Night Falls on Baxter
Best friends Trevor and Louis stood outside Baxter Academic Center and took in the familiar view. It looked the same—ugly. Pale brown bricks of varying hues surrounded monolithic, vertically slender rectangular windows. The doorframes were graphite-grey, metallic affairs surrounding glass panels. The roof was horizontal, which made the building look from afar like a child’s fort made of enormous cardboard boxes. The building was a child of the 60s, architecturally out of place on the grounds of a boarding school—Westminster, by name—founded in the 19th century. But today, both boys wanted nothing more than to hear the strange air currents coursing through the building and to stroll through its long, boring halls again. Having played golf together that morning, they had decided on a nostalgic whim to drive up Williams Hill and take a last look through the building.
The Connecticut late-August sun shone on Trevor and Louis as they gazed up at Baxter. They had graduated that May and would be leaving for college—Trevor to Haverford, Louis to Amherst—in a couple days. Trevor hadn’t gotten into Amherst.
They stood on the driveway in front of Baxter, leaning on opposite sides of the metallic turd of a dumpster into which the construction crew had tossed furniture from the building that was not worth salvaging—battered bookcases from classrooms, rickety metal desk-chairs, and other general academic paraphernalia. In another corner of campus stood Baxter’s replacement, a $41 million behemoth called Armour Academic Center that would vault the school into the 21st century. It towered over every other building on the campus. Students snickered that it was visible from outer space. Baxter—the building that held particular significance for they and their fellow day students at this boarding school—was to become a parking lot. The building was scheduled for demolition in a week and both would be off to school long before then. This was their chance to give the Baxter its Last Rites.
“Shall we?” Trevor turned to Louis after a few minutes’ solemn regard of the edifice.
“Might as well,” Louis sighed.
Trevor closed his eyes as he gripped the handle on the door and pulled. Thousands of hands have touched this handle, he thought to himself. How many owners of those hands took that cool smoothness of the metal for granted? He knew he had on almost every occasion until this one. He stepped into the vestibule, holding the door for Louis. That strange whirring sound—screwy air currents—filled their ears as it had so many times before. The ghosts of Baxter groaned.
“Jesus Lou, they’ve taken everything,” Trevor murmured, agape at the denuded upper foyer. The earthy-red-brown brick walls were void of the rudimentary wooden benches that used to line them. Juniors and seniors had always hung out between classes in the square upper foyer, while freshmen and sophomores filled the lower foyer. The school veterans would peer over the railings down at the “children” and heckle them until a spoilsport teacher barked at them to knock it off. The open center of the lower foyer was a stage for the class clowns of the lower grades, who would sometimes tell jokes or act out funny scenes from popular movies in order to curry favor with their elders. Every sophomore dreamed of the day after graduation that year, when he or she would enjoy an exam week’s worth of acclimation to the upper foyer before enjoying it fully the next fall. This tradition would die with Baxter. It isn’t right, Trevor thought. It was like closing Radio City Music hall—inconceivable.
The near left corner of the upper foyer was the site of one of Trevor’s great personal achievements. When school lunch on Wednesday or Saturday—when school was in session until 11 AM—was unappetizing, he, Louis, and some of their fellow day students would order mountains of spicy chicken wings from a local pizza place. They would bicker about who would have to trudge down a steep hill to the edge of campus to meet the deliveryman, usually resorting to drawing lots. The “winner” would slink out and return shortly with a greasy cardboard box of pungent orange hunks of meat, bone, and cartilage. Trevor had eaten 35 wings in 25 minutes one Saturday in the January of his junior year. He had felt like Neil Armstrong. Now, his stomach growled.
The boys turned right and strode through more metal double-doors into the main upper floor hallway. Directly across from them was room number 35. The room was nearly empty, desolate. Posters of fractals, Fibonacci sequences, and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album were conspicuously absent. In their places were rectangles of vaguely brighter, cleaner regions of wall-plaster.
Louis leaned against the back wall and removed his purple Amherst Golf cap. “Christ, it’s Mr. Ulrich’s room,” he said. Peter Ulrich had been their soft-spoken but intense math teacher they had had junior year for Honors Pre-Calculus. Ulrich was notorious for issuing weekly problem sets that even the Asian math wiz kids struggled with. Lou had been an Ulrich acolyte, having been one of the only students they knew who appreciated the man’s teaching style—he almost always responded to a question with a question of his own. Lou was eager to study mathematics and economics at Amherst, in hopes of becoming an actuary or an investment banker. Trevor, on the other hand, had never enjoyed or excelled at math. He looked forward to taking a slew of creative writing and literature courses at Haverford.
Turning right and moving down the hall a distance, they arrived at room 33, which Trevor held in particular regard. He alone entered while Lou sought out the bathroom to take a piss.
It had been known as “The Thinkery”—the domain of one Todd Eckerson, an institution at Westminster. Eckerson was the philosophy department, mostly renowned for Moral Philosophy, a fairly basic survey of general ethics. Not bad for most high schoolers. However, Trevor had been one of seven students in a class of Eckerson’s called Philosophy and Literature (Louis took AP Statistics that year instead). Eckerson called it a “great books” class, as it covered such intellectually weighty tomes as The Iliad, the Bible, Pascal’s Thoughts, and St. Augustine’s Confessions, not to mention Dante’s Divine Comedy, Shakespeare’s The Tempest and even a smattering of Nietzsche. Eckerson would challenge students with pointed questions about Job, Pascal’s Wager, and which Circle of Hell Paris Hilton belonged in.
The main inhabitant of the walls of the Thinkery was a large framed print of Raphael’s “The School of Athens.” In the central figures of Plato and Aristotle Trevor saw himself and Louis. He was Plato, pointing upward, trying to grasp the ungraspable, the abstract. Louis was Aristotle, pointing at the world around—Lou was concerned with what existed concretely: answers. Eckerson had long since taken the print to his new classroom in Armour. Now the Thinkery was indistinguishable from the other empty chambers of Baxter.
They made their way through other rooms. Room 38 was the main computer lab, where Trevor, Louis, and some of their fellow day students would gather during mutual free time and play computer games like Unreal Tournament, a multiplayer battle game where up to ten of their fellow day student boys would try blow each other away with futuristic guns. All games had been outlawed by Mr. Reeves, whose temper flared more abruptly than a bolt of lightning. One’s chances of getting “be-Reeved,” however, were far, far greater.
Mr. Marco’s office was across from the computer lab. He was the Director of Studies for the school but more importantly Trevor and Louis’ golf coach and mentor. When both of them had a free period, they would sometimes sit on the couch in Marco’s office and distract him from his work, bantering and psyching themselves up for upcoming golf matches and tournaments. Their freshman year, Marco called both Trevor and Louis into his office to inform them that he had selected Lou as the last player for their squad at the regional tournament that year. Trevor had sat silently on the couch for ten minutes after receiving the news. Now there was no couch or bookshelves or framed photos of golf courses. It was another empty chamber in condemned Baxter. But there was a touching bit of color on these walls. Other visitors to the dying building had taken to writing their names or drawing pictures in permanent marker in some rooms, which would be rubble before long anyway. Trevor and Louis grabbed markers from a nearby classroom and signed the white concrete above where Mr. Marco’s mahogany desk once stood. Trevor’s left hand shook as he made his mark.
The auditorium was barren. All the chairs had been pulled up and carted off to who-knew-where. The entire student body gathered there for a half hour each Monday and Thursday morning, where weekly faculty and student announcements would be made. The auditorium could never quite accommodate the entire student body. As a result, students who missed out on getting a proper seat packed into the aisles so snugly that the room looked like an MC Escher print. Trevor recalled the smoothness of the seat cushions and the shampoo of the girls who would sit in front of him. Lavender, coconut, lemongrass, vanilla. The empty odor of dust now filled Trevor’s nose. All that remained of this great hall was the sloping floor with its dingy grey carpet, rent and shredded in places where chairs had been wrenched up from the floor.
