6.

But when at 9:13 Matt woke to a sky of pewter rain poking through the bedside window, tiny pellets streaming to the bricked courtyard washed from salmon to brilliant gleaming red…he was abashed. What is your problem? Dashing around bellyaching, sulking hither and yon about New York? Blinking at the gray light as the rain lobbed its glutinous freight against the windowpanes, he padded out to the common room. And there discerned what he hadn’t when he’d beelined right to bed last night: three rapid flash-flashes on the answering machine’s mailbox number three. Sophie. From 10:23—home, but couldn’t find her keys…could she possibly sleep over? At 10:47—just trying again, in case, my super, can’t reach him: a weary, aggrieved sigh before the click. And finally, 12:01, in a tight voice—not to worry, she had managed to get inside; g’night.

He snatched up the cordless and ran back to his room. “I’m so sorry,” he blurted to her muted Hello.

“Matt?” A skittish laugh. “Wh-what happened?”

And here, though he might have said any number of things—I was taking a walk; I was in the midst of a depressive episode; Sophie, I was rapt in senseless anguish—he contented himself with a simple “I just got your messages.” Still redolent of the truth.

“Oh.” Disappointed, though. “Did you—not hear the phone?” she wanted to know.

“N-no.” Which, strictly speaking, was even also true. “Can I make it up to you? How awful. Sophie. I’m so sorry. Please?”

“Matt!” Now her voice had relaxed. “Hey. It’s not your fault.”

Right, of course. Though nonetheless, guilt, you know, a curious creature…and he flung over the line dozens more words gutted of meaning until she not only yielded to brunch (his treat) at Freddy’s on Prince Street but requested The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths from Bobst Library—if you really are feeling suddenly so chivalrous!

Chivalrous? Not exactly. What he felt as he slapped down the hall to the bathroom for the morning douse was more in the vein of mortification. Last night, while he’d moped round the city, he had left his lady to freeze, locked from her home. Yet the wrong done was more than that. Giving Sophie up as someone who couldn’t understand, maybe did not even deserve to hear what he was feeling. Why? Just because she hadn’t been forced down the same loser trail of tears in her childhood? Well, don’t you want to have a single true person-to-person connection ever? Here you are at school, the new life! This is precisely the opening you’ve begged for: you will simply have to chance it.

By the time Matt thudded past the security desk, out the front door into the newly dry-eyed day, where gleaming yellow taxicabs, slick, swooshed up, making that pleasing slurry sound on the wet streets, he had cut himself a fair shake. Let yesterday close on its maudlin contents, all. Fine. But from now on: with Sophie, full disclosure.

When Matt veered left from Washington Square Park into the library, Mary Fawzi was standing by the circulation desk. Above a stack of three dark books she proffered her ID card to the student checker. So Matt lingered, fumbling with his wallet, wiping his feet repeatedly upon the sodden entrance mats, as her books were passed over the magnetic machine—and when she cradled these under an arm, then turned toward the exit, he placed himself in her way.

“Hello.” He slipped her an amiable smile. Precisely the same height as he was. Had they ever stood face to face together? “Mary.”

“Yes.” Bewildered: her sloe eyes dilated further behind thick lenses. “Matthew.”

“Matt.” He coughed, polite, dropping his gaze to the books under her arm. Fixed Stars and Irregular Planets, the spine of the top one read. Science? Might have guessed.

“Oh—I’m sorry.” A slim index finger pushed her glasses up by the nosepiece.

Ah, Mary: not the nosepiece! “No—it doesn’t matter. Whatever. How are you?”

“Fine.” Even in a word, that admixed British flashed out like tinfoil from her voice. He wouldn’t be able to replicate her tone, the breathy i of Fine. “And yourself?”

“Good! You know. I woke up early. Saturday. Good day for…a little studying.” Now, that’s just blather, sir. Surely even you can hear that? But he patted his courier bag as if to underscore their common ground.

“Yes,” she said again. Her posture was conspicuously erect, the thin olive neck keeping her round face rigidly high amid the heavy black waves. Too erect, too definite; a normal kid would be shifting her weight here, slouching ironically. She needed a good talking-to tutorial, this helpless, fendless thing. “I have some reading as well.”

And they stared at each other. All righty, then. Ho-hum. What weather we’re having? What did you have in mind for this little confab, hmm? At last he heard his voice make a fuzzy laugh, and hers a giggle, very thin, like a glass vial breaking. “Well.” He surrendered, stretching an arm out in you-may-pass. “I guess I’d better let you read.”

