4.

It was like waking up on Christmas morning. It was like having slept right to the afterlife. All you needed to do was get out of bed and dress and you would find yourself in the beautiful new world. His body’s whole texture had changed: he was sinuous, lizardy; squirming in the sheets, all his tendons felt limber and stretched.

Had it happened? To him? A girl, and such a rare foal too, a sand-colored fantasyland of black sparkling eyes and pink grinning mouth always winging lightly away on some new bit of banter or another quick, urgent firefly laugh. Ah, he was a fool! This girl, to have picked him up—like a dropped piece of paper she uncrumpled to read what was written there? Was she playing with him, a sadist, or in the pocket of some group of insanely cruel ones?

No: something incontrovertible had happened in their lamplit gaze, in the minutes turning over rapidly, excitingly like dice; there was something in the murmury treble of her voice, in her tremble when he’d kissed her on the cheek and that indrawn breath, yes, that was it, her scissoring inward like an accordion, with the half gasp it emitted—and what had pressed her, what had squeezed her if it were not the vise of This Same Thing—

Dear God: I am in love. He poked his feet out the bedspread and wiggled as he told them too, for we are in love, and you, and you.

Josh padded into the room and snuffled in his direction.

“Hey,” greeted Matt, feeling liberal.

Josh found a tissue, blew profitably, and waddled back out.

I am in love. He unsheathed himself from the bed. He wanted to taste Cheerios in love, to unfold a newspaper in love, to wash his face with splashes of lovely water in love! He pinched his cheeks in the wardrobe mirror. Stop grinning, you idiot. Already 10:05—if he rushed, he could dash up to Jason’s before Moral Reasoning.

         

“Hullo.” Jason finally opened the door two flights up, grumpy and fuddled with sleep. “This better be good.” He shuffled to the couch, blinked at the milky light. Jason’s room had a musty, cloistered odor; so far Matt had noted parts cumin and socks.

“You will not guess what happened to me last night.” Matt threw down his bag.

“Let me try,” Jason rasped, pushing open the window and lighting a Newport. Exhaling meditatively, he crinkled one eye. “You shat yourself at dinner.”

“Similar, yes, if by that you mean the occurrence of something totally impossible. Try again.” Matt stood, arms straight out at the sides—his best pinstripe pants and crisp button-down: to let this red-letter day shine out!—as if Jason could read the news there.

“I know, I know.” Jason cleared his throat. “You hooked up with Carly Hale.” Roman candles of laughter going off.

“Yes! You’re very warm.” Matt sat down on the bed opposite and put both hands on Jason’s knees. “I met a girl. A girl who likes me!”

“What?” Jason stubbed out the fresh cig, leaning forward keenly. “How?”

“I know!” He grinned. “It’s crazy. Jason. Jason. She is fabulous.”

“Hmm. I don’t see what she’s doing with you, then,” Jason sniffed.

“I know!” crowed Matt, jumping up again. “My question exactly!”

“Well, spit it out. Is she cute, pretty, beautiful, or sexy?”

Matt pictured four cartoon sections of red meat, each quadrant cursived with one of those words. “Ugh! Please don’t sully her with your loose talk!”

“Don’t get all uppity on my ass.” Jason bent to light another cigarette. “Listen to him. What do you know from girls, anyway? Have you ever even kissed a girl, Matt?”

“Yes, I have. But thank you ever so for that moving show of support.”

“Where? On the cheek?”

“On the lips, I’ll have you know.” He most certainly had kissed Becky Lee, twice, when he was thirteen, at gifted camp in southern Jersey.

“Oh, how about that! Mazel tov.” Jason smooched two grand Edith Piaf kisses in the air. Then he grinned evilly. “With tongue?”

“Yes, with tongue. Satisfied? Once. All right?” Matt picked his bag up.

“Calm down, I’m just asking. Wait, don’t go.”

“I have Moral Reasoning lecture.” Matt headed toward the door.

“Wait! Are you going to see her again?” Jason padded up behind him.

“Tonight.” Matt turned back at the open door and clung to its edge, flushed with joy, facing Jason breathing heavily in his mauve T-shirt and gray sweatpants. “Tonight. We’re going to the movies.”

“Tonight? Oh my God, that’s serious. That’s now! Listen, I’m sorry. You just come back here after your three o’clock—we’ll whip you in shape.”

“Shape?”

“Yes, shape. For your date! Ugh, go on, just trust me!”