The school bookstore, just outside the auditorium, had empty shelves. Where bags of chips, candy bars and bottles of water, juice and soda once waited, only air remained. No crumbs; only dust. Every Westminster student was assigned some sort of task that served the general upkeep of the building; some students wiped down chalkboards after school, others picked up paper and other trash from the floors of the foyers. Trevor had worked in the bookstore, learning how to use the computerized cashier system. Ms. Brownfield, a mountain of a woman, would bark admonishments at him whenever he hit the wrong key or took too long to ring someone up. But at the end of every shift, she let him take a candy bar or a bottle of soda for his trouble. Now the space held the counter and a few wire stands that would in a few days be buried and twisted from the wrecking crew’s work.
The sun was a bit lower now. The blue part of the sky darkened and the yellow part had turned a faint orange. Trevor and Louis were running out of time. They returned upstairs to their final stop, the library.
Darling Library was now anything but darling. Dull beige carpet dominated the scene. It used to be largely covered or at least interrupted by study tables, computer kiosks, and bookshelves, but now there was nothing to distract their gaze from the utter drabness of the floor. The computers had been hauled away weeks earlier. Only the one that had almost never worked properly in Trevor and Louis’ time remained, its circular speaker ports punctured, wires protruding. Standing on either side of the defunct machine, Trevor and Louis studied the room. They turned to each other.
“Remember that time you really pissed me off at this computer?” Trevor asked.
“I don’t think so. Wait—vaguely,” Louis replied. He squinted slightly, trying hard to remember, to relive.
Trevor grimaced. “February, junior year. I had to email Ulrich asking a question about the problem set and you were too damned busy playing some game right here at this very machine. All the other computers were taken, and you had a hell of a score going and ‘couldn’t leave it.’ I had to run clear across the building and fire it off. I was late to class, got detention. I don’t think I spoke to you for three days after that.”
“Heh, yeah, I remember,” Louis chuckled. “You were livid. You got over it though.”
Sure, Trevor thought, but that was my one detention. In four years. Shit. It was easy for Louis to brush that little tiff aside in his memory, for Louis had never had a detention. One detention was not going to ruin his life or anything, but Trevor prided himself on never screwing up at school. Louis had never apologized for causing the detention either.
There was an upstairs part of the library called the Perry Room, where students sometimes studied above the rest of the space. But Trevor and Louis had only ever played card games like Hearts or Spades with other day students after school there. The big tables where they had played were gone, as was the whiteboard they used for keeping score in their games. But surprisingly, a window that opened to the roof was open.
“Lou, not once was that window open in all our years here.”
“I don’t think so, Trev. Heck, let’s see the roof for the first time.”
The window would only open so much, and there was a sizable step down onto the roof. Furthermore, Trevor, while no fatass by any means, was not svelte either. He groaned as Louis stuffed him through the opening and he tumbled to his side with a thud onto the hot, black rubbery plastic roof covering. Louis laughed as Trevor, grumbling, brushed himself off.
After Trevor helped Louis ease himself down onto the roof, the two friends looked around. “How about that Lou? Four years at this school, and here we are taking in this view for the first time. Damn; we can see the balcony of Memorial Hall from up here. If only we’d known about this on those spring afternoons when girls would tan up there.”
Louis grinned. “Shit, sure. Bikinis.”
Trevor and Louis walked over to the edge to get a clearer panorama. The deep green lawns stretched out before them, interrupted by yellow and brown stately Tudor-style buildings. Trevor sat down, his feet dangling over the edge. Louis sat to his left, silently taking in the view. Trevor spoke after a couple minutes.
“Never again will we be such good friends as we are right now, Lou.”
Lou sighed, acknowledging the heavy truth of his best friend’s statement. Fighting back a tear, he replied, “We’ll always have Baxter.”
Evening was coming fast. The boys had to be going home, where each had a good deal of packing to do. Louis rose first from the edge of the roof and extended his right hand to Trevor, who took it and pulled himself to his feet. Walking over to the window back to the Perry Room, Trevor spied a chipped, red-orange brick that had fallen out of the outer wall of the building. He tried to pick it up gently but much of it fell away, leaving only a solid lump the size of a baseball. It would be his souvenir of the building.
They squeezed back into the Perry Room through the window, descended the stairs, crossed the library, and reemerged into the upper foyer. Like pallbearers, they processed around the corner and out the double-doors. Louis walked ahead towards the car, not wanting to look back for fear of more tears. But Trevor stopped in his tracks a moment. Facing Baxter one last time, he planted a kiss on the metal doorframe before striding down the stairs after his friend.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Creative Writing stories, #2: A Blizzard
A Blizzard
Thursday morning’s exam—Religion 101—“The Old Testament”—had been a piece of cake. Expounding on Genesis, the Book of Job, and the Song of Songs was easy for Jacob Feinberg, a good Jewish boy. After a few notebook pages on suffering and divine love, he found himself strolling out of Wilde Hall back to his dorm, where an empty suitcase awaited him. Once he opened the front door of Wilde he stopped dead in his tracks. He gazed out and noticed snow falling in cottonball-sized clumps on the lawn before him. There was a silence so deep it seemed as if G-d had pressed some grand “MUTE” button. Nothing moved except the snow. Oy vey, he thought to himself. Being from Coral Gables, Florida, he had never seen anything heavier than a snow flurry in person. Inhaling deeply, he donned his new red wool cap—the first one he had ever owned—and strode out into the snow.
He didn’t make it thirty feet before he was on his back, clenching his teeth and cursing the cold. The old, uneven brick walkway was quaint in dry months but under the half-inch film of snow that sat on it, it may as well have been sheer black ice. He clutched his right hip as he clambered to his feet. A pretty girl—a 6.5 if his ex-girlfriend Ginny was an 8—coming toward him had seen. Her body jerked forward as she struggled mightily not to double over from the sight of his folly. They passed each other silently but when she coughed behind him, he was sure it was to contain laughter.
Back at his room, the local TV news confirmed his fears: “Tallmadge County, Virginia is bracing for a potential record snow event as citizens are raiding local supermarkets for bread, milk, water, and firewood today,” chirped the news reader. Flights were being delayed and cancelled left and right from all area airports: Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Charlottesville. His flight was scheduled for departure at 5:55 PM out of Charlottesville. He packed his suitcase deliberately and solemnly, as if he were headed for a few years in prison rather than a couple weeks back home. His cell phone rang—Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” served as his ringtone—and he snatched it off the table. The outer screen read “HOME.” It was his mother.
“Jacob, they’ve cancelled your flight to Atlanta. Your father and I are looking into getting one for you Saturday night out of Charlottesville. Pack anyway, though. If you can get to the airport this evening, go ahead and get a room in a hotel nearby.” Her New-Yawk accent was comforting.
“You know that it’s already snowing here, don’t you Ma?” he replied. His two-wheel drive Honda wasn’t going to be any match for the highway.
“Well then get a ride with someone,” she said curtly. She was a caring but abrasive woman.
“Alright Ma; I’ll call you later. Love you.”
He was stuffing his toiletries case into the suitcase’s side compartment when two faint knocks came at his door. He whirled around and opened it. Before him, as he lived and breathed, stood Virginia “Ginny” O’Halloran. Her black wool cap and black winter coat contrasted with her milk-white skin and red hair. He started sweating.
“I heard your flight was cancelled,” she said. “Nikki Esposito was supposed to be heading back to Florida too and her airline cancelled.”
“That’s right,” Jacob replied. “What are you up to?”
“Well, that’s why I’m here. My mother and father are driving down from Charlottesville to get me and they wanted to know if you needed a ride since you’re supposed to fly out of Charlottesville. You can stay at our house tonight if you need to.”
It was an incredible stroke of luck that the O’Hallorans were willing to put Jacob up for a night—he wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. They were a solid Irish Catholic family and had liked Jacob well enough when he and Ginny were together, despite his being Jewish. He had sat with them at the Parents Weekend football game that October, chuckling at Mr. O’Halloran’s odd jokes. But when Jacob broke up with Ginny over Halloween weekend because he “didn’t see the relationship going anywhere”—code for “I want to be able to hook up with other girls if I want to”—they would have sided with their precious daughter. This invitation was either an olive branch or a chance for an inquisition.