“Yes.” She shifted her books. Then all at once grinned, wide, cheeky. Really? One might have expected something more feminine. “Though there is hardly any hurry. There is always more reading. Isn’t there?” she asked, suddenly curious, probing his gaze intently. Perhaps he hesitated too long before nodding earnestly, saying, Oh, always. Because she began to look away, and by the time she added, “I suppose that’s why we are here. Of course,” she seemed to be talking to herself. “Goodbye,” she said, formally, almost curtly, her eyes grown already closed and opaque before she passed.

As she walked by, the cuff of her pink collarless shirt brushed his bare wrist. Soft foreign cotton. A touchable whisper on his skin. Mary. Queer bird! Not the most adroit of tête-à-têtes, though it was nice to hear her laugh and speak, instead of just weeping. He marched up the central stairs. A good deed done there, however ineptly. Next time we’ll try to work up some surefire topic before we open contact with her.

It was either this incident, with its sense of doing right by all and sundry, or the feeling that the previous evening was bile under a bridge, drained far away. Or it was simply faute de dinner: but while he searched Art History for Rosalind Krauss, his thoughts revolved gratifyingly toward the nigh repast. Walking from the library into an afternoon changed all to crisp blue, he lit a cigarette, the spark of flame licking up from his lighter eager, tame as a dog. Now it was on to eating fresh scrambled eggs someone’s generous hands tended. And what else, what better could there be, than his dining companion, Sophie, she!

Across the walkway on a park bench sat Mary. Her back toward him, but since she was diagonal and far, her profile was clearly visible. An expressionless face. A dilapidated yellowed paperback. With her left hand, she rolled something between her fingers, then threw it to the ground. Bread; some pigeons investigated. Faintly her lips rubbed each other, as if smoothing out ChapStick.

It is possible. That’s what he should say to her. It is possible. Not merely have a friendly check-in with her: that, truly, was the news he bore, what she needed to hear, what she would understand in the right way. For wasn’t it staggering, the current rate of change: just two months ago if you had told him he would have a Sophie and a Jason—

A red leaf above Mary had detached from its tree; now it went turning over and over itself with its five flame fingers splayed out, rapidly training around like a lutzing ice-skater, and landed flat across the crease of her book. She jolted up: to fix the providing sky with a painfully unironical, guileless smile.

Faugh. Matt lifted his peacoat collar against the wind and stomped on. It is possible—who could say such stupid things.

         

Sophie was waiting by the door of Freddy’s in a dark-green velvet skinny blazer, white frilly blouse, and tight jeans, her black stocking socks tucked into white high-heeled pumps. She shifted a Lucite-handled frame bag as he noosed her waist: so small, all of her felt holdable in one palm. The waiter signed them into a table by the back wall, underneath a mammoth mirror that reflected golden autumn light.

“Hello, stranger,” she trilled. The mirrored gold gave her whole skin glow.

“Hello, strangerette.” He winked.

“Ah—where’s my kiss?”

He leaned over the table and pecked her cold lips. Thinking: Sorry. Not again this madness from me.

“Oh,” he said, settling down again on the banquette. Because, sandwiched between a table of well-heeled Euro-tourists and a trio of men clinking flutes of mimosas, sat Scott Belfast and his lady in the far corner, directly opposite. Scott Belfast was slouched in his chair, scowling, hands jammed into his jacket pockets; Liza Andrewes was stretching her model-sized arms, mouth open to disgorge a lioness yawn.

“What?” Sophie squirmed around in her seat. She groaned. “Ah. Those two.”

So he was in a place the cool kids had chosen! Perhaps Scott Belfast would see. With Sophie. Sharp-dressed: though maybe her frilly blouse looked a little deranged? Matt felt his face grow hard-edged, and his eyes sag heavy, bored, worldly. A leaden torpor draped about his lips. Unassailable. Cool.¹⁸ “Do you know them?”

“He’s in my Renaissance Art class. Unbelievably annoying. He thinks he’s so smart. Mm, how about pancakes and eggs—split?”

“Sure. You pick the eggs.” He tapped his front teeth. Even here that prodigy stood out. The world seemed to move around him, to gather about the scene of Scott Belfast black-dressed, pouty, and languorous, twisted now so that one imperial arm hung over the silver back of his chair. The droop of his fingers down; a flash of fine-boned wrist as he inclined two lazy fingers toward Liza Andrewes’s upcurved lips.

