We met underneath a table. On top of the table was a tank with two turtles in it. People
were tipping small drops of beer into the tank to see if the turtles could get drunk. It was a
party, our first week of college. We were so young and didn’t know it. We looked at each other.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” you said. You had hollow cheekbones, not quite the
attractive kind. Messy hair the color of cherry wood.
“What do you mean?” I asked. I had kneeled under the table to look for an outlet.
Someone wanted to plug a speaker in. You grinned.
“In general. What are we doing here?” You had your knees folded up in the way that
boys your age liked to sit, and as you said this you tipped your head up and studied the
underside of the table. You touched the wood with a crooked finger.
“No.” I said. Because I didn’t know what else to do, I took a sip of my drink. The side of
my plastic cup was sticky with sugar. Everytime I peeled a finger off of it, it made a tiny sticking
noise.
I heard my roommate, Joanna. “Did you see where Joy went?” Joanna and Joy. We
wrote “JoJo’s Room” on the whiteboard outside of our door. We were going to be best friends.
You said, “come with me. I want to show you something.”
You looked right into my eyes when you said this, and because no one had ever looked
into my eyes that way before, as if their entire being had been distilled and focused on me,
concentrated into two black pupils that reflected my own, I said, “okay.” We weaved through
the party, hazy and loud, smelling of incense and beer, until we came to a rickety door off the
yellow kitchen. Stepping outside it was like someone had turned the sound down on the mass
of college students bumping against each other inside the house. You walked to the back of the
property. Crickets chirped, bugs hummed in the August air. Up on the hill, on campus, I saw a
blue light, the rape alert system that trailed across campus like a string of beads, and briefly I
wondered if it was wise to follow you into the dark, but you were of average height and very
thing with a long nose, the look of an artist, and I followed you to a stream where we lay on our
backs. Four years later, when I was more confident, I probably would have made fun of you,
sassily, for bringing me here. “Is this your move?” I would say, grinning at you over my
shoulder, maybe flicking your hair. “Romantic star-gazing by a stream?” Then I would kiss you,
to let you know I liked it. But I wasn’t like that yet.
“How did you know this was here?” I asked. The sky was a softer blue than I was used
to, but I tried to pick the stars out anyway.
“I came down here during orientation,” you said. Your voice was shaky and tenuous, like
a leaf about the blow away. “I’m Jeremy, by the way.”
“I’m Joy.”
You saluted me in the dark.
I saw you again, sitting on a stone bench. For my freshman seminar I had chosen a class about
whales. You were headed there too. We walked next to each other. Your sneakers had drops of
white paint on the toes.
“I guess I’ll sit next to you,” you said.
“I guess I’ll allow it.”
You smiled, a small smile. You asked if you could borrow a pen. I gave you one. We sat in
silence as the professor pulled the curtains shut and played a disc of whale songs. The sun
coming through the blue curtains made a watery darkness, and as the songs swam in circles and
dips above us it was easy to pretend we were pearls, snuggled in an oyster at the bottom of the
sea.
Do you remember you returned that pen to me the next time we had class? Of course
you did.
JoJo didn’t become best friends, but maybe we did. From me window I could see a hill
and a dumpster, and the tower where you lived in the 14th floor. You wanted to be a director,
and sometimes I would meet you in the dining hall after hours for fries and cold cereal.
“Do you know what to do if someone catches you staring?”
“No,” I said. I picked at my fries. They were cold.
“Watch.”
You stared at a table of athletic looking boys with gray sweatpants and short haircuts.
You stared and stared, your face empty, and when one of them finally looked at you, you held
your vacant gaze for another moment, then blinked the slowest blink I had ever seen. When
you opened your eyes again, you stared just to the left of them, your mouth partly open. I
laughed.
“See?” you said, “like you were just spacing out.”
You made a bracelet for me out of a fork, bending it until the tines kissed the handle. I
kept that bracelet for many years until I got married. Then it felt dishonest to keep it.
A Friday night in October. I sat on the bottom bunk in your room and watched your
friend Holly shake out her brown curls. She was in love with you, did you know? But I don’t
think you were ever in love with her. Bright Eyes played from your computer. A plastic bottle of
vodka on the dresser. You were drunk and loose. My tongue felt too big for my mouth.
“Flamingos!” someone shouted. “They are the coolest animals in the whole world!
Pink!” The flamingo lover flapped his arms. Everyone laughed. I laughed. You sat next to me on
the bed.
“I’m sorry. I’m drunk.” Your eyelashes were wet.
“Why are you sorry?” I wore my green sweater that day, the one with the rolled neck. I
tugged the sleeves over my hands.
“I don’t know.” You said it curiously, as if it was something you had never thought of
before. A trail of ants disappeared underneath the desk but no one cared. We had all the lights
on. I jumped up off the bed and traced a smiley face on your mirror with one of the whiteboard
markers. It smelled like chemicals.
“Watch this,” I said. I lined my face up with it exactly. You looked at me with round eyes.
