Carrie Pilby

Carrie Pilby Caren Lissner Teen Genius (and Hermit) Carrre Pilby’s To-Do List:1. List 10 things you love (and DO THEM! ) 2. Join a club (and TALK TO PEOPLE! ) 3. Go on a date (with someone you actually LIKE! ) 4. Tell someone you care (your therapist DOESN’T COUNT! ) 5. Celebrate New Year’s (with OTHER PEOPLE! )Seriously? Carrie would rather stay in bed than deal with the immoral, sex-obsessed hypocrites who seem to overrun her hometown, New York City. She’s sick of trying to be like everybody else. She isn’t! But when her own therapist gives her a five-point plan to change her social-outcast status, Carrie takes a hard look at herself—and agrees to try.Suddenly the world doesn’t seem so bad. But is prodigy Carrie really going to dumb things down just to fit in? How far should a teen genius go to fit in? My plan to fulfill #3 on my To-Do list, Go on a Date: PRODIGY SEEKS GENIUS—SWF, 19, very smart, seeks nonsmoking, nondrugdoing very very smart SM 18-25 to talk about philosophy and life. No hypocrites, religious freaks, macho men or psychos. I can’t wait to see the responses I get. Praise for Carrie Pilby “Smart, fresh and totally hilarious—you’ll be rooting for Carrie from start to finish.” —Lauren Barnholdt, author of Two-Way Street “If you’re looking for a comic commentary on school, parents, growing up and everything else, read this book.” —Buffalo News “[Carrie] is utterly charming and unique, and readers will eagerly turn the pages to find out how her search for happiness unfolds.” —Booklist “Woody Allen–hilarious, compulsively readable and unpretentiously smart.” —Philadelphia Weekly Carrie Pilby Caren Lissner www.miraink.co.uk (http://www.miraink.co.uk) Contents Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Acknowledgments Chapter One Grocery stores always give me a bag when I don’t need one, when I’ve bought just a pack of gum or a banana or some potato chips that are in a bag already, and then I feel guilty about their wasting the plastic, but the bag is on before I’ve noticed them reaching for it so I don’t say anything. But in the video store, on the other hand, they always ask if I want a bag, and even though, theoretically, I should be able to carry my DVD without a bag, and the bag is another waste of plastic, I always need a bag at the video store because, for reasons that will soon be understood, I believe all DVDs should be sheathed. The camouflage doesn’t work today. I’m only half a block out of the store when I see Ronald, the rice-haired Milquetoast who works at the coffee shop around the corner, approaching. “Hey, Carrie,” he says, looking down at my DVD. “What’d you get?” Uh-oh. I have to give this speech again. “I can’t tell you,” I say, “and there’s a reason I can’t. Someday, I might want to rent something embarrassing, and I don’t necessarily mean porn. It could be a movie that’s considered too childish for my age or something violent or maybe Nazi propaganda—for research purposes, of course—and even though the movie I have in my hand is considered a classic, and nothing to be ashamed of, if I show it to you this time but next time I can’t, then you’ll know for sure that I’m hiding something next time. But if I never tell you what I’ve rented, it puts enough doubt in your mind that I’m hiding something, so I can feel free to rent porn or cartoons or fascist propaganda or whatever I want without fear of having to reveal what I’ve rented. The same goes for what I’m reading. I want to be able to pick a mindless novel, as well as Dostoyevsky. And I also want to be able to choose something no one’s heard of. Most of the time, people say, ‘What are you reading?’ and if I tell them the name of the book and it’s not Moby Dick, they’ve never heard of it so I have to give an explanation, and if the book’s any good it’s not something I can explain in two seconds, so I’m stuck giving a twenty-five-page dissertation and by the time I’m done I have no time to finish reading. So books I read and movies I rent are off-limits for discussion. It’s nothing personal.” Ronald stands there blinking for a second, then leaves. My rules make perfect sense to me, but people find them strange. Still, I need them to survive. This world isn’t one I understand completely, and it doesn’t understand me completely, either. People think I’m odd for a nineteen-year-old girl—or woman, if you’re technical—that I neither act excessively young nor excessively “girlish.” In truth, I feel asexual a lot of the time, like a walking brain with glasses and long dark hair and a mouth in good working order. If we were to talk about sex as in sex, as opposed to gender—as everyone seems to want to these days—I would say that my mind’s not on sex that much, and I was never boy-crazy when I was younger. Which makes me different from just about everyone. I did have crushes on two of my professors in college, one of which actually turned into something, but that’s a story for later on. That whole saga only confused me in the end. So much of the world is sex-obsessed that it takes someone practically asexual to realize just how extreme and pervasive it is. It’s the main motivator of people’s activities, the pith of their jokes and the driving force behind their art, and if you don’t have the same level of drive, you almost question whether you should exist. If it’s sex that makes the world go around, should the world stop for those of us who are asexual? I graduated from college a year ago, three years ahead of my peers, and now I spend most of my time inside my apartment in the city. My father pays my rent. I could leave the house more, and I could even get a job, but I don’t have much motivation to. My father would like me to work, but he has no right to complain. I remind him that it was his idea to skip me three grades in grammar school, forever putting me at the top of my class academically, in the bottom fifth heightwise, and in the bottom twenty-second socially. My father is also the one who told me what I refer to as the Big Lie. But that, like all the business with my professor, is a story for later on. When I get back to my apartment building, Bobby, the superintendent, asks how I’m doing, then takes the opportunity to stare at my rear end. I ignore him and climb the front steps. Bobby’s always staring at my rear end. He is also too old to be named Bobby. There are some names that a person should retire after age twelve. Sally, for example. If Sally is your name, you should have it changed upon reaching puberty. Grown men should not be called Joey, Bobby, Billy, Jamie or Jimmy. They can be Harry until the age of ten and after fifty, but not between. They can be Mike, Joe and Jim all their lives. They cannot be Bob during their teenage years. They can be Stuart, Stefan or Jonathan if they’re gay. Christian is not acceptable for Jews. Moishe is not acceptable for Christians. Herbert is not acceptable for anyone. Buddy is good for a beagle. Matt is good for a flat piece of rubber. Fox is good for a fox. Dylan is too trendy. I get in through the front door and the stairwell door and the apartment door. When I am finally inside, I experience tremendous afterglow. They make the apartments in New York as hard to get into as Tylenol bottles and almost as big. I see a therapist, Dr. Petrov, once a week. He and my father grew up in London together. I don’t really need to see him, but I go each week because I might as well get my father’s money’s worth. The morning after I rent the DVD, I leave my apartment to see Petrov. It’s drizzling softly outside. The air, a soupy mess, scrubs my cheeks, and the few remaining leaves on the trees bend under the weight of raindrops and dive to their deaths. A pothole in front of my building catches them, emitting a soggy symphony. There’s something I love about visiting Petrov: His building is on one of those quaint little blocks that almost make you forget how seedy other parts of New York can be. Both sides are lined with stately brownstones whose bright painted shutters flank lively flower boxes, the tendrils dripping down and hooking around wires and trellises. The signs on the sidewalk are extremely polite: Please Curb Your Dog; $500 Fine For Noise Here. It’s idyllic and lovely. But the only people who get to live here are the folks who inherited these rent-controlled apartments from their rich old grandmas who wore tons of jewelry and played tennis with Robert Moses. Petrov’s waiting room is like a cozy living room, with a gold-colored trodden carpet and regal-footed chairs. One wall is lined with classic novels, a pointless feature since one does not have the time to read Ulysses while waiting for a doctor’s appointment. A person would have to make more than 300 visits to Petrov in order to finish the book, which just proves that someone would have to be crazy to read all of Ulysses. But a waiting room is not the proper place or situation to read any book. All books have a time and a place. Anything by Henry Miller, for instance, should be read where no one can see you. Carson McCullers should be read in your window on a hot summer night. Sylvia Plath should be read if you’re ready to commit suicide or want people to think you’re really close. On Petrov’s coffee table, there’s more literature: the L.L. Bean catalogue, Psychology Today, the Eddie Bauer catalogue, the Pfizer annual stockholders’ report. I admire Petrov’s ability to incorporate his junk mail into his profession. The door to Petrov’s office opens, and a short guy walks out, lowering his eyes as he hurries past me. No one I’ve ever passed coming into this office has made eye contact with me, as if it’s embarrassing to be caught coming from a therapy appointment by someone who is about to do exactly the same thing. Petrov stands in his doorway. “How are you doing today, Carrie?” he asks, waving me inside. There are books piled high on his desk and diplomas on the wall. Petrov sits down in a red chair and balances a yellow legal pad on his knee. I sink into the reclining chair opposite him. “I’m fine.” “Did you make any new friends this week?” I think my father put this theme into his head. I don’t have many friends, but there’s a good reason for this, which I’ll explain in the near future. “It rained this week,” I tell him, “so mostly I stayed inside.” Petrov’s hand flutters across the page. What could he be writing? It did rain all week. “So you haven’t been outside your apartment much. What about this coming week? Do you have any social plans?” “I have a job interview today,” I say. “Right after this appointment.” “That’s wonderful!” he says. “What kind of job?” “I don’t know,” I say. “The interview’s with some guy my dad knows. I’m sure it’ll be mindless and pointless.” “Perhaps by going in thinking that, you’ll cause it to be so.” “If you’re trying to say it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, that’s psychobabble,” I say. “If I tell you that the job might turn out to be mindless, then it might, or it might not. The outcome really has no relationship to whether I’ve said it.” “It might,” Petrov says. “You put the suggestion out there.” He leans back in his chair. “I think you often thwart yourself. Let’s look at how you do it with friendships. Whenever you have met someone, you then tell me that the person was unintelligent or a hypocrite. Perhaps you have too narrow a definition of smart or too wide a one for hypocrite. There are some people who are very street-smart.” “You can’t have an intelligent discussion with street smarts,” I say. “And even if I could find other people who are smart, they’d probably still be hypocritical and dishonest.” It’s true. I went to college with a lot of supposedly smart people, and they’d rationalize the stupid, dangerous or hypocritical things they did all the time: getting drunk, having sex with lots of different people, trying drugs. Nobody did any of that in the beginning of school, but once the temptation started, my classmates got sucked in, then began making excuses for it. Even the self-possessed religious kids came up with ridiculous rationalizations. If they want to believe in certain things, fine, and if they don’t want to, that’s fine, too, but they shouldn’t lie to themselves about their reasons for changing their minds. The hypocrisy isn’t any better out of school, especially in the city. “I want you to tell me something positive right now,” Petrov says. “About anything. Tell me something you love. As in, ‘I love a sunset.’ ‘I love Miami Beach.’” “I love it when people sound like Hallmark cards.” Petrov sighs. “Try harder.” “Okay.” I think about it a bit. “I love peace and quiet.” He looks at me. “Go on.” “I guess you missed the point.” He sighs again. “Give me another example.” “I love…when I can just stretch out in my bed, hearing no horns, no chatter, no TV, nothing but the buzz of the electrical wiring in the wall. But sometimes I like the sounds from the street.” “I like that,” Petrov says. “Now, tell me something that makes you sad. Something besides hypocrites and people who aren’t smart. Tell me about a time recently when you cried.” I think. “I haven’t cried in a long time.” “I know.” I hate when Petrov thinks he knows things about me without my telling him. “How do you know?” “Because you’re guarded. Because you were put into college at fifteen, when everyone was three to seven years older than you, and at fifteen, you weren’t socially advanced or sexually aware. All kinds of behavior goes on at college, people drinking, losing their virginity right and left, experimenting with who knows what. Some people respond by trying to fit in, but you chose to opt out of the system completely. Which was understandable. But now, you’ve been out of college a year and you’re still not experienced in adjusting to social changes. Being smart doesn’t mean being skilled at social interaction. No one ever said being a genius was easy.” I hear it start to rain harder outside. Petrov gets up, shuts the window and sits back down. “You’ve mentioned your father’s Big Lie a few times,” he says. “I think we should talk about that sometime.” “Yes—” “But not today. I have an assignment for you.” I look at the rug. It’s full of tiny ropes and filaments. “I want you to, just for a little while, be a little more social. Just to see the other side of it, to determine if there is such thing as a comfortable middle ground. I don’t want you to do anything dangerous or immoral, but I want you to do things like go to a party, join an organization or club. After you do some of these things, I want you to tell me how you felt doing them. You don’t have to start right away. You can wait a bit until you feel comfortable.” “Okay. How about next year?” Petrov smiles. “That’s not a bad idea,” he says. “New Year’s Eve would be a good night for you to spend time with friends. You could go to a New Year’s Eve party.” “Maybe I should just vomit on Times Square,” I say. “Then I’d be fitting in.” Petrov shakes his head. “You know I’m not suggesting you do anything dangerous. But I do want you to learn to socialize better. What you should do is work up to spending New Year’s Eve with people. We’ll start small first. A