Moo (7 page)

Every day, Chairman X had to endure the pleasant, reasonable voice of Dean Harstad calming him down. “Say,” he would remark, “you’ve been spreading those radical ideas again. The books are there. The hort answer-line people just have to re-e-e-ad from the book. Don’t have to make it harder than it is. These folks who call in, they don’t like to go off on a tangent, you know. No time for that.”
Dean Harstad had unbounded patience, the very patience that drove Chairman X bananas, patience as a weapon. At meetings, when Dean Harstad was delving deeply into his patience, he would close his eyes. It was a remarkably infuriating gesture, especially to Chairman X, who had probably never closed his eyes voluntarily in his whole life.

Chairman X had a private fantasy of killing Dean Harstad. While normally a believer in the larger forces of history, and ready at any time to discount a theory of history that privileged “great men,” Chairman X did feel that there were key individuals, uniquely destructive, who could not be replaced, after whose demise life on the planet would actually be better, and Dean Harstad was one of these. Hitler, Stalin, Nils Harstad. The urge to violence was what Chairman X, a flower-man, a believer in perennials, struggled against. Neither vegetarianism nor Buddhism, neither long study of Japanese gardening theory nor the example of the Lady X, a mild and generous woman, had quenched his desire to kill Dean Harstad, preferably with his bare hands, staring right into the eyes, forcing him, at the last moment, to recant, to regret, to know his life as worse than bankrupt.

Chairman X consciously released his grip on the shovel he was throttling, and hung it gently on its hook in the tool building, then washed his hands, and went up to his office to write a memo. It read,

Of course, this memo would never reach the provost, nor was it intended to. The Chairman stuck it into a campus envelope and addressed it to Mrs. Walker, provost’s office. That was how you got anything done on this campus.

D
UBUQUE
H
OUSE HAD
always been known, with a thrill among the customers and a shudder in the administration, for parties. For a few years in the mid-eighties, the resident assistants had, of their own accord, gone through the dorm and removed mirrors from the bathrooms. Even without shards of glass and sharp metal frames, even with bags checked at the door and paper cups for beer, it had been surprising what the drunken customers could transform into weapons, and every party had ended in a fight, and every fight had ended in one or two hospitalizations. In 1986, the administration had quietly decided to end coeducation in Dubuque House. With no male customers living there, plenty of security, and strict instructions to the female customers to lock their doors and keep them locked until they went to bed, THEN to lock themselves in, the rate of unfortunate incidents had dropped almost to zero, and the administration had turned its attention back to fraternity row. It was too bad, some thought, that you couldn’t bar male customers from the fraternities, too, or, even, from assembling in groups larger than three anywhere on the campus, but given the impossibility of that Utopia, the best you could hope for was keeping them confined to their own area. That was what fraternity row was for.

Dubuque House parties were still the best on campus. Actual bands, good ones, came from Chicago and Kansas City, and actual dancing took place far into the night. Without boys and boys’ rooms, there was less danger of rape, and the dorm was far enough from fraternity row, all the way across the campus, that a girl would have sobered up from the walk before she was halfway there. Those who passed out and were left by their dates under bushes and trees were picked up by campus security and efficiently taken home. There had never been a case of injury through exposure to the weather, though that was something Ivar Harstad and the student affairs office worried about every year.

Mary, Sherri, Keri, and Diane, all of whom were shocked by how poorly they were doing in their classes, but none of whom had confided this to the others, assuming that the others were doing well, were dressing with careful exhilaration for their first college bash.

