November 1997
“Damn. I’ve forgotten to bring a pen. You don’t have an extra, do you?”
Charlie was standing in a dingy, narrow hallway in Queens College, waiting for an appointment with the graduate student advisor, Master Holcombe. It was the girl’s eyes that Charlie noticed first, an unusual greenish amber in her pale face, the color of a fallen leaf in the snow. She stared at him expectantly, with a frank intensity he found unsettling.
“Uh, let me check,” he said, rummaging in his bag. He came up with a fistful of writing implements and presented them to her on an open palm.
She chose one, and smiled. Her teeth were small and white. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re American.”
“How can you tell? I’ve barely said a word.”
She laughed. “You’re so American.”
“Why does that sound like an insult?” he said lightly, though it did. “You are, too.”
She squinted at him. She was wearing a short brown plaid dress and brown leather sandals. Her skin was pale; a smattering of freckles fell across her nose and chest and arms. He couldn’t tell much about her shape in that dress, which hung from her shoulders like a sack, but her bare legs were tanned and strong. She was tallish, and her curly cinnamon hair was pulled back in a clip. “Everything I say sounds like an insult,” she said. “So I’ve been told.”
Just then the door opened and a young man with a receding chin and strips of thin hair plastered to his forehead slipped out. He wore gray slacks and a flimsy white collared shirt, which had taken on a pinkish cast from the skin underneath. “Holcombe said to send in whoever’s next,” he said.
“I guess that’s me. Nice to meet you,” the girl said, offering Charlie her hand.
“But we didn’t,” he said. “Meet. I don’t even know your name.”
“Claire,” she said. “Ellis.”
“Charlie Granville.”
She smiled. “Why don’t you come to drinks after dinner at our place tonight? We’re rounding up all the Americans we can find.”
“We … ”
“Ben and I. My boyfriend. Fiancé, actually.”
Charlie nodded. He felt a suffusing prick of disappointment, like a bee sting.
“Thirty-two Barton Road,” she said. “Eight o’clock.”
He looked at her fingers; she wasn’t wearing a ring. “Thank you,” he said. “I’d like that.”