Ginny continued, “They’ll be here in about an hour. Finish packing.” Four inches of snow were already on the ground.
The O’Hallorans arrived on time in their Chevy Suburban. Mrs. O’Halloran greeted Ginny with a hug and Jacob with an emotion-neutral hi-how-are-you-how-are-your-parents schtick. Mr. O’Halloran shook Jacob’s hand firmly—much more firmly than at their previous meeting, Jacob recalled. They set off for Charlottesville with the snow coming down in white sheets.
The landscape was a white apocalypse—every mile or two there were cars at all sorts of angles on the sides of the road with their flashers on. Others had glided clear off the highway and down onto the median snow-smothered grass. Mr. O’Halloran was singularly fixated on the road, silently guiding the vehicle forward at a quarter of the speed limit. Mrs. O’Halloran, who was by no means a quiet woman, said nothing from the other front seat. Perhaps she was remaining quiet so her husband could concentrate on the road. This, Jacob decided, was a pretty hopeful notion. Ginny was seated to Jacob’s right, behind Mrs. O’Halloran. She was engrossed in a Nicholas Sparks novel, which she read by the light of her cell phone. Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” came on the radio. Jacob saw Mr. O’Halloran’s eyes widen sharply in the mirror as he fumbled for the knob and switched the station to NPR as Billy Joel yowled, “Come out Virginia, don’t let me wait...”
After nearly three hours on the road, they arrived at the O’Halloran residence. Breaking her silence, Mrs. O’Halloran said a weary “Welcome,” as they opened the door and snow tumbled off their coats and onto the rug. Sitting in a chair in the living room, reading the family Bible, was Mary Jane O’Halloran, whom Jacob feared above the rest of the family combined. Though they were quite similar in stature, Mary Jane had not been blessed with her younger sister’s pretty face. She was plain, and it was clear that her plainness was a chip on her shoulder, for she held any boy Ginny dated in great disdain, especially a shyster like Jacob. And because sisters always tell each other everything, Jacob knew Mary Jane’s deepest ire was reserved for him, the Florida Yid who’d taken Ginny’s virginity. “Hello Jacob,” she said with a face that rivaled a gargoyle’s for stolidity.
“Hi Mary Jane,” he replied. “Home for the holidays from Cambridge?” She was a senior at Harvard and damned proud of it.
“Yeah, working on my thesis on a couple of Shakespeare’s problem plays, All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. I heard you’re staying with us tonight.” If looks could kill, Jacob thought. All he could do was nod.
Not ten minutes after they shook the snow from their shoes and set about warming up, the power went out. The wind had picked up from nothing to a breeze and then a gale—G-d’s own breath—likely sending some weary pine tree across a telephone pole to the ground. Everyone groaned in dismay at the darkness. Mr. O’Halloran dispatched his wife and daughters to find candles.
Jacob was now alone in the darkness with Mr. O’Halloran. The silence was a burden too great to bear for long. Jacob had the neurotic feeling that Mr. O’Halloran was staring straight at him, praying to Jesus for the destruction of the kike who had sullied his daughter’s good soul.
“Thank you kindly for letting me stay with you all tonight,” Jacob said.
“You’re a good kid, Jacob. We’re happy to help out a friend of Ginny’s at a time like this.”
“Thank you, Mr. O’Halloran.”
“I trust you will be nothing but a perfectly respectful guest in this house tonight.” His voice was just above a whisper, but Jacob caught every word.
“What do you—yes sir,” Jacob replied. Though the house was beginning to take on the chill from the snowstorm outside, Jacob was sweating, his skin clammy.
“Good, good. Girls, any luck with those candles?” Mr. O’Halloran called into the darkness in the direction of the kitchen.
Mrs. O’Halloran emerged holding a large, short cylinder candle that had just been lit. Her daughters followed behind her, each holding in one hand a red glass candlestick and steadying the white candle inside it with the other. They flanked her like maids assisting an ancient queen during a sacred ritual. Slowly they walked to different tables and placed the candles there, illuminating the room in the familiar, haunting amber color of firelight.
From the drawer inside the table in front of the couch where he sat, Mr. O’Halloran produced a deck of cards with a miniature picture of the Last Supper on the back. “Let’s play a while, since there’s little else to do,” he said.
“I’m going to go read in bed with a flashlight,” said Mary Jane, and she slunk off, though not before giving Jacob the stink-eye. Hateful shiksa.
“Always studying, that one,” whispered Mrs. O’Halloran after the beam from Mary Jane’s flashlight had disappeared around the corner. “I hope she finds some time to have fun up at Harvard.”
“I’m sure she does, Mom,” Ginny said airily. It was the first time she had spoken in a great while.
The four of them played Hearts. Ginny was partners with Jacob and Mr. and Mrs. O’Halloran comprised the opposing team. Mr. O’Halloran was a competitive man who wasn’t above the occasional passive-aggressive jibe. “Played that jack of spades a bit early there, eh Jacob?” he chuckled after a particularly decisive hand. But when Ginny and the Jew successfully shot the moon a half dozen hands later, Jacob beamed but did not dare look Mr. O’Halloran in the eye. Ginny squealed with delight and mussed Jacob’s hair across the table. It was the first acknowledgment she had given him all evening. Back when they were together, she would often tousle his hair when she was pleased with him. Now, he blushed a little bit. Luckily it was too dim for anyone to see.
Mr. and Mrs. O’Halloran decided to call it an evening at around 8:30 PM. Mrs. O’Halloran searched out another candle and showed Jacob to the guest room—clear on the other side of the house—where the bed was made and ready for him. Thanking Mrs. O’Halloran, Jacob followed her back to the kitchen for a glass of water. Ginny was nursing a small glass of grape juice and nibbling at a ginger snap at the table. Jacob sat down across from her. The candle burned to his right and shone upon her hair. It reminded him of the third date they had had, at a fancy restaurant in town at school. After seeing a movie, they returned to campus and made love, both for the first time, in his bed. He smiled at the memory as he sipped his water and he glanced at her. She seemed to be recalling the same experience, given the smile she too wore.
Tracing the rim of his half-empty glass with his index finger, Jacob wondered why on earth he had broken up with Ginny. She had never been disloyal or bitchy, shared his sense of humor, and was great in bed. He had become accustomed to her and had grown stupidly jealous at the relative sexual freedom of many of his buddies, who would share stories of getting drunk at parties and hooking up with this girl or that. He had made the dating-rookie mistake of taking his woman for granted and going off in search of new blood. He hadn’t even so much as kissed another girl since breaking up with Ginny. What a schmuck, he thought. In the orange glow of the candle between them, he decided to set about getting her back as soon as possible.
Mrs. O’Halloran cleared her throat and announced that she was going to bed. Ginny dutifully followed both upstairs and both bade Jacob good-night. Having placed his glass in the sink, Jacob took the candle from the table and made his way back to the guest room. He blew out the candle and settled into bed in the darkness as the wind tossed the snow-laden trees’ limbs back and forth outside.
A couple hours later, Jacob was awakened by a kiss on the cheek. She whispered into his left ear, “Jacob, I need you. I have to have you.”
His reply: “Here? Now? In your parents’ house? Are you crazy?”
“Do you want me or not?” she cooed. She nibbled at his ear. This was a stroke of remarkable, almost unreasonably good luck. It seemed she wanted him back as much as he wanted her. He would not waste this opportunity. Crazy shiksa, he thought to himself.
“Come here,” he replied, full of desire.
Her hands moved over him and she slid into the bed, already naked, in the pitch-blackness. Ginny certainly was crazy, but in a very, very good way; that side had been unleashed after they had had sex a few times. He felt the familiar smooth skin of her back under his fingers and could not resist her. When they were finished, she put her nightgown back on and slunk out the door. Exhilarated, Jacob returned to sleep. She was his again.