It could not be said that they were getting along well as a general rule. The most they felt for each other was relief at the familiarity of someone and some place in the wilderness of people and ideas they had entered upon three weeks before. Even so, getting ready was fun. The possessiveness each had been feeling about her clothes and makeup, the fear each had had that something might be used or borrowed without permission, had fallen away the moment Sherri said to Diane, “I have the perfect belt for that dress!” and then pulled out the perfect belt—black patent leather with a silver buckle shaped like a morning glory—and handed it over. Soon after that, Keri was wearing Mary’s purple miniskirt instead of the tasteful flowered print dress she had planned on, and Mary was trying on one of Diane’s hats. She hardly ever wore hats, but she had to admit that if she crushed one side a little bit, and cocked it over her eye, it gave her a very interesting look. And she liked the parrots marching around the band. They matched the orange and yellow blouse she had been planning to wear for a week. Then Diane said to Keri, “Oh! You’ve got Red Door! I love that!” and they all had to put some on, and discuss how best to put it on—spray it onto a cotton ball, then touch your hot points, or, as Keri insisted, spray a little cloud, then walk through it,
once
. Sherri walked through it twice, now that she was a redhead.

Mary said to Keri, forgetting herself just a little, “Girl, you look sexy in that purple skirt!” and Keri’s face turned beet red, because looking sexy in that very purple skirt had been a fantasy of hers since the first day, when she watched carefully as Mary unpacked her clothes, and took note of every item. Her own clothes hung in a wan pastel lump in her side of the closet. When she got dressed in the morning, she didn’t even look at what she was putting on, knowing that it would look okay and much the same as yesterday. Instead, she looked at what Mary was putting on, which was an education. The thing about Mary, Keri thought, was that she was so effortlessly herself. She snatched things out of the closet and threw them on, making fashion decisions faster than a speeding bullet. Everything about Mary, Keri thought, was a positive contrast to herself, and while she was afraid to actively model herself on Mary, she thought
by studying her, she might soak up something that would give her more energy, make being herself less of a labor.

Sherri said, “I heard at these parties you get two guys, or more, to every girl, and lots of different types of guys, not just fraternity guys. I heard even some foreign students come.”

“You mean, like, from New York City?” said Diane. “That would be foreign enough for me. Exactly.”

Sherri puckered her lips speculatively into the mirror, then said, “What I dread is if kids from my high school show up. I wish there was a big banner, ‘Fishburn High, this is not for you, stick with your own kind.’ ”

Keri said, “What kind is that?”

“The gawky kind. Besides, one of them is sure to tell my old boyfriend if they see me dancing with someone else, God forbid I should flirt or kiss or, as my mother would say, throw my body around in a suggestive manner.”

Mary said, “Didn’t you break up with him?”

“I did, but it takes two to break up.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Well, girls,” said Sherri, “how do we look?”

They stood up and gave each other the eyeball. Sherri tucked the label into the back of Diane’s blouse. “Fabulous,” said Diane. “Super fabulous,” said Sherri. Keri smiled and smoothed her purple miniskirt, Mary opened the door, then locked it behind them. They could hear the band rumbling from the dining room two floors below.

Across from the campus, in a bar near the physics and astronomy building called “the Black Hole,” Gary was working on his roommate Bob. “Shit. It doesn’t matter what the guys are wearing as long as you’ve got jeans and sneakers on. The thing is to check out what the girls are wearing. I’m not going to hike all the way back over to the apartment so you can put on a different shirt, and I’m not going to let you go by yourself, because you’ll find some excuse to stay there, so let’s just go.”

The clientele of the Black Hole consisted largely of students who, if asked a question about what single nutrient they might choose to have with them on a desert island (or in a black hole), would answer unhesitatingly, “Bud.” All earnestly believed that beer
was
the perfect food, and that this knowledge had been kept from them by a conspiracy of adults. While Bob knew this wasn’t true, he frequented the
Black Hole because it gave him someplace to go that was decidedly different from his apartment but not unlike Earl Butz’ confinement room with the lights off. He said, “I hate parties. I like anti-parties, like the Black Hole here.”

“Shit. If you don’t watch out, you’re going to go right back to your dad’s farm and think that a night out means going down to the Country Tap.”

Bob didn’t say anything because that’s exactly what his dad and uncles did think.

Gary stood up suddenly and said in a fed-up tone of voice, “Well, I’m going.”

Bob brought his glass close enough to his face to see it in the dim light. It was empty. Since sometimes in the Black Hole you had trouble catching a waiter’s eye and getting a refill, he stood up, too. “Okay, okay,” he said. He had known Gary about a month now. While he didn’t think they were quite friends, having no history together, for now the sense of Gary’s companionship was comforting.

