I said.
Then I said no more.
He sat up again. “Is this it?”
“I…”
“Is that the best you can do? You’re not even going to try?”
I just looked at him.
“One compromise?”
It just didn’t fit.
“Didn’t I teach you? Didn’t I say it over and over? Why can’t you learn it?”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Is it such a hard thing to learn?”
Finally I said, “It’s not something I would say.”
“But you can learn.”
“We’re not in class.”
“Just say it!”
I looked at the rug. “It wouldn’t be me….”
“Do you always have to be such a goddamn prude?”
Before I could say anything else, he jumped up, stalked into the bathroom and shut the door. I sat still on the rug and suddenly felt very cold.
He came back out in a minute and said he’d drive me home.
We rode to my dorm in silence. He didn’t say anything when I got out of the car.
In my room, I curled up in my bed in the dark and stared at the phone, sure he’d call. I rehearsed various speeches in my mind, speeches in which I would tell him that maybe there was a way we could get past this, that maybe there were things he wouldn’t say, either, if I asked, that I had already made compromises and that I’d been happy to make them for him, but this was something that bothered me. And if we couldn’t get past this, I wanted to say why it was hard for me to yield to his request.
But I never got the chance to say any of it. He didn’t call.
The only time the two of us did talk was in class, when all of us were discussing the reading materials. That was it.
The semester eventually drew to a close. He and I never had another personal conversation.
I got an A in the class. I guess David would have been afraid to give me anything less.
By the way, I deserved it anyhow.
For a long time after that, I had trouble seeing couples kissing on campus. Their lives were so normal; why did mine always have to be strange? Did these carefree couples know that for some people, not everything worked out so neatly? Did they appreciate that?
The worst was, I knew a lot of the couples were together just for sex. At least David and I talked about books, music and his work. What did these people who did nothing all day but face-mash actually talk about? Some of the girls on my floor had boyfriends whose biggest accomplishment was making fifth-string lacrosse or flunking astronomy.
The rest of my time at Harvard wasn’t much of an improvement. I studied hard, graduated and moved into the apartment my father found for me.
Now that I’ve just spent some time thinking about the relationship with David, I feel sore and unfulfilled, similar to how I often felt after the encounters themselves.
So I go out to the supermarket to grab some ice cream and rainbow sprinkles.
I wend my way through the murky city air and into the perfume-and-garlic world of D’Agostino. I pluck a frosty pint of Cherry Garcia from the freezer, and as I’m pacing the aisles, I pick up sprinkles and cherry soda, too.
Once I get home, I make an ice-cream soda. The fizz bubbles high above the glass. When I taste it, I immediately realize I shouldn’t have been denying it to myself for so long. The ice cream slides down my throat into my gut. It feels absolutely wonderful. There is nothing better than this.
I pass a mirror on the way back into my room and notice that my lips have turned red.
Chapter Four
In the morning, I’m depressed. I don’t know what to do. I have another appointment with Petrov. This probably won’t help. But maybe it will.
The sidewalk is soggy, but the sun is out. I keep my eyes on the ground, feeling just as low. When I descend into the subway, there’s only one other person in the station. Still, I have to glance up at him.
The way he looks strikes me immediately. He’s wearing a gray bowler hat. He appears to be in his early thirties. He’s also got on a long raincoat, and he’s clean shaven and looks unusually neat. But it’s the hat that strikes me. No one wears hats these days, especially a gray bowler hat. He looks like he’s out of an old detective movie.
He paces before the complement of full-length Broadway ads: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; Les Mis; Phantom of the Opera. Occasionally, he starts muttering to himself. Just one of the many people in this city who are on the borderline.
I lean against the wall and stare at the ground, at the oval slabs of gum that have been there so long they’ve turned black, and at the dirt and stones and wrappers. The Hat Guy is still pacing, still muttering, and I don’t want to appear to be staring at him, so I look away. There are so many places where we pick things to stare at in order to avoid looking at strangers. We do it in elevators all the time. But there is hardly anything to stare at on an elevator. I should start a company that manufactures sticky blue dots that read “Stare at this dot to avoid talking to the person next to you.” I could make a fortune.
I wonder what people are supposed to talk about in elevators. “Wouldn’t it be funny if these Braille ‘numbers’ were really curse words?” “You know, it has been statistically proven that ninety percent of ‘door close’ buttons don’t really work.” “Hey, wanna order pizza from the emergency phone?” “You know, most buildings don’t have a thirteenth floor because the builders were superstitious. But this building actually used to have a thirteenth floor. It collapsed last year during a storm.” Come to think of it, I might use that one.
The light from the subway train comes out of the tunnel, and then the train itself appears. The Hat Guy hops on, and we immediately head to opposite corners of the car like boxers in a ring.
The Hat Guy pulls a long, thin book out of a flat paper bag and again starts muttering. On the train, there’s not much to stare at, except ads for community colleges. I think the quality of a college is inverse to how much it has to advertise. You don’t see Yale putting ads in the subway. The other ads are about made-for-TV movies on cable. Years ago, you used to be lucky if you could find one decent program out of three networks. Now, through the wonder of cable, the odds have been reduced to one in twenty.
I get to Petrov’s a few minutes early and the door to his office is closed. I crouch next to the door and put my ear to it.
I hear the guy inside say, “It’s in every one. In every sexual fantasy I have, right as we’re about to…uh, do it, the phone rings.”
Petrov:
