By the time I got within striking distance of J. E.—Jonathan Edwards, my residential college—I had cheered up considerably. My initial sense of defeat had subsided, and I was beginning to see the night as a major step forward. Polly had kissed me; I had told her the truth about Cindy. I was off the sidelines and into the game, and the score wasn’t nearly as lopsided in Peter Preston’s favor as I’d imagined.
Fumbling for my keys by the main gate, I grew uneasy, as though I were being watched. Casting a furtive glance down Library Walk, the elegant bluestone path that separated J. E. from Branford College, I spotted a shadowy figure on the grass between the walkway and the Branford moat, maybe thirty yards away. He had his back to me and was partially obscured by a tree, but something—his distinctive slouch, or maybe just the drape of his coat—told me right away that it was Nick. I was amazed to see him still hanging around campus at this hour.
I wasn’t sure if he’d seen me, and could just as easily have slipped through the gate and left him to his business, but I didn’t. Part of my hesitation came from a fear of looking like I was snubbing him—grouchy and foul-mouthed as he was, Nick could be surprisingly touchy—but mainly I was just curious. Nick had gotten under my skin over the past couple of months. I’d met a lot of guys like him back home, factory workers and manual laborers who seemed too smart for the jobs they’d ended up with and only knew how to fight back with muttered curses and bitter jokes, guys who played the lottery every week just to remind themselves that you couldn’t win. Like them, Nick made me wonder if I was a fool for
thinking I had some kind of God-given right to satisfying work and personal happiness, for believing that what separated me from him was anything more than a few points on a standardized test and a little bit of luck that was bound to run out long before I reached the finish line.
I didn’t walk any more softly than usual, but for some reason he didn’t hear me approach. He just stood there, lost in thought, gazing into a lighted window on the ground floor of Branford, on the far side of the moat. Kristin Willard was framed in the window, her profile angelic in the pale glow of her reading lamp. She seemed to be concentrating hard, as if something in the book didn’t make sense to her. Another girl appeared in the doorway behind her, but Kristin read on, oblivious to the intrusion. Our conversation in the dining hall came back to me, Nick and Matt joking about inviting her to our orgy, but it seemed wrong now, creepy instead of funny.
I cleared my throat.
Nick couldn’t have reacted more violently to a gunshot. He spun on his heels, emitting a strangled yelp of distress, and flung his arms into an awkward karate stance that couldn’t conceal the flinch of pure terror on his face. I jumped backward, raising my own hands in a reflexive gesture of self-defense. We froze in these half-assed Bruce Lee poses for a few seconds, until Nick finally realized who I was.
“You got a good dentist?” he asked me.
“What?”
“If you ever do that to me again,” he whispered, “you’re gonna be missing a whole bunch of fucking teeth.”
He brushed off the front of his coat as if he’d gotten crumbs on it, and walked off without another word. When I checked on Kristin again, she was gone. All I could see through the window was the lamplight falling on her empty desk.
My heart still pounding, I opened the door to my suite and stepped into a pungent cloud of pot smoke spiced with the industrial-strength odor of fermented pickled cabbage. Pretzel Logic was playing on the stereo and the common room was crowded with visitors from the second floor, including the elusive Vernon Davis, the only black guy on our entryway. I had barely registered my surprise at his presence when Ted lifted the red plastic tube off the coffee table and held it out to me. Sang did the same with a glass jar the size of a human head.
“Bong hit?” asked one.
“Kimchi?” inquired the other.
Over the past couple of months, these two items had become the centerpieces of a popular late-night ritual in our suite. Sang had returned from Christmas break in California with three huge containers of his grandfather’s homemade kimchi—it was supposedly aged in the traditional manner, buried in a hole in the backyard—and he invited a couple of his Asian friends over to try some on the night before classes began. Shortly before they arrived, Ted broke open a gigantic Thai stick his prep school lacrosse coach had given him as a Christmas present. Those who partook of these two delicacies in the proper order—I wasn’t one of them—pronounced the combination nothing short of miraculous, and word had gotten around.
