say, I’m unimpressed.”
“Deeply unimpressed,” Melanie agreed immediately. “In general, but particularly when stood next to you.”
“She’s skanky, and I don’t know why people who dye their hair that eggplant color—”
“Aubergine, Alex,” Melanie corrected me automatically.
“—never seem to realize that as it grows out it looks silly. She’s flat-chested and has big hips, and if he really wants the pear-shaped girl over you he’s a complete fucking asshole idiot who—”
“That’s the problem,” Cristina said quietly. “He’s really not.”
Just before Christmas the English department chose to return our papers, with comments. Sean Douglas, course convener, was on call to read the comments provided by two separate members of staff and add his own, smirking spin.