8.

From the dorm to Sophie’s apartment was thirteen city blocks downtown and several large avenues west, which Matt was having difficulty tallying as he estimated the time that remained between now and the end of all life. Twenty minutes. More; closer to thirty, especially if he kept up at this trudging rate. No hurry, really. Only there was nowhere else to go: but there, and finish it. Or maybe he didn’t even need that. He could just turn left. Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and head for the green fields of Long Island, right to the tip of Montauk Beach, which Sophie had always wanted to visit, make a raft of some kind out of reeds and nettles and float away like a kid in a fairy tale, like King Arthur taking ship for the isle of Avalon, which is to say the island beyond life…

Oh shove a sock in it, sir, and pick up the pace.

Sophie was sitting rigid at the kitchen table when Matt crept into her studio, below the line of windows, all ajar, where a breeze stirred a few ambrosial-smelling jonquils in a vase on the sill: the sole moving feature of the oddly stationary room. Immediately she hustled up—attentive, affectionate, giggling queerly high-pitched as she pecked him with little kisses. “Hi,” she murmured, taking his face in her hands. “I missed you last night.” Grinning. “God, you look awful. Was it—are you hung-over? Do you want some juice or water?” Wheeling at the sink before he even responded.

“A bad thing happened last night, Sophie. A few bad things.” Where to begin? “Oh, God, Sophie. You have no idea.” You have no idea: Liza’s whisper! The virus of it was still in his ears. He put his hands over his eyes.

“Ssh,” she decided, sinking into a chair beside him. “Come on.” With her small, definite hand she pried one of his, to hold it on his lap. “Matt?”

So he started in with the less incendiary of the two matters.

Weirdly, she seemed more melancholy than mad when she heard about Dwight. “Wow,” she reflected, shaking her head. “You guys—you guys really need to stop with that stuff, you know? It’s no joke to feed somebody heroin. You give out these drugs without thinking—even X can be really dangerous. Did you hear about that guy who died at a Supersize rave in San Francisco? Or that girl who overheated a couple of weeks ago in St. Louis? It was in the Times. Matt, she was only fifteen. Aren’t you worried?”

Matt stared at the mica tabletop, its scattering of dark flecks. Hardly the highest of worries here. Besides, the people at our parties have the good sense to drink water when they’re feeling thirsty, that is to say dehydrated, folks, have you heard of the word? But, delicately, so as not to inflame: “Sophie. Wouldn’t you say, probably more people die every year from alcohol poisoning? But it’s not, no one takes it as the responsibility of the liquor-store guy who sells that last quart. Right?”

“Right. It’s not their responsibility. I didn’t say it was. But: don’t you care? How would you feel if someone you gave X to—what if they died?”

How would we feel? When at the end of a night Jonathan forked out his bills in the staff bathroom, under the fluorescent beams: your kickback, blood money. Well, that’s a little extreme! Ecstasy, not crack here. No?

“Well,” she sighed. “Maybe you’ve learned your lesson. I guess it sounds like Dwight’s going to be all right. I’m glad you told me, finally.” Brightening, she squeezed his hand once on the table before lifting his glass for a refill.

While she let the water plunge into his glass, Matt’s mind stayed fastened in the birdlime of one desire: that she remain there, just so, with her back to him, engaged in this act that, if you thought of it, was testament to her affection, and therefore a thing such as might never happen again, because this instant was the last moment in which she would not know, this second, passing now, the last in which she did not see she had been betrayed, by him.

Just like that: it was over.

“Matt?” she said, taking a step toward him, the clear glass held out in her hand like the picture of her own cleanness. “Are you crying? Matt? Is it—because of Dwight? Or what I said? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” This just made him blubber harder. “Did you have wine last night? I told you wine messes with your mood, you’re always so sad the next day.” And that was her in spades, prescriptions at the ready, plus so caring she noticed each least thing about his person. “Come on, Matt.” Even she was beginning to look unsettled. “It can’t be that bad.” Well. It could be.