five-point plan.” Petrov grabs a memo cube that has Zoloft embossed at the top. Some people will take anything if it’s free. “First,” he says, “I want you to write a list for me of ten things you love. The street sounds were a good start, but I want ten of them. Secondly, I want you to join at least one organization or club. That way, you might meet some people with similar interests, maybe even people you think are smart.” He’s writing this down. “Third, go on a date…” “Okay…” “Fourth, I want you to tell someone you really care about him or her. It can’t be sarcastic.” “Sarcastic? Me?” Petrov tears off a piece of paper and hands it to me. ZOLOFT® 1 List 10 things you love 2 Join an org./club 3 Go on date 4 Tell someone you care 5 Celebrate New Yr’s “The point’s to help you adjust,” he says. “Not to teach you to do anything bad. But to help you see that there could be positive aspects of social interaction.” “I wouldn’t have such trouble adjusting to the world,” I say, “if the world made sense. Which it doesn’t. I’ve seen that time and time again. Maybe the world should adjust to me.” “Just try,” he pleads. “When you meet someone new, for instance, don’t…” “What?” “Don’t pontificate.” He scratches his goatee. “Don’t feel the need to show off everything you know at the same time, or make every argument that’s in your head.” “If I’m not comfortable saying what I’m thinking, then isn’t the person wrong for me? And if they don’t like me, isn’t it better I find out sooner? Besides, if I say what I believe, this way we find out right away if we’re compatible.” He blinks for a minute. “It’s good to meet compatible people, but you don’t have to hit them with tests all at once.” I shrug. “I’ll think about it.” He nods. “Just try.” When I get outside, I pull my coat over my head to ward off the pouring rain, and I run to the subway. I am dying to get home, slide under the sheets and doze off. But I can’t. I have a job interview. As I get close to the subway, a guy in a raincoat seethes at me, “Smile!” This makes me feel worse. I was lost in thought, minding my own business, and someone felt he had the right to disturb me anyway. Doesn’t he realize that by making me feel like I was doing something wrong, he only made me feel less like smiling? It actually had the reverse effect he intended. It’s like striking a bawling kid to stop him from crying, and we’ve all seen that done. I don’t see what it had to do with him anyway. I never go around demanding that people change their facial expressions. How come everyone tells me what to do, but they would never let me do a tenth of the same back to them? The caf? where I am to meet Brad Nickerson is two stops up. When I arrive, he’s already seated at a table. He’s got slicked-back blond hair and a nondescript face. He’s also younger than I expected, and I’m not so sure this isn’t secretly a blind date rather than a business meeting. He stands and smiles. “It’s good to meet you,” he says. “Likewise.” We both sit down. He lets one of his legs hang over the other—he has long legs—and he briefly asks me how my trip up there went. Then he turns his attention to a clipboard. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions about your qualifications.” “All right.” “Your father says you type,” he says. “I have.” “Which computers do you use?” “In school I used Macs, Dells, Gateways, HP’s, most of the off-brand PC’s, and all of the Mac and Windows operating systems. I wish they were more compatible. If Europe accepted the Euro, why can’t our computers be a little more compatible?” His eyes narrow. “How old did you say you were?” he asks. “I’m nineteen.” “You seem awfully serious for a nineteen-year-old.” I don’t know what to say to that. Now I feel bad, just like I felt when the guy yelled “Smile.” As if I was doing something wrong simply by existing. Brad doesn’t say anything either, only stares at me and waits. And waits. When they send people to do job interviews, they should at least make sure they’re half as competent as the people they’re interviewing. “You could tell me what the job’s about,” I say. “Oh!” he says. “Well, it would be, at first, sort of an administrative assistant to the boss, typing things when need be, helping with office work. But eventually it could lead to greater responsibilities.” He picks up his coffee cup. “How does that sound?” I don’t suppose he really wants a truthful answer. “Ducky,” I say. “Mmm-hmm.” He sips his coffee. “Mmm.” He thinks for a second. “Well, why don’t you tell me your strengths and weaknesses?” A relevant question, at last! I say, “I try to figure out what’s right and wrong, and then I stick by it. I don’t engage in activities that are dangerous to others or myself. I try not to make judgments about people.” “I wasn’t making a judgment about you,” he says, apropos of nothing. “I didn’t say you were.” We’re stuck in a stalemate again. He reverts to common ground. “How fast do you type?” “Sixty to sixty-five words a minute,” I say. He doesn’t add anything. I ask, “Would you like that in metric?” He shrugs. “Sure.” “Sixty to sixty-five words a minute.” I smile, but apparently, this doesn’t pass muster as a satisfactory attempt to prove I’m not so serious. He finishes his coffee. “Well,” he says, standing and smiling, “it really was nice to meet you. We’ll probably give you a call.” “Great,” I say, but I’m really complimenting his discretion in bringing the matter to a close. When I’m finally home, I’m incredibly relieved. Thank God I’m out of there. I close my bedroom door, drop my purse to the ground and strip off my moist clothes. My pants leave a red elastic mark all the way around my waist. I rub it to obliterate it. Then I drape my clothes over a chair and walk to my bed. Now I can engage in my favorite activity in the world. Sleeping. My bed is a vast ocean with three fat, starchy pillows. Slowly I slide under the covers, naked. I feel the cool sheets around me. The cotton caresses my back. I close my eyes and let each notch of my spine relax. My mind is blank now. Every part of my body is sinking and empty. I don’t have to think about anything, hear anything, say anything, feel anything, worry about anything. Everything is distilled until it is completely clear. The roof may rain down and shower me with concrete. The forked crack in my wall may creep all the way to the ceiling. Still, I can lie here forever if I choose. There is no one to stop me. In my bed, there are no psychologists, no job interviewers, no hypocrites. I do not have to make up lists of ways to socialize. I do not have to smile. I do not have to justify my beliefs. I don’t have to wear dress shoes. I don’t have to pledge allegiance to the flag. I don’t have to use a number two pencil. I don’t have to read the fine print. I don’t have to sell fifty boxes of mint cookies. I don’t have to be over five foot four to ride. It is true that lying in bed is not an intellectual activity. It is true that it is nonproductive. But when ninety-five percent of out-of-bed activities hold the possibility of pain, to be pain-free is simply the most delicious feeling in the world. I lie there for an hour, listening to the rain type a soggy message on my windows. When the storm has subsided a bit, I lift my head. A hint of a cherry scent curls under my nose. I don’t know where it’s coming from—maybe through the window. The scent reminds me of cherry soda, something I haven’t had in years. I think about its virulent fizz, the way it bubbles deep in one’s gut. I picture a giant glass, dark plumes of liquid bouncing off the sides. I recall a New Year’s party my father threw when I was young, how black cherry soda was what we kids were allowed to have while the adults downed highballs. There was a kid named Ted there, and he dropped M&M’s and corn chips and peanuts into his cherry soda to make us cringe. He got so much attention from the threat of drinking it that I don’t think he actually had to do the deed. I grab a notebook from on top of my stereo and start writing my “things I love” list for Dr. Petrov. Soon, I actually have managed to come up with a few. 1 Cherry soda 2 Street sounds 3 My bed The best bed I ever had was one with a powder-blue canopy when I was eight. My room was great back then. It had a black shag rug, Parcheesi, a giant periodic table of the elements, a diagram of Hegel’s dialectic, a model solar system, a couple of abstract paintings, and a sextant. 4. The green-blue hue of an indoor pool 5. Starfish 6. The Victorians 7. Rainbow sprinkles 8. Rain during the day (makes it easier to sleep) I think a little more. I’m out of ideas. If I could write a hate list, I could fill three notebooks. That would be fun. A list of things I hate. I could start with the couple across the street. The couple across the street are in their late twenties or early thirties. They’re tall and fairly professional-looking. I see them in their kitchen window more than I do outside. They always mess around in front of the oven, pinching and poking each other, and before you know it, there’s a little free-love show going on, and finally, they repair to a different room. You’d think they’d have enough respect for their neighbors to keep us out of their delirious debauchery. But that’s not the reason I hate them. The reason I hate them is that whenever they pass me on the street, they never say hi to me. They must know I’m their neighbor. I’ve lived here for almost a year. Then again, I never say hi to them. I try for a little while longer, but I can’t come up with nine and ten for my list. I put the notebook down and lie in bed on my side, my hands crossed over each other like the paws of a Great Dane. I think about Petrov’s five-point plan. Join an organization. Go on a date. Petrov must think that I’m incapable of these things. It’s not at all that I can’t do them. It’s that I choose not to. Sure, being alone can get boring, but why should I have to force myself to go out and meet all the people who have lowered their moral, ethical and intellectual standards in order to fit in with all of the other people with low moral, ethical and intellectual standards? That’s all I would find if I went out there. I could prove to Petrov that he’s wrong. I could show him that the problem is not with me, but with everyone else. I could do it just to prove how ridiculous it is. Going on a date, or joining a club, will push me right into the thick of the social situations that people get into every day. I’m sure it can’t be that hard. And even if Petrov believes there is the .0001 percent chance that I’ll meet one person who understands me, more likely, I will simply be able to say that I tried. It will be a pain, but it shouldn’t be that difficult. I will be a spy in the house of socializers. And then I will be able to prove once again to myself, as well as to Petrov, that even when I’m alone, it’s much better than going outside. That evening the phone rings. It could be bad news. It could be my father calling to say I didn’t get the job. Or worse, it could be my father calling to say I got the job. But it also could be the MacArthur Committee calling to tell me I’ve won the Genius Grant. I jump up and catch it on the third ring. It’s my father. “I spoke with Brad,” he says. “He seemed to think you weren’t that interested in the job.” “Oh, now I remember,” I say. “The vapid, immature guy.” “I got the feeling you weren’t very nice to him.” “I didn’t ask for the interview.” “You have to tell me how, at some point, you are going to support yourself.” “Right now I’m using a Sealy Posturepedic.” “Carrie.” “I saw Dr. Petrov this morning.” This seems to cheer him up. “Okay. And what did he say?” “He wants me to do some kind of socialization experiment. Go on a date. Join a club.” “And what did you say?” “I said I’ll try.” “That’s what I like to hear.” “You know, you owe me,” I say. “Why?” “You know why.” Silence. He knows I mean the Big Lie. “I know,” he says. “Good.” “Well, if there was a job you might be interested in, what would it be?” “Something where I can use my intelligence,” I say. “Something where the hours aren’t ridiculous. Something where I can sleep while others are awake and be awake while others are asleep. Something where people aren’t condescending….” “Yes….” “Something I don’t hate.” Chapter Two “You ever been here before?” “No.” The woman behind the desk peers at me through small round glasses. I don’t know what her problem is. Everyone in this office has, at some point, never been there before. She gives me three forms to fill out, including a W-4 and a confidentiality pledge, and this wastes twenty minutes. If only the rest of the job is like this. She hands me two hulking toothpaste-white stacks of paper. “The lawyers need you to compare them word for word,” she says. “A full read. It could take a few hours.” Dad has gotten me work legal proofreading, which he says pays well and can be sporadic. I can work night or day. I’m smarter than ninety-nine percent of lawyers, so it should be easy. I reach my cubicle, which has a drawerless desk. This is even lower in the office furniture hierarchy than a drafting table. Behind me, an old guy in squarish glasses is reading two documents, his eyes swinging from one to the other. He looks a little too old for me to consider him for a possible date. But who knows? He’s bald and unthreatening-looking. Maybe I can figure out how to flirt with him enough to lure him to dinner, and then I’ll be satisfying Petrov’s requirement. That would leave me with three requirements to go. I look over my desk. It’s rife with supplies. Someone has taken a long piece of yellow legal paper and colored in every other stripe with a red Flair pen, and then completely filled in the remaining stripes with Wite-Out. And that person has also drawn a box in the left-hand corner with blue ink. It’s some sort of flag. It must have taken a good half hour to do. A supervisor comes in to further explain my task. The first document I have to look at is an original. The second document is a version they got by scanning in the first one and printing it out. But sometimes, when they scan documents in, the new copies that they print out accidentally have extra commas or extra letters in them, due to dirt on the scanner, marks on the original document, or something else. So my job is to compare the original and the printout word for word, making sure they’re exactly the same. I am supposed to do this for 210 pages. It seems like there must be a faster way to do this sort of labor in this era of technological advances. No wonder lawyers charge $400 an hour. They’re paying proofreaders to sit and play Concentration. I lean back in the hard chair and close my eyes. Within a minute, I have my answer. But I can’t use my easier system until Oldie behind me goes to get coffee. Which, I soon find out, he does every ten minutes. And it takes him ten minutes to do it. My father thinks I don’t want to work, but the truth is, no one else is really working. It’s all a big sham. No one says anything about it because they’re doing it, too. If all of the BS-ing was automatically extracted from the American workday, the American workday would last three hours. There are still tons of secrets in the world to which I am only just becoming privy. While Oldie is gone, I take the top page of my original, put it in front of the top page of the new copy, and hold them both up to the light. They match exactly: not a line, word or dot out of place. So these pages are fine. I put them both down and move on to the next pair. I hold them up to the light, and there’s not a stray line, streak or speck. This probably takes two percent of the time it would take to read the whole thing. When I finish, I leave the document a third of the way open on my desk so it looks like I’m in the process. I use my extra time to think about a lot of things. I think about why, if the highest speed limit anywhere in the U.S. is seventy-five, they sell cars that can go up to one hundred fifty. I think about whether the liquid inside a coconut should be called “milk” or “juice.” I think about why there are Penn Stations in New York and Maryland but not in Pennsylvania. I think about Michel Foucault’s views of the panoptic modality of power, and whether they’re comprehensive enough and ever could be. Behind me, Oldie picks up the phone and taps at the buttons. He asks for someone named Edna. On the one percent chance this won’t be completely boring, I eavesdrop. “Oh, I know what I wanted to tell you,” he says. “I called Jackie this morning, but she wasn’t there, but Raymond was. So Raymond tells me he’s home because he has all this sick leave saved up, you know, because teachers are allowed to accumulate their sick days, and so this is the third Friday in a row he’s taken off from school, and he was getting ready to go over to the Poconos to ski. He was practically bragging about it. And I say to him, ‘Raymond, that’s lying. Sick days are if you’re sick.’ Yeah, he’s cheating the kids. I know. I know. So he backs off and says, ‘Well, I only do it once in a while.’ And I say, ‘Raymond, excuse me, but you just said you did it three Fridays in a row, so don’t back off now.’ Do you know why our daughter married someone like that? He’s amazing, bragging like that. Amazing. I know. I said to him, ‘Work ethics like yours are why America’s going to pot. Because everyone tries to get away with everything.’” Eventually, the guy hangs up. I have to turn around. “Excuse me,” I say. “I couldn’t help overhearing. You’re annoyed because your son-in-law was goofing off. But you were just having a personal conversation on the phone for twenty minutes when you were supposed to be doing your proofreading. Isn’t this a little hypocritical?” There is nothing more fulfilling than watching people get caught in the thick, coarse gossamer of their own hypocrisy. Oldie is stunned. “We’re entitled to breaks,” he says, but his voice is quavering. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Oldie sniffs, “I don’t see why it’s any of your business,” and returns to his assignment. There are no new assignments, so I rest my eyes and sit back in my chair. I hear a fax machine whirr behind me, and the choppy sounds of someone’s discordant clock radio. Soon a young guy with dark, tufty hair pokes his head into the room. He looks around but apparently doesn’t see whom he had hoped to. He’s ready to retreat, but then he notices me. “Oh,” he says. “Hi. You a student?” “No,” I say. “I graduated. I’m a temp.” I’m barely able to hide my elation at the diversion. Oldie gives us both a sneer. “You just in for tonight?” “Far as I know.” He extends his hand. “Douglas P. Winters. Front desk dude.” He sniffs and wipes his nose with his arm. There’s something appealing about ending your sentences with a snort. I also get the feeling he’s smart and slumming. I can spot an underemployed lazy intellectual anywhere. “Carrie Pilby,” I say. “You here till morning?” “I guess so.” “So you said you graduated. Where’d you go to school?” This is always a dilemma. Everyone who went to Harvard has it. The problem is, if you say Harvard, it either sounds like you’re bragging, or conversely, people think you’re making a joke. A lot of Harvard graduates say “Boston,” and then when the other person asks where specifically, they say, “Cambridge,” and finally, if pressed again, they admit where they went. I decide to get it over with. “Harvard.” “For real?” I nod. “Say something smart.” This is another disincentive. It’s like finding out someone’s part Puerto Rican and saying, “Say something in Spanish.” Just because I went to a top college doesn’t mean I have a complex mathematical axiom on the tip of my tongue. I mean, I do, but it’s not because of where I went to college. But I decide to play along. “I think that the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption.” Doug stands there for a second. “Wow.” I don’t tell him that I stole the whole thing from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which I read one day when I had three hours to kill. Oldie looks back at both of us. “You two gonna do any work tonight?” “Why don’t you call 60 Minutes and rat out your son-in-law?” I ask. He sniffs and goes back to his work. “Come outside,” Doug says. “I’m out front.” I assume this means that if I get in trouble, I can blame him. I follow him through the glass doors into the waiting room, which has plush chairs and golden letters on the walls bearing the name of the firm. Fancy-schmancy. Doug motions to an armchair next to the security desk, and I sit by his side. “Are you looking for a regular job?” “Someday.” This conversation has gone on long enough without my knowing what’s important. “Where did you go to school?” “Hempstead State,” he says. Oh well. I guess he’s not so smart after all. Then again, maybe I’m judging too quickly. At least, Petrov thinks I do. “I didn’t feel like going to Harvard,” he adds, opening a bag of pistachios and pouring a few onto the table. “Right.” “You got a boyfriend?” I wonder if he’s asking because he likes me, or he’s just making fun of me because he knows no one would want to be my boyfriend. “No,” I say. He cracks a pistachio on the table, then opens it like a tulip. “You just kind of play the field?” “Mostly, I sleep.” Doug laughs. “If I could, I would. Any time in bed is time well spent.” We’re silent for a minute while he swallows his pistachio nut. Then he cracks another against the desk. “Did you know that pistachio nuts are like orgasms?” That is so disgusting! I turn away and look at the paintings on the wall. I think they’re Edward Hopper. Doug pinches the green meat from inside the shell and pops it into his mouth. He chews, swallows and posits: “One nut will taste all salty, but the next one will taste almost buttery. The third one will be shriveled and brown with a weird kind of tartness. They’re like sexual climaxes. Each one is completely different in its own way, but they’re all great.” “Fascinating.” I look away. “Did I embarrass yew?” He laughs. “Here, I’m sorry. Have one.” I put my hand out. “No. An orgasm.” I look up. “Just kidding. Here.” He hands me a nut. I can’t believe he talks about something so intimate like it’s as routine as brushing your teeth. I mumble a thank-you and return to my seat. I spend the rest of the night reading Black’s Law Dictionary until I can barely see straight. Now at least I can pepper my conversations with ex aequo et bono and de minimus non curat lex. The shift ends when the first rays of dawn filter through the office’s tinted windows, which I imagine were created to remove the only joy of working there—the view. There is a commotion as a group of workers leaves and another arrives. With all the gossiping, peeking at the newspaper headlines and getting coffee, this takes a half hour. I may have underestimated the amount of fakery that goes on in the workplace. When one has been up all night, one gets a filmy taste in one’s mouth and a bleariness in one’s eyes. I wipe my lips and stand straight up, stretching. My bones ache. I throw my backpack across my shoulder and head out into the carpeted lobby. Doug and I shake hands, and I stretch some more. I guess I’ll see him again if I return to the firm. In the elevator, there’s a guy holding a metal cart bursting with donuts. They smell delicious. Some are topped with a thick cairn of chocolate cream, some are glazed, some are powdered and jelly-filled, and some have a slab of strawberry frosting and sprinkles. Eating one would get rid of this taste in my mouth. But the donut guy gets off on the third floor. I continue to the bottom and step out into the sunshine. It looks like today will be nicer than the last few. In the park, homeless people are emerging from boxes pushed together like trains. Cardboard condos. I wend my way past intricate metal stairways and under m?langes of scaffolding and torn advertisements for magazines, and sunlight bounces off glistening marble statues and embeds itself in glass doors. Hordes of commuters flood the streets in their gray and navy-blue uniforms, all of them walking—as is often the case—in the opposite direction of me. On a corner, a balding, timid-looking guy is handing out something and yelling. Everyone brushes past him. He keeps trying to give them a yellow flyer, and they keep turning their heads away. I vow to take the flyer when he hands it to me. It must be awful to stand there all day being rejected. However, he only gives me a cursory glance and then hands a flyer to the person next to me. I stand there, waiting. Finally, he shyly says, “Oh,” and thrusts one in my hand. The First Prophets’ Church, it says at the top, and there’s a long explanation of how Joseph Natto, an Episcopalian minister, had a vision way back in 1998 that his preachings about the church were lacking in something. A list of ten rules suddenly appeared in his mind. This is a real original story. I look up, and Tonsure-Head is talking s-l-o-w-l-y to a Spanish woman who is staring at him wide-eyed as if the more she opens her eyes, the more she’ll understand English. I’ve noticed that religious nuts always prey on foreigners. Anyone else would be too smart to fall for their fabrications. I’m tempted to go up and ask the guy why he only talks to people who don’t have a good command of English. Lately, my life has been about saying exactly what’s on my mind, particularly to people who need to change. Unfortunately, religious nuts are the one phylum that loves that. When they’re challenged, a dreamy smile crosses their faces like a trail of footprints and they give an answer like, “Oh, you have to have faith, and once you accept [insert name of savior here] into your heart, you will understand.” Then they’ll surely tell you some story about how once, they were just like you, until they had their moment of inspiration and it changed their life forever. The key to all religions is simply believing whatever they tell you and not allowing a scintilla of rational doubt to enter your mind. None of us was around 2,000 or 5,700 years ago (or 173.5 years if you’re a Mormon—sorry, Mormons) to know what really happened, so people decide whose story to choose, and which steadfast principles to select, based upon such important criteria as what their parents forced them to believe growing up and what other relatives forced them to believe growing up. At least Mormons hold off on baptizing their kids until they’re eight, but is an eight-year-old going to be any more resistant than a baby? I keep watching Tonsure-Head speaking mas des-pac-i-o to the Spanish woman and I wait around to see if he’ll try to convert me, too. That wouldn’t be so bad, if he can give me good answers to my questions about religion. If he does that, I’ll give him a chance. That’s a big if. Suddenly, a strange feeling wells up in me that I get once in a while. It feels hollow and icy, and it’s right in my gut. It makes me want to warm myself up inside. I look at him and wonder if this religion is all he has. Who am I to make fun of it? Maybe it’s something he loves. Maybe he’s lonely. Something else makes me sad, but I can’t put my finger on it. Then, the feeling goes away in a few seconds. Good. I keep waiting for Tonsure-Head to talk to me, but he ignores me. I wonder if he realizes that because he himself is not a minority, he himself would not be one of the people he would have reached out to on the street. How hypocritical. I give up, take the flyer home, and tape it to the side of my protruding closet. It’s got an address for the church on the bottom. It’s an organization, so if I join it, I can fulfill the second goal on Dr. Petrov’s list. But if I go to one of their services, my real goal will be to infiltrate this organization and expose it as a cult. I don’t want it taking advantage of people. I’ll protect the gullible. Several days later, I finally have the pleasure of bringing my top-ten list to Petrov. Even though it’s really a top-eight list. Before I can discuss it, though, Petrov asks me again if I’ve made any new friends. I tell him that I haven’t, but to please him, I mention my conversation with Douglas P. Winters. “Sounds like he might have been flirting with you,” Petrov says. “Eh.” “Are you interested?” “He seemed a little…sex-obsessed.” Petrov sits back. “I know you think that most people are sex-obsessed,” he says. “While I have no doubt that it’s true in many cases, I would gather that if you were older, and if you had more sexual experience, it wouldn’t seem as glaring.” Of course. Petrov thinks I’m a virgin. Everyone assumes that if you think the world is sex-obsessed, you must not have had sex. As if sex is so all-consuming that once you have it, you can completely justify the fact that it’s scrolling through everyone’s brain twenty-four hours a day. Plus, people think that, in general, if you express perfectly logical criticisms of the way society works, it means you’re “uptight” and “need to get laid.” As if sex is a cure for everything. I haven’t ever told Petrov about my experiences with Professor Harrison. I guess it’s true that, because of confidentiality rules, he wouldn’t be allowed to tell my father, which is a plus. But I don’t see why he has to know anyway. At least, not yet. I spent years in college not telling people about Harrison. I’m good at it. “How do you know I’m not sexually experienced?” I ask. “Are you?” “I don’t see how it’s relevant to a discussion of whether other people are sex-obsessed. I can have opinions regardless of whether I, myself, have had sex.” “True,” he says. “But it’s hard to comment on what it’s like to take a plane if you’ve never been off the ground. However, if you have had sexual experiences, and you want to discuss them…” “Nope,” I say. I decide that I’d better change the subject quickly—this time, anyway. “I thought about joining an organization last week.” “Really?” he says, interested. I tell him about Tonsure-Head and the church, and how it might be a cult that should be exposed. Petrov says, “You would have taken the flyer anyway.” “What do you mean?” “Even if you didn’t want to expose the church as a cult, you would have taken the religious flyer anyway. You would have taken the flyer for the same reason you keep coming to see me even though you say you don’t