Authors: Unknown Author
His gaze traveled from Eric’s to the print across the room.
“I bought a print of it too. But when I got back to the hotel, my parents were furious at me for sneaking out, and I remember . . . my father just yanked it out of my hands, took one look at it, and tore it down the center. He said not only had I snuck out without permission, but I had come back with pornography.”
Randall turned his head against the back of the chair, and when Eric saw the smile on his face he realized the story was supposed to be funny. He managed a slight laugh. But something about the story had seemed crafted, and it was a challenge feeling sympathy for a boy who stayed at the Ritz when he was twelve, even if his mother never got out of bed when they were there.
“Do you believe him?” Randall looked at him directly.
“I'm sorry.”
Randall pushed himself out of the chair and crossed over to the print. “According to you, Bosch was truly a mitigated Cathar, right? Which means that instead of being a believer in the established views of the medieval church, he was a heretic who believed that the earth was the creation of Satan. And that Satan was the ruler of all things physical and corporeal. Including the body . . .”
The boy was basically quoting the prologue to Eric’s book.
Randall turned, as if framing himself directly beneath the work in question as he demonstrated his knowledge of it. But now, his voice had a gently prodding tone to it. “To be cursed, to be the ultimate sinner, was to be ensnared in the physical. Was it that easy to be damned? Simply to feel alive in your own body?”
Eric wondered if perhaps this young man had been spending time with his grad students. Randall’s hard but expectant stare suggested that Eric’s initial suspicion was correct.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“Stockton Hall.”
“That’s three blocks from here. ..” Eric’s heart was hammering, knowing that he shouldn’t press at all, should shut the boy out with silence and then shut the door after him. “How did you know where I live?” he finally asked.
Without guilt or the sudden shame of the caught, Randall answered, “I followed you.”
It was past one and Stockton Hall was winding down from another Friday night, but the glare of the hallway’s fluorescent lights seemed profane and Randall kept his head bowed, listening to the slow scrape of his footsteps over the hallway’s thin industrial carpet. As he approached the end of the hall, he heard conversations muffled by cinderblock and the distant pounding of a stereo. None of it was loud enough to drown out the memory of the sound of Eric slamming the front door to his house. At the end of the hall, he stopped outside Kathryn’s room. He had trained himself to endure moments like these, to fight the urge to confess to Kathryn the truth about what had brought him to Atherton. But the urge was stronger than it had ever been. Once Eric slammed the door, Randall had to suffer the weight of his secret alone. No sliver of light came from beneath Kathryn’s door, so he turned for his own.
Randall hesitated before he went in, waiting to hear a grunt or a sudden sharp intake of breath. He could only make out Jesse’s voice speaking in urgent, hushed tones. It was the voice Jesse used with only one person, his father. Randall gave the door a gentle shove.
Kathryn had once observed that no dorm room in Stockton was more cleanly divided between roommates than his and Jesse’s. Jesse’s side of the room was stark; the only thing adorning the wall beside his bed was a print of Salvador Dali's
Persistence of Memory
, On the four shelves affixed to the wall above his headboard, his textbooks were meticulously organized by course, each one Atherton’s basic introductory gut. Intro to Psych, American History, etc. Across the room, Randall’s wall was an eruption of posters, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel meeting the edge of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, competing with anything else he could buy at the student union or tear out of a magazine. Pages detached from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog—half-naked models, their arms looped with commercialized nonchalance around each other’s shoulders—presided over his desk, their prominent placement an attempt to remind Jesse of his roommate’s orientation and perhaps deter him from loafing around the room in only a pair of gym shorts or boxers. So far the attempt had failed.
Blue lights from the miniature television flickered across Jesse’s torso where he lay on the bed, the portable phone pressed to his ear. As Randall hung up his jacket, he heard Jesse giving only sporadic grunts of acknowledgment to the person on the other end of the line. The TV sat on top of the miniature, knee-high refrigerator; they both had been jointly rented from the student union, and without protest, Randall had allowed Jesse to keep both on his side of the room.