And was.

First she was calm. She laid both hands on the table and inquired frankly into every detail: which he gave, blathering on, and for a moment it seemed as if Sophie had a store of hitherto unknown and impossible maturity, such that this story could be taken in and annihilated simply by being accurately conveyed. That moment had definitely passed when she started shouting, with curses, turning circles in the little kitchen, and was just a dim foolish memory by the time she was sobbing in a heap on the floor at the foot of her bed—kicking toward his ankles each time he approached with arms outstretched. Time passed. Matt begged. He offered penance. For example, he could sleep on the floor for a month. Longer, if she wanted. Or anything else she saw fit. Only not to, not to—

“No, it’s good,” she concluded finally. Wiping her tears, beginning actually to smile. To smile? Yes, indeed; remote and vaguely chilling. “You’ve made your choice.” Looking at him almost proudly, pulling back her head as if to study him from an even greater distance. “And I’ve made mine too. Come here,” she said, getting up to standing and walking into the kitchen. “I have something to show you.” From atop the windowsill she produced a ripped envelope.

What nice stationery. A beautiful crest. The University of California at Berkeley.

“This came Tuesday. I haven’t known what to do. But now: it all makes sense. You want something else, which isn’t me, and you’ll always want that. And I want to get out of New York. I don’t even want to be near anyone who’s heard of a place called Cinema. It’s good,” she said, taking both of his hands in hers, raising her smooth brow till it touched his. “You made it easier,” she whispered. “We’ll just part ways.” Though her breath caught there; she was beginning to cry again, silently.

“But I want you,” he insisted, squeezing her hands.

“It doesn’t seem that way,” she gasped. “It hasn’t seemed that way for a long time.”

“But it’s true,” he urged her.

“I wish it were,” she murmured, firm, in control of herself again. “Goodbye, Matt.” She drew his head farther down and pressed his forehead with a sisterly kiss.

He reeled away from that gesture, banging against the sink counter by the fridge—

On the refrigerator was a new picture among the art postcards, evidently clipped from a newspaper. And in this picture was a girl. Suddenly that girl had entered the room with them, was watching from one side: though not her but a flat version, flimsy as a slide, as a scale off some snakeskin. Mary’s round and soft and black eyes were trained on something outside the frame; her lips were pressed together, tense. It was her photo from the facebook, the long-ago-pored-over facebook, blown up to monstrous size and converted to coarse newsprint. Granular, blurred: which made her look like some sort of a fugitive, a WANTED criminal, or one of those kidnapped children reproduced above the words Have You Seen Me? But what could humble Mary Fawzi from next door in Third North have done that she should be scissored and pinned among Sophie’s painted Marys, Marys kneeling for Annunciation, reading, bending their gentle flaxen-haired heads—like some sort of icon? “What is that?” he asked timidly, approaching, while a sense of doom went blossoming up from his gut.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Sophie pressed a fist to her hip, blank-faced.

“I’m sorry, I just need to know—where did you get it?”

“It was in the school paper,” she sighed. “That’s that girl who killed herself, remember? I told you I went to the memorial service last week. Or I thought I did.”

Oh, that girl. That’s all. “Can you…tell me a little more? Please? I don’t—remember.” There was a haziness in the corners of his eyes, as if the periphery had gotten dusted with a particulate soot, like these pixels, these blots from the newsprint.

“She killed herself,” Sophie repeated. “Where do you want me to start?”

“I don’t suppose you have the article still?” he asked meekly, batting his enormous eyes, his eyes suddenly as large and unwieldy as palm fans. He was prostrate against the sink when she laid it before his gaze, saying, Here.