need to.” Oh, won’t he please enlighten me about my very own secret motivations for every single thing I do, which I’m sure he has a brilliant theory to explain? “I come here to get my father’s money’s worth,” I say. Petrov says, “You come here to talk to me. I’m paid to listen. Maybe you’re insecure and think other people won’t listen to you. But I do. If you really wanted to stop coming here, you’d refuse to. But you come, just like you took the religious flyer. What are you doing?” “Looking at your clock,” I say. “I never noticed it before. You have it strategically placed up on the shelf behind my head, so that when you look at it to see how much time we have left, I’ll think you’re looking at me. And it’s a big clock. I guess you wouldn’t want people to go a second over.” “It’s not entirely selfish,” he says. “If a patient runs over the time, it backs up all my other patients.” “I always kind of wondered what you do if someone’s in the middle of a big important story about himself, and his time’s up,” I say. “Do you suddenly say, ‘Hold that suicidal thought until next week?’” “I try not to get into anything too heavy in the last few minutes of the session.” “Oh, well, that’s cheating. If only forty minutes of a forty-five-minute session can be dedicated to serious talk, you’re gypping people out of five minutes.” “Carrie,” Petrov says, “we’re here to talk about you.” “Well, if I talk about you, it brings me out of my shell.” “Ah,” Petrov says. “It does?” “No. I just figured you’d like that. Some self-analysis. Deflecting things to you helps me. I thought you’d like the hypothesis.” Petrov sighs. “Did you bring your list of ten things you love?” I pull it out and hand it to him. “Yes, but it’s a top-eight list.” “You always have to be the contrarian.” “No, I don’t. Ha ha. Get it?” 1 Cherry soda 2 Street sounds 3 My bed 4 The green-blue hue of an indoor pool 5 Starfish 6 The Victorians 7 Rainbow sprinkles 8 Rain during the day (makes it easier to sleep) “Tell me,” he says. “When’s the last time you had a cherry soda?” I think. “Not since I was little.” “What about rainbow sprinkles? When was the last time you had them?” By the shore, maybe. Dad and I used to get vanilla soft-serve ice cream in those airy flat-bottomed beige cones. “Not since I was a kid, again.” “But they’re in your top eight favorite things.” “I guess I just haven’t made them a priority.” “I think,” Petrov says, “that part of the reason for your depression is that you deny yourself things, or you don’t seek out the things that make you truly happy. Not everything has to have analysis behind it. Why not just enjoy yourself without thinking sometimes?” “So when did we decide that I was depressed? Neither of us has ever mentioned the term. We’ve talked about how the world is full of hypocrites, how a lot of people aren’t that smart or don’t talk about things that actually matter, and last time, you said you understood that I was younger than everyone else in college and that might have made things harder for me. But now all of a sudden I’m depressed. Did your friend Eli Lilly just ship you a free eight ball of Prozac?” He looks beaten. “I shouldn’t be so quick to label. But I think you’d be happier, and more at peace with the world, if you sought out things you enjoyed. Sitting home all the time can’t make you too happy. When you were in school, you moved ahead by taking tests and getting good grades, and you certainly could feel yourself progressing that way. But now that you’re out of school, I think you’re in a bit of a holding pattern. If you did more activities related to things you loved, you probably would meet like-minded people and move forward with meaningful friendships and relationships. That’s why I thought it would be good for you to join an organization.” “Should I go find a cherry-soda club?” “Let’s add a Part B to the first part of your assignment,” Petrov says. “The first part was to write a list of things you love. Now, for 1B, go out and do some of them. Get an ice-cream cone with rainbow sprinkles. Go to the store and buy cherry soda.” “Okay.” He looks at my list again. “You also mention sleep, and you mention rain.” “Sleeping in the rain,” I say. “I’ll get on that right away.” “Good.” He is so oblivious. When I get home, my hand immediately shoots into my mailbox, which I love almost as much as my bed. I subscribe to fourteen magazines, and just seeing the cavalcade of colors in my box fills me with joy. But what’s more, each day brings the potential for new surprises. This is the kind of hope that keeps me going when nothing else does. Maybe the MacArthur Genius Grant notice will come in the mail. But today there’s only something white and thin inside. It’s an actual letter—rare these days, in our e-mail driven society. It’s in a fine white wove envelope, and my name and address are typed neatly in 10 pica that looks like it came from a typewriter and not a printer. It’s from the dean’s office at Harvard. I’ve finally gotten him to respond to my request, the rogue. Dear Carrie: Hope this finds you well and I am sorry it has taken me so long to respond to your letter. As always, I appreciate your concerns. However, as I mentioned during our conversation at your father’s function last year, I don’t see, as I didn’t see then, a need for an honors program at Harvard. Even though you maintained in your letter that it is important to allow “the best of the best” at our school to interact, we believe that every student at Harvard is already the best of the best…. Bull. That’s what I had thought before I’d arrived there. I thought everyone would be a genius and wouldn’t look at me funny when, for example, I wanted to talk about philosophy or current events at a party or in the dorm lounge. Some of the kids were okay, but some would go “whoosh” and cut their hands above their heads when I said something they deemed too intellectual. I also met people whose test scores were much lower than mine, and some of them had rich alumni parents or played lacrosse or dived really well and that’s probably why they got in. There were also plenty of beer-chuggers and bubbleheads and people who talked nonstop about sex, which one would think is odd for a school that everyone had to study like hell to get into, but I guess that’s why their gonads exploded as soon as they got fifty miles from home. I thought that by having an honors program, the students at Harvard who were actually smart could be together. On rare occasions, I did encounter smart people in school. Once in a while, I’d end up at a mixer with the other prodigies, and we’d discuss the difficulties of being fifteen in a sea of twenty-one-year-old drinkers and Lotharios. I felt a kinship with the others, but they soon grew to love seeing how much they could get away with, while I didn’t. That was around the point that Professor Harrison began to express a more-than-academic interest in me. I fold Dean Nymczik’s letter and balance it in the alley between my computer and printer. Dean Nymczik doesn’t understand. Few people do. There are a great many people who believe themselves to be smart—in fact, I’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t—but none of them are smart enough. And this is my father’s Big Lie. The exact lie—let me see if I can remember it correctly—was this: “When you get to college, you’ll meet people who are just like you.” He’d say, junior high is tough, high school is tough. In college, they’ll be just like you. Just wait until you get to college. They were not. And they are not. I went through four years, and now I’m out. On the rare occasions I meet people now, I find that they consider snowboarding a cultural activity and that their main reading material is TV Guide. And I don’t know how to respond to that. So mostly I stay in bed. Chapter Three There’s a good reason that I don’t have any friends in the city. Most people’s friends are people they met at college. And most people they became friends with at college are people they met freshman year. And most people they met freshman year, they met during the first few weeks of school. I did start off with a few friends freshman year. My roommate, Janie, was my friend. But she dropped out of school in November. Another friend I had was a girl named Nora, who was a prodigy, like me. The week before the start of classes, they kept having receptions for prodigies. At one of them, I was standing by the window, staring outside and holding a cup of 7UP, and Nora came over to me. “You look bored,” she said. “Do you know anyone here? I don’t.” Then she dragged me over to other groups of people and we stood next to them until we were included in the conversation. It took Nora only a little while to be the leader of the conversation. Unfortunately, the fact that she was so friendly meant she quickly became friendly with a lot of people. She started organizing all kinds of things, especially during the first few weeks of school. She’d get an idea for something to do, like walk around Boston or head to a movie, and she’d e-mail a bunch of people including me, and we’d meet up and go. But people like that never stay friends with me for long. They’re so outgoing and loud and popular that they get swept away by people who are more like them. I shrink in that kind of competition. Nora contacted me less and less. I think she also got a boyfriend. I saw them on campus together. At first, even after we stopped doing things together, when Nora and I would pass each other around Harvard, we would wave to each other. After a while, we just nodded. After another while, we started pretending we didn’t see each other. It’s weird how once you dip below a certain level with people, you’re no longer above the say-hello threshold and you have to pretend not to see them so that it’s not awkward. Maybe it happens because it starts getting too risky. You’re not sure they’ll say hello back, and if they don’t, you’ll feel embarrassed. I remember that it was also that way with certain professors on campus. Students in a huge lecture class would definitely know the professor, but we wouldn’t know if they really knew us. So saying hi to them on campus would put pressure on them to figure out who we were, but if they did recognize us and we didn’t say anything, they might think we were being snobby. It was a real quandary. When I think back to Harvard, I get mixed feelings. I remember the beginning of each semester, when the air would turn cool and I’d look out my dorm window at all the students strolling in their hooded crimson sweatshirts through the fallen leaves. I’d get excited because there were new classes and new possibilities to come. But my hopes would fade quickly as the semester wore on. No one would talk to me in class. I’d eat alone in the dining hall, and I’d spend Saturday night looking out my window at everyone else, just like the previous semester. And it wasn’t that I wanted to be doing what they were doing, but that I wanted them to be doing things with me that I wanted to be doing. And what hurt most was that I was on a campus that students around the world would give their eyeteeth to be at, so I should have been absolutely thrilled, but instead, it seemed like it was everyone else’s place except mine. And now I’m in New York, in a hip part of town that people around the world would give their eyeteeth to live in, and I feel exactly the same way. The only period during which things were different was when I was with Professor Harrison. I don’t remember thinking much of anything the first time I saw him. It was English 203, The Modernists, second semester of sophomore year. There were twelve of us in the class; they’d broken it into two sections. The other section just got a grad student, and mine got a full professor. We were lucky. Harrison was average height, about forty years old, with brown hair that was starting to gray. He had a tendency to wear soft V-neck sweaters. He told us the first day that he didn’t want this to be a typical English class where we just read the novels and competed to give the best deconstruction. He said that, once or twice, he’d ask us to write our own modernist pieces. I was a little nervous because I’ve never been as good at writing as I am at other things. Most people like writing to be intimate and revealing, and I resent having to tell the most private details of my life in order to interest people. Plus, writing isn’t as exact as other subjects. In high school, I would sometimes start a creative writing assignment and feel like I was skating into the middle of the ice with nothing to hold on to. My best subjects were math and science. I was also pretty good in philosophy and literature, but not at writing my own literature. Harrison went around the room and asked each of us to tell where we were from and what our major was. I found myself wishing that most professors did this, since people in many of my classes didn’t really get to know each other. This was my chance. I said that I loved reading and observing human behavior. When I finished, Harrison smiled, nodded and said, “Welcome to the class.” We left that day with a writing assignment: to introduce ourselves and then talk about something we disliked about our personalities. Harrison said that plumbing one’s own flaws was a characteristic of modernist writing. I wanted to impress Harrison right away, so I had to do this properly. In my dorm room, I lay on my stomach on my bed, cooled by the chilly air that blew in through a crack in the window. I agonized for an hour over the opening line. Eventually, I decided on, “Of the three grades I skipped, second grade seemed the most abrupt.” There. I’d put the most salient thing about me first. And it was a little revealing. Surely he’d like that. I added, “Suddenly, I’d gone from pencil to pen, from printing to script, from oral show-and-tells to oral reports, from running from boys to watching classmates chase them. Skipping fourth and eighth grades was a breeze.” Yes, this was good. I told some more about myself, but finding something I disliked about myself was hard. I thought of the first quasi-modernist book I’d read, Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, when I was nine and my French lesson had been canceled. The protagonist had to, it seemed, try and say every extreme thing that came into his head to see what happened. I didn’t have a similar quirk. I thought some more. What could I write about that would make a good modernist essay? I could invent something. Sometimes I feel…like a cockroach. Sometimes I feel like a swing set. Nah. I decided to write about being too studious. It wasn’t very intellectual, and it wouldn’t incorporate much symbolism. But what the heck. It was just one assignment. During the second and third classes, Harrison didn’t mention the essays we’d turned in. We dissected various modernist authors. One kid in the class, Brian Buchman, was the biggest kiss-up I’d met yet, and at Harvard that was quite an achievement. If he’d been sincere, I would have admired him, but he had a tone that was clearly false. Half of what he was spewing was stuff I’d learned in high school, but