CHAPTER 3

New Year’s

On her walk home she thought about a presentation she gave in class. She considered that maybe she talked for too long. The desperate face of the pretty girl in the front row plagued her. Why did that girl look so desperate? Was the presentation too long? Boring, maybe? She thought of herself standing and talking away like an idiot. She tapped her thigh as she walked and turned the music up in her earphones, then turned it down a bit. The song was about a girl getting a New Year’s kiss. New Yearsssss, she thought.

One New Year’s she got kissed by a boy she knew from childhood. His name was Sol, and he talked slowly. As children they had played at each other’s house here and there, until one fateful afternoon when Sol invited her into his parents’ room to sit on their waterbed.

“This…is…my parents’…room.”

The room was small, smothered by the oversized waterbed. The purple sheets worsened the skewed bed-to-room ratio. Sol sat down first and bounced lightly.

“It’s a…waterbed.”

She sat down next to him and felt the wave of the bed below; to her right was a framed picture of a cat on the nightstand, and to her left was Sol, smiling. She liked the waterbed and wondered what it must be like to sleep on. Then Sol’s father came in and said: “This is very inappropriate.”

That was the last time Sol and she ever spent any real time together, save for the New Year’s encounter, which could be described as brief at best. A girl she had only just become friends with her freshman year of college invited her to the party. “Come to my party!” the girl said as she wore a beige peacoat.

There wasn’t any dancing, and Leda spent the night standing around, awkwardly attempting to make conversation with strangers. A cognitive neuroscience major from Harvard talked to her for a while.

“What is it you study?” he said.

“Writing.”

“And what are your plans with that?” He was drinking soda but was taking small enough sips that it seemed like alcohol.

“I don’t know…I mean, I want to write, but I’ll probably teach. I’d like to write, you know, but I’ll have to teach.”

“Oh, well, it sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” he said.

She wondered why this Harvard student was judging her. He had neglected to untuck a pant leg from his sock and his hair looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a considerable amount of time. She folded her arms and regretted wearing such a low-cut shirt. The neuroscientist (or whatever he was) eventually walked away and she thought, Don’t go. Being alone was decidedly worse than reevaluating her life choices. Then she saw Sol.

He looked the same as he did when he was ten, only maybe a little fatter. He was wearing what appeared to be a vintage shirt with the 7UP logo on it. What would ever possess him to wear that? Does he think it’s irony or something? she wondered, but didn’t fully want to consider because she was so grateful for the potential company.

“Sol!”

He turned to look at her and blinked hard.

“Oh…wow…I can’t believe…it’s you.” He blinked hard again.

“Yeah, it is. How are you? Where are you these days?”

“Oh…you know…around.” He blinked hard again. By now she realized he’d developed a tic. Maybe he’s been through trauma. Maybe he’s lived a life I couldn’t understand beyond waterbeds and 7 UP. She felt suddenly compelled to fix whatever it was in him that was causing all the blinking. She reached out, gently touching his arm.

As their conversation muddled on, she realized that he was as bored and desperate as she was fumbling through this New Year’s night, and such a realization led to the immediate bond of: we are both bored, lonely, and miserable. Had Sol more social understanding, he might have attempted to talk to someone else. Since he didn’t, she didn’t feel the need to pretend she’d rather talk to anyone else either, so they stood together for the two hours leading up to midnight, mutually accepting each other’s forced but dearly appreciated company.

“I wish there was dancing,” she said.

“Like…Dance…Dance…Revolution?”

“No. I mean, like, real dancing.”

“Oh…I can’t…really dance.”

“I’m sure you’re good at it.” She looked at his pants. They were a little stained.

“Not…really…but I’d…dance with you…if you wanted.”

She thought that was sweet.

At 11:59:50 everyone started counting down to midnight. The sudden collective loudness was startling. She thought, Here we are all alone pretending to have time together. Then it was midnight.

There wasn’t a moment for her to think about kissing Sol. Before the party, she got dressed in the foaming need to have a New Year’s kiss. She watched her naked reflection in the mirror, and although she wished to be more linear, she traced the outline of her hip bone and thought of a boy holding her, kissing her. But standing there with clumsy, slow, ticking Sol, she didn’t think of kissing him. When midnight hit, she watched the crowd in unison undulation, and right in between “Happy” and “New Year” he kissed her as her head was turned. Just the corner of her lips. Slowly, clumsy, gentle. She felt a swell of warmth in her checks, his 7UP pudgy irony pressed against her. It was over by the time it began, and she didn’t know how to act afterward, but it would be remembered in her life as the single most erotic New Year’s kiss she would ever receive.

When leaving the party, she and Sol exchanged phone numbers in the ritual of feigned interest in further communication. They said their goodbyes for too long, and she stumbled a little as she walked away. She put on her red winter coat and thought about the waterbed. The rolling motion, and sleep, a dream about a boat, blue, and a feathered mask she bought and hung in her room as a child. Before leaving she held the doorknob for a moment, feeling the winter cold draft through the bottom of the doorway and her palm pressed against the cool steel of the knob. This is the New Year. As she went to push open the door, Sol called out to her.

“Leda.”

She looked back at him filling an empty space in the unwinding party. She wanted to call out to him, but she just waved.