“I DIDN’T WANT to knock,” the boy said, standing in the door of Hart’s room and looking at Hart and Ford sprawled out, drunk. “I thought you might be asleep.”
“What time is it?” Ford mumbled.
“Two.” The boy paused, waiting for their attention. “You’re both on my list. Two things. First, would you help with the mixer? Second, would you contribute to Vorgan Temby’s birthday party?”
Hart decided he hated the boy. The guy was being superior because he and Ford weren’t studying.
“Well, I think I can give you a definite no to the first question,” Ford said. “You see, this guy and I are both queer.”
“Come on,” the boy said, “that’s the excuse everyone in the dorms gives; we’ve got to get together.”
“And about the birthday party,” Ford went on, “I don’t even know who Vorgan Temby is.”
“Professor Temby.” The boy glanced at Hart for support. “You know, he teaches torts. He teaches you. Look, you don’t have to give, unless you want your name on the card.”
“Oh,” Ford said, “so that’s the way it is. What do you think?”
“I think I want to think about it,” Hart said. “I hate Professor Temby.”
“I hate him too,” the boy said. “You should make peace with people you hate.”
“Not by giving them presents,” Ford said. “We’ll think about it.”
A round face pushed through the open door.
“I’m not intruding on anything am I?” Toombs said.
“Come on in,” Hart said, and the boy backed out, giving Toombs room.
“It’s nothing,” Toombs said. “There’s just a telephone call for Hart. I thought he might want to take it.”
“Why not?” she said.
Suddenly Hart was cool, the man for the situation.
“Oh, hello Susan,” he said.
“I like them,” she said. “It’s not very original, but at least they weren’t wilted. Would you like to play?”
“I’d like to talk,” he said.
“We’ve already talked. I thought we might actually do something. You know, I don’t want to sit around the apartment looking intense.”
“I’d still like to talk.”
“All right, forget it. Maybe we’ll bump into each other in the Square.”
The phone was silent, but she hadn’t hung up. His strength faded.
“All right, I’d love to play,” he said.
“Good.” He could almost see her smiling. “Meet me at the bridge. We can walk on the other side of the river. It’s quiet.”
He hung up and went to his room to get his coat.
“We’ll never get in,” he said. The fence was fifteen feet high. Beyond it he could see the football practice fields.
“When I was in sixth grade, we had this club. We snuck into football games. Did you do things like that?”
“We rang doorbells and ran,” Hart said.
After two hundred yards, the fence turned right and a row of trees pressed them against it. When they’d gone twenty yards past the bend, she turned and started through the trees.
“This is how we got in, but you’ve got to promise not to tell. All right?” He followed her away from the fence. They broke through the trees. An access road, plowed, shone in the moonlight. She slid down into a drainage ditch next to it.
The pipe in the ditch was about four feet high. She crouched down on the level ice floor and waddled in like a duck.
“Look,” he called after her, “I’m not going into this goddamned thing.” His words echoed back to him from the dark.
“I don’t care what you did in first grade.” He couldn’t hear any answer and he stuck his head into the pipe.
“Can you hear me?” he called. “Susan!” Again, he heard his echo. He slid in like a Russian dancer, his arms wrapped around his knees.
After about thirty yards, the pipe ended in a concrete box. He felt for the top.
“You can stand up,” she said from above. “Half of you is already out of the drain.” He put his hands down and lifted himself onto the freezing stone floor.
“All right,” he said, coughing out the grit he had filtered through his mouth.
“Where is this?”
“Can you wait thirty seconds?” she said. “And don’t tell me when you guess.”
Moonlight came down on them from holes high above and illuminated stone pillars that stretched up where he couldn’t see. They were climbing and the wind was blowing around them. A freezing wind that carried fine particles of ice. He drew the string on his parka, pulling it tight around his waist.
She stopped in an archway ahead of him. Beyond her he saw the shoulders of the football stadium, curling around on either side and then stretching out in a straight line toward the Charles River.
They were in the center of the half-circle, halfway up in the stone stands. Out the end, at the gate of the horseshoe, he could see the red chimneys of the Harvard houses. The wind swept in from the right side, coming down the stands, reversing and passing out over the football field, picking up the snow and tossing it on the seats. The moonlight made the ice pellets shine like glass beads as the wind dropped them down.
“Do you hear that?” Hart said. The wind whistled like a child blowing over a bottle. “It sounds like there are people here.” ‘
‘I’m sure dopers use this place. And cats. I think someone is watching us now, plotting,” she said.
A beer can bounced along the left side of the field and, carried by the wind, flew up over the retaining wall, landing in the lower stands.
“I’m freezing,” he said, sitting down on the nearest seats, inviting her to wrap up in his coat.
“Don’t you want to explore? We could climb to the top. You can see everything from up there.” She was still standing in the archway.
“I want to talk,” he said. “Besides, you must have explored this place, with other boys, since the first grade.”
She sat down beside him in the stand.
“It was the sixth grade. Sixth grade. Why the hell can’t you just do things?”
“I am trying to do something,” he said into the wind. “I’m trying to make sense. For Christ’s sake, what’s wrong with that? I just want us to get together.”
She stood up, her hands in her pockets, and swung around so that she was looking down at him.
“One time, when Father was out of town and I was living in the house alone, I called up my aunt and asked her over for dinner. I told her it was probably the only time I’d ever be able to entertain her in style. She said, ‘How sad, I always dine in style.’ I didn’t come here because you sent me flowers. I can always buy flowers. Hart, I could buy you. Maybe I already have.”
“Eat shit,” he said.
She laughed.
“At least that’s more likable than trying to kill us out on the ice.”
He’d lose her either way. If he did nothing, the summer would finish them.
“Hart,” she said, “I like you. I really do.”
“Then why the hell can’t we love each other?” he shot back. “I can’t live this way. I need to be organized. I need a way of living I can rationalize. This way, I spend half my time worrying. I can’t work. I can’t sleep. I’m going to flunk all my courses. I won’t pass.”
“Christ,” she said, “you’re the kind of person who can’t help but pass. You’re the kind the law school wants. Do you think anyone cares about the robots? The law school hates the guys who regulate their studying habits. The law school got them without trying. The law school wants you: the earnest ones. You’ve got class. The law school wants to suck out your Midwestern class. You can’t flunk. That’s why I’m worried about you.”
“We could do things together,” he moaned, “help each other, make plans, live in a sane way.”
“Hell, show me something I can’t buy in Langdell,” she snapped. “Show me someone who doesn’t kiss my father’s ass. You’re like a dog: you grovel or attack on command.”
She backed away, toward the end of the row of seats. The darkness began to swallow her, blend her into the black stone of the stadium.
“What do you know about law school?” he called after her. “You’ve never been there. You couldn’t get through a year at Radcliffe.”
“You were born for the married students’ dorm,” she said from the dark. “You were born for a dating bar.”
And then she was gone. He felt her go. He became part of the concrete: a leftover from the last football game. The solitary fan, waiting for spring. He’d sit all night. They’d find him in the morning, frozen.
“SUSAN.”
He stood up and screamed. Looking out, he saw nothing but the empty stands and the snow. She would be through the pipe, walking home.
“Susan,” he said, just loud enough to lift the word around him into the wind. He wondered what it was going to be like to cry.
“Did you think I was going out through the tunnel alone?” she said from the darkness behind him. Her hand brushed his shoulder.