Matt bounded down the steps, bag swinging, extended to his full height and imperious, on a mission, into the brilliant sparkling chill of an autumn morning bordered with changing trees, and paper scraps and desiccated leaves skimming along the streets in the crisp breeze. The kiss with Becky Lee should count for quite a bit. He knew what it was like to be close to a girl, to feel the palpitations in your hand as you clasped that mysterious other having no idea what, if anything, it thought. Sophie’s hand, of course, would be different from Becky Lee’s; she was more swanlike and small, breakable; he would have to treasure it gently in his palm. What he most remembered of the kiss at gifted camp was that it was very soft. And there was no clear definite end to it. It was like biting into a marshmallow in the dark, when you don’t know if you’ve finished it or have more still to go. First closemouthed under a streetlight in the parking lot, where he’d stood on the curb for her; later they did it with tongue, behind the bushes. And that was the one he’d replayed. He had followed her movements, their tongues going round about like those northern anchovy once seen in an aquarium—silvery thousands in a cylinder tank circling each other without stopping or slowing, a vision both calming and electric.

He had been drawing the same undirected matting of lines for the last five minutes while the professor kept yammering about Freud, Freud and Vienna, Freud and primal scene, Freud and blah blah blah. He turned the page. And started zigzagging a fresh matting. Becky Lee, that queen of evil. Of course, as history knows, she had to dump his dork self the following day, sitting next to Patrick Martin right from breakfast and never bothering to speak to him again—even though they shared the same algebra section and had to study at the same table day after day for that final week of camp! He didn’t think it was his kiss that drove her screaming off, though it wasn’t any glowing accolade; you couldn’t exactly be sure any of what he’d done was right. Funny, you do see pictures of sex in the movies, etc., so you know what you’re supposed to do there, at least sort of, but what went on in the unpictured dark of people’s mouths to make them good kissers? Were men supposed to make darting motions inside the woman’s circular swirl?¹⁴ Did you move your tongue the whole time?¹⁵ Whatever it was, he could learn. He didn’t feel a priori unsexual, per se. The trick would just be hiding from Sophie that nearly no girl had looked at him twice. And also retaining her mysterious interest, however one accomplished that.

All day, everything he did—trudging through kids fanning across Meyer into fluttering classroom doors, veering near-collisions in the cafeteria—she stayed inside him, or rather the idea of her, hiddenly with him like a card kept in his breast pocket, a wafer under his tongue. Then to call her whole image out: that sent thrills, over and again, like touching an outlet just for the joy of being shocked! Amazing how quickly a girl could turn a person to crazy. He had never imagined it would be so, though Dante and all talked it to death. The feeling with Becky Lee had mostly been fright. She was pretty, there was a sexual sense, but she was a closed object, one of a number of pinballs ricocheting in the social sphere. Getting this girl would make us more popular, he remembered thinking. And that was also what he’d thought in high school. No doubt every loser has those fantasies where Alexa Stern, lab partner extraordinaire and nicest popular girl in your grade, suddenly sees there is more to you than commonly supposed. She looks up above the putrid frog mess between you somehow instantly filled with admiration for your delicate surgeon’s hands; she invites you back to her house to work on the lab report, where you unveil your knowledge of Rimbaud, of van Gogh; the snow is falling as you walk out and her mother locks the door, saying, Wow, that Matt really is a gentleman; Alexa bashfully, quietly concedes this. Then falls for you deeper, harder, Stop it, guys, she says in the hall after you pass and the crew hoots, He’s actually really cool. And in fact that’s the priceless moment—the silence descending on those guys as they glance around all insecure in the strange new universe. The vision tapers to flashes next: you’re going out, doing what everybody else has done for years, eating cheese fries at the Tenafly Diner, lingering under the marquee saying, What should we see? and then you buy her a soda, she gives you a ride in her Rover, there you are shutting the—

Things always break down somewhere in a fantasy. It was impossible that he should find himself casually getting out of a Range Rover and shutting the door. That athletic, red-blooded, expensive vehicle; he’d probably trip on the step-down shelf and break his little finger.

All of those girls—unattainable, pretty, even glamorous with their fresh-brushed hair, opulent jeans, and squishy sweaters—he had secretly felt them unworthy. There was a tinge of revenge in his visions: they would be sorry when he came into his own, would see how he over-passed them the way a rocket zipping toward a distant galaxy passes the orbiting moon. Even in his imaginings of the new him, girls had fit only to a limited degree, a shadowy she-thing by his side when “the crowd” was hanging out, some creature petulant and bored complaining together with him, who nevertheless always stayed a frightening stranger.