he made it seem like he was discovering nuclear energy. When the third class ended, and everyone was shoving their books into their natty black backpacks, Harrison called me up to his desk. I stood there while Brian Buchman said goodbye. “Do you have a few minutes, or are you in a rush?” Harrison asked me. “Do you have time to come to my office?” “I have time.” We walked down the hall to a pentagonal cul-de-sac with a wooden door in each wall. A few of the doors had yellowing newspaper cartoons taped to them. Harrison’s door was blank except for his name. We entered his office and he sat at a rusty metal desk. He had a few newspaper clippings taped to the painted-white cinderblock walls, and there were papers piled high on a broken chair. I’d heard before that academics got no respect, and the size of Harrison’s office proved it. He was a well-regarded professor, and this was what he had to work in. Harrison leaned back. “I found your introduction very interesting.” “Thanks.” I noticed there were no photographs on his desk. “You said in your essay that you study too hard.” “Well, maybe there isn’t such a thing,” I said, trying not to be nervous. “But some people say that.” I remember noticing that he had a maroon sweater on and suddenly thinking it looked good on him. He had slightly wavy hair and intense brown eyes. He said, “Starting college at fifteen doesn’t sound easy.” “Well, it’s not so hard academically. But…” “Socially, it could be hard.” I nodded. “You sure you don’t have somewhere to be right now?” “No,” I said. “I mean, yes. This is my last class on Thursdays.” “You the oldest in your family?” “I’m an only child.” “Mmm,” he said. “I had a younger brother. It created some tension when I got so much more attention in school.” “Did you skip grades?” “I only skipped one grade. But I found it hard. For you to have skipped three…that must have been quite an adjustment.” I nodded again. “How are you finding school?” He looked straight at me. I hadn’t found anyone that interested in me since back when I had interviewed for college in the first place. We ended up talking for more than an hour. We got to things I hadn’t told anyone. I told him about sitting in my dorm room freshman year, after my roommate had moved out, feeling miserable even though everyone kept saying how lucky I was to have the room to myself; I talked about the earliest smart things I’d said to adults that had made their eyes widen, like going up to a woman in the library when I was seven and pointing to her copy of Call It Sleep and saying, “That’s a good book.” I talked about figuring out how to play “F?r Elise” on the inside of the piano when I was five. I stopped several times for fear I was boring him, but he kept urging me on. At times, he would reciprocate, telling a story about something smart he’d done as a kid, or a time he had felt out of place, and I almost felt as if he thought he needed to impress me. That was strange. “One day, the boy who lived next door to me was reading a comic book on his stoop,” Harrison said. “He wouldn’t show it to me, so I stood in front of him and started reading it upside down, out loud. He was amazed, even though it’s not so hard to read upside down. He thought I was a genius. Then he ran and got a bunch of his friends, who kept giving me things to read upside down. They made me feel like some sort of superhero.” I told him about something that had happened with a neighbor of mine. “When I was in first grade,” I said, “this sixth-grader who lived on my block came up to me on the playground at school and told me he was doing a report and he needed an example of a case in which the First Amendment wouldn’t apply. All the kids used to ask me for help, even the ones who picked on me. I told him that yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater was an example, even though we have the First Amendment right to free speech. Then, the next day, in the lunchroom, he ran up to me all out of breath and said, ‘Carrie! Carrie! You’ll never believe this! I looked in the encyclopedia, and they took your example!’” Professor Harrison threw his head back and laughed. I realized then that the story was funny, and I laughed, too. He laughed some more, and that made me laugh more. The more we laughed, the more it seemed fun just to laugh, even after the joke had gotten stale. It was a good feeling that something that I’d merely considered strange in my childhood was now amusing, an experience to look back at and laugh about with someone. There were plenty of bad things that had happened—oh, if only I could recycle them into amusing stories! And Professor Harrison would understand. But our time had to come to an end. Harrison looked at me and said, “Well, I know you have to move on.” I said, “Not really, but…” but he just laughed and got up. He shook my hand. His hand felt warm. I said I appreciated the discussion, and then I left. As I walked back, my mind raced a million ways. He was smart—no, brilliant. He liked to hear me talk. He encouraged me to talk more, and always had a response. I felt more excited about the conversation than I had from any in years. But I also knew that this was probably the last time we’d spend that kind of time together—probably he was having those sorts of meetings with every student to discuss their essays, and probably they were all as enchanted as I was. And just like with my outgoing friend freshman year, I’d quickly move out of Harrison’s scope, overshadowed by people who were louder and more “fun.” Besides, surely, Harrison already had a throng of people outside of class that he belonged to. Former students, relatives, colleagues. He was great. How could people not swarm around him? There was still relatively little I knew of him, but what I knew was terrific. I felt like I wanted to back him into a corner and quiz him for hours. And of course, I also wanted him to ask more things about me. I had been saving things up for years to tell someone who was interested, who cared. Harrison hadn’t made fun of one thing I’d told him. He hadn’t said “whoosh.” He hadn’t barked “SAT word!” when I’d used a big word. He’d agreed with what I’d said and sometimes built on it. The most amazing discovery in the world is someone who understands what you’re about without your having to go through your entire life history to explain it. But my time was over. During the next class, my feelings were confirmed. I got no wink or knowing smile from Harrison. He didn’t single me out in any way. I was disappointed. I still thought I should mean more to him. Hadn’t we shared secrets? Weren’t we friends now, whereas everyone else was just a student to him? He had told me about feeling alienated and lonely as a boy. Were those things you told everyone? Had he told everyone? I kept looking at him. He was so handsome, so smart, so steady. I doubted he’d ever been into getting drunk at parties. The person who got the most attention in class that day was Brian Buchman. Not that Harrison had a choice. Buchman went on and on, and Harrison ate it up—one genius to another. I was filled with jealousy. I wanted to say something equally brilliant, but neither I nor anyone else in the class had a chance to get a word in with motormouth running. Buchman talked about “The Stranger.” He said, “Not that, by the way, the English translation can even come close to the French…” and Harrison nodded in agreement. Buchman called Camus “superb” and made the “okay” symbol with his thumb and forefinger as he said it. I wondered if vomiting would cost me an A. An airheaded girl in our class, Vicki, stared at Brian the whole time, cocking her head to the side like an attentive terrier. Brian wasn’t bad-looking. But what a phony. Harrison didn’t look at me once. I felt miserable. When the class ended, Brian and the professor were still talking. Neither of them glanced up as I went out. I left in a foul mood. I walked toward the Square, and it looked like everyone on campus was having fun. Two people in down jackets pitched a Frisbee back and forth. A gaggle of fraternity guys was horsing around with a lumbering Saint Bernard. A girl and her boyfriend were fake-fighting in front of the library. In my dorm hallway, I smiled when two girls from my floor passed me, but they kept talking and didn’t smile back. That was embarrassing. I opened my door, dropped my books on my dresser and climbed into bed. I lay there for maybe half an hour in a fetal position, racked with malaise. It was almost a month into the semester, and already, everyone had crystallized into groups. I listened to the end of a branch scrape repeatedly against my dorm-room window. The phone rang. “Carrie?” a voice asked. “It’s Professor Harrison.” “Hi.” I sat up. “I just was wondering if you’d be up for dinner tonight. I know you probably have plans…” Something inside me seized. A one-on-one dinner? Would this count as a date, or just a discussion? Would there be other students there? What had inspired this? How should I act? What if I said something stupid? At least I had already read half of the books on the syllabus, so I could hold my own in that respect. Besides, Harrison had enjoyed talking to me that first time, right? I shouldn’t be nervous. “Sure,” I said. My voice probably cracked. “What kind of food do you like?” “Uh, whatever you want.” He laughed. “You ever eaten Moroccan?” “No.” “Then we’ll do Moroccan.” He seemed to like it when I hadn’t tried something. I would soon learn that. He liked being a teacher. I hung up and thought about what to wear. I didn’t know if you were supposed to look good for a man who was asking you to dinner but who was a respected elder and not someone who could potentially have a romantic interest in you. I didn’t really know how to look good, anyway. Looking good involves trying to look just like everyone else, and I don’t spend a lot of time looking at everyone else. I pulled on a blouse that I’d worn to a formal dinner with my father a year earlier. I did have an adult-type wool coat. I trotted down the stairs, glad to be joining the other people who had somewhere to be. A chilly wind blew. I felt excited and nervous at the same time. I waited on the lawn. Harrison wasn’t there yet. I gazed back at my dorm. It looked like a three-story Colonial house. Several of the lights were on. They represented people who were stuck inside, not about to step into the thrilling unknown. Professor Harrison’s car was so small that I didn’t realize it was there for the first few seconds. I guess Harrison didn’t notice me at first, either, because he peered in his rearview mirror for a second before realizing I was walking toward him. He got out, came around and opened the door for me. It wasn’t necessary, but it was a nice gesture. “Hello,” he said. “Hi.” I climbed inside, and he threw the door closed. It was incredibly warm inside. The heat was blowing full force. He walked around the front of the car, illuminated for a second by his own headlights. Harrison slid inside. “Any preference?” he asked, playing with the radio dial. “Whatever you—” I started, and then became aware that maybe I was being too passive. I’d already let him pick the food. “Classical?” Harrison found a classical station, and I sneaked a peek at his profile. He had a softly curving nose, and a pleasant expression on his face. We talked about composers. He knew a lot about their lives, even more than he knew about their music. I’m always impressed when someone is well-versed in a topic that has nothing to do with their main discipline. It shouldn’t be so unusual, but when one keeps meeting person after person who doesn’t have any academic passions, to find someone well-versed in three or four really is a miracle. We talked about Edvard Grieg, whom I’d always been a little fascinated with. Harrison noted that he’d entered the conservatory around the same age that I’d entered college. The two of us talked about him for a half hour. Everything I knew, he knew. We parked in a small lot behind the restaurant. Inside, it was dark but alive with people. When the waiter came up to us, Harrison said, “Back room.” The waiter escorted us through a doorway full of burgundy beads. The back room was small, the walls covered in fuzzy red felt. None of the four tables was occupied. “Hope you don’t mind,” Harrison said to me. “I like privacy.” “Me, too.” “I wouldn’t want students to see us and think I’m playing favorites,” he said. “You don’t take them all out to dinner?” He winked. “Only the best and brightest.” I looked down at my menu. There was a gold tassel hanging from it. “It’s too bad you’re not old enough to drink,” he said. “They have this sweet kind of red wine here…” My eyes glossed over the list of entr?es but didn’t really take anything in. “Do you like sweet things?” he asked. I nodded. The waiter filled our water glasses, and David ordered a Coke for me and a glass of red wine for himself. But when his wine came, he held it out to me. “Try?” I hesitated, then took a sip. It was sharp and sweet at the same time. “It’s good,” I said. David took a sip. He was actually putting his lips where mine had just been, and it was a little exciting. He held the glass out for me again. The waiter returned as I was drinking it, and a look passed between him and David, but neither said anything. After David took the glass back, he rested his chin on his hands and stared at me for a minute. “It looks good on you,” he said. “What does?” “The wine. It turned your lips red.” I didn’t know what to say to that. I picked the menu up again. It was odd that he could stare at me without feeling embarrassed. He only stopped staring when the waiter came to take our orders. David asked if I’d decided, and I said I hadn’t, and he asked if I minded him ordering for me because he knew some things I should try. After the waiter left, he said, “So, what do you really think of our class?” “I like it,” I said. “I like the way you incorporated our own writing—” “No,” he said. “Not the curriculum, the students.” “Oh. I guess…they’re fine.” “What about Vicki?” I shrugged. “She seems nice.” “Tell me what you really think.” “Well—” “Come on. Our secret.” “Well, she’s a little…” “…bit of an airhead?” Harrison said. I laughed. “You agree?” “That’s what I was thinking of.” “Between you and me,” he said. “We can both keep secrets, right?” “Right,” I said. “Almost everything about me is a secret.” He smiled. “There’s something so fresh about you,” he said. “As brilliant as you are, you still have this youthful spark. I can’t get over it.” I looked at the table and sipped my Coke. “What about Brian Buchman?” he asked. “Smart kid, right?” “He is pretty smart.” “Is he not the biggest ass-kisser in the history of academia?” I laughed with glee. “I thought you loved him!” He rolled his eyes. “Oh, Camus is superb.” “‘I found the French version to be far superior,’” I mimicked. “Oui,” Harrison said. The waiter came, and I glared at him. His appearance was becoming an annoyance. For all David said about my having a youthful spark, he seemed to have one, too, even though he was a well-respected academic. Some of his stories indicated that he was still just as insecure as he’d been growing up, which I liked. There was something else that was thrilling to me: We were laughing together about our class, as if they were below us and we were both high above them. When the food came, David took his fork and pushed a little of everything onto my plate. “Eat up,” he said. “Don’t hold back. Enjoy yourself.” We ate greedily and took turns drinking from the next glass of wine. We giggled until we’d finished it. Then David ordered more. We ate, we drank, we laughed, and I knew I was acting completely empty-headed and silly, and for the first time, I didn’t care. I was with someone brilliant, who could protect me if need be, and I wasn’t worried about anything. As soon as we left, the cold air hit us. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll turn on the heat as soon as we get in the car.” He put his hand on my back for a second. A shiver went up my spine. All sorts of feelings darted through me, but they didn’t gel into a consistent whole. I was just feeling an amorphous anticipation. I didn’t know what to do with it, as it was new to me. He backed out of the parking lot and I felt the heat come on. Through the windshield, in the dark, a row of pine trees looked like a spiky sine wave. A few stars were out. It seemed like we were a world away from campus. “You know, you really make me feel at ease,” he said, pulling onto the road. “I’m glad,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else. “It’s true.” He smiled. “Are you usually not at ease?” “I don’t know if any of us is usually at ease.” He looked at me for a second. Something made me shiver again. David put the radio back on and told me how impressed he was with my knowledge of music. I mentioned my four years of piano lessons. I remembered that my father had put up a poster of Uncle Sam that he’d gotten from the local music store, and it read, “I WANT YOU to practice every day.” David talked about a recital he’d been to where his cousin had played Beethoven’s Fifth, and just as he’d gotten to the last note, a panel in the ceiling fell down, raining white dust on everyone. The way David described his cousin Stevie, in a little navy-blue suit and bow tie, which got powdered up like a jelly donut, I had to laugh. The two of us talked at length about good and bad childhood music experiences, about the odd teachers we’d had in our music classes in school and for after-school lessons, and about other extracurricular activities, and before I realized it we were back at my dorm. I didn’t know what time it was. I’d had a lot of wine. I knew it must still be early, but it felt late. Only two or three windows were lit up. I sat there, feeling the alcohol wash through me. I waited for my eyes to focus. “Well,” David said. “I had a nice time.” “I did, too.” “Got your keys?” “Hope so.” I began digging through my purse. David reached into my purse and grabbed my left hand. I looked up. “Do you really want to leave?” he asked me. He slowly began massaging my palm with his thumb, in a circular pattern. I returned to staring into my pocketbook. “If you could do anything right now, what would it be?” I knew he wanted me to be the one to suggest going somewhere else. If it was my idea, it would be less illicit. But I didn’t know what to say. Before I could decide, he leaned over, put his hand behind my head and brougt his lips to mine. He stopped for a second and looked at me uncertainly. I turned to face him, and he kissed me again. I could hear the motor running. Soon he had his hand on the back of my neck. Then he pulled away. “I told myself right after we had that talk in my office the other day that I wouldn’t let myself do this.” He actually had been thinking about this since our talk the week before! And he hadn’t been able to resist! I couldn’t believe it. It was the first time I’d been wanted that much, and not just to be on someone’s spelling bee team. “Look,” he said. “I can let you go, or we can go somewhere.” I paused. I had no choice. “Let’s go.” He had some of the same paintings in his living room that I’d had in my bedroom growing up. Before I had a chance to tell him, he was walking down the hall, calling for me to come on a tour. His apartment felt like the warmest place I’d been since leaving home. There was a fireplace in the living room, thick rugs everywhere, and fat pillows smothering the couches and bed. We didn’t linger in David’s bedroom. I followed him back to the kitchen. “Anything to drink?” he asked, heading around the counter. “I think we already did that,” I said. The wine had smoothed my speech, hammering out the kinks and stumbles. David laughed, unscrewing the top of something. He poured himself a glass and set it down. “Do you ever use the fireplace?” I asked, walking over and sitting on a corner of the couch. It was charcoal-gray, with light and dark areas where it had been rubbed. “I haven’t yet this year,” he said. “I was waiting for the right inspiration.” How’s it going to start, I wondered. Would he use a bunch of tricks that would get me into his bedroom? Or was that not going to happen? I was assuming it would, even if I wasn’t sure whether I wanted it to happen. He did know I was inexperienced, right? He had to. He couldn’t expect much. Then again, maybe he liked inexperience. “What are you thinking about?” he asked. No one had ever done that before, simply asked me what was in my head. He put his now-empty glass on the kitchen counter and walked toward me. He looked serious and intense. I noticed a slight wobble in his step. “Your syllabus,” I lied. “Ah,” he said, sitting on the other corner of the couch. “That reminds me. I published a paper on Speech and Phenomena…” He began telling me about it, and I liked that in the middle of our sitting in the living room, work was still on his mind. It was strange, though, that after we’d been kissing in his car, we were back at the chaste distance we’d been at before. I wondered if maybe he was going to tell me to sleep on the couch and tuck me in and read me a bedtime story. Despite myself, I feared it. “You know,” he said, “when I say things about you, like that you’re brilliant, or that you look beautiful with merlot on your lips, it’s because I really think that. I’m not just saying it to flatter you.” I pointed to the empty glass on the counter. “Wow,” I said. “That stuff works great.” He laughed. “It’s not the alcohol,” he said. “You are just so…” I cocked my head to the side. “Are you nervous?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he leaned over, put his hand under my chin, lifted my head and kissed me. He ran his hand down the front of my shirt, then down my slacks until he got to my kneecap, which he held. He wrapped his arms around me, and we kept at it until I was out of breath. After a while, we went into his room. He was happy with what happened, and I was left unfulfilled. I wasn’t so surprised. It was more academic for me. Something I should experience to know what it was about. But after he was asleep, I looked at him, ran my hand over the comforter and felt lucky to be there. Class held a new excitement after that. David would lecture, pace the room, then stop and look up and down the aisles with a slight smile on his lips, acting as if nothing was going on when we both knew it was. It was our game. Occasionally, when I thought it was safe, I would catch his eye and raise an eyebrow, and once in a very rare while, he’d wink at me quickly. Sometimes, I would just get a surge of excitement watching him walk around in his soft sweaters, knowing that no one else in class had snuggled against them, knowing that later that night, I would. And when Brian Buchman was droning on and on, and Vicki was swooning, I would feel happy instead of miserable because I knew that later, David and I would laugh about it. One time, David was a few minutes late to class, and everyone started yammering. “Maybe we can leave if he doesn’t show,” said a guy named Rob, who only came to class half the time anyway. “I like this class,” a girl said. “I do, too,” Brian said. “He loves you,” Rob ribbed him. “Yeah, and he ignores the rest of us,” a girl complained. “He’s probably just busy,” Vicki said. “Is he married?” “I don’t think so.” “Maybe he’s gay.” “That would be a shame. He’s so cute!” I told David about this later, and we both cracked up. In my other classes, I daydreamed. I was somehow able to take notes, but my mind was elsewhere. I would return to my dorm room to find a message from him on my machine, either an invitation to come over or just a call to say he missed me. If there was no message, I’d lie in bed on my stomach and gloss over my reading materials until he’d call. That usually didn’t take long. Then, he’d pick me up outside the dorm and we’d head out to eat or to his place. On the nights in which he had to get his work done, I stayed in my dorm room and did my own work. I maintained my good grades because when I wasn’t with him, studying was all I did. I had no need for anything else. No need to force myself to head out to some club, meeting or coffee bar to feel as if I was making a lame stab at socialization. No need to wander through the Square alone, looking at everyone else having fun and wondering how I could join in. I had one person who cared about me and wanted to hear my thoughts, and that was all I needed. The winter was a snowy swirl of schoolwork, fireplaces and him. As for the physical part, I never got the hang of the Main Event, which seemed to be uncomfortable and ended really quickly, but I didn’t care because everything else was great. On weekends, we drove all over Massachusetts, through colonial towns and historic villages and country roads, stopping for cider or chowder or pie. We walked along the harbor hand in hand, talking about places we could travel to, about places we’d never been and places we’d dreamed of as kids. At dinner in a waterfront restaurant, I’d watch the reflections of orange lights shimmering in the harbor, and he would reach across the table, dunk his roll in my bisque, and ask me if he should put this or that book on the syllabus for next semester. I couldn’t believe I was affecting what his next semester classes would be reading, or that he considered me intelligent enough to offer suggestions. But he always listened closely to what I said and either nodded or gave me a new perspective. It felt wonderful. Each of us should have the feeling, even if only for once in our life, of having someone so entranced by us that every inconsequential thing about us becomes an object of fascination. Any old piece of debris that’s poking around in our soul can be offered up for voracious consumption. David and I commiserated on the perils of being smart, of thinking too much. One time, we were driving through a small town, the gray-brown branches of naked trees crossed above us like swords, and I told him the story of how, for a few months in seventh grade, I couldn’t sneeze. “It started out of nowhere,” I said. “I was in social studies in seventh grade, and I was about to sneeze, and then I thought about it, and I couldn’t. The sneeze got all bottled up under the bridge of my nose and wouldn’t come out.” Every time I had to sneeze after that, I tried not to think about sneezing, but the more I tried not to think about it, the more I had to think about it, so I couldn’t sneeze. Finally, one night, I confessed everything to my father, and he arranged an emergency meeting with the school psychologist. The psychologist told my father he was concerned that I might have obsessive-compulsive disorder. I had to see him for four weeks in a row. But somehow, I started forgetting to think about sneezing during my sneezes, and the problem disappeared as quickly as it had come on. David smiled. “If you think a lot about anything, it can ruin it,” he said. “If you think about kissing, about the fact that two people press their lips together and move into all sorts of configurations, it seems completely bizarre.” “I’ll bet it’s worse if you think about it while you’re doing it,” I said. “Let’s see,” he said. And he pulled off the road. After about a month of my sleeping over regularly, David began telling me a few new things he wanted me to do. They were only slight variations on the norm, and I considered them a small sacrifice to make. Whatever kept his attention. As long as they didn’t go too far. But soon, he began to tell me some of the things he wanted me to say. They bothered me. They weren’t the kind of things I’d ever said before, and I’d probably never say them again, if I could help it. It wasn’t just that they were dirty—the words were harsh. I didn’t feel I could utter some of what he wanted. But I didn’t want to disobey. “We’ll start slowly,” he said kindly, one night in his room. “Just like with everything else. I just want you to say this one thing.” I was silent. “Carrie?” What’s wrong with you, I thought to myself. It’s just words. You know that intellectually. So what? But I knew that even if I could say it, it would come out unnatural. And thus, it wouldn’t have the effect he was hoping for. I was sure of it. “Come on,” he said, sweat on his brow. “Say it.” “It won’t…it won’t sound like me.” “Just say it,” he whispered. “Say it once.” He kissed my lips, then my neck. He ran his hand down my chest and rested it in my crotch, then took his index finger and began circling. “Say it. What do you want me to do to you?” “‘I want… I want you to…’” “Go ahead.” “I can’t.” He sat up. He didn’t look so kind anymore. “What’s the matter?” “It won’t sound like me. It won’t sound right.” “Say it any way you want.” He leaned over me and kissed me again. “Come on.” I just looked up at him. “What’s the matter with you?” “It’s not…I can’t.” He sat up and looked into the distance. “David?” He ignored me. “Come on. I’m…” He rolled over on his side and pulled his blanket up. “Forget it. What’s the use?” “Are you mad at me?” He ignored me again. I turned over, too, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay there, my back to him, quietly waiting for him to change his mind. I wanted to get up and put on some bedclothes, but I thought that the more silence there was, the more he’d need to break it. I was scared even to breathe. I watched the red numbers on his clock radio change. Eventually I fell asleep. At some point in the night, I woke up and pulled on a T-shirt. Then I went back to sleep. In the morning, when I awoke, David was already in the kitchen, heating up coffee. I padded in there, and he gave me a silent nod and went back to the coffee. He also was quiet in the car going back to campus. I went through my classes upset but trying to concentrate. When I came home, the light on my answering machine wasn’t blinking. I collected my introductory philosophy books and read in bed. An hour passed without a call. I was scared. Why had I been so stupid? But he would have to give me another chance, right? I read Meditations on First Philosophy, but my eyes just kept rolling over the same words again and again, as if I were highlighting the book in varnish. Nothing stuck. Every few minutes, I looked at my