Beware of Love in Technicolor (8 page)

“I just don’t want to see you like that,” I told him as I removed the cheese from my slice of pizza.

“No problem,” he said. “Anything for you.” And he kissed the tip of my nose.

I’ll wait for you to stop laughing and thinking things like, “What an idiot!” before I continue.

***

I spent the next week trying to figure out what John and I had started. We had dinner together twice, but he made claims to being busy with labs and study groups afterward. He held my hand to walk to the SUB to see a movie, and then spent twenty minutes flirting with a loud, mannish girl he knew from his dorm. He walked me back to Wyndham, but declined to come inside. As I watched him walk away, I noticed him head in the opposite direction from Holt Hall.

On Friday afternoon, Molly and I went to the mall to blow some money and calories. She had decided to join the crew team, as coxswain, and needed a new alarm clock to be sure she awoke each morning at the crack of dawn. I was glad she had found something to do, but was not so excited about the looming 4:45 am wake-up calls.

“What do you see in him, anyway?” she asked between bites of frozen yogurt. I had been complaining of the mixed signals I had been receiving from John.

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “He makes me crazy. He seems to get me, though, like he’s reading my mind sometimes.” I continued to think about the question.

“He’s a good kisser,” I said, thinking about his lips.

Walking home from the bus stop, I saw the light on in his room. Since my shopping trip had been bust, and I had no bags to drop in my room, I made the rash decision to drop by unannounced. It was eight o’clock on a Friday night. I knew I would never get my hands on one of the hall phones in The Pit, so I might as well take my chances where I found them.

Molly continued on her way up the hill as I ran to catch the side door of Holt behind a group of guys. I didn’t want to have to go around and deal with the Friday night security desk setup at the front door each weekend evening, looking for booze and joints and anything else on “the list.” I trotted up two flights of stairs, and stopped to check my hair in the reflection off the darkened window. Satisfied, I opened the door and proceeded to John’s room.

Second-long Holt was a different world from The Pit. It smelled of wet gym socks and salami. The posters on the walls warning the boys of binge drinking and date rape were scribbled on and ripped, barely hanging to the walls by one or two corners. Almost every door was flung wide open, with boys wandering aimlessly from room to room, the sounds of Pink Floyd and The Allman Brothers tangled in a strange and surreal symphony.

John’s was the first room on the left after the study lounge. He had a single, which meant he had no roommate, and no room. Only about fifteen feet deep, about seven or eight feet wide where the bed was built into a loft to make room for a desk underneath. In the back, the room narrowed to about four feet wide, and contained one small window.

When I arrived, I was surprised to see Topher sitting at the desk. A boy I didn’t know was standing in the doorway. John was in the back of the room, pouring ginger ale into a Thermos. His face lit up when he saw me.

“Greer!” he called out loudly.

“Hi,” I smiled at him. “Hey, Topher.”

“You guys know each other?” John asked as he replaced the bottle of ginger-ale in his mini fridge.

“
We rob banks
,” I said, with a wink thrown Topher’s way. I had recently learned that my new friend was as much of a film buff as me, but instead of appreciating the
Bonny & Clyde
quote that I thought for sure he would catch, he gave a nervous laugh.

“She lent me a pencil at orientation,” he explained.

“C’mon,” I said, poking his knee with the pointy toe of my boot. “What about the grocery store, all the dining hall lunches, the cute little stick figures on my door?”

“Uh-oh, sounds like you’re in trouble, brother,” the unknown boy said to him.

More nervous laughter.

“This is my friend Brett, from home,” Topher said to me, successfully changing the subject. John stared at me from the back of the room while we guests made our own introductions.

“To what do we owe this pleasure, Greer?” John asked me, the tone of his voice different now. I felt like I had made a huge mistake by stopping by, but I could not turn and run now. 

“I was just coming back from the mall. I saw your light on,” I replied.

“Ah, the mall,” he said, and took a sip from the Thermos. “We were just about to leave.”

“You are coming with us, right?” Brett asked me.

“Uh, I don’t know,” I started. I looked to John. He met my gaze, and had the same look about him as the night I went to the French film with Brian Deneen.

“Of course she’s coming with us,” John said, a bit too loudly. “There’s nothing Greer likes more than a party.” He pulled his leather jacket on and looked me straight in the eyes as we all exited his room. He walked in front, his long legs outpacing us. I searched my mind for some excuse to flee, but I came up empty.

              We walked quickly to another dorm in Area 1. Once inside, Topher found the room we were looking for, and we were let in by a small, freckle-faced girl with a blue Mohawk. Her name was Prim, and it was obvious that it was the connection between the two that brought us all here that night. There was another girl inside, Prim’s roommate, who was a tall, skinny girl named Julie. She had a bottle of tequila in one hand, a cordless phone in the other. I envied them their private room phone.

             
The tequila, though, was a different story. I at least understood part of what was making John act like such a jerk. I wondered what exactly he had in that Thermos.

             
We hung out in the room for about an hour. They passed around the tequila, taking swigs and grimacing and chasing it with shared bottles of orange soda and Sprite. John kept his Thermos to himself. I was thirsty and dying for a Diet Coke, but did not dare ask for something to drink. I noticed that Brett was abstaining, as I was, though he was laughing and keeping up with the silliness despite his sobriety. I sat quietly in the corner. I think John even forgot I was there for a little while. At one point, I met Topher’s eyes and he smiled one of his summer day smiles at me. Then he jumped up out of the desk chair he was sitting in, threw one of Julie’s hot pink scarves around his neck, and stood in the middle of the room.