The electricity returned and the snow tapered off by morning, leaving twenty-two inches over Charlottesville. The O’Hallorans and Jacob shoveled quietly, extricating the Suburban from the drifts. The roads were still slow going, but a call to the airport confirmed that Jacob’s new flight, the 12:55 PM, would be departing on time. When 11 o’clock rolled around, it was time to leave for the airport. Mr. O’Halloran offered to drive Jacob himself. Mrs. O’Halloran, Ginny and Mary Jane saw him off. He hugged Mrs. O’Halloran and waved awkwardly to Mary Jane—that plain, hateful girl. As he embraced Ginny in turn, he whispered in her ear, “Last night was incredible. Thank you.” She furrowed her brow. He shrugged it off.
As he climbed into the front seat of the Suburban, he looked in the side view mirror and saw Mary Jane beaming and biting her lip, her eyes burning. She waved excitedly, her smile broadening. “Only the Good Die Young” was on the radio again. Billy Joel sang, “Ah but they never told you the price that you pay/For things that you might have done...”
Jacob went as white as the snow outside.
Thursday morning’s exam—Religion 101—“The Old Testament”—had been a piece of cake. Expounding on Genesis, the Book of Job, and the Song of Songs was easy for Jacob Feinberg, a good Jewish boy. After a few notebook pages on suffering and divine love, he found himself strolling out of Wilde Hall back to his dorm, where an empty suitcase awaited him. Once he opened the front door of Wilde he stopped dead in his tracks. He gazed out and noticed snow falling in cottonball-sized clumps on the lawn before him. There was a silence so deep it seemed as if G-d had pressed some grand “MUTE” button. Nothing moved except the snow. Oy vey, he thought to himself. Being from Coral Gables, Florida, he had never seen anything heavier than a snow flurry in person. Inhaling deeply, he donned his new red wool cap—the first one he had ever owned—and strode out into the snow.
He didn’t make it thirty feet before he was on his back, clenching his teeth and cursing the cold. The old, uneven brick walkway was quaint in dry months but under the half-inch film of snow that sat on it, it may as well have been sheer black ice. He clutched his right hip as he clambered to his feet. A pretty girl—a 6.5 if his ex-girlfriend Ginny was an 8—coming toward him had seen. Her body jerked forward as she struggled mightily not to double over from the sight of his folly. They passed each other silently but when she coughed behind him, he was sure it was to contain laughter.
Back at his room, the local TV news confirmed his fears: “Tallmadge County, Virginia is bracing for a potential record snow event as citizens are raiding local supermarkets for bread, milk, water, and firewood today,” chirped the news reader. Flights were being delayed and cancelled left and right from all area airports: Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Charlottesville. His flight was scheduled for departure at 5:55 PM out of Charlottesville. He packed his suitcase deliberately and solemnly, as if he were headed for a few years in prison rather than a couple weeks back home. His cell phone rang—Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” served as his ringtone—and he snatched it off the table. The outer screen read “HOME.” It was his mother.
“Jacob, they’ve cancelled your flight to Atlanta. Your father and I are looking into getting one for you Saturday night out of Charlottesville. Pack anyway, though. If you can get to the airport this evening, go ahead and get a room in a hotel nearby.” Her New-Yawk accent was comforting.
“You know that it’s already snowing here, don’t you Ma?” he replied. His two-wheel drive Honda wasn’t going to be any match for the highway.
“Well then get a ride with someone,” she said curtly. She was a caring but abrasive woman.
“Alright Ma; I’ll call you later. Love you.”
He was stuffing his toiletries case into the suitcase’s side compartment when two faint knocks came at his door. He whirled around and opened it. Before him, as he lived and breathed, stood Virginia “Ginny” O’Halloran. Her black wool cap and black winter coat contrasted with her milk-white skin and red hair. He started sweating.
“I heard your flight was cancelled,” she said. “Nikki Esposito was supposed to be heading back to Florida too and her airline cancelled.”
“That’s right,” Jacob replied. “What are you up to?”
“Well, that’s why I’m here. My mother and father are driving down from Charlottesville to get me and they wanted to know if you needed a ride since you’re supposed to fly out of Charlottesville. You can stay at our house tonight if you need to.”
It was an incredible stroke of luck that the O’Hallorans were willing to put Jacob up for a night—he wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. They were a solid Irish Catholic family and had liked Jacob well enough when he and Ginny were together, despite his being Jewish. He had sat with them at the Parents Weekend football game that October, chuckling at Mr. O’Halloran’s odd jokes. But when Jacob broke up with Ginny over Halloween weekend because he “didn’t see the relationship going anywhere”—code for “I want to be able to hook up with other girls if I want to”—they would have sided with their precious daughter. This invitation was either an olive branch or a chance for an inquisition.
Ginny continued, “They’ll be here in about an hour. Finish packing.” Four inches of snow were already on the ground.
The O’Hallorans arrived on time in their Chevy Suburban. Mrs. O’Halloran greeted Ginny with a hug and Jacob with an emotion-neutral hi-how-are-you-how-are-your-parents schtick. Mr. O’Halloran shook Jacob’s hand firmly—much more firmly than at their previous meeting, Jacob recalled. They set off for Charlottesville with the snow coming down in white sheets.
The landscape was a white apocalypse—every mile or two there were cars at all sorts of angles on the sides of the road with their flashers on. Others had glided clear off the highway and down onto the median snow-smothered grass. Mr. O’Halloran was singularly fixated on the road, silently guiding the vehicle forward at a quarter of the speed limit. Mrs. O’Halloran, who was by no means a quiet woman, said nothing from the other front seat. Perhaps she was remaining quiet so her husband could concentrate on the road. This, Jacob decided, was a pretty hopeful notion. Ginny was seated to Jacob’s right, behind Mrs. O’Halloran. She was engrossed in a Nicholas Sparks novel, which she read by the light of her cell phone. Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” came on the radio. Jacob saw Mr. O’Halloran’s eyes widen sharply in the mirror as he fumbled for the knob and switched the station to NPR as Billy Joel yowled, “Come out Virginia, don’t let me wait...”
After nearly three hours on the road, they arrived at the O’Halloran residence. Breaking her silence, Mrs. O’Halloran said a weary “Welcome,” as they opened the door and snow tumbled off their coats and onto the rug. Sitting in a chair in the living room, reading the family Bible, was Mary Jane O’Halloran, whom Jacob feared above the rest of the family combined. Though they were quite similar in stature, Mary Jane had not been blessed with her younger sister’s pretty face. She was plain, and it was clear that her plainness was a chip on her shoulder, for she held any boy Ginny dated in great disdain, especially a shyster like Jacob. And because sisters always tell each other everything, Jacob knew Mary Jane’s deepest ire was reserved for him, the Florida Yid who’d taken Ginny’s virginity. “Hello Jacob,” she said with a face that rivaled a gargoyle’s for stolidity.
“Hi Mary Jane,” he replied. “Home for the holidays from Cambridge?” She was a senior at Harvard and damned proud of it.
“Yeah, working on my thesis on a couple of Shakespeare’s problem plays, All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure. I heard you’re staying with us tonight.” If looks could kill, Jacob thought. All he could do was nod.
Not ten minutes after they shook the snow from their shoes and set about warming up, the power went out. The wind had picked up from nothing to a breeze and then a gale—G-d’s own breath—likely sending some weary pine tree across a telephone pole to the ground. Everyone groaned in dismay at the darkness. Mr. O’Halloran dispatched his wife and daughters to find candles.
Jacob was now alone in the darkness with Mr. O’Halloran. The silence was a burden too great to bear for long. Jacob had the neurotic feeling that Mr. O’Halloran was staring straight at him, praying to Jesus for the destruction of the kike who had sullied his daughter’s good soul.
“Thank you kindly for letting me stay with you all tonight,” Jacob said.
“You’re a good kid, Jacob. We’re happy to help out a friend of Ginny’s at a time like this.”
“Thank you, Mr. O’Halloran.”
“I trust you will be nothing but a perfectly respectful guest in this house tonight.” His voice was just above a whisper, but Jacob caught every word.
“What do you—yes sir,” Jacob replied. Though the house was beginning to take on the chill from the snowstorm outside, Jacob was sweating, his skin clammy.
“Good, good. Girls, any luck with those candles?” Mr. O’Halloran called into the darkness in the direction of the kitchen.