clock. Dinnertime was approaching. I’d have to hike down to the dining hall and sit at the end of a table alone. Doing that always gave me an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to do it if he was going to call. I felt hungry. I ignored my stomach and tried again to concentrate on Meditations, but I decided maybe I needed something light to read. So I picked up Thus Spake Zarathustra. The phone rang. I reminded myself, even as I dashed to it, to make my voice sound uninterested. “Hello.” I wouldn’t have admitted it, and it sounds very clich?d, but clich?s become clich?s because they happen: when I heard his voice, my stomach jumped. “I went out and got wood for the fireplace,” David said. “I could use a little help initiating it.” I wanted to tell him how happy I was that it was him, how scared I’d been, how much I’d missed him and how I would say whatever he wanted. But I didn’t. I told him I would meet him outside in ten minutes. That night, we ate heaping bowls of linguine at an Italian place, then went to David’s apartment. Once in the living room, we lay down on the rug in front of the fireplace, a bottle of wine between us. David put his glass down on the brown tiles and lay on his side in an S shape, his knees bent. I rested my head on his jeans and stared into his chest. Thank God everything’s okay, I thought. It felt so good just to lie there, listening to him breathe. I closed my eyes, and we both lay quietly for a while. Then, I felt his fingers move over my wine-ripened lips. “Come here,” he whispered, and he brought my chin to his face. “Let’s stay here for a change,” he said, and I nodded. Soon he said, “Say it. What I wanted you to say yesterday. Please.” Before he’d called, I had told myself I would, and on the way over, I had told myself I would, but now I couldn’t. It didn’t seem like the right words. It didn’t seem to fit with either me or with us. And why did he want me to say it, when he knew how much it bothered me? “Say it!” I started. “‘I… I…’” “Yes?” His eyes were closed. I couldn’t finish. “Come on,” he said. “Go ahead.” “David,” I said. Then I said no more. He sat up again. “Is this it?” “I…” “Is that the best you can do? You’re not even going to try?” I just looked at him. “One compromise?” It just didn’t fit. “Didn’t I teach you? Didn’t I say it over and over? Why can’t you learn it?” I didn’t know what to say to that. “Is it such a hard thing to learn?” Finally I said, “It’s not something I would say.” “But you can learn.” “We’re not in class.” “Just say it!” I looked at the rug. “It wouldn’t be me….” “Do you always have to be such a goddamn prude?” Before I could say anything else, he jumped up, stalked into the bathroom and shut the door. I sat still on the rug and suddenly felt very cold. He came back out in a minute and said he’d drive me home. We rode to my dorm in silence. He didn’t say anything when I got out of the car. In my room, I curled up in my bed in the dark and stared at the phone, sure he’d call. I rehearsed various speeches in my mind, speeches in which I would tell him that maybe there was a way we could get past this, that maybe there were things he wouldn’t say, either, if I asked, that I had already made compromises and that I’d been happy to make them for him, but this was something that bothered me. And if we couldn’t get past this, I wanted to say why it was hard for me to yield to his request. But I never got the chance to say any of it. He didn’t call. The only time the two of us did talk was in class, when all of us were discussing the reading materials. That was it. The semester eventually drew to a close. He and I never had another personal conversation. I got an A in the class. I guess David would have been afraid to give me anything less. By the way, I deserved it anyhow. For a long time after that, I had trouble seeing couples kissing on campus. Their lives were so normal; why did mine always have to be strange? Did these carefree couples know that for some people, not everything worked out so neatly? Did they appreciate that? The worst was, I knew a lot of the couples were together just for sex. At least David and I talked about books, music and his work. What did these people who did nothing all day but face-mash actually talk about? Some of the girls on my floor had boyfriends whose biggest accomplishment was making fifth-string lacrosse or flunking astronomy. The rest of my time at Harvard wasn’t much of an improvement. I studied hard, graduated and moved into the apartment my father found for me. Now that I’ve just spent some time thinking about the relationship with David, I feel sore and unfulfilled, similar to how I often felt after the encounters themselves. So I go out to the supermarket to grab some ice cream and rainbow sprinkles. I wend my way through the murky city air and into the perfume-and-garlic world of D’Agostino. I pluck a frosty pint of Cherry Garcia from the freezer, and as I’m pacing the aisles, I pick up sprinkles and cherry soda, too. Once I get home, I make an ice-cream soda. The fizz bubbles high above the glass. When I taste it, I immediately realize I shouldn’t have been denying it to myself for so long. The ice cream slides down my throat into my gut. It feels absolutely wonderful. There is nothing better than this. I pass a mirror on the way back into my room and notice that my lips have turned red. Chapter Four In the morning, I’m depressed. I don’t know what to do. I have another appointment with Petrov. This probably won’t help. But maybe it will. The sidewalk is soggy, but the sun is out. I keep my eyes on the ground, feeling just as low. When I descend into the subway, there’s only one other person in the station. Still, I have to glance up at him. The way he looks strikes me immediately. He’s wearing a gray bowler hat. He appears to be in his early thirties. He’s also got on a long raincoat, and he’s clean shaven and looks unusually neat. But it’s the hat that strikes me. No one wears hats these days, especially a gray bowler hat. He looks like he’s out of an old detective movie. He paces before the complement of full-length Broadway ads: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; Les Mis; Phantom of the Opera. Occasionally, he starts muttering to himself. Just one of the many people in this city who are on the borderline. I lean against the wall and stare at the ground, at the oval slabs of gum that have been there so long they’ve turned black, and at the dirt and stones and wrappers. The Hat Guy is still pacing, still muttering, and I don’t want to appear to be staring at him, so I look away. There are so many places where we pick things to stare at in order to avoid looking at strangers. We do it in elevators all the time. But there is hardly anything to stare at on an elevator. I should start a company that manufactures sticky blue dots that read “Stare at this dot to avoid talking to the person next to you.” I could make a fortune. I wonder what people are supposed to talk about in elevators. “Wouldn’t it be funny if these Braille ‘numbers’ were really curse words?” “You know, it has been statistically proven that ninety percent of ‘door close’ buttons don’t really work.” “Hey, wanna order pizza from the emergency phone?” “You know, most buildings don’t have a thirteenth floor because the builders were superstitious. But this building actually used to have a thirteenth floor. It collapsed last year during a storm.” Come to think of it, I might use that one. The light from the subway train comes out of the tunnel, and then the train itself appears. The Hat Guy hops on, and we immediately head to opposite corners of the car like boxers in a ring. The Hat Guy pulls a long, thin book out of a flat paper bag and again starts muttering. On the train, there’s not much to stare at, except ads for community colleges. I think the quality of a college is inverse to how much it has to advertise. You don’t see Yale putting ads in the subway. The other ads are about made-for-TV movies on cable. Years ago, you used to be lucky if you could find one decent program out of three networks. Now, through the wonder of cable, the odds have been reduced to one in twenty. I get to Petrov’s a few minutes early and the door to his office is closed. I crouch next to the door and put my ear to it. I hear the guy inside say, “It’s in every one. In every sexual fantasy I have, right as we’re about to…uh, do it, the phone rings.” Petrov: The phone rings in your fantasies right as you’re about to have sex. Man: Yes. P: Do you answer it? M: No. But it completely ruins the mood, and the fantasy’s over. P: So you’re getting hot and heavy with a woman, you’re about to have sexual intercourse, and the phone rings. M: Yes. P: I think you have intimacy issues. M: What makes you say that? What idiots. Petrov shouldn’t even charge me, after having to listen to this dreck all day. I hear him approaching the door, and I scramble away from it. The guy who comes out is about four foot ten. I wonder how people like him even have sex. I’m not trying to be funny. How do people who are so different in height have intercourse? I’ve seen four-foot-eleven girls with men who look like they’re six foot three. When they’re in bed, do the girls climb up to kiss them, then lower themselves and have sex, and then, when they’re finished, climb back up and kiss them again? “Hi, Carrie,” Dr. Petrov says. “How are you doing?” “I’m fine.” I enter and sit down. “Is there a ‘but’?” he asks, sitting across from me. “You seem hesitant.” “Well,” I say, “I sort of have this problem.” “Okay.” “Whenever I’m having a sexual fantasy, the phone rings.” Petrov shifts uncomfortably. “I’d appreciate your not listening in on my sessions.” “I couldn’t help it. The door was just flat enough for my ear.” “Let’s see what kind of progress you’ve made on your to-do list.” ZOLOFT® 1 Do things from list of 10 things you love 2 Join an org./club 3 Go on date 4 Tell someone you care 5 Celebrate New Yr’s “I had ice cream,” I say. “To fulfill mandate number one.” “That’s great,” he says. “Did you get rainbow sprinkles?” “Yes. I made a whole ice-cream soda.” “And how did it make you feel?” I have to admit it. “Pretty good,” I say. He smiles, as if he’s earned a victory. This bugs me, so I add, “I haven’t made any progress on getting a date. Or joining an organization.” “What about the guy from legal proofreading who flirts with you?” “He doesn’t flirt with me. And I haven’t seen him again yet. I will, though.” “Good. Remember not to back down if he wants to get to know you better. Even if he’s not exactly like you, you can still become friends with him.” “Okay.” “Have you found any clubs you might want to join?” “I’m looking around,” I say. “I’m still considering that church.” “You know, you’re in New York City. If you pick up the Weekly Beacon, there are lots of events in the listings section.” This reminds me of something. The Weekly Beacon has a very popular personal ad section. It gives you a little more than the usual personal ad websites on the Internet. You can read the Beacon’s ads in the paper or on the Web, but they also have a feature where you can have a voice mailbox so you can hear the other person’s voice and they can hear yours, without having to give out your number at first. So not only can you trade e-mails, but you can trade phone messages, too. That provides me with optimum chance to talk to them and rank their creepiness potential before I have to meet them. A lot of people on the Internet pretend to be different than they are. This is perfect. I should be able to get at least one date and satisfy Petrov’s requirement easily, even if this wasn’t the method he had in mind. I can place an ad and tell all about myself. What’s more, I can mention in the ad that I have morals and that I’m smart. And I can include my restrictions for the people who respond. That way, I might actually meet someone who has standards and intellectual interests. I’m definitely going to do that. Petrov asks, “Are you okay? You seem a little down today.” We go into how my week went, how my father is, and about New York in general, but I don’t mention Professor Harrison. I tell Petrov I’m going to rent classic movies after the session. That’s how I’ve been occupying several evenings lately, since I’ve read a lot of classic literature but haven’t seen enough classic films. The movies come from a top-100 movie list recently released by the Association of American Film Reviewers. They actually released a whole bevy of lists, including 100 best movies, 100 best movie scores, 100 best leading men, 100 best leading women, and 100 best movie characters. If I had to do my own film characters list, number 1 would be C. F. Kane, 2 would be Nurse Ratched, 3 would be Dr. Strangelove, and 4 through 21 would be Sybil. There are some great characters in movies—greater than in real life. When I leave Petrov’s office, I figure I’ll walk home instead of taking the scumway, so that I can pick up a DVD on the way. It’s not that long a walk. Maybe this is good practice for staying out on New Year’s Eve. A few blocks out of Petrov’s office, I see someone familiar. It’s Hat Guy again. He disappears around a corner. Is he following me? It’s awfully odd to see someone twice in one day whom you’ve never seen before. I wonder if my father is having him tail me to check up on me. I decide I’ll follow him a bit. I run up the block and around the corner. He disappears again. I try to catch up, but I lose him. Maybe I’m imagining it. When I get back to my apartment building, Bobby is outside, bending over a cellar window that’s caked with mud and damp leaves. He notices me from between his own legs. “Hey, beautiful,” he says. I quickly turn and don’t say anything. I push the front door open and jog up the stairs, which have been trampled for so many years that the black rubber matting beneath the carpeting has bled through on the edge of each step, and the color of the rug has turned from yellow to sallow. When I reach the top, I stop. I stand there and feel a hole in my stomach. All Bobby did was say, “Hey, beautiful.” And he’s old; maybe saying it brought him joy. Why was I so mean? What if he really does think I’m beautiful? What if, as far as he was concerned, he was just being nice? No one else consistently tells me I’m beautiful. I stand there and feel sickness wash over myself. Then, the feeling goes away, like it usually does. That night, I get called for legal proofreading. It turns out to be even more monotonous than the last assignment. I sit with three other proofers in a room that’s almost completely barren. The desks look like they were swiped from an elementary school: manila tops, metal green insides. The floor is white and dusty. It’s freezing in there. It must be the room they don’t let their clients see. The other proofers are much older than me. I look at them, but unfortunately, none of them look like they’d make a good date. I will have to keep looking, and I’ll have to place that ad soon. The four of us sit like bored students in study hall, waiting for work. The other proofers discuss a variety of topics: whether Walt Disney is really frozen, trying to name all of the ingredients in a V8, leaving a dog out and forgetting you left it out, kids drinking chocolate milk with their school lunch every day, Japanese cartoon characters that look American, bad television shows. A man and woman talk about their belief that today’s television is much worse than when they were kids. People always say that, but I guess they don’t realize that TV is always going to seem worse now than it did when you were twelve. Anyway, I happen to like TV. I’ve met people who will self-righteously declare that they don’t own a TV set, as if it makes them morally superior to everyone else, as if they are declaring they have never told a lie or broken the law. There is absolutely nothing immoral about television. It’s not even unhealthy. Vapid and stultifying, maybe. But we all need it sometimes. I know I do. My mind worked so hard for the first eighteen years of my life that it needs—and deserves—a virtual brain pillow to rest in. Around 3:00 a.m., the room is silent. Everyone is reading newspapers. I’m starving. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Probably, I’m more bored than hungry. I get up, go to the kitchen, drop some coins into the snack machine and grab a bag of pretzels. I return to my seat and start eating. A few people turn around. I can’t help it. Pretzels crunch. I start to feel like everyone is looking at me. I put the bag aside and sit quietly. But I see the pretzels there, their tiny knobs calling out to me. My mouth waters. I know it will water until every last pretzel is gone. The psychology behind that is interesting. When I can take it no more, I grab the bag, head into the kitchen and scarf down the pretzels. I hate peer pressure. When I return to my seat, I decide I’ll write a draft of my personal ad for the Beacon. I take out a pen and print: PRODIGY SEEKS GENIUS—I’m 19, very smart, seeking nonsmoking nondrugdoing very very smart SM 18-25 to talk about philosophy and life. No hypocrites, religious freaks, macho men or psychos. I can’t wait to see the responses I get. I pull out my pocket calendar and write on it, on a date next week, “E-mail personal ad to Beacon.” I’m giving myself a week to find a less-desperate way of meeting people. But if nothing else works out, I can place this ad and answer other people’s. The next night, I’m scheduled to return to the firm where Douglas P. Winters works. I’m excited. I tell myself that I must dig in my heels and ignore his salacious comments, as he may be my only prospect for a date by New Year’s. But I hope that he doesn’t drop me before it happens because he realizes, as David did in college, that I still have morals. David left me wondering for a long time if all men would be like him, making me do things that felt wrong, then immediately shutting me down coldly if I didn’t. And I hated the women who routinely gave in and made it easy for them to be that way. Nowadays, I don’t think every man is evil, but the good ones can also get a good-looking woman, so a woman who isn’t good-looking just has to lower and lower her standards until they’re down around her ankles. It’s not fair; it’s just life. I sometimes think that women are the most hypocritical beings around. They complain from nine to five about how men are pigs, and then they give them what they want from five to nine. But I can’t say they’re doing it out of any malice; it just comes from neediness. I’ve heard feminists say that women shouldn’t “need a man,” but it’s not that women need a man. It’s that most people need someone, and if they’re women and they happen to be heterosexual, their choice is limited to men. And if they’re not beautiful women who can pick and choose, their choice can be limited to self-centered men. All right, maybe it’s not so bleak, but it’d be less bleak if people actually had standards and tried to hold out, like I did by refusing David’s requests. At night, when I push open the glass doors of Pankow, Hewitt and So & So, Douglas P. Winters looks happy. “I’ve got pistachios!” he announces, then breaks into an evil laugh. I tell him I can’t wait for him to give me one. Then I wend my way through clusters of desks to the supervisor and pick up a small document. All I have to do is make sure that the typist correctly inputted the proofreader’s corrections. Oldie is in a different cubicle, so I don’t have to deal with him. As I read through the document, I gradually realize that it’s somewhat intriguing. It’s stamped Confidential. It’s about two major banks that are going to merge. I wonder if I can sell this information. I finish it and turn it in. The supervisor says there’s no more work right now. So I head out to Doug. Doug’s bangs are wet with sweat. He motions to a seat. “Hot in here?” I ask. “I have a cold,” Doug says. “Didn’t you have a cold last time I saw you?” “I’m allergic to work.” “Go home.” “I’m allergic to starving.” “I just read a document about a bank mega-merger,” I tell him. “Sounds like a page-turner.” “I was wondering if the information’s worth anything.” “Probably,” Doug says, “but that would be insider proofreading. A lotta guys went to jail in the eighties for that. Did you sign a confidentiality oath when you came to work here?” “Yeah.” “Did you sign it in your real name?” “Yes.” “Bad move.” “I wanted my real name to be on the checks.” “That’s true,” Doug says. “Well, I didn’t sign any agreement. You could slip me the documents.” If I want to work on getting him to ask me out on a date, I could throatily add, “Well, you could slip me something, too.” But I’m not that desperate yet. There’s still the personals—placing one and responding to other people’s. I laugh at my “slip me something” thought, and Doug asks, “What?” “Nothing.” “Come on.” “No.” I’ve been laughing at my own secret jokes my whole life. Why stop now? I understand them better than anyone else. “Come on,” he goads. I have to lie because I know that Doug is one of those people who won’t give up. I say, “I was laughing because I just remembered a joke I heard two kids tell each other in the subway yesterday.” “I’m waiting,” Doug says. “Uh… Knock-knock.” “Who’s there?” “Interrupting cow.” “Interrupting co—” “MOOOO!” He laughs. “Not bad. It’s hard to find good jokes that are clean.” “True.” “I have a joke,” Doug says. “Is it clean?” “No. But there aren’t any bad words in it.” “Okay.” “What did Little Red Ridinghood say as she sat on Pinocchio’s face?” “What?” “Tell a lie! Tell a lie! Tell the truth! Tell the truth!” The supervisor comes out. “Carrie? I have a job for you.” The assignment takes an hour, and then things are quiet. I reach for the pile of magazines that apparently have already been ravaged by the full-time staff (the staff that has time to lambaste their sons-in-law and, judging from a gift that has been left on the desk, to create a little dog out of an eraser and five pushpins), and lying flat on top is a magazine article about Human Papillomavirus. I read about how the majority of women have it, how it’s spread by sexual contact, how it might be the cause of cervical cancer, and how even condoms can’t prevent it. I guess that’s God’s little joke—people actually started protecting themselves from AIDS, so now there’s something that’s spread by sex no matter what. I bet someday there’ll actually be a disease that can kill you just from having sex, and that people will decide to keep having sex anyway. Maybe there will have to be a ten-year sex moratorium in the country in order to eradicate it. When it’s time for “lunch break” at 2:00 a.m., Doug invites me to eat in the kitchen with him. He looks tired—he keeps tugging at his shirtsleeves, and his short hair is a mess. The artificial fluorescent lights shine brightly above. Doug doesn’t eat, but he drinks coffee. It’s amazing how many people are addicted to coffee and won’t admit it. Some people are as obsessed with coffee as sex. But I guess an obsession doesn’t count as an obsession if everyone’s doing it. I guess it’s perfectly normal to say, “Oh, I just can’t put on my underwear until I’ve had my first cup of coffee.” It’s funny—we all look down on China’s past addiction to opium, as if we’re above all that, but most of modern America has to be doped up on caffeine in the morning and plied with alcohol at night. I don’t know that we’re any better than the Chinese. Perhaps we need both substances to get through life. But if everyone needs these medications just to cope, isn’t something wrong? Anyway, I’m ignoring the matter at hand: proving that I can go on a date. I keep sneaking looks at Doug in order to figure out if I could ever kiss him. He does have nice tufts of hair and a cute craggy chin. But I still don’t know him well enough to be attracted to him. Then again, it’s early. If it was just a first date, I wouldn’t have to kiss him right away. I mention the papilloma article to Doug. “Can you imagine what it would be like,” I say, “if there was a disease that could kill everyone unless they stopped having sex?” “Forget it,” Doug says. “I’d fucking die.” “Or the converse.” He sips his coffee. “Can men give each other the papilloma thing?” “I guess.” “Damn. Just when I was ready to accept condoms.” Does that mean he’s gay? I look at him. Yeah, come to think of it, he is. I feel stupid. “Maybe that’s how the world ended the first time,” Doug says. “Maybe our civilization was as advanced as it is now, and then sex killed everyone. We can control nukes better than our sex drives…” He keeps chattering and I pretend I’m listening, but I’m really just trying to take in the fact that he’s gay. I have to think of things like that over and over until the shock value wears off. There are a great many things that shock me even though they shouldn’t. Obviously someone being gay should not shock me. I wonder if I can go out to eat with him and still count it as a date. Can having dinner with a gay man count as a date? What makes a date a date? I guess there has to be a possibility of something romantic happening. So what’s it called if you have dinner with a gay man? A gayte. Well, I can send in my personal ad next week. At 4:00 a.m., my shift is over. The firm calls for a car service to drive me home. I wonder what would happen if I asked the driver to take me to Chicago. I wonder how far I could get him to go without his calling his supervisor. Maybe I’ll try each time from now on to get the driver to go a little farther. It would be worth being banned from temping. Maybe Atlantic City is the limit. Although the last place I want to go is somewhere where a bunch of seventy-year-olds make love to three slot machines at a time and shriek at you if you get too close. One of the world’s greatest pleasures is sitting in the back of a hired car at night. From where I’m sitting, the city looks like a sleeping villain. The heat is blowing full force. The wheels coast evenly over the smooth road. There is no music on, owing, I think, to some old Giuliani Rule. Right now the world exists just for me and the few other people in the city who are up. It’s too early for even the delivery trucks and the most anxious commuters. When I get back to my apartment and undress in my room, I notice that the light is on in the apartment of that couple across the street. Their window is big and boxy, revealing a table, stove, drapes and hanging plants. But I don’t see the couple. I guess they’re in another room. For just a second, I feel a connection to them. They are up at this odd hour, and so am I. I want them to come to the window, wave and smile, intrigued by the fact that we have something in common. We share a secret, a quiet time of the night. I strip down to my underpants because I’ve left the heat on too high. My throat is dry, and I drink a cup of seltzer. Then, I crawl into bed and fall asleep. When I wake up hours later, the light in the couple’s apartment is off. At nine o’clock, I’m too tired to get out of bed. I roll onto my back and pull my covers up to my chin. Beams of blue daylight stream in overhead. I decide that, for a while, I will simply lie here, listening carefully to the street sounds and seeing where my thoughts transport me. I’ve done this once or twice before, just lain here and listened to see what comes to mind. It’s amazing how many far-off sounds and unusual noises you can isolate if you concentrate. Lately, vague stimuli have been provoking obscure childhood flashbacks. I think maybe the reason that so many of my recent memories have come from early childhood is that I’m at an age where I can’t be considered a kid anymore, yet I don’t have kids of my own, so the only way to experience childlike enthusiasm is to fantasize and remember. I’m sure Petrov would have an explanation. I relax as much as possible and close my eyes. All is silent. Then, I start to hear birds chirping. There are two of them, exchanging their high-pitched staccato reports. It reminds me of when I was three and my grandfather and grandmother walked me around the shady grounds of their apartment in London, and we came upon a cracked robin’s egg lying among the tufts of grass and knotted roots. It was such a pale and beautiful shade of blue that I almost cried. They encouraged me to lift it up. Inside, there was nothing except whiteness, the purest white I’d ever seen. Each time I visited them after that, I looked for more eggs, but couldn’t find any. I was fascinated at that age with so many things: revolving doors, mirrors, clocks, trains, fans, elevators, hydrants. I soon wanted to know how all of these worked—same with eggs and animals—and this led to a house full of science books that I devoured and spat out like so much gum. To balance that were all of the novels—I don’t even remember reading kids’ books when I was two, like my father tells me I did, but I must have quickly graduated to more advanced stuff. The air outside is still, save for the distant rumbles of buses. Now I hear glass breaking. Someone must be setting down a trash bag full of recyclables. The sound reminds me of the wind chimes one of our neighbors had on her back porch when I was younger, and how, one day when there was a hurricane, they whirled around fiercely the entire day, jingling and spinning like a carousel out of control. I was glued that afternoon to the TV. I lay on my stomach charting the storm, using the wind direction and velocity to figure out when it would hit land and how long it would stay. In the evening, the power went out, and my father lit a candle and we sat in the kitchen for an hour and talked in the darkness. The rain pummeled the windows and the wind blasted the roof, but we were safe inside. I talked about school starting up again; Dad talked about what it was like when he was in school. We talked about the first apartment we lived in in New York when I was two and a half, right after we moved out of London. I think it was the longest talk I had with my father, and one of the few I’ve had with anyone. I haven’t thought about that day in a long time. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/caren-lissner/carrie-pilby-39774645/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.