The evening air was so perfectly cool as to seem like a cloud of pleasure suspended about them, specifically FOR them. Bob’s spirits lifted. Gary knew lots of the girls who went by in perfumy groups. “Hey,” they would say, and come up to him, “Hey, Gare. Done those chem problems yet? Suzy Allison was looking for you, I saw her in the Union. Cool shirt. Hey. Hey.” Bob admired the way Gary fended them off and strung them along at the same time. Instead of stiffening at their approach, the way Bob felt himself do, Gary loosened, let them in close. But he always kept walking. “Hey, Cheryl, wow, you look terrific. Hey, Carla, hey, Barb, call me.” With just his fingertips, he touched them on the elbow or the shoulder. It was a technique of such delicate instinctive intimacy that it made Gary seem like a visitor from outer space, like no male that Bob had ever known.

The lights of Dubuque House seemed to surge on the heavy beat of bass and drums that could be heard from inside. Doors and windows opened to the cool air, and customers were standing everywhere, as many girls as boys. Bob handed over his six dollars, had his hand stamped, received tickets for two beers, and pressed himself after Gary into the crush.

It was then that Diane, who had been standing with her mostly full cup of Diet Coke, watching the dancers, was pushed suddenly backward, and Bob received her in his lap, followed by another girl,
who stumbled over them. “Holy Moly” was what Bob heard Diane exclaim into the shoulder of the other girl, and then a guy in a Garth Brooks T-shirt came down and Bob felt his ankle twist and give underneath the pile. Even so, as soon as they all landed they seemed to bounce, as others turned and pulled them up, and then everyone, including Diane, was looking at Bob and saying, “You all right, man? You’re okay, aren’t you?”

“More or less.” He tried to stand up, but that was impossible, so he hopped and hobbled toward one of the tables pushed against the wall. Diane followed him. That was the consolation.

She looked great, with her hands on her hips and her short haircut like an exclamation point and all her girlish elements, too, the cologne and the smooth skin, and the fine blond hair on her forearms and the exasperated look on her face, which was the look above all others that drew him. She said, “You were standing practically on top of me. You didn’t give me an inch to move!”

He said, “I was just trying to get through. I wasn’t standing there.”

“I bet that hurts.”

“Well, yeah. Yeah, it does.”

“It’s swelling right up. I can see that from here.”

“Maybe it’s broken.” He thought first about Earl Butz, about how he was going to get across campus without a car.

“It’s not broken.”

“How do you know?”

“Nothing cracked. I would have heard something crack.”

It was true that she had been that close, and closer. Closer than any other girl since he’d come to college. He smiled. She said, “Shit. Now I suppose I’ve got to find you a way back to your dorm. What’s your major?”

“Agronomy.”

“Are you kidding? Where are you from?”

“About a hundred miles from here.”

“I can’t believe it!”

Clearly, she was really angry. He said, “You don’t have to do anything, except maybe take these tickets and go get us a couple of beers.”

“I don’t like beer.”

“Well, get yourself a Coke.”

“Diet Coke.”

“Get that, then.”

“All right, all right.” She stomped away. Now this was a girl, Bob thought, who was not like any girl he knew, and this was the girl he wanted.

Across the room, Mary was standing half-hidden by a post and watching Keri. She was sure that Keri hadn’t seen her, which was just fine, because if she were to see her, she would certainly come over in a friendly way and start asking questions. Of all the roommates, Mary had found Keri the least compelling. She aroused in her neither incipient antipathy nor incipient affection. Keri’s beauty, which the other girls often commented on, looked right out of a magazine to Mary, and white girls in magazines reminded her of the Barbie dolls she had had as a child. They were around, and sometimes she played with them, but her mother always called them “those things,” as in “Put those things away,” or “Those things are the silliest-looking things I’ve ever seen.” Thus Mary had held Keri in low regard, until now. Now Mary watched her and marvelled.