It was a tragedy. It was a mystery. A nice girl, involved in her studies, valedictorian of her class at the international school back in Alexandria, Egypt. At 12:03 P.M. on March 24. Five-story building. Home for spring break. No one had heard anything, no one had heard a sound. The family would not comment. The family was her mother, Sonia, an architect and public planner; father was deceased. No friends had commented either, but that was because there were no friends, guessed her roommates, guessed R. Kurt Schoonmaker ’99, who often saw her eating breakfast alone in the dining hall of Third North. Roommate Carly Hale ’99 guessed she was homesick. Roommate Marcia Brandton ’99 guessed she was lonely. Professor Macalester, who taught the astronomy class for which Mary passed so many hours at the observatory, judged that you couldn’t find a kinder girl. Trace Edwards ’97 often saw her at the library, where he was a checker, but you never would have been able to tell something was wrong; even if sitting quietly by herself, she was likely to be smiling. “She always came across as very rational, lucid; she is the last person I would have expected to be driven by her emotions like this.” “Still, set against comparable universities, NYU has an excellent record of diagnosing and preventing at-risk students.” Dirk Proctor was compiling a memorial book. The Wellness Center was organizing grief-management sessions and adding extra sessions to its regular rounds of anxiety counseling. A pair of sandals had been left lined up on the balcony.

Waterworks spurted automatously from his eyes. His brow touched cool linoleum. No.

“Matt?” Sophie was behind him. “Matt?” Kneeling on the floor beside.

The story surged up in chunks. How he heard the first time her crying, so strangely, such an odd, pure kind of absolute sadness in the middle of the night. Then afterward, almost keeping a sort of vigil, wanting to be with her in her loneliness, which he understood; as if it was one thing he could do for her, witness, keep company. But in the daytime: what do you say? I heard you crying? I know you’re sad too? It’s going to be okay? All those times watching her eat corn chips in the hallway, smiling as she lifted a stack of books, walking past him with the tail of her soft cotton shirt brushing the back of his wrist—that’s when he could have done something! Started a real conversation? Invited her to lunch? Or at the very least told someone, he could have informed, gotten Health Services involved. But: nothing. Hadn’t even talked to her since sometime in the autumn. And moving rooms—just left her there, alone. Vigil over! When listening had been the single action he’d ever done for her: that gesture. That beau geste. That worthless piece of…

“Oh wow,” she sighed, wiping his eyes with her sleeve, craning his head into the bony splay of her collarbone. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry for you.” One arm pulled him into the nets of her hair.

He nestled deeper, listened to the quick hare beat of her heart. And she was alive, this Sophie. She was the opposite of No: that was everywhere evident here in the preciousness of her against his head, his chest. The inimitable spindle of her, this moving mechanism of blood and bone and right thoughts, and the fantastic imaginations of her singular mind. Good. She at least was still undamaged and safe; for her it was not too late. Let her go on to Berkeley and leave him behind, bagged up like so much trash. Let her find love with someone who could give back all that she needed, all that she merited.

Yet now there passed in the magic lantern of his brain limitless Sophies, a Sophie in her snowflake-printed shirt digging her arm through his and tilting up her face for a kiss as together they crossed a winter-damasked street; a Sophie brooding, pure sagacity and intellection, over a café table on which there lay some variety of art-history text; black-eyed Sophie beside him in bed, a shyly excited smile on her face as the spider of her hand went tracing the verge of his shoulder, over and again the round loop of his shoulder, as if in all of time there was nothing more they would ever have to do but this, forever, this gazing and touching—because in her eyes there were still forests and countries, whole bodies of water and nations he had never explored, not yet met—

Yes: yes to her, yes to that, yes. Wasn’t there a sliver of chance left?⁶⁰

“Sophie,” he croaked.

Her body stiffened under his head. Her hand stopped stroking his back. A long pause, interrupted by the plash of a drop into what sounded like a glass of water in the sink. “Why are you smiling?” she said at last.

“I’m not smiling.”

“I saw you,” urged her voice, steady, strong.

You certainly did!