“My God,” marveled Sophie, after giving the order and the folded menus back to the waiter. “Stop staring.”

His cheeks took fire. “I’m not staring,” he mumbled. Examining his hands’ mottled backs.

Sophie twisted to check them a second. “What’s the big deal anyway?”

“Don’t you think he’s pretty cool? He’s so, I don’t know. Rock-star. Very charismatic, I mean. Just watch him.”

Sophie snorted. “I have watched him, in seminar. No rock star. Not charismatic either. Trust me. A fucking idiot: he talks on and on in this really irritating nasal voice.”

“He talks in class?” Truly? Wasn’t that a Rule—Never Participate in Class?

“Oh my God, yes. The other day—”

Matt nudged her denimed knee. “They’re coming over here,” he hissed.

“What?” She leaned in eagerly.

“They’re—”

“Yo,” Scott Belfast told Sophie. He gripped the silver bar on the top of her chair.

“Hel-lo, Scott. How are you?” A startled smile splashed over her lips.

“This is Sophie; this is Liza.” Scott snapped his jaw back and forth.

Liza offered a hand to Sophie, amber-and-red bangles clanging on her long white arm. “Pleased to meet you.” A drawl of honey-dripping syllables. “What’s up?”

“Hi, Scott,” added Matt.

Scott’s eyes rested upon Matt, or rather Matt’s outlines, shadowy, vague. “Uh…”

“I’m on the fourth floor. Of Third North. Your dorm.” Please someone stop me.

“This is Matt,” inserted Sophie smartly.

“Matt, yo,” said Scott Belfast. Liza Andrewes was staring the other way, adjusting her tawny mane. “Well.” Scott gently banged the back of Sophie’s chair, a wide band on his middle finger clinking faintly. “I guess I’ll see you Tuesday.” He rolled his eyes at Sophie and pursed his lips to one side: Isn’t it such a nightmare?

“Tuesday,” she chimed. Frozen smile.

Matt recovered his breath as he followed with his gaze Scott Belfast swaying through the crowd, those swooping side-to-side movements like some kind of eloquent music: and could he ever manage to imitate that, that perfect sashay? Outside, through the plate-glass window, Scott Belfast drew Liza Andrewes gruffly toward him; she lifted the lapels up on her dove-gray big-buttoned captain’s coat and—very melancholy-nineteenth-century-heroine with her lowered eyes and the splay of that fantastic mane upon the wintry wool—leaned her angelic head some inches down onto his cheek: before they strode off, invisible cameras clicking.

“Now I feel really bad.” Sophie was glaring at Matt open-eyed, mouth still frozen in an agonized smile. Finally she arrghed and hit the table with her right palm. “That was so mean of me. I hate talking shit about people.”

“I should say so.” He smiled evilly. “The guy seems to like you.”

“I know.” She shook her head side to side, mournful-slow. “What I was going to say was that the other day he asked if I wanted to study for the midterm together.”

Matt’s lungs seized up, squashed by an iron vise. “He was hitting on you?”

“No, no, stupid. I mean, probably not. I don’t know. But anyway, I had to invent this excuse. I’m sure it was totally transparent. I just didn’t expect—oh fuuuck.” She thwapped morosely at the table again. “Nooooo. I think I told him I was working the Chan Library desk today.”

“Uh-oh,” he sang-said. “Whoops.” But he couldn’t help grinning. His Sophiekins had dissed Scott Belfast! The Lord works in mysterious ways. “Well, if he’s such a fucking idiot he won’t remember, eh?”

And then the waiter set down two five-pound platters, steaming and smelling of maple syrup and fresh baking—in other words, of a pure, transcendent heaven.

Matt was measuring the pancakes’ breadth with his knife—three pancakes, you could each have one and split the third, but a slice down the middle of the stack was right, equal shares of fruit topping and this globular red sauce—when he looked up: she was holding one muffin of eggs Florentine aloft, watching his knifework intently.

“You’re so weird.” Her eyes were serious, scrutinizing his face as if she could spy in it meanings shifting beneath the surface.

“Oh!” How had he let it show? What would a normal boy have done here? “I just want to be fair. Wanted to make sure you, also, had…were given…”

“I know.” Suddenly her lopsided smile: it was a fruit cracking open, to show fine rows of pomegranate seeds lined up inside. “I mean I like it. Go on. Please do.”