“No thanks,” I said.
“No bong hit?” Ted squinted at me in broken-hearted disbelief. It wounded him when people didn’t want to share in his pleasures.
“Sorry,” I said, my willpower already starting to erode. “I’ve got five hundred pages of Middlemarch to go before I sleep.”
“So?” Ted glanced around the room for support. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You ever try to read George Eliot stoned?” I felt somewhat sheepish advancing this line of argument after splitting two pitchers with Polly, but it was important to my self-image that I at least try to resist. “You can’t get past the epigraphs.”
“Eat some kimchi,” said Donald Park, a Korean-American straight-arrow who only tolerated our dope smoking out of a deep, almost primal craving for his ancestral staple. “It’s scientifically proven to clear the mind and freshen the breath.”
“Danny’s a kimchi virgin,” Sang explained, as though this shameful fact hadn’t already attained the status of common knowledge. He passed the jar across the table to Donald, who unwrapped a pair of restaurant chopsticks he’d removed from his shirt pocket and used them to fish out a radioactive-looking wedge of cabbage, its pale surface speckled with chili powder. He munched it slowly, regarding me with undisguised pity.
“I’m working up to it,” I assured him. “I’m gonna get there any day now.”
Among my friends—especially my more or less omnivorous Asian friends—I was widely celebrated for my strange eating habits. I had grown up in a house where spices were frowned upon, and where eating out inevitably meant pizza or McDonald’s. Before college, the only Chinese food I had ever consumed was a mouthful of canned, uncooked La Choy water chestnuts whose unusual texture had left me deeply traumatized. But it wasn’t just the cuisine of other lands that gave me trouble; I had also cultivated a profound, unshakable revulsion for a number of common American foods, including eggs, raw tomatoes, mayonnaise, mushrooms, sea creatures, and every vegetable known to humankind with the exception of iceberg lettuce, canned corn, and overcooked green beans. On the other hand, the few things I did like—hot dogs, BLTs (minus the T), French dip sandwiches, chocolate pudding, pancakes, saltines with peanut butter—I consumed in amounts that had made me a minor legend in the dining hall. I justified myself by saying that I more than made up in volume what I lacked in variety, but the truth was that I was often embarrassed by my cowardice, the way I forced my friends to bend over backward for me when choosing a restaurant or even ordering pizza. I had a number of self-improvement projects in the works in those days, and one of the main ones involved forcing myself to become a more adventurous eater.
“Tonight’s the night,” sang Hank Yamashita, in a credible imitation of Rod Stewart. Hank was a six-foot-tall Japanese-American from the Upper East Side who read GQ and had taken it upon himself to act as my informal fashion advisor. It was at Hank’s urging that I had replaced my cherished blue suede winter coat with a less eye-catching parka, and had relegated my new Thom McAn cowboy boots to a dusty corner of my closet. (It wasn’t that Hank had anything against cowboy boots per se—he owned several pairs himself—but he did object to the peculiar orange glow mine seemed to give off, especially at twilight or in cloudy weather.) “Vernon’s gonna take the plunge,” he added.
“Tonight?” I asked.
Vernon responded with a skeptical nod, and it wasn’t until then that I noticed the chopstick in his right hand. On the tip, impaled like a check on a spindle, was a tiny scrap of kimchi.
“That’s the plan,” he said, holding the chopstick in front of his face like a sparkler. “How hard could it be?”
Vernon was a short, powerful-looking guy with no neck and the suave baritone voice of a late-night deejay. He lived with Hank and Donald, but generally kept himself apart from the social life of the entryway. If you asked his roommates where he was, they’d just give a vague shrug, as if to suggest that it was a big world out there, and your guess was as good as theirs. Ever since I’d met Vernon freshman year and learned that he’d attended the same Jersey City high school as my mother, I’d been hoping we could become friends, but lately I’d begun to suspect that it wasn’t in the cards. I couldn’t seem to find a way of talking to him that didn’t transform even the simplest conversation into some sort of debate about race in America. He’d been steering clear of me since our last meal in the dining hall, when I’d pressed a little too hard to enlist him on my side of an argument about Richard Wright’s portrayal of Bigger in Native Son.
