Chapter Twenty-one

SIGMA ALPHA MU, OR Sammy, had a plastic Santa on the front lawn. The brothers referred to him as Sammy Claus and did whatever they could to have freshman girls pose topless with him. A Sammy Claus album got passed down from class to class. Next to Sammy Claus was a punch station. There were many punch stations at Sammy parties, but none more elaborate than the one next to Sammy Claus: three trash cans filled with red, redder, and reddest punch. In order for a freshman to set foot in Sammy, they had to drink a cup of the reddest punch. An ancient thirtysomething Sammy alum manned the punch station, persuading people to have second and third cups. Girls who had three cups almost always posed with Sammy Clause, then made their way into the frat house, where there was darkness, a pounding bassline, more punch stations, and Sammys grinning knowingly in the dark, for only they could see how the night would unfold.

“Are my lips red?” Charlie asked the Lacrosse Girl. Francis had asked Charlie to make sure that she drank no more than 1.5 glasses of punch. He’d calculated the formula based on her weight and his inside knowledge of the ingredients.

“Yes,” she said. “Are mine?”

“Really red,” said Charlie.

Everyone’s lips were red. One of Charlie’s favorite stories growing up was his mother’s about a costume ball in Paris and the absinthe zombies roaming the steps of the Opera House, falling and laughing.

“Ever wonder what blood has to do with beauty?” asked the Lacrosse Girl. “I mean, isn’t that the point of makeup? To show a guy that there’s blood in your face?”

He thought about the little capillary blossoms that would appear on Paula’s cheeks. She’d called just before he left for Sammy and said she was going on a midnight river cruise after work. She said she had a weird feeling inside and needed to be out on the water. Tonight, during their weekly Saturday call, John had confirmed that promiscuity was a given on a cruise ship. That the rhythm of the water made people insatiably horny.

“The subliminal message is, ‘You’re going to drown, so go and procreate before the end.’”

“You really think she’ll be promiscuous?”

“A single, healthy, nineteen-year-old girl on a party boat after midnight?”

“I never said she was single.”

“Every human being is single.”

Charlie wished human beings would act less human, but according to John, resisting nature was futile. At the Sammy Claus punch station, a skinny girl with brown nipples kissed Santa’s cheek as camera flashes went off.

“I’m getting another punch,” Charlie told the Lacrosse Girl.

“Get me another?”

“Do you mind if I get you a half?”

“Just get me a full one.”

“Francis was very specific about 1.5 punches.”

“I just want to have some fun.”

Me too, he thought, spotting Nicoletta at the far end of the lawn. Her hair was up, and she’d fully embraced her height by wearing heels. Charlie had seen her magazine cover. The headline was “Summer Love.” Nicoletta wore a sundress and threw her hands up in the air in celebration of summer love, although, according to the Lacrosse Girl, Nicoletta was single, and they shot the cover in early March. Elsewhere in the issue, there was a Q&A with the cover girl.

“What does it feel like to be an Ivy League model?”

She said she didn’t consider herself a model, and that school came first.

“Any summer crushes you’d like to share with us?”

She said she didn’t kiss and tell.

“What’s something no one knows about you?”

She said she had nothing to hide.

“There’s Nicoletta,” Charlie said, handing the Lacrosse Girl her full cup of punch.

“You should say hi to her. You like her, I can tell.”

“I like that she’s not embarrassed to be six feet in heels and that she wore her hair back exactly like the magazine cover, but she’s not my future, that much I know. My future is on a midnight cruise along the Delaware. I just hope she remembers that I’m her future. Cruise ship rhythms can mess with important facts.”

“Maybe Nicoletta’s your fact tonight? Paula sounds great, but Francis and I fear that she’s aging you. You worry so much. We’re young, Charlie. It’s sort of our job to be youthful.” The Lacrosse Girl finished her second cup and grabbed a third. “Let’s go inside. I want to dance.”

She grabbed his hand and walked them past the entrance, which was teeming with Sammys in togas and backward baseball caps, stomping their feet and bobbing their heads.

In his mother’s story about the party at the Paris Opera House and the longest night the world had ever known, the sun didn’t seem to rise for two whole days. People got lost in there, some forever. The end of the world was in an antechamber’s antechamber, where absinthe filled the holy water fonts and a man in a mask in a birdcage rattled the bars like a furious chimpanzee.

*

By the time he reached the third floor, the sweat of at least ten strangers was on his person. Charlie counted himself among the drenched and red-mouthed, a people whose voices could not be heard above the bassline, while their masters, the Sammys, whispered in the shadows. He was alone now, on the top floor of the frat house. The Lacrosse Girl had gotten sucked into a centrifugal group of dancing Sammys, who wore pink wigs and swigged peach schnapps. Charlie tried to reel her in, but it was too late. Within moments a wig had been placed over her short, sandy hair. They put her in a chair and told her to throw back her head, so the schnapps would have an easy trip down. Charlie wondered if the Sammys had missed on purpose; only some of the schnapps made it down her throat. The rest was on her shirt and shorts. They laughed about it; the Lacrosse Girl laughed, too. Regardless, tomorrow she’d stink of peach. Francis won’t be happy. He’s the sort of kid who freaks out about food stains and their associated smells.

“In here,” someone said. “I’m here,” she said. “In here.”

Here was a dark room, some sort of repository for expired furniture. Blocky wooden chairs were piled high, and in the back of the room was a naked mattress, on which sat Nicoletta.