Mrs. O’Halloran emerged holding a large, short cylinder candle that had just been lit. Her daughters followed behind her, each holding in one hand a red glass candlestick and steadying the white candle inside it with the other. They flanked her like maids assisting an ancient queen during a sacred ritual. Slowly they walked to different tables and placed the candles there, illuminating the room in the familiar, haunting amber color of firelight.
From the drawer inside the table in front of the couch where he sat, Mr. O’Halloran produced a deck of cards with a miniature picture of the Last Supper on the back. “Let’s play a while, since there’s little else to do,” he said.
“I’m going to go read in bed with a flashlight,” said Mary Jane, and she slunk off, though not before giving Jacob the stink-eye. Hateful shiksa.
“Always studying, that one,” whispered Mrs. O’Halloran after the beam from Mary Jane’s flashlight had disappeared around the corner. “I hope she finds some time to have fun up at Harvard.”
“I’m sure she does, Mom,” Ginny said airily. It was the first time she had spoken in a great while.
The four of them played Hearts. Ginny was partners with Jacob and Mr. and Mrs. O’Halloran comprised the opposing team. Mr. O’Halloran was a competitive man who wasn’t above the occasional passive-aggressive jibe. “Played that jack of spades a bit early there, eh Jacob?” he chuckled after a particularly decisive hand. But when Ginny and the Jew successfully shot the moon a half dozen hands later, Jacob beamed but did not dare look Mr. O’Halloran in the eye. Ginny squealed with delight and mussed Jacob’s hair across the table. It was the first acknowledgment she had given him all evening. Back when they were together, she would often tousle his hair when she was pleased with him. Now, he blushed a little bit. Luckily it was too dim for anyone to see.
Mr. and Mrs. O’Halloran decided to call it an evening at around 8:30 PM. Mrs. O’Halloran searched out another candle and showed Jacob to the guest room—clear on the other side of the house—where the bed was made and ready for him. Thanking Mrs. O’Halloran, Jacob followed her back to the kitchen for a glass of water. Ginny was nursing a small glass of grape juice and nibbling at a ginger snap at the table. Jacob sat down across from her. The candle burned to his right and shone upon her hair. It reminded him of the third date they had had, at a fancy restaurant in town at school. After seeing a movie, they returned to campus and made love, both for the first time, in his bed. He smiled at the memory as he sipped his water and he glanced at her. She seemed to be recalling the same experience, given the smile she too wore.
Tracing the rim of his half-empty glass with his index finger, Jacob wondered why on earth he had broken up with Ginny. She had never been disloyal or bitchy, shared his sense of humor, and was great in bed. He had become accustomed to her and had grown stupidly jealous at the relative sexual freedom of many of his buddies, who would share stories of getting drunk at parties and hooking up with this girl or that. He had made the dating-rookie mistake of taking his woman for granted and going off in search of new blood. He hadn’t even so much as kissed another girl since breaking up with Ginny. What a schmuck, he thought. In the orange glow of the candle between them, he decided to set about getting her back as soon as possible.
Mrs. O’Halloran cleared her throat and announced that she was going to bed. Ginny dutifully followed both upstairs and both bade Jacob good-night. Having placed his glass in the sink, Jacob took the candle from the table and made his way back to the guest room. He blew out the candle and settled into bed in the darkness as the wind tossed the snow-laden trees’ limbs back and forth outside.
A couple hours later, Jacob was awakened by a kiss on the cheek. She whispered into his left ear, “Jacob, I need you. I have to have you.”
His reply: “Here? Now? In your parents’ house? Are you crazy?”
“Do you want me or not?” she cooed. She nibbled at his ear. This was a stroke of remarkable, almost unreasonably good luck. It seemed she wanted him back as much as he wanted her. He would not waste this opportunity. Crazy shiksa, he thought to himself.
“Come here,” he replied, full of desire.
Her hands moved over him and she slid into the bed, already naked, in the pitch-blackness. Ginny certainly was crazy, but in a very, very good way; that side had been unleashed after they had had sex a few times. He felt the familiar smooth skin of her back under his fingers and could not resist her. When they were finished, she put her nightgown back on and slunk out the door. Exhilarated, Jacob returned to sleep. She was his again.
The electricity returned and the snow tapered off by morning, leaving twenty-two inches over Charlottesville. The O’Hallorans and Jacob shoveled quietly, extricating the Suburban from the drifts. The roads were still slow going, but a call to the airport confirmed that Jacob’s new flight, the 12:55 PM, would be departing on time. When 11 o’clock rolled around, it was time to leave for the airport. Mr. O’Halloran offered to drive Jacob himself. Mrs. O’Halloran, Ginny and Mary Jane saw him off. He hugged Mrs. O’Halloran and waved awkwardly to Mary Jane—that plain, hateful girl. As he embraced Ginny in turn, he whispered in her ear, “Last night was incredible. Thank you.” She furrowed her brow. He shrugged it off.
As he climbed into the front seat of the Suburban, he looked in the side view mirror and saw Mary Jane beaming and biting her lip, her eyes burning. She waved excitedly, her smile broadening. “Only the Good Die Young” was on the radio again. Billy Joel sang, “Ah but they never told you the price that you pay/For things that you might have done...”
Jacob went as white as the snow outside.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Creative Writing stories, #1: "The Ask-Out"
Hey, I'm back! After a couple busy months, I actually have time to post something AND something to post as well. I took a Creative Writing course this Winter Term at school, which required us all to write three stories and ultimately revise and turn in two of them. In order to determine which two I liked best, I decided to write final versions of all of them. The first story I'm sharing with you all is the one that I decided not to hand in. That doesn't necessarily make it crap, though. Maybe it is, but read it and let me know. Without further ado...
The Ask-Out
He was starting to sweat. It was not the sweat of physical exertion but of pure anguish. It was an unexpected sweat. A sweat of indeterminate temperature such that he shivered without any apparent cause for shivering. Sneaky sweat.
Neither of them had class at this time of day. He knew that she would be studying at her usual table in the library. He peered at her through the rectangular slit window in the main door to the library, her long, dark amber hair in a simple ponytail. She wore a cream-colored sweater, navy skirt, and navy leggings—she was always immaculately, modestly dressed. He stood in deep thought about how he might best approach her. Should he go directly to her and ask her out point-blank? Should he put his books down at another table first? If so, should he walk by her and draw her attention on the way to said other table? The sheer number of methods of approach was maddening. He felt like a military general who had no idea how best to position his troops.
He was no General Patton, so he decided to just wing it. He had never winged anything before but then again, he had never asked a girl out, so god only knew what would work. He trusted his subconscious to lead him to the Promised Land—in this case, maybe dinner and a movie. Hell, he was surprised to have made as much progress as he had in the courtship game the last few months. He had wondered about this moment for nearly half a year. It was late January, and his dreams of going out with her had stewed in his head since September.
His feet were moving but he had no idea to where. He felt controlled by a consciousness that stemmed from outside his head. In a fog, he veered to the left of the path that would have taken him straight to her, darting between two chest high wooden bookshelves that housed the school’s Encyclopedia Brittanica. A few more seconds of automatic movement and he noticed his load was lighter—he had shuffled off his backpack over by the computers. He then found himself striding confidently toward her, smiling as warmly as he could. He reached her side at last and she glanced up from her work. Those beautiful deep brown eyes, he thought. They met his own and he snapped out of his quasi-autopilot. She cleared her throat and he glanced quickly out the window at the snow-covered school quad. The ice from last week’s freezing rain still clung to the naked tree limbs. The cavernous room was silent; only the faint rustle of paper in the librarian’s office could be heard.
~ ~ ~
Katelyn Price had beguiled Tim ever since freshman year, when they were in the same Ancient History class. He had sat directly behind her, enamored with the cascade of her not-quite-blond, not-quite-brown hair. They were “friends” on Facebook but nothing more. He had enjoyed perusing her pictures ever since they became “friends.” She was gorgeous; about five feet six inches, with eyes that seemed to change color from one day to the next, modulating between brown and hazel-green. Her frame was lean but she thankfully did not look like the girls who subsisted on breath mints and the occasional salad. And unlike the girls who did not feel pretty unless their skirts were too short to leave much to the imagination, Katelyn dressed smartly, and her modesty made her sexy.