“You know what?” I turned to Donald, seized by a sudden jolt of inspiration. “I think I’ll try some, too.”
“You’re kidding,” said Sang.
I shook my head. “Why not? I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“All right!” Sang congratulated me with an upraised fist. I was touched by how pleased he seemed. “I knew you could do it.”
Donald plunged a chopstick into the jar and speared a bite-sized morsel of cabbage. I took it from him and smiled at Vernon.
“Safety in numbers,” I said.
Vernon gave a barely perceptible nod. Then he brought the kimchi to his nose and gave it a little sniff.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, looking me straight in the eye as he closed his mouth over the tip of the chopstick. I followed his lead. He withdrew the chopstick and chewed slowly, his expression shifting from grave suspicion to cautious approval.
As soon as I bit down, my mouth flooded with powerful sensations. The kimchi was cold, briny, crunchy, and spicy, though not nearly as fiery as I’d expected. It was okay.
“Well?” said Sang. “What’s the verdict?”
Hank, Donald, and Ted leaned forward in their seats, as if something important were about to happen. Vernon and I traded glances, each waiting for the other to take the lead.
“Not bad,” we finally blurted out, almost in unison.
Something about our answer struck the other guys as funny. Sang slapped his leg. Hank and Donald traded high fives in our honor. Ted shook his head, an expression of solemn wonderment taking hold of his face. He held out both his meaty arms as wide as they would go, as if he were thinking about embracing all five of us at once.
“This,” he said, pausing to make eye contact with each of us in turn. “This is why I came to Yale.”
An hour or so later, I slipped away from the party. It was almost two in the morning, but my breakthrough with the kimchi had given me a second wind. Even after a couple of celebratory bong hits, I felt strangely alert, eager to resume my plodding trek through Middlemarch My mood was such that it didn’t even bother me to open the door and find Max sprawled out on my bed, his bare, not-exactly-spotless feet propped up on my pillow.
“Hey,” I said, “what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?”
Unaware of the emotional progress I’d made since our last encounter, he scrambled into sitting position, shielding his face with a fat hardcover.
“Sorry.” He peeked out from behind the book. “I would’ve stayed in my room, but Nancy wanted to go to bed early.”
“No problem.” I dismissed his concerns with a magnanimous flick of the wrist. “Whatcha readin’?”
“Something about Leon Czolgosz. The anarchist who shot McKinley.”
“Nice guy?”
Max didn’t seem to notice that I was goofing on him.
“I wouldn’t call him nice, exactly. But I’ll tell you what—that McKinley was a first-class dirtbag in his own right. You want to know what’s wrong with America, study up a little on the McKinley Administration.”
“Got what he deserved, huh?”
“That’s not for me to say. I’m just saying there are different ways to be a killer.”
“I hear you,” I said, thinking suddenly of my parents, and the way my life sometimes seemed to embody their worst suspicions about college. Was this what they’d scrimped and sacrificed for all those years? So their son could spend his Tuesday nights drinking beer, smoking dope, eating weird food, and learning to see the assassin’s side of the story?
Max rose slowly from the bed, a distracted expression on his face. He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose with two fingers, as if he had a headache.
“Guess what?” I told him. “I just ate some kimchi. Me and Vernon.”
He let go of his nose and turned his attention to his navel area, which he scratched with more than run-of the-mill thoroughness. The skin down there looked pink and a bit rashy, like he had poison ivy or something. When he was done, he paused for a few seconds to examine his fingernails.
“Cindy called again. She sounded pretty upset.”
“I’ll call her tomorrow.”
He nodded and slipped past me on his way out, stopping short just as he reached the doorway. He glanced over his shoulder, forcing a quick smile.
“Hey,” he said. “That’s great about the kimchi.”