“Hey,” she said. “We both sought out the top floor.”

“My brother advised this tactic at college parties.”

“Smart guy.”

“Sometimes.”

Her punch cup was empty. She was smiling. She’s always smiling. Maybe it’s a modeling habit that can’t be unlearned.

“This room smells so old,” she said.

“Like wooden ghosts,” said Charlie.

“I like that.”

“I just made it up.”

“Want to sit down?”

“I guess so.” She pulled him down and he tumbled over her. In the seconds before she kissed him, he knew he’d be kissed and felt panic, a hot piece of lead going through his middle. Guilt smolders just below the rib cage. He hated the feeling, and decided he needed the moisture of her mouth to put out the heat.

She was a subtler kisser than Paula. She’d probably kissed less and was still developing her lip muscles.

“I’m sort of seeing someone,” said Charlie.

“Oh, right, Miss Blue Eyes. I have one of those. How sort of?”

He looked at her different-colored eyes. They were hard to pass up, especially the hazel one. He wished he could request which color their next kiss would taste like. There would be another kiss, he decided. John would bet good money that Paula would kiss someone on the cruise. Maybe it was unwritten that couples kiss other people when they’re apart. No real harm. As Paula had once asked, “What is kissing, anyway?”

Make this one taste like the greenish one, Charlie wished, and kissed her again, then again and again, dousing the guilt until it was extinguished for good, leaving him in a limbo. “I feel like a forest after a massive fire,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

“Confused.” While cheating, one can be so honest.

“I know what you mean.”

“Have you ever heard of Frucor? It’s an Australian sports drink. My girlfriend was a model for them.”

“Oh, wow! Which agency?”

He kissed her again, blaming Paula for not belonging to an agency.

“Do you think this mattress is dirty?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Charlie, again using his cheater’s honesty.

“I don’t care.” She got out of her long blue jeans.

“How tall are you?” asked Charlie.

“Tall. Here.” She put his hand between her legs, showed him what to do.

The cheater’s honesty allowed him to take a clinical interest in it. He told himself that he was practicing for future Paula reference. Sometimes Nicoletta would stop him and remind his hand how to move, other times she’d moan, and Charlie would smile. It was an amazing game, the prize at the end, her fists pounding the mattress.

“Do you want me to do something for you?” she asked, tugging at his pants.

“No, I’m fine. Like I said, I’m sort of seeing someone, so, you know.”

“Well, Charlie, we just like, you know?”

“Of course, but does that really count in terms of . . . future things?”

“It doesn’t mean that we’re girlfriend and boyfriend, but it does mean something. I mean, I’ve never let a non-boyfriend do that.”

Fuck, he thought.

“Let’s sleep on it,” she said. “But you have to spoon me after touching me.”

Charlie complied. Two young, skinny bodies forming a crescent over a wet spot.

*

He woke to a dry mouth and a pain in his forehead, a vein full of punch worming its way around his skull. On the wall was a poster of Mike Schmidt winning the 1980 World Series, jumping for joy.

“Schmidty,” said Charlie. Nicoletta’s back was turned to him, but he could tell from her breathing that she was awake.

“I had his baseball card from that year,” he said, fingers under nostrils.

“I should get out of here,” said Nicoletta. “Will you walk out of here with me?”

Her morning voice was delicate. Only two years ago, she was sixteen, thought Charlie. And that was how she sounded now, like a sixteen-year-old girl.

“Sure, I’ll walk out with you.”

“Do you know where the bathroom is? Don’t worry, I’ll find it.”

She wasn’t afraid of what was outside the door in the Sunday-morning corridors of Sammy, while Charlie lay paralyzed in bed looking at Schmidty and smelling the new smell. But it wasn’t entirely new. He’d had this on his fingers before, though not from Paula. She smelled of flowers. This scent almost certainly smelled like a food, but which one? Not that nonsense about girls and fish. This was a rich, heady, almost spicy scent of scents. He vowed not to wash his hand until he figured out its secrets.

“Looks like my friend also crashed here, so I’m going to go have breakfast with her,” said Nicoletta, back from the bathroom where she’d wet her face. She was back to smiling, but this morning Charlie didn’t mind, as long as the smile meant taking last night lightly.

“Last night,” she said. “I don’t know, I guess last night was last night.” She went back to the mattress to kiss him goodbye. Her breath was minty.

“Did you use mouthwash?”

“Yeah, I found some Scope in the bathroom. Didn’t want to smell for our goodbye kiss.”

“Does my breath smell?” asked Charlie.

“No, not really. I think we’re still at an age when our breath doesn’t really smell in the morning.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean?” asked Nicoletta.

“It’s just something I do.”

“You’re cute. I like you, Charlie, but please stop smelling your fingers, it’s making me feel self-conscious.”

“Oh, sorry, it just smells so good.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess that’s sweet.”

“And spicy.”

They kissed goodbye, and when she left the room, he missed her. He didn’t have to explain the feeling to himself, he just let it be. We had fun. She’s nice. I’m nice. We’re still at an age when our morning breath is sweet. And I don’t really miss her, I miss the room having held two people instead of just me. And Schmidty. By the way, Schmidty, stop jumping for joy. It’s not 1980 anymore, it’s 1987. Christ, Schmidty, why did I do those things with that tall girl? And that smell? What is it, Schmidty? And my headache. I need food, Schmidty. Stop jumping for joy. I’m such an idiot.