“Wow,” you said. Then we all did it, drawing faces and horns and halos. We took
pictures of each other. There’s one of us somewhere, standing side by side, me with a
moustache and you with big ears and freckles. You’re holding the camera in your right hand.
Our shoulders are almost touching. But not quite.
On Halloween I met Max. I was walking back to the dorm with some girls from my floor.
He was sitting on the steps with a friend. The friend was smoking, but he wasn’t. He was
dressed as Indiana Jones. He tipped his hat at me.
“Do you live in our building?” Ashley asked. She was an alien. Her false glitter eyelashes
that night made her eyes look more doll-like than usual. She was from Maryland. We all
referred to her as “our southern friend.”
“We do. Do you guys?” There was two of them and five of us. We sent messages to each
other with our breath, coded explorations. We were all desperate for friends and lovers. Max
smiled at me. I was standing with my hip cocked to the side and I was suddenly very aware of
this. Teresa, the drunkest, started to cry about how she missed her friends. A rabbit watched us
from across the quad, eyes reflecting green in the night.
“Goodnight,” the friend said. I didn’t look back at Max as we walked away.
You’re probably wondering why I’m thinking about you. The truth is I don’t know. The
other day I was driving into town. I had friends coming for dinner and I wanted to get items for
a cheese plate. Crackers, fig jam, soft wedges of Brie. On my way to the shop I stopped at a red
light. I saw a very old woman in a pink cardigan on the sidewalk. I wondered if she was alone.
Then I pressed on the gas and I thought of you. There’s no reason for it, really.
Max kissed me at a party a month later, right after Thanksgiving break. His leather jacket
was soft under my hands. He was the only boy there wearing one. He pressed his whole body
into mine when he kissed me and I pressed back. There was a broom next to us, and when we
kissed it clattered to the floor. The window was open. Cold air rushed in, fighting with the heat
of many bodies.
I had many lovers after Max. Now I have a husband. He makes us eggs without toast in
the morning and we sit at the small wooden table across from each other drinking our coffee
and reading books and below the table our toes touch. Everything in our house matches. I have
an orange cat that breathes on my face in the morning, and from my bedroom window I can
see the sea.
You sent me a message. It was almost Christmas. In my room I had put white Christmas
lights up and in the dark the pinpoints of light wiggled. Joanna and I agreed we would keep
them up the rest of the year. We were not best friends, but we were friendly. The message
popped up on my computer screen. I was writing the final paper for our class. We had studied
for it together in the library, tracing our fingers over an illustration of a gray whale, pressing our
fingers on the tiny dorsal fin. My paper was about the negative effects of Navy sonar testing on
whale populations. Yours was about the public perception of dolphins. Yours was probably
more interesting. You sent a long line of exclamation points then: hey. I responded.
Joy2theworld: hi
Redballoon8585: observatory?
Joy2theworld: what?
Redballoon8585: do you
Redballoon8585: want to
Redballoon8585: go to the observatory with steve and I?
Redballoon8585: *me
Joy2theworld: im working on my whale paper, lol
Joy2theworld: I prob shouldn’t
Redballoon8585: come onnnnnnn
I thought about walking to the observatory, a hunched little almost building on the far
side of campus on the highest part of the hill. It was so cold that day it hurt my cheeks to go
outside.
Joy2theworld: I can’t, sry!
You typed for a long time.
Redballoon8585: : I
Joy2theworld: : )
Redballoon8585: you’re going to regret not going. i know this
Twenty minutes later you knocked on my door. I knew it was you because you were the
only person who always only knocked once. I opened the door. You looked up at me from
under a red knit hat. You were tying your shoe. Steve was with you. He looked down the hall at
Heather’s room. They had hooked up once. I had seen him the next morning with his shoes on
the wrong feet.
“Hey,” you said.
“Hi.”
“We came to get you. To save you from a lifetime of regret.”
I stepped back into the room. We all had the same rough gray carpet. There was a small brown
stain on ours, right by my foot.
“I really can’t go,” I said. I laughed so it wouldn’t be mean. “I have so much work to do.”
“Do it later.” You had your camera with you. All of your photos felt like looking through
a tunnel at someone or something very far away.
“You guys can hang out for a couple of minutes if you want. I need a little break.” I
waved my arm at my bed. It was the only place to sit other than the desk. Joanna had left her
music on on her computer. Tinny sounds chopped at the air from the headphones. You made a
low, strangled noise that might have been a hum of indecision.
“Yossarian lives!” you said. The first time you had come to my room, we had bonded
over my copy of Catch-22. You smiled at me. I sat down in my desk chair. I was wearing my
school sweatshirt and the sleeves were already frayed. Steve eyed the box of Pop-Tarts on my
shelf.
“Can I have one of those?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He reached for the box of Pop-Tarts and, with two fingers, slid one out of the package. The
wrapper sparkled like tinsel under the Christmas lights. He broke a Pop-Tart in half and stuffed
the whole half into his mouth with his palm. He offered the other half to you. You shook your
head no.