I’d only gotten through a couple of paragraphs when my eyes strayed to the pink envelope resting under the chipped hockey puck I used as a paperweight. The envelope contained Cindy’s most recent letter, the only one I’d received from her since we’d parted on bad terms over Christmas vacation.
I put down the book and picked up the letter, though the actual document was something of a formality, since I had it pretty much memorized. Even now, a good three weeks after I’d fished it out of my mailbox at Yale Station, I still felt the urge to reread it once or twice a day.
Dear Danny,
I’ve been thinking a lot about Bruce lately, I’m not sure why. I think the song the River is about the saddest thing I ever heard my whole life. I love Hungry Heart though. That’s sad too if you think about it. the guy just gets in his car and ditches his wife and kid. He doesn’t think twice. It’s just who he is. Maybe the guy in the River should do that too. He seems so depressed as it is …
I always had this idea that if Bruce got to know me—to REALLY know me! then we would fall in love and be together. (I know this sounds kind of stupid, believe me!!! I never told anyone but you) Yeah, I know he’s this big rock star he can have any girl he wants. I’m not Cheryl Tiegs or anything but it’s like he says on Thunder Road, she’s not a beauty but that’s all right with him. Hey—he’s the one who said it NOT me!
This wasn’t some crazy fantasy. It was what I believed. I believe there’s one person in the world your meant for no matter what, and that he was the one for me (You know that song For You? I LOVE that song) I’ve felt this way for a long time, even before Born to Run. But then this afternoon I realized it was all just a big stupid joke. Joke on me. Even if he met me he’d just think so what? What’s so special about her?
I cried a little and then I was okay.
Sincerely,
Cynthia
On New Year’s Eve, Cindy and I had slept together for the first and only time. Her mother was out of town visiting relatives, and she invited me over for a quiet evening of champagne and Dick Clark. Around eleven thirty, we started making out on the couch. It was her idea to relocate to the bedroom, and the suggestion caught me totally off guard. By that point I’d pretty much given up on the prospect of ever actually having sex with her, a mental adjustment that had made our time together a lot less stressful for both of us. I hadn’t even packed a lambskin.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I have something else.”
Already naked, she broke open a package she’d produced from one of her dresser drawers and turned away from me, squatting in a froglike stance. I heard an odd noise, something like the sound of shaving cream foaming out of the can. When it stopped, she turned around and approached the bed, wiping her hands across her thighs.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Birth control.”
I wanted to ask her what kind, but she’d already climbed into bed with me. There was no sign of the nervousness she’d exhibited at my house; she was in charge of the situation, utterly at peace with her decision. She looked up at me, and her face was pure invitation.
“Happy New Year,” she said, pulling me on top of her.
Her eyes widened as I slipped inside her, and she gasped, as if something profound and transforming had just happened, as though this were more pleasure than she deserved or could bear. I was startled by the urgency with which she met me, the frantic rhythm of our coupling. The noises that came out of her were heartfelt and unpredictable. Sitting at my desk two months later, I could still feel the tension of her legs around my waist as I came, the groan of desolation she gave when we slipped apart.
What I wanted to forget—for her sake as well as mine—was the feeling of wild emptiness that had come upon me the moment I entered her, the awful physical knowledge that she’d been right all along: this really was all I’d wanted, and now that I had it, I knew I’d never want it again. Her passion was embarrassing, not because of what it said about her, but because of what it revealed about me, the person who’d been willing to humor her and string her along for half a year just so I could fuck her and not feel a thing, except maybe that I deserved it for putting up with all those visits to the car lots, all the annoying chitchat, all those letters on pink stationery.
She must have realized it too, because as soon as we were finished she burst into tears and told me to please get out of her house. Five weeks later she mailed me the letter I was now slipping back into its envelope. Why such a shameful memory gave me an erection every time I replayed it, I had no idea, but that was how it always happened. I already had my pants open and the zipper down when my eyes strayed to the face-down copy of Middlemarch, the words “George Eliot” thundering off the cover like an accusation. Three hundred ninety-two pages to go.
Fuck it, I thought. I’ll just have to skim the rest over breakfast.