Beach Trip (16 page)

“Hardly at all. Well, I mean we might have a glass of wine if Mitchell and I go out to dinner. And he drinks beer, of course, but I don’t like the taste of it.”

“See? You’re not going to become an alcoholic just by drinking to excess once every twenty years.”

“We only drink on the weekends,” Sara said. “And then it’s only wine or beer. No hard liquor.”

“Bully for you,” Mel said.

“Isn’t anyone going to ask me how often I drink?” Lola asked. Annie stopped dealing and everyone waited patiently for Lola to continue. “Every day,” she said. “We have cocktails on the patio by the pool and Briggs tells me all about his day, how many deals he closed, how much money he made, what he shot on the golf course.”

No one said anything. Annie went back to dealing.

Sara lost the next round. “This is getting pretty boring,” she said, draining her martini.

Mel poured her another one. “We can play something else,” she said.

“You’re so competitive,” Sara said. “Why don’t we just relax and sip our drinks and watch TV?”

“Chug the Jug?” Mel said. “Polish Poker?”

“Didn’t we use to play Polish Poker in college?” Annie asked.

“Shit-faced Driver?” Mel said. “Suck and Roll? You Blink You Drink?”

“It says a lot about you that you still remember those games,” Sara said.

“Hey, Annie, remember that party senior year at Whitey Fogo’s? The one where you and Mitchell had broken up and you came with Mule Gebhardt and got so drunk?”

“I never broke up with Mitchell.”

“Really?”

“I never dated Mule Gebhardt.”

“Sure you did.”

“Okay. Once.”

Lola giggled. “I remember Mule,” she said. “He was sweet.”

“I think you’re remembering someone else,” Sara said. “Mule was anything but sweet.”

Lola frowned slightly and cocked her head like a small, bright-eyed bird. “Why did they call him that?” she asked, gathering up her cards. “Mule wasn’t his real name, was it?”

“The other guys on the football team gave him that nickname,” Mel said. “It’s because his pecker hung down like a mule’s. They also used to call him Donkey Dick.”

Lola’s eyes grew round. She put her hand to her mouth and giggled. “Oh, my,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be painful?”

Mel grinned. “You mean for his girlfriend?”

“Only if it was true,” Sara said.

“Well, Annie, was it?”

“Shut up, Mel.” She had lied when she said she didn’t remember that
night. She remembered it clearly, right up to the moment she had let Mule take off her T-shirt. She had wished then that Paul could see her, that he might be watching jealously from some dark corner of the room. But then she had seen the bulge in Mule’s jeans and she had known she couldn’t go through with it no matter how badly she wanted to get back at Paul Ballard.

“You were so drunk you got up on a table and sang the school fight song.”

“I don’t remember,” Annie said.

“What were we drinking that night?” Sara asked.

“Tequila,” Mel said.

“Oh, yeah. That rotgut stuff that Whitey brought back from Mexico with the grub in the bottom.”

“And Annie got the worm,” Mel said.

“I don’t remember,” Annie said.

“Those were some wild times.”

“I guess,” Annie said.

Mel gave her a wary look. She leaned over to pour her another drink. “What happened to you senior year? You kind of went crazy there for a while.”

Annie held her drink up to the light like she was examining a precious stone. “Wild oats,” she said. “I was sowing them. Right before I settled down to being a good wife and mother, and a God-fearing Republican.”

hree days after they met him at the bonfire, J.T. called and asked Mel out. Sara had been expecting this—she had steeled herself to accept it—but when the call came she found herself unable to stay in the room with Mel. She took her backpack and went downstairs to the quad. It was a cool evening in early October and the maples along the edges of the lawn shimmered like firelight. Students sat in groups around the quad, clustered beneath tall streetlamps, talking quietly. Here and there a cigarette glowed in the darkness.

Sara had come down with the idea of studying but now that she was here she didn’t even bother to open her backpack. She walked to the shadows at the edge of the quad and sat down on an empty bench, listening as someone strummed a guitar and began to sing softly “Fire and Rain.” James Taylor suited her mood. She put her head back and stared at the stars, listening.

She had seen him twice on campus but he hadn’t seen her. She’d made sure of that, ducking behind a laurel bush, lurking in the doorway of the science building until he passed. Both times she had felt
cowardly, ashamed, but she couldn’t face him. Not yet anyway Not while there was a chance that she might stammer or sweat profusely or knock something over. She needed time to work on her routine of cool detachment. She practiced in front of the mirror in their room when Mel was out.
Don’t I know you?
she would say, waving one hand airily in front of her face and making her expression vague.
You look familiar to me. What was your name again?