             
“I am big!
” he exclaimed with dramatic flair. “
It’s the pictures that got small!
”

             
Prim grabbed the scarf by the ends and yanked Topher down onto the bed, landing next to me. She sat on top of him. He looked at me, waiting, ignoring the girl tightening the scarf around his neck.

             
“Really? Do I win this one?” he asked, his face lighting up. Prim stopped her advances. Julie looked up from her long-distance phone conversation. John remembered I was in the room. I stood up to excuse myself to the soda machine down the hall.

             
“
Sunset Boulevard,”
I stated, glaring at John on my way out the door. He had a faraway, glazed look in his eyes. It was exactly how I did not want to see him.

             
“Argh,” I heard Topher growl and laugh on my way out.

             
I was seething under the surface. I had specifically told John I wanted nothing to do with this part of his life. How dare he lead me into this situation instead of taking me aside and suggesting I go home?

             
When I returned to the room with my Diet Coke, people were moving about, pulling coats on and moving about to leave the room. Once back outside in the early October night, John walked up beside me.

             
“How are you doing? You ok?” he asked. His feet were having trouble navigating a straight line.

             
“Been better,” I replied curtly.

             
“Whatever,” he replied quickly, and stumbled away, back toward the people who didn’t seem to care what a fool he looked like.

             
Julie took the lead. I don’t think she talked about anything but sex the entire evening. Where, when, and how often she and her boyfriend back home in New Jersey did it. What she liked to wear, what he liked to eat afterward. If I hadn’t been so blind with rage, I might have learned a few things.

             
When we had wandered about a hundred yards or so down the railroad tracks, the group started to slow down. It was dark, with only the light of the full, harvest moon and the faraway glow of the university to guide our eyes.

             
“This looks like a good spot,” Prim said, and they all stopped. She took something out of her pocket, handed it to John, and struck her lighter. The flame lit up the small group for a moment, and I saw a joint dangling from John’s lips, He leaned down, and let Prim light it up.

             
He stood up straight and inhaled deeply. The end of the joint glowed orange. Even in the dim light, I could see the idiot smile on his face. He coughed, stumbled backward, and handed it off to Topher. Topher took his turn, and attempted to pass it to me.

             
“No, thanks,” I said shortly, and walked away. I heard Brett decline as well, and his footsteps in the gravel as he joined me about ten feet away from the circle.

             
“You don’t smoke?” I asked him. We sat down on the outside rail, our knees touching.

             
“Nah, don’t drink, either,” he said.

             
“It doesn’t bother you that Topher is doing this with you here?” I looked at him closely for the first time. He was kind of cute. Cuter than John, but not as intriguing.

             
“Should it?” he asked. “I never thought about it.”

             
I shrugged, and scattered some pebbles with the toes of my boots. The crunching sound under my feet was satisfying in the otherwise quiet of the night. Julie interrupted our conversation.

             
“C’mon lovebirds! We’re freezin’ our asses off out here!”

             
“Lovebirds?” I heard John say. He must have forgotten I was there again. I heard his heavy footsteps approach, and saw the gleam of the moon off the toes of his black boots. I looked up, way up, to his face.

             
“Having fun?” he asked me.

             
“The most,” I replied.

             
Brett helped me to my feet. The group started making its way back to the light of campus. Brett and I walked in the lead, with the others straggling behind. John was stumbling along behind me by about six paces.

             
“It’s cold,” I said to my new buddy. “My hands are freezing.”

             
“Here, give them to me,” Brett said. He took my hands in his and rubbed them warm.

             
“What the fuck?” I heard John mumble behind us, right before he stumbled off the tracks and fell to the back of the group.

***

              I let Brett hold my hands all the way to the pizza place downtown. Once there, John slid himself into a booth, while Prim and Topher went to order. Julie disappeared to the ladies room.

             
I had a decision to make. Should I keep pushing John? I didn’t know him very well, but I could see I was the buzzkill I had every intention of being. I looked at him and we locked eyes. We were each too stubborn to soften.

             
I slid into the booth adjacent to the one John was in, my back to him. Brett slid in next to me. I pretended to be interested in whatever it was he was babbling about. I laughed where I ought to, and tucked my hair behind my ear. I could feel John’s eyes boring a hole in the back of my skull.

             
Prim and Topher were obviously confused when they approached the two tables with trays of pizza and cokes. Topher sat with us, the girls sat with John. Julie pined for her long-distance, sex-machine boyfriend, while my table companions discussed the various lives of people they had grown up with. I picked at a slice, but did not eat. I was losing my enthusiasm, and just wanted the night to end. I no longer felt a smug satisfaction for ruining his night, but only sorry that I had even dropped by his room at all.

             
“Would you excuse me?” I said to Brett finally. He stood and let me out of the booth. “I’m going to get going,” I said to him.

             
“What? Now?” he asked, wiping the grease from his chin with a paper napkin.

             
“I’m beat,” I Iied.

             
I saw John look up from his pizza, and met his gaze. I saw in the wall of mirrors that we both had the same defeated look on our faces.