It was junior year, and Tim was elated to find that he and Katelyn once again had a class together: English. Maybe this would provide a pretext for them to converse. Having spent all of freshman year too chicken to talk to her, he resolved to get to know her somehow this year.
For the first few months of class he could manage no more than a shaky “good morning” to her, but one day in early December saw a perfect opportunity for Tim to lay the groundwork for proper acquaintance. The English department always found a way to incorporate Shakespeare into the curriculum—standard practice for a prep school with a bit of a Briton complex. That day, the Bard’s Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?”). The teacher frequently called on students to read poems aloud prior to discussing them, and so Tim hoped that if he read the sonnet aloud and with gusto, Katelyn would appreciate his sensitivity and eloquence. What if he glanced at her at key points in the poem while he read it? Would she be moved by such a gesture? Would she be creeped out? He decided to keep the glance count to one, at the very end: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/So long lives this and this gives life to thee.” This would be a Grand Romantic Hook for sure.
Sure enough, the teacher called for a reader for Sonnet 18. Sure enough, no one raised a hand at first. And sure enough, Tim was called on when his own shot up—not too eagerly, he hoped. He proceeded confidently through much of the poem but his heart began beating harder and faster as he neared the critical final lines. He stumbled over the fourth-to-last line: “Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade.” He stuttered at “wander’st” and his voice cracked. He took a deep breath and hurried on through the rest of the poem, forgetting to look at Katelyn at all. It was just as well; his attempt at a Grand Romantic Hook had fallen flat.
Tim decided that since he was no Cicero, he would employ the pen (or keyboard) instead of the tongue. He contrived to engage her on Facebook IM and with winged words win her affection!—or at least get to know her and let her get to know him, whether she liked it or not. While lying in bed studying at home one Friday evening in early January, he noticed the name Katelyn Price illuminated along with his other Facebook “friends” who were online at the time. His heart started pounding and he began sweating a sneaky sweat. Gutless, he stalled for time, checking his email four times in the space of ten minutes and getting up for a glass of water to wet his rapidly drying tongue. He was stalling, but his curiosity trumped his anxiety in the end. He swallowed hard, fingers trembling as he typed in the message box and pressed ‘SEND.’
TIM [8:37 pm] Hey there Katelyn
Hey there Katelyn? Was he trying to seem like a pervert? He might as well have said What’s shakin’ baby doll? She responded quickly:
KATELYN [8:37 pm] heyy Tim
She had not ignored him; he had cleared the first hurdle. Was there any meaning in the second Y? A typo? A casual, friendly informality? He was encouraged.
TIM [8:38 pm] how are you doing this evening?
KATELYN [8:38 pm] pretty good, how about you?
Thank goodness she didn’t totally adhere to the needlessly terse Internet parlance with abbreviations like “u” for “you.” He let her misuse of a comma slide.
TIM [8:38 pm] I’m well; can’t complain…how are you?
You already asked her how she’s doing, shithead. He felt his ship of courtship taking on water before it had even left port. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, waiting for the familiar pop that signaled a response. It came, and he braced for the worst.
KATELYN [8:40 pm] haha good good, what’s up?
He had not scared her off after all! Not yet, anyway. He forged on, hoping his game would improve in a hurry.
TIM [8:40 pm] not too much, I guess; I was wondering, however, if you might know what pages we need to read in Catcher in the Rye for English class on Monday
Being a diligent student, Tim knew the answer to this query, but he could think of no other immediate means of conversation extension.
KATELYN [8:41 pm] sure thing, one sec, let me check
TIM [8:41 pm] thanks, I’m much obliged
Much obliged? Who are you, some Southern politician? Three or four minutes passed and no reply came. He shifted back and forth under his covers, no longer comfortable in this position or that. But pop went his computer soon enough:
KATELYN [8:47 pm] hey sorry about that, I think its chapters 5 through 9
TIM [8:47 pm] excellent, thanks very much Katelyn
KATELYN [8:47 pm] youre welcome Tim
He was relieved that even though she neglected its apostrophe, she at least put the E on the end of “youre.” His anxiety began to wane as he reveled in having carried on an online conversation with her for nine full minutes. He was Harry Potter fighting against the Lord Voldemort of his timidness! He was Captain Picard making First Contact! He had made it further than he would have expected himself to.
Perhaps he was turning a corner, preparing to put himself out for romantic acceptance or rejection by that most fickle beast, Teenage Woman, for the first time in his life. Even though his manner around his fellow “guys” was energetic and sometimes downright obstreperous, he had always been shy about girls, never having been kissed and only a few times hugged, other than by his mother. Even when his male friends discussed what girls were “hot,” he kept mum. He had always fancied himself a sure-thing kind of guy, and while he did not pretend to know much about life’s principal intricacies, he knew enough to know that women were never a sure thing.
This reflection on the achievement of communicating briefly with Katelyn caused him to zone out. A full seven minutes had passed since she had sent her last message dangling, neglected. Did she think he had just abruptly ended the conversation without a proper good-bye? He was eager to keep chatting with her but his self-congratulation had caused him to lose focus on continuing to talk to her. He was mortified again, his wild heart jumping up and down in its chest cavity cage, enraged and fearful. His eyes went wide as he scrambled to think of anything to say but came up empty. He perked up when he heard the pop sound again.
KATELYN [8:54 pm] hey are you going to the hockey game tomorrow night?
It was an unexpected, pleasant surprise. She had messaged him twice in a row! And after a long pause, no less! Like the feet of Fred Astaire his fingers fluttered over the keys.
TIM [8:54 pm] definitely; I’ll see you there, I imagine
KATELYN [8:54 pm] you bet! we’re gonna kick some Taft ass!
He was caught off-guard by her cursing. He did not tend to use such invective, but he secretly enjoyed when girls did.
TIM [8:55 pm] heck yes we are! 2 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, right?
KATELYN [8:55 pm] thats right! See you there!
KATELYN [8:56 pm] hey Tim I’ve gotta run, I’ll see you tomorrow at the game
TIM [8:56 pm] alrighty; bye Katelyn!
KATELYN [8:56 pm] byee xoxo
Did she really just…xoxo? His heart soared at the possibility of what those four characters meant. Two hugs and two kisses! Perhaps she was into him. Perhaps he had just paved the road towards his first kiss and more! The perhapses flew through his mind like a hundred shooting stars. He was beaming now, awed by the possibilities established by this conversation. As he grew more tired, so his thoughts moderated. Let’s get her phone number first. Maybe go out to dinner and/or a movie.
He woke up early the next morning and showered. He showered almost exclusively at night, but today he wanted to look his freshest for her. He applied a modest amount of his favorite eau de toilette, which smelled deliciously of orange. He then decked himself out in black pants, a black turtleneck and his golden yellow Superfan t-shirt. Most everyone who attended big school sporting events wore black and gold—the school colors. He did not don such regalia often, but this was not an ordinary occasion. He looked himself over in the mirror—a rarity—before heading downstairs. He was ready to continue his dogged pursuit of Katelyn Price.
He arrived at the game just as students were beginning to pour in and both teams were taking their warm-up laps around the rink. He took his place just shy of center ice, in the front row, knowing that Katelyn often stood with her friends in the second row. They would be in the middle of the cheering throng of home-team faithful. There would be plenty of time to chat in between plays and periods, during which time he would engage her in conversation eventually leading to an exchange of cell phone numbers.
His fellow students and Superfans streamed in like iron filings to a magnet and soon the black and gold mass was enormous, murmuring, cheering for some of the team’s luminaries. The visiting team brought a busload of fans as well, dressed in crimson and navy blue. It was going to be a raucous game. Only bad blood could come out of the competing cheering sections.
Katelyn still hadn’t arrived by the time the opening puck dropped. Tim was sweating that sneaky sweat again. He cheered only with half his normal voice. His heart thumped in his chest with brutal monotony.