There was a way: beyond this white ceiling, beyond the atmosphere, there was darkness, clear infinite darkness in which the stars stirred. Matt squeezed his eyes shut. Beyond these walls to his sides—weren’t they flimsy, couldn’t you reach and punch them down? A series of caramel-colored home-movieish images began raving across his mind. Sophie with her set of retro airline-style luggage, sunglasses on, pushing a cart through an airport, checking backward to make sure he was following. Her beside him in a beat-up old car, riding up a mountain in the crisp air of evergreens and redwoods. Her before an immaculate sunset, wearing shorts and hiking boots—smiling, cheering!

Matt’s eyes flared open. Are you confused, sir? A little brain-touched? It’s totally and completely impractical, I can tell you that right now. And your scholarship? I suppose you’d like to fling that out the window—goodbye, future! Now, sir, that’s being somewhat overdramatic, wouldn’t you say? I mean: let’s face it. You are a National Merit Scholar, after all. People take years off all the time, and transfer, just fine. And what will you do in this alleged “year”? I don’t know. Work in a bookstore? Read philosophy? Cook up California produce—in some invisible kitchen, with her?

This was his chance to start fresh, free; he must take that risk. Not to fail with Sophie as he had failed with Mary: and she was above still, on the fridge, her picture, like a beacon shining clarity into the room. Here there was still an inch of time, here it was not too late. Would he really let trivial stuff prevent him again? From Sophie? What else was he for—but her? This special, miracle girl: with a single laugh she made the air scatter with magic sparks! Imagine not to have to don the costume of his clothing, to walk with a supercilious mask sutured to his face about NYU, to make chitchat with brainless strangers; no, of a Friday to stay in, read side by side with Sophie, not to have to sweep himself under the carpet of these catchwords, desperate, inveterate loser. And that must have been the hunger Vic had seen, from the beginning: I’ll do anything, make me a slave if need be. But when you understood it finally for what it was—why couldn’t it be escaped? Even just thinking so: his body suddenly like a river shooting everything in it toward her! “Sophie,” he panted. “Close your eyes, okay?” Obediently, she shut her tear-ringed eyes; she seemed to be wishing, holding her little fists abstractedly tight. “You know what it’s like, Sophie? It’s like punching; remember, from our first day? When they poked through the paint so all the gold underneath could show through. That’s how I feel right now. Because I feel how much I love you, completely. And I want to come with you to California, if you will let me.”

“Really?” She flashed open her eyes. Her face was lit within as a lantern. It was a face he had maybe never seen before: red, wet, newborn-fresh. Then suddenly her gaze clouded over. “So: what. After last—don’t you think I’m still mad? You think you can just—just—” Just what? He was waiting patiently. He could wait, so long as he was facing her, inhaling her presence with his gaze, with his chest that tingled at her warm nearness, just drinking in inexhaustible bottles of her…. Yet now her lipsmelted into that lopsided smile. “Really.” She grabbed his hand, nipped playfully at its back. “Okay.” Squeezing him, she was nodding, her whole body was a sort of nodding, even the way her moist lashes curled at the edges was a kind of assent, serious, joyful. “Okay.” She rose from the floor, her smooth fingers lifting him to standing; slowly, they drew him over to the bed, rocked him back on the white sheets. “You are crazy to do it, you know that?” she broke off to sigh. Yes, yes. “Though I think actually you’re doing the right thing. For you too. Get out of New York, Cinema.” Ssh, ssh. He dove into her neck with his mouth. Thickets of rippling tendons, plateaus of unmarked beach. And there shone her face: still so brilliant red, so lucent, open; his own just felt the same, like a thimble, outfitted with dozens of tiny windows. Holy shit. As if the body had a trick in it, a secret button—if someone pressed it, the scales on your body clicked open: and goldenness, and just pure you went streaming through. Love. This, this at last deserved that name.

And, compared to this: what? What other concern could there possibly be?

“Wow,” he muttered, “you look so different.”

“You do too,” she gasp-giggled.

“How?”

Now she threw back her head into the whiteness of sheet to see him, her fingers grazing at his cheek. “You kind of look like you’re on Ecstasy.”