That first semester, disinclined to return to Atlas’s German classes, Jess had taken up Spanish. When one day towards the end of term she asked me to come over and help her pick out an outfit for their final conversation group, I wondered who my straight friend was trying to impress on this campus of women. After some prying, she gushed about a flirtation with Angelo, her Mexican-born professor who always dawdled out of the building with her and observed she was a fast learner.
‘It’s okay, he’s married,’ she insisted with her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth as she flecked her eyelashes with mascara. ‘Nothing’s going to happen; it’s just fun to flirt.’
I laughed at Jess, but when Greg found out, he called her an ‘asshole’ and Angelo a ‘creep’.
Angelo was married to a Literature professor from Ireland. A few weeks after ’Twas, while they were having an innocent coffee, Angelo told Jess that he and his wife were separating. He’d found out she’d had a year-long affair with a female PhD student, herself in a civil partnership with one of the librarians.
Within a month, Jess was spending most of her nights at Angelo’s new apartment and Greg was ranting regularly to me about how unethical and idiotic this man must be. Jess began to wear her summer camp ‘Love A Teacher’ T-shirt and complained that every time she spoke to Greg he made her cry. I had to lie to our mutual friends about Jess’s disappearances and began to grow annoyed with the frequency with which I ate in the dining halls alone.
Though I felt happy to see my friend smiling and gushing about how she and Angelo would move in together after she graduated and no longer have to keep their relationship a secret, I also felt betrayed. Each morning and evening I sat in front of Matthew’s latest eight-page email with less and less conviction. I wondered what was real, whether I had made a mistake, whether perhaps he was right (perhaps I was a child with no brain and no thought of anyone but herself). I tried moving around the furniture in my room, playing Alanis Morissette at full volume, walking aimlessly through the snow and watching House on the communal television downstairs, but Matthew’s vile and violent words leapt from my laptop screen into my head, followed me around and crawled beneath my skin. How could I have imagined I could be normal? It had seemed possible with Jess and Greg and a play to work on, but when it was just me and my library books in a strange country with the only person in the world I hadn’t lied to wanting me dead, the whole notion seemed absurd.
Without Jess to demand food and wine, I also spent less time at Greg’s. I think it struck us both as less acceptable if it were just the two of us, and I feared the conversation wouldn’t run as easily without our brazen Texan mediator.
Still, after a few weeks of sad ‘goodnights’ at the end of Tuesday evening classes, I was whining loudly about having no kitchen and being bored with campus food, and Greg finally invited me over alone.
‘Thanks, I’ve missed this,’ I murmured as he handed me the things to lay the table.
‘I only miss you when I think about you.’
I hiccupped an unsure laugh.
‘I have been very nice to Jess and answer all her emails promptly, but she’s a fool. Doesn’t she know he could lose his job? Doesn’t he know it? And all this business with the wife.’
I responded appropriately, venting my anger at my friend but trying not to fuel Greg’s rage. Jess did know he could lose his job and she also knew how much dating her last language professor had screwed her up, but I understood her desire for drama and the thrill of something so illicit.
Greg’s criticism turned to the independent study Jess was supposed to be writing with him and the meetings she kept cancelling. He raved about the department and the miserable students who didn’t turn up to his classes and I realised, in the weeks I hadn’t spoken to him, Greg had become more misanthropic and lonely than usual.
‘You and I, my dear, we know that theatre is not just egomaniacal clowns singing musicals, but also Robert Wilson and Beckett. And that “acting” – or “smacting” as Richard Maxwell describes it – is something that is constantly being renegotiated and examined.’
He paused to drain his glass.
‘What do you want to do with your life, Lucas?’
I sighed automatically, ‘I dunno.’
‘Do you want to direct? I’ve put so much effort into you, don’t let it be a waste.’
‘I like it, but I’m not sure I’m so good at it. Academia seems safer.’
Greg looked at me. ‘I am, of course, very biased, but I think you should be an artist and take chances and work with your imagination and heart.’ He broke his gaze as I blushed and began to clear the plates. ‘What are you doing in the summer? You should come to my house in the country and swim in the beautiful river and meet my friends and family who would enjoy you as much as I do. My friends like to get drunk and float down the river and eat. They are all very nice and smart but being older means you are not so worried about being intelligent. You would find them dumb and friendly.’
I helped him wash up and walked back to my dorm alone. I curled onto my bed under the eaves with my laptop and stared at the number 6 beside the word Inbox. In a neat column of blue I read each repeated ‘Matthew Wright – RE: Your decision.’ I knew I should leave them until the morning or ignore them altogether, but Greg’s kind words had left me feeling warm and I suddenly felt a masochistic urge to destroy that feeling by reimmersing myself in my own illicit world. Clicking at random, I read:
From: Matthew Wright <theoutsider@worldopen.co.uk>
To: Natalie Lucas <sexy_chocolate69@sweetmail.com>
Sent: 15 November 2003, 11:14:52
Subject: I’m not throwing you a lifejacket
You’re even more foolish than I thought if you think you can reinvent yourself.
I never tried to stop you growing and I always knew you would grow away from me. I knew my situation was a doomed one. But I asked for one thing: respect. And you haven’t been able to give me that.
I’m old and I’ve read and seen a lot, but I know nothing. Nothing except love. That’s all that matters. And that is the only thing I tried to teach you. You will learn it one day. But it will be too late for me.
Most men will not swim before they are able to. Ring any bells? It’s Hesse.
If you carry on this pig-headed search for a new, super, independent you, who doesn’t need Uncles and turns left when a friendly stranger suggests right …
… well then, Natalie, you will not swim:
you will drown.