Each team collected a goal in the first period and everyone sat down when the horn sounded for the intermission. As Tim turned around to find his seat, there she was, beaming at the Zamboni. She was radiant, her hair hanging freely this time. She was looking mighty, mighty nice in her Superfan t-shirt, which clung to her curves perfectly. Had she dressed that way for him? Their eyes met. His heart beat differently.
She smiled down at him from her seat in the row behind him. Her eyes were an exotic green-hazel today. “Hey Tim! You made it!”
His own smile was ten miles wide. “I sure did; wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he replied. What a fucking cliché. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. God, she’s beautiful.
He was doing it again. He had nothing else to say. Tim, who would win the “Most Talkative” superlative in the school yearbook when he graduated, had nothing to say. Mortified, he turned around and waited for the game to pick back up. A few minutes later, a whistle from the referee stopped play momentarily and he decided to give it another shot. He stammered, “So Katelyn, did you enjoy the reading in Catcher in the Rye last night?”
“Oh I just SparkNoted it. I had to write a U.S. History paper last night. ”
He sputtered, “I see, I see. Well…” Katelyn smiled warmly but raised a skeptical eyebrow, knowing that Tim had trailed off. It was no use. He was failing miserably at male-female smalltalk, a basic skill of Courtship 101. The referee blew the whistle again and Katelyn fixed her eyes back on the game. Tim turned around, sweating again.
The home team was victorious by a score of 4-2. Everyone left the rink on an adrenaline high except the opposing fans and Tim, who still could not believe his silence in the presence of someone so lovely, so unreasonably sweet. If only he could conquer his irrational fear of talking to her past a few seconds’ awkward pleasantries, she could easily be his, at least for dinner and a movie.
As he walked back across campus to his car, he decided that he would ask her out within the next week, bashfulness-be-damned. He would hold his head up and pop the question—well not the question; a much more preliminary question: “Would you like to go out sometime?” That bluntness would circumnavigate the smalltalk problem and give her the power to accept his request. But would she even consider doing so in light of the fact that they had never spoken at length to each other? To hell with it; just ask her and see what happens. He directed his attention to the roads, which were slickening with the freezing rain that was beginning to fall. Grayness enveloped the region.
~ ~ ~
Their eyes locked once again. His heart raged. He blinked a long, deliberate blink. He was at least smiling. She was smiling too, although she looked like the distraction had kicked away the strands of a good train of thought. She blinked a normal blink. Damn, those eyes!
“Hey there Tim. What’s going on?” Her smile flattened a little.
“Not too much. Just going to do some homework before I head home.” His chest was tightening. His breathing was becoming shallower and more of an effort.
“Cool. Same here.” A pause. Harold Pinter would have loved it.
“Good.” Nothing more.
Seemingly instantly, he was back across the room, standing over his backpack. The main zipper was partly opened. It was an abyss inside. He was sweating. The librarian rustled a few more papers.
The Ask-Out
He was starting to sweat. It was not the sweat of physical exertion but of pure anguish. It was an unexpected sweat. A sweat of indeterminate temperature such that he shivered without any apparent cause for shivering. Sneaky sweat.
Neither of them had class at this time of day. He knew that she would be studying at her usual table in the library. He peered at her through the rectangular slit window in the main door to the library, her long, dark amber hair in a simple ponytail. She wore a cream-colored sweater, navy skirt, and navy leggings—she was always immaculately, modestly dressed. He stood in deep thought about how he might best approach her. Should he go directly to her and ask her out point-blank? Should he put his books down at another table first? If so, should he walk by her and draw her attention on the way to said other table? The sheer number of methods of approach was maddening. He felt like a military general who had no idea how best to position his troops.
He was no General Patton, so he decided to just wing it. He had never winged anything before but then again, he had never asked a girl out, so god only knew what would work. He trusted his subconscious to lead him to the Promised Land—in this case, maybe dinner and a movie. Hell, he was surprised to have made as much progress as he had in the courtship game the last few months. He had wondered about this moment for nearly half a year. It was late January, and his dreams of going out with her had stewed in his head since September.
His feet were moving but he had no idea to where. He felt controlled by a consciousness that stemmed from outside his head. In a fog, he veered to the left of the path that would have taken him straight to her, darting between two chest high wooden bookshelves that housed the school’s Encyclopedia Brittanica. A few more seconds of automatic movement and he noticed his load was lighter—he had shuffled off his backpack over by the computers. He then found himself striding confidently toward her, smiling as warmly as he could. He reached her side at last and she glanced up from her work. Those beautiful deep brown eyes, he thought. They met his own and he snapped out of his quasi-autopilot. She cleared her throat and he glanced quickly out the window at the snow-covered school quad. The ice from last week’s freezing rain still clung to the naked tree limbs. The cavernous room was silent; only the faint rustle of paper in the librarian’s office could be heard.
~ ~ ~
Katelyn Price had beguiled Tim ever since freshman year, when they were in the same Ancient History class. He had sat directly behind her, enamored with the cascade of her not-quite-blond, not-quite-brown hair. They were “friends” on Facebook but nothing more. He had enjoyed perusing her pictures ever since they became “friends.” She was gorgeous; about five feet six inches, with eyes that seemed to change color from one day to the next, modulating between brown and hazel-green. Her frame was lean but she thankfully did not look like the girls who subsisted on breath mints and the occasional salad. And unlike the girls who did not feel pretty unless their skirts were too short to leave much to the imagination, Katelyn dressed smartly, and her modesty made her sexy.
It was junior year, and Tim was elated to find that he and Katelyn once again had a class together: English. Maybe this would provide a pretext for them to converse. Having spent all of freshman year too chicken to talk to her, he resolved to get to know her somehow this year.
For the first few months of class he could manage no more than a shaky “good morning” to her, but one day in early December saw a perfect opportunity for Tim to lay the groundwork for proper acquaintance. The English department always found a way to incorporate Shakespeare into the curriculum—standard practice for a prep school with a bit of a Briton complex. That day, the Bard’s Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?”). The teacher frequently called on students to read poems aloud prior to discussing them, and so Tim hoped that if he read the sonnet aloud and with gusto, Katelyn would appreciate his sensitivity and eloquence. What if he glanced at her at key points in the poem while he read it? Would she be moved by such a gesture? Would she be creeped out? He decided to keep the glance count to one, at the very end: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/So long lives this and this gives life to thee.” This would be a Grand Romantic Hook for sure.
Sure enough, the teacher called for a reader for Sonnet 18. Sure enough, no one raised a hand at first. And sure enough, Tim was called on when his own shot up—not too eagerly, he hoped. He proceeded confidently through much of the poem but his heart began beating harder and faster as he neared the critical final lines. He stumbled over the fourth-to-last line: “Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade.” He stuttered at “wander’st” and his voice cracked. He took a deep breath and hurried on through the rest of the poem, forgetting to look at Katelyn at all. It was just as well; his attempt at a Grand Romantic Hook had fallen flat.
Tim decided that since he was no Cicero, he would employ the pen (or keyboard) instead of the tongue. He contrived to engage her on Facebook IM and with winged words win her affection!—or at least get to know her and let her get to know him, whether she liked it or not. While lying in bed studying at home one Friday evening in early January, he noticed the name Katelyn Price illuminated along with his other Facebook “friends” who were online at the time. His heart started pounding and he began sweating a sneaky sweat. Gutless, he stalled for time, checking his email four times in the space of ten minutes and getting up for a glass of water to wet his rapidly drying tongue. He was stalling, but his curiosity trumped his anxiety in the end. He swallowed hard, fingers trembling as he typed in the message box and pressed ‘SEND.’
TIM [8:37 pm] Hey there Katelyn
Hey there Katelyn? Was he trying to seem like a pervert? He might as well have said What’s shakin’ baby doll? She responded quickly:
KATELYN [8:37 pm] heyy Tim
She had not ignored him; he had cleared the first hurdle. Was there any meaning in the second Y? A typo? A casual, friendly informality? He was encouraged.
TIM [8:38 pm] how are you doing this evening?
KATELYN [8:38 pm] pretty good, how about you?