“Okay. Well. I guess we’ll go.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Let me know next time.”
“Of course, of course. Hey! Listen to that song, okay?” You walked backwards out of the
room. Steve was already out of sight. I heard the door to the stairway whoosh open. Faraway
laughter.
“I will,” I said. I waved. You held up your palm in response.
Later that night I listened to the song. The chorus went like this:
Hey hey I have something to say.
You’ve tickled my brain
Now I can’t sleep at night.
It was okay. I didn’t see you for a long time after that. Max and I dated for a couple of years.
Then I didn’t see him much either.
I sit by the window upstairs and watch the ocean. The air is warm and salty. When the
whales migrate, I can sometimes see them from this window, small dark humps rising out of the
sea, sending the occasional stream of white flume in the air like a message. Mostly gray whales,
but sometimes humpbacks too. When the humpbacks go by I play their songs as loud as I can
on our speakers at home and sometimes my husband and I will have a bottle of champagne to
toast them with. I open the windows and let the deep, mournful songs rise up as high as they
can. I like to think the whales can hear them. That the songs say, “Keep going buddy. You’re
almost there.”
The last time I saw you we were seniors, almost ready to graduate. Finals had just
ended. All the front yards were covered with red cups and metal folding tables. During the day,
girls lay in bikinis on the roofs. I was at the Zone Bar, a dingy place with a scuffed up pool table
and no windows and a corner where people danced. I could barely see you, hidden behind a
man with broad shoulders and a girl wearing a purple wig. Later, when I left, you were outside
of the pizza place next door, Sal’s, sitting on a bench. I smiled. I sat next to you. Across from us,
students crowded into booths and stole slices of floppy pizza from each other.
“What are you doing?” I said. Your chin was stubbly. I fingered the edge of my skirt. It
was purple and had a pocket in the front.
“Waiting for Todd to get us some pizza. I didn’t want to go in there right now.”
Across from us, wedged in the doorway between Sal’s and Zone Bar, the break-dancing
homeless man slept. There were rumors he used to be a student, that he had gone mad his
senior year. His skin and his hair and his clothes were all one color. Sometimes when I saw him
dancing in the common I gave him a dollar.
“Mm.” I said. “Do you know what you’re doing after graduation?”
“No.”
“Me neither.” We sat. I noticed a thread was loose on the hem of my skirt. I yanked it
off, and we watched it tumble away from us under the orange light from the streetlamps.
“What are you doing?” you asked.
“I said I didn’t know.”
“No, I mean, right now? Why are you alone?” He turned to look at me then. I held my
breath.
“I was going home. I don’t really feel well,” I said. Someone down the street shouted
“Rick! Rick!”
“Then why are you sitting here, talking to me?”
My blood stilled. The smell of pizza seeped into my skin. I had left my boyfriend and my
friends back at the bar. I looked at the break-dancer. I hoped he wasn’t dead.
“I don’t know.” The stones of the common glittered. I could see myself in your eyes; my
silver eyeshadow, my trendy skirt, my intramural sports playing boyfriend. You thought I was
like everyone else. You were disappointed. But I don’t remember us ever agreeing to be
different together.
“Okay, I guess I should go then.” I said.
“Do you know soon we will have an attention span equal to a goldfish?” you said as I
stood up.
“I did read that actually.” My body was turned towards you like a sunflower that
couldn’t find the sun. You pressed your lips together until they almost disappeared.
“Bye,” you said. You held your right hand up, white and smooth in the night, and cocked
your wrist once, sharp and final.
“See you,” I said. I spun around fast and walked up the hill to my apartment. My sandals
made slapping noises on the sidewalk. Laughter and yellow light drifted out of windows. I
hugged my arms to me chest. I went home.
I work for a paper now. I do stories about school council elections and local heroes.
Once I did a story about a seaweed farmer. He was convinced that seaweed would be the new
kale, that seaweed could save us from ourselves if we only developed a taste for it. A restaurant
in San Francisco had taken him up on it, and now offered a side of seaweed as an alternative to
fries. It was a good story, one of my favorites. My husband kissed me on the forehead after he
read it and then it won a minor award for local journalism. The award committee held a dinner
in honor of the winners and we went.
At the dinner they served chicken in a volcano of mashed potatoes. Across from us and
a few tables away was a woman who didn’t look real. Her hair was gold and bulbous, her eyes
deep, deep blue. She wore a dress with hundreds of tiny crystals scattered over black velvet,
and every time she moved her head it was done slowly and deliberately. She was with a man
many years her senior. I wondered if he was rich, or if I was just being judgemental. I stared,
and suddenly her eyes were locked with mine. My heart jumped, but I kept my face very, very
still. I blinked, the slowest blink she had probably ever seen. Then I opened my eyes and held
my gaze just to the left of her face. My jaw was slack and loose. The woman looked away.
The room rose in applause. As did I.