But with Sophie: all day the memory of her light hand on his forearm; her light hand fell and fell again on his forearm like a feather he could still feel.

         

“Now,” said Jason, “do you have any idea how much experience she has?”

It was 3:45. The excitement had solidified in his veins to metal, making it difficult to move or speak. Matt found himself sinking down, head buried in bed pillow.

“Well,” Jason sighed, “can we assume she’s not a freak-o like you?”

“Where is this coming from?” Matt pushed himself up, incensed. “You’ve been nothing but Mr. Meany-Face since I told you.”

“Mr. Meany-Face? There’s the crazy boy I know and love.” Jason’s face looked actually sort of ashen. A rueful smile curled the corners of his lips. “I’m sorry. Would it help if I told you I was a little bit jealous?”

“Jealous?”

“A tiny bit. Stop blowing it out of proportion.”

Dear God—did he mean…? Was this the undercurrent of their so lifesaving companionship? “But, Jason. How do I put this. Ah, recall with me, if you will, the moment on the first day, when I said I was not in fact on the, the, as you say, ‘bus’…”

“Oh Lordy my.” Jason smirked up at the ceiling. “Not of Sophie, you retard, I don’t want to get in your pants. Jealous of you. I want some action too.”

“Oh,” said Matt. “Well, I’m sure you’ll find someone.”

“I know that.” Jason began taking objects out of a plastic bag and putting them on the trunk that served for a coffee table: paper towels, Windex, a juice glass, two hand-sized mirrors. “It’s just, I’m ready now. I just came out now, at school, you know. Told my parents, like, August. Well, I told my mom, she told my dad. My high school friends, no idea, none. We used to play spin-the-bottle, you know. I had a girlfriend too. Yup. Sandy. Tenth grade. What a stupid time. I wish I’d never done any of it.”

Jason was gazing off into space, above the potted plants by the door. And Matt stretched out a hand to Jason’s shoulder. No words to address that sort of thing, the things people like them brought along—carried as if in locked cabinets across huge spaces of time, perhaps always. Still, as the heat vents clicked on and began releasing a steady stream of warm dry air into the room, his body did not seem to care about the limits of communication. His body was sending something like the heat toward Jason, a warm radiant river from his chest. So say something here: you must let Jason know.

“I’m sorry,” Matt heaved out finally.

“I know.” Jason turned to look at him. His eyes were serious and open, depths and depths of brown chocolate. “Thank you.” He tightened his lips. “Anyway!” he called in a bright voice, patting Matt’s knee. “You! Let’s go!”

It took all of two hours and the virtue of two mirrors before Matt was pronounced fit to date. He exchanged his shirt for a black version (pink “way too faggy” for Jason), they forked through queasifying spanakopita in the dining hall, and then Jason tapped his arm, wished him luck.

In forty minutes he was on a sticky pay phone to Jason.

“Jason!” he croaked. “Jason! The tickets are sold out!”

“What?”

“The Nights of Cabiria—it’s sold out!”

“I thought you were supposed to pick them up ‘in advance’?!”

“It is,” he panted, almost tearing. “I thought it was in advance.”

“Oh, dear. Thursday, Fellini, Film Forum.”

“What do I do? I’ve tried everything! I’ve spoken to the manager! I’ve got my name on a wait-list!”

Jason cleared his throat. “Pray?”

He ran up and down the line of ticketholders, begging everyone to scalp him their seats. “Just two tickets ’r all I need, just two tickets, please?… Thank you anyway.” His vision was blurring, he was about to cry, he was all humbled over and speaking by now to people’s torsos. And then, at the very end of the line, after, trembling, he gave his plea, he heard a gasp, followed by a startled spurt of laughter, and looked up: it was she. Sophie.

She put a finger to her lips. Dragged him inside the glass doors, mimed for him to take off his jacket, took off hers, straightened her hair, ahem-ed. Marched across the red-carpeted lobby to beside the front of the line, where an exhausted-looking ticket-taker stood ripping. “We’re back,” she said, smiling. “Oh—sorry, it was the other guy we talked to here, who got our tickets before. Anyway, thank you both!”

And just like that—it was that Bonnie and Clyde—they shuttled inside.