Randall sank down into his desk chair, turning his back to Jesse. Shut out by Eric and unable to risk Kathryn’s disapproval of his sex life, Randall had somehow been left with only his unattainable, half-naked roommate as company. Staring blankly at the computer screen seemed like the only way to cope. He brought his hands to the keyboard, but one landed on the edge of his desk as another curled into a fist against his lap. Anger formed a knot inside his chest. He shut his eyes, drew breath, and was startled by the sound of Jesse setting the portable back into its cradle.
Canned laughter came from the television.
“Who was that?” Randall asked without turning.
Springs creaked as Jesse settled back into his bed. “Kathryn hates me, doesn’t she?”
Startled, Randall turned to see Jesse, his eyes on the television, one arm bent between his head and the pillow, revealing a tuft of dark hair in his armpit. “You two seemed pretty tight at Madeline's,” Randall said, unbuttoning his shirt as he moved to his closet, which allowed him to avoid looking at Jesse for too long.
“Whatever. It was all an illusion. I’m not surprised, though. The girl’s got so many little voices in the back of her head telling her what not to do that she can barely leave her room without asking all of her friends if it’s a good move. And now she lives across the hall from a guy who goes after whatever he wants.”
“Whoever he wants,” Randall corrected, balling up his shirt and tucking it into the laundry hamper.
“What I don’t get,” Jesse continued, “is how she had such a problem with the fact that I sleep around, but it’s perfectly all right for you.” “Since when do I sleep around?” Randall settled back into his desk chair. “Drywater, Texas,” his first attempt at short fiction, was still an open file, designated by a rectangle on the toolbar at the bottom of his screen. His stomach clenched and in his rush to close it, the file exploded onto the screen. He clicked the mouse several more times than needed.
"Oh, come on. All these late nights have been spent at the library?”
Randall bent against the back of his chair. "You know, Jesse, Kathryn has a value system we should all respect. Maybe even aspire to.”
Jesse let out a short, barking laugh as he rose from the pillows, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and turned to face Randall. “No fucking way. I travel across the entire country to get here, to be on my own for the first time in my life, and then I’ve got some prude trying to pile on more rules about what I can and can’t do with my body than I had to put up with as a five-year-old.”
Randall held Jesse’s eyes because it prevented his eyes from wandering down to where the leg of Jesse’s boxers yawned open. “I’ve never heard such a noble excuse for being horny,” Randall said. He turned back to the computer.
“Who are you kidding, Randall? Maybe you respect her, but I know you couldn’t be her if you tried every day.”
Randall rose from the chair and moved to his bed. He had to step over several piles of his books in the process before he sank down onto his mattress and began unlacing his boots. “You need some friends, Jesse. Someone you keep around for a little longer than it takes to get them into bed. Then I might be able to take you seriously when you lecture me on
my
friends.”
He managed to keep his tone steady, but when he shot a glance Jesse’s way, he saw that Jesse wore a wry, disbelieving smirk. “What are you talking about, Randall? I have you.”
Randall kicked one boot to the floor and then started pushing the other one off with his heel.
“Yeah, well, I think I’ve figured you two out,” Jesse said blithely, his bare feet padding to the fridge. He opened a carton of orange juice and slugged it right from the opening. Randall stared at his back, waiting for him to continue but unwilling to urge him on. “For her, you’re the phantom boyfriend she doesn’t have the courage to go out and get, and for you . .. well, my guess is you don’t really feel alive until that Tim guy or whoever has you flat on your back, but then, in the morning, when you start to feel a little dirty, you’ve got Kathryn and the pedestal she’s put you on.”
Jesse turned back, grinning slightly as if this were little more than locker-room banter. Randall surveyed him, trying to hide his anger and confusion. Why had Jesse picked tonight of all nights to share his pop-psychology insights? “Who says I ever feel dirty?” Randall asked icily.
Jesse arched his eyebrows and returned the orange juice to the fridge. Randall began removing his socks before he noticed that Jesse had wandered almost to the invisible line dividing their sides of the room, leaning one hip against the edge of the desk. Randall looked up, startled, as Jesse crossed his arms over his bare chest, waiting.