Thank goodness she didn’t totally adhere to the needlessly terse Internet parlance with abbreviations like “u” for “you.” He let her misuse of a comma slide.
TIM [8:38 pm] I’m well; can’t complain…how are you?
You already asked her how she’s doing, shithead. He felt his ship of courtship taking on water before it had even left port. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, waiting for the familiar pop that signaled a response. It came, and he braced for the worst.
KATELYN [8:40 pm] haha good good, what’s up?
He had not scared her off after all! Not yet, anyway. He forged on, hoping his game would improve in a hurry.
TIM [8:40 pm] not too much, I guess; I was wondering, however, if you might know what pages we need to read in Catcher in the Rye for English class on Monday
Being a diligent student, Tim knew the answer to this query, but he could think of no other immediate means of conversation extension.
KATELYN [8:41 pm] sure thing, one sec, let me check
TIM [8:41 pm] thanks, I’m much obliged
Much obliged? Who are you, some Southern politician? Three or four minutes passed and no reply came. He shifted back and forth under his covers, no longer comfortable in this position or that. But pop went his computer soon enough:
KATELYN [8:47 pm] hey sorry about that, I think its chapters 5 through 9
TIM [8:47 pm] excellent, thanks very much Katelyn
KATELYN [8:47 pm] youre welcome Tim
He was relieved that even though she neglected its apostrophe, she at least put the E on the end of “youre.” His anxiety began to wane as he reveled in having carried on an online conversation with her for nine full minutes. He was Harry Potter fighting against the Lord Voldemort of his timidness! He was Captain Picard making First Contact! He had made it further than he would have expected himself to.
Perhaps he was turning a corner, preparing to put himself out for romantic acceptance or rejection by that most fickle beast, Teenage Woman, for the first time in his life. Even though his manner around his fellow “guys” was energetic and sometimes downright obstreperous, he had always been shy about girls, never having been kissed and only a few times hugged, other than by his mother. Even when his male friends discussed what girls were “hot,” he kept mum. He had always fancied himself a sure-thing kind of guy, and while he did not pretend to know much about life’s principal intricacies, he knew enough to know that women were never a sure thing.
This reflection on the achievement of communicating briefly with Katelyn caused him to zone out. A full seven minutes had passed since she had sent her last message dangling, neglected. Did she think he had just abruptly ended the conversation without a proper good-bye? He was eager to keep chatting with her but his self-congratulation had caused him to lose focus on continuing to talk to her. He was mortified again, his wild heart jumping up and down in its chest cavity cage, enraged and fearful. His eyes went wide as he scrambled to think of anything to say but came up empty. He perked up when he heard the pop sound again.
KATELYN [8:54 pm] hey are you going to the hockey game tomorrow night?
It was an unexpected, pleasant surprise. She had messaged him twice in a row! And after a long pause, no less! Like the feet of Fred Astaire his fingers fluttered over the keys.
TIM [8:54 pm] definitely; I’ll see you there, I imagine
KATELYN [8:54 pm] you bet! we’re gonna kick some Taft ass!
He was caught off-guard by her cursing. He did not tend to use such invective, but he secretly enjoyed when girls did.
TIM [8:55 pm] heck yes we are! 2 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, right?
KATELYN [8:55 pm] thats right! See you there!
KATELYN [8:56 pm] hey Tim I’ve gotta run, I’ll see you tomorrow at the game
TIM [8:56 pm] alrighty; bye Katelyn!
KATELYN [8:56 pm] byee xoxo
Did she really just…xoxo? His heart soared at the possibility of what those four characters meant. Two hugs and two kisses! Perhaps she was into him. Perhaps he had just paved the road towards his first kiss and more! The perhapses flew through his mind like a hundred shooting stars. He was beaming now, awed by the possibilities established by this conversation. As he grew more tired, so his thoughts moderated. Let’s get her phone number first. Maybe go out to dinner and/or a movie.
He woke up early the next morning and showered. He showered almost exclusively at night, but today he wanted to look his freshest for her. He applied a modest amount of his favorite eau de toilette, which smelled deliciously of orange. He then decked himself out in black pants, a black turtleneck and his golden yellow Superfan t-shirt. Most everyone who attended big school sporting events wore black and gold—the school colors. He did not don such regalia often, but this was not an ordinary occasion. He looked himself over in the mirror—a rarity—before heading downstairs. He was ready to continue his dogged pursuit of Katelyn Price.
He arrived at the game just as students were beginning to pour in and both teams were taking their warm-up laps around the rink. He took his place just shy of center ice, in the front row, knowing that Katelyn often stood with her friends in the second row. They would be in the middle of the cheering throng of home-team faithful. There would be plenty of time to chat in between plays and periods, during which time he would engage her in conversation eventually leading to an exchange of cell phone numbers.
His fellow students and Superfans streamed in like iron filings to a magnet and soon the black and gold mass was enormous, murmuring, cheering for some of the team’s luminaries. The visiting team brought a busload of fans as well, dressed in crimson and navy blue. It was going to be a raucous game. Only bad blood could come out of the competing cheering sections.
Katelyn still hadn’t arrived by the time the opening puck dropped. Tim was sweating that sneaky sweat again. He cheered only with half his normal voice. His heart thumped in his chest with brutal monotony.
Each team collected a goal in the first period and everyone sat down when the horn sounded for the intermission. As Tim turned around to find his seat, there she was, beaming at the Zamboni. She was radiant, her hair hanging freely this time. She was looking mighty, mighty nice in her Superfan t-shirt, which clung to her curves perfectly. Had she dressed that way for him? Their eyes met. His heart beat differently.
She smiled down at him from her seat in the row behind him. Her eyes were an exotic green-hazel today. “Hey Tim! You made it!”
His own smile was ten miles wide. “I sure did; wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he replied. What a fucking cliché. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. God, she’s beautiful.
He was doing it again. He had nothing else to say. Tim, who would win the “Most Talkative” superlative in the school yearbook when he graduated, had nothing to say. Mortified, he turned around and waited for the game to pick back up. A few minutes later, a whistle from the referee stopped play momentarily and he decided to give it another shot. He stammered, “So Katelyn, did you enjoy the reading in Catcher in the Rye last night?”
“Oh I just SparkNoted it. I had to write a U.S. History paper last night. ”
He sputtered, “I see, I see. Well…” Katelyn smiled warmly but raised a skeptical eyebrow, knowing that Tim had trailed off. It was no use. He was failing miserably at male-female smalltalk, a basic skill of Courtship 101. The referee blew the whistle again and Katelyn fixed her eyes back on the game. Tim turned around, sweating again.
The home team was victorious by a score of 4-2. Everyone left the rink on an adrenaline high except the opposing fans and Tim, who still could not believe his silence in the presence of someone so lovely, so unreasonably sweet. If only he could conquer his irrational fear of talking to her past a few seconds’ awkward pleasantries, she could easily be his, at least for dinner and a movie.
As he walked back across campus to his car, he decided that he would ask her out within the next week, bashfulness-be-damned. He would hold his head up and pop the question—well not the question; a much more preliminary question: “Would you like to go out sometime?” That bluntness would circumnavigate the smalltalk problem and give her the power to accept his request. But would she even consider doing so in light of the fact that they had never spoken at length to each other? To hell with it; just ask her and see what happens. He directed his attention to the roads, which were slickening with the freezing rain that was beginning to fall. Grayness enveloped the region.
~ ~ ~
Their eyes locked once again. His heart raged. He blinked a long, deliberate blink. He was at least smiling. She was smiling too, although she looked like the distraction had kicked away the strands of a good train of thought. She blinked a normal blink. Damn, those eyes!
“Hey there Tim. What’s going on?” Her smile flattened a little.
“Not too much. Just going to do some homework before I head home.” His chest was tightening. His breathing was becoming shallower and more of an effort.
“Cool. Same here.” A pause. Harold Pinter would have loved it.
“Good.” Nothing more.
Seemingly instantly, he was back across the room, standing over his backpack. The main zipper was partly opened. It was an abyss inside. He was sweating. The librarian rustled a few more papers.
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