Across the quad the guitarist had moved on to “Bartender’s Blues.” Sara sighed and put her feet up on the bench, wrapping her arms around her knees. Mel would be excited about the date. She’d only mentioned him a couple of times since the bonfire but both times a delicate flush had appeared on her cheeks, and her eyes had shone with a subtle light. Sara guessed that he probably had that effect on a lot of women. She had hoped that despite what he had said that night on the beach he was already committed to someone else. That he had a girlfriend. That way she and Mel could pine together. They could form a sisterhood of unrequited love. She had hoped it was true, and yet deep in her heart she had known it was not. She had known he would call and it would be Mel he asked for.

And she, of course, would have to be happy for Mel. That’s what good friends did. They supported one another no matter what the cost. No matter how painful.

She lay down on the bench with her hands behind her head, gazing up at the stars. The evening air was sharp and smelled of dead leaves and wet grass. Pegasus stared down at her and above him Perseus shone in all his splendor. When they were girls she and Mel had learned the names of all the constellations. They had checked out books from the library and took turns spending the night in each other’s backyards, spraying themselves with insect repellent and huddling in lawn chairs while all around them fireflies glowed and shooting stars streaked across the sky.

Sara looked up at Pegasus and tried not to think about Mel laughing and talking on the phone with J.T. All around the quad, dormitories towered against the evening sky, their windows making little cheerful squares of light. She thought,
It could have been me he called.
She tried to imagine what that might feel like. She tried to imagine him coming toward her in the darkness, crossing the quad with long, purposeful strides. Heathcliff striding across the moors toward Cathy. Darcy searching in the moonlight for Elizabeth Bennet.
Fuck. I read too much
, she thought.

She stood up suddenly, hoisting her backpack across one shoulder, and
began to walk swiftly around the perimeter of the quad. The guitarist had stopped playing. He was loading his guitar into a case as she walked past, her backpack thumping against her hip. A couple of Goth kids dressed like Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious came toward her, holding hands in the darkness. She thought,
I don’t care if I ever see him again.
She thought,
He means nothing to me.

“Hey,” someone said behind her. She kept walking, her legs trembling as if she had run a marathon. Her breath fogged the air around her face. The moon, shrouded in clouds, rose above the turrets of Amsterdam Hall.

“Hey!” The voice was louder, more insistent. She stopped walking and swung around.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

He stepped forward into the light. “Sorry,” he said, as if he found her expression amusing. “Sorry to disappoint you.” He was dressed in a corduroy jacket and a pair of ragged jeans, his hair shaggy around his ears.

“I’m not disappointed,” she said without thinking, and her face flared with heat. She put her head down and began to walk again.

He fell into step beside her. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere. I’m just walking.”

“I called your roommate.”

“I know.”

“We have a date Friday night.”

“Cool.”

“She said for me to come over. She said you were watching
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“Well, if she said that then I guess we are.”

They walked for a while in silence until they came to the front of Nordan Hall. He brushed her arm lightly as they went up the steps, her backpack bumping against her hip. He opened the double doors and she stepped inside, blinking for a moment under the fluorescent lights. Her face was numb from the cold. She signed him in at the front desk and they walked down the narrow corridor and stood waiting together for the elevator. He was even better-looking than she remembered, tall and broad-chested. She stood looking at her reflection in the elevator doors, trying to remember if she had put on any lipstick.

“I like your hair,” he said. “It’s curly.”

She put her hand up self-consciously and touched it. “It does that when I don’t straighten it,” she said.

The elevator door opened and two girls got off. They looked at J.T. and giggled. He put his hand out to keep the door from closing and she slipped through in front of him and punched the button for her floor. The door lumbered close and they began to rise slowly.

The elevator smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. She tried to think of something clever to say. “You know there’s a twelve o’clock curfew,” she said. It was the best she could do.

He looked at her curiously. His eyes were a deep green flecked with streaks of gold. “I won’t stay long,” he said. “I promise.”

Later, after he’d gone, Mel tossed a pillow across the room and struck her in the back. Sara was lying on her bed, facing the wall, pretending to sleep. “I know you’re not asleep,” Mel said.

Sara rolled over and flung the pillow back. Mel caught it, looking at her with a thoughtful expression. “You were kind of quiet tonight.”

“Was I?”

“Don’t you like him? Don’t you want me to go out with him?” She sounded uneasy, as if she was afraid Sara would say no. Overhead, the light flickered. Faintly, down the hall, the Eagles were singing “I Can’t Tell You Why.”

“Don’t be stupid. Go out with whomever you want to.”

“It’s not worth ruining a friendship over.”

Sara pulled the covers to her chin and turned again to the wall. “Nothing’s worth that,” she said.

heir second morning at the beach, they rose late. Mel came into the great room to find Sara and Annie propped on one sofa staring, bleary-eyed, out at the ocean. Lola sat across from them, playfully rolling a tennis ball from one hand to the other. Mel took one look at Annie and Sara and laughed.