“What?”
“Go ahead.”
Randall furrowed his brow.
“You’re not going to, are you?” Jesse finally asked.
Now Randall knew what Jesse was waiting for. The next step of his bedtime routine was to slide beneath the comforter and remove his jeans down to his ankles before dropping them in a ball at the foot of the bed.
“Two months of living together and you still can’t take your pants off in front of me.”
“You never answered my question.”
“What question?”
“Who was on the phone?”
Jesse was silent.
“Your father?” Randall asked.
Randall found a petty triumph in the color that rose to Jesse’s cheek and the sudden tension in his jaw. “What drug was it this time?” Randall asked.
“Pride,” Jesse answered, turning down the comforter. Randall was about to slide under his own when Jesse spoke again. “You know I got home in time for the repeat of the local news. That’s some fucked-up shit. The car accident?”
Randall tensed, groping for any memory of what he might have said to Jesse. He had sworn to keep his pursuit of Eric secret. That was vital. But their room had become a private comfort zone, with Jesse giving details of his sexual conquests that Randall guessed he didn’t share with anyone else, and which Randall loved hearing because they afforded him a private, intimate glimpse of the guy everyone else on the floor regarded as either an asshole or an enigma, a man he refused to desire. Sometimes he even considered Jesse to be a version of himself, but without the apologies and the secrets.
“Eberman? Isn’t that the guy you have a hard-on for?”
Jesse slid under his comforter and reached for the switch on the gooseneck lamp affixed to his headboard. “Maybe now’s your chance,” Jesse said, before he killed the lamp and rolled over onto one side.
Any hope that he might get the last word was dashed. Randall stood frozen for several seconds. He hadn’t told Jesse anything concrete, but he had confessed his attraction for Eric during those first weeks of school as they traded their evaluations of hot students and sexy professors. But there was a good chance that somewhere amid all the freshman psych that formed Jesse’s worldview, there might be some pretty good intuition.
He heard Jesse’s sheets rustle, and through the shadows on his side of the room, Randall could see Jesse had turned his head to find Randall still staring at him. “Good night, Randall.”
Kathryn emerged from her room to see Randall coming out of his. She saw his eyes widen and then he gave a slight laugh at her outfit. She’d pulled on unlaced duck boots with a pair of sweat pants, and thrown her heaviest Columbia-brand snow jacket on over her nightshirt. She must have looked like, a bag lady who’d gone on a shoplifting spree at the mall.
She held up her pack of Marlboro Lights. “It’s cold in the fire stairway,” she said, pointing to the exit door to their right. Randall shook his head no and gestured to the boys’ communal bathroom down the hall.
“Great,” Kathryn said, as she followed him. “All dressed up for nothing.”
Private shower stalls with soap scum-stained curtains lined one wall of the bathroom. A window at the far end was propped open, emitting cold gusts of wind that chilled the tiled floor. Whereas the girls on their floor never left their toiletry baskets behind, the boys had no qualms about it, and Kathryn chuckled when she saw Randall’s Aveda-stocked basket on the window ledge alongside more plebeian toiletry kits featuring labels like Gillette and Pert Plus. Contact lens solution was wedged between a bottle of Issey Miyake cologne and matching body wash. She was taken aback. Randall wore contacts? So there were some limits on the small life details they had shared, (And even more limits on the larger dramas she had kept from him.)
Kathryn exhaled her first drag with her head tilted back, watching the cloud of smoke crawl toward the fluorescent light. She offered him one, but he held up his toothbrush in response. ‘You’d think someone would have done some work to make this place look less like a hospital.”
Randall was brushing his teeth hard enough to bring white froth to the corners of his mouth. He bent at the waist and spat into the sink. “Try Princeton,” he said as he disappeared into a bathroom stall. He emerged, dabbing at his mouth with a compulsively folded triangle of toilet paper. “I hear they have fireplaces in the lounges there.”