What She Saw... (10 page)

Phoebe got her bag and called a taxi.

Jason Barry Gold didn't try to stop her at the door. He was too busy watching
Caddyshack
for the fourth time, laughing his head off at all those misfired drives.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, Rachel felt compelled to remind Phoebe that she'd seen it coming from a mile away. “I told you he was an asshole,” she told Phoebe after Phoebe told her the whole story—stretched out on Rachel's sleigh bed a few afternoons later, a box of half-eaten doughnut holes resting forlornly in her lap. She was more blah than brokenhearted. She was thinking at least now she could say she'd gone to third base. She wasn't expecting to ever talk to Jason Barry Gold again.

She wasn't necessarily sorry about that, either.

But at a certain age, the past is as irrelevant as the future is unthinkable. (Only a social ignoramus, for example, would dare mention the previous weekend's parties on Monday morning.) Indeed, a week or two later, Jason waltzed up to Phoebe in the hall outside Petite's classroom as if that night in Saddle River had never happened. “Yo, Phoebster, waz up?” he said, hand raised to high-five her.

“Hey.” She smiled warily as she raised her hand to meet his, thinking she had at least one thing to be happy for in life: at least she wasn't wearing her pale pink polo shirt with the mysterious bleach stain beneath the left armhole.

But he caught her hand around the wrist. “You should come by the field after tennis,” he told her. “We're playing the Peddie School, and it looks to be an excellent matchup.”

“Oh, really?” she said, mock-wrestling to free herself of Jason's grip.

But he still wouldn't let go—not until she'd promised him she'd be there. And she was.

She was standing on the sidelines pretending to be “psyched” when Jason scored the winning goal in the final ten seconds of the game.

After that, it was only a matter of time before the two became “really good friends.” Which is to say that, much to Rachel Plotz's consternation—“he's just using you” was Rachel's personal opinion—Phoebe spent more than the occasional free period driving to and from the Pringle Bagel Emporium in Jason's BMW convertible. There was never any indication that he had the slightest interest in fooling around. In fact, he spent most of the time talking about Aimee Aaron. (They were back together, but he was still having “space issues.”) And that was fine by Phoebe. She only wanted to get along, to avoid conflict, to have other people not hate her. Or so she told herself.

Maybe that was all Jason wanted, too.

Though as his graduation neared, it began to seem that his stake in his and Phoebe's friendship was larger than it had first appeared. He said he'd never met a girl he could really talk to before. He said he was really going to miss her next year. He said he'd keep in touch, and he lived up to his promise.

The following letter arrived in the Fines' mailbox the summer before he started college:

JULY 25, 1987

Dear Phoebe,

I'm actually writing this letter from Stratton, Vermont, where I'm
attending a tennis clinic. Yeah, you're right: tennis IS a very good
time. Speaking of which, when you return from summer school, I'd like
to reserve a few days with you. This is so I'll have the chance to kick
your petoot in tennis. And no doubles with Rachel Plotz. Nothing
personal, I'll have you know, but I don't want to deal with that sob
story. No fucking way.

Update. It's over with Aimee. Finished. Kaput. End of Story. I
just couldn't deal anymore. But you shouldn't get the idea that I'm a
cold, unforgiving louse of a person—or that I'm a legitimate
heartbreaker. I'm not, I tell you, I'M NOT! But sometimes in this
world, certain people take life a little too seriously for my taste, if you
know what I mean. (I know you do.)

Dude—I MISS YOU!

I'll see ya soon. (I better.)

Love always,

Your best buddy,

Jason Barry Gold

a.k.a. “The Gold Standard”

Pringle Prep, Class of '87

University of Pennsylvania, Class of '91

Harvard Business School, Class of '94?

C.E.O. of the World, 2010?

P.S. Dude—what do you say the two of us get married in fifteen years
if we're still single (and desperate)? Ha, ha.

Phoebe never wrote back. With his connection to Pringle severed, Jason Barry Gold no longer seemed like the expedient social investment he once had.

And she didn't appreciate the backhandedness of his marriage proposal.

Maybe, also, not writing back was Phoebe's way of getting back at him for the way he'd treated her that night in Saddle River. Somewhere along the way, she'd come to realize that neglect is the best revenge. Which is to say that the nastiest thing Jennifer Weinfelt ever uttered still couldn't begin to compete, cruelty-wise, with the silence of a phone not ringing, a letter not arriving, an overture played to an empty concert hall.

4. Spitty Clark

OR “The Gentle Date Rapist”

CHANCES ARE THAT Phoebe Fine never would have “rushed” if Mindy Metzger hadn't persuaded her to, arguing that sororities, despite their less-than-democratic admission policies, were largely self-selecting institutions, and therefore not half as elitist as they might at first appear. And Phoebe believed her—up until the moment the Greek Committee, having summoned all the participating freshmen to the second-floor TV lounge of Alumni Hall, distributed its so-called invitations. As it happened, Mindy Metzger received her invitation first. And Mindy Metzger, upon discovering the most-revered of all Greek letters, Pi Pi Pi, printed in purple on a parchment card inside, had the decency not to scream for joy—not until Phoebe had received her invitation. But then when Phoebe did receive hers, Mindy didn't even ask if she could see it. She just leaned over Phoebe's shoulder and read it for herself. Then she whispered, “Ohmigod, I am
so
sorry,” because inscribed on Phoebe's parchment card were the wrong letters, the letters of Phoebe's second-choice sorority—not Tri Pi (as it was known) but a less prestigious house called Delta Nu Sigma (or “Delta Sig,” for short).

“Oh, well,” said Phoebe, as if it didn't matter one way or the other.

But of course it did. She didn't want to be a Delta Sig. She wanted to be a Tri Pi. Never mind Mindy Metzger. Tri Pi was the sorority that girls seemingly too sophisticated for sororities wound up pledging. Which is to say, girls raised primarily in cities as opposed to suburbs; girls so exceedingly comfortable with their own self-construction that the act of getting dressed always appeared to have been accomplished in five minutes— even if the truth was more like two hours; girls who, even if they were Jewish, weren't “too Jewish”; girls such as Phoebe aspired to be and occasionally even convinced herself that she was.

Delta Nu Sigma was a different matter.

Blessed with the same approximate demographic as Pringle Prep, it wore its Jewishness with the same sense of duty-bound pride with which its sisters sported Larry Levine lamb's-wool overcoats in winter. And it was for this very reason that its letters added up to an infinitely less prestigious affiliation even within the Jewish sorority girl population, for whom real popularity depended on approval not just from other Jewish sorority girls, but from sorority girls in general, and specifically from a handful of semilegendary pretty girls—none of them Jewish, and all of them blessed with long blond hair, skinny asses, and solid American last names—whose friendship the rest of the Greek community coveted as small Caribbean protectorates looked to the United States for cash infusions.

But what choice did Phoebe have now? Just then, a tiny girl with rubber bracelets appeared at her side, threw a lei around her neck, and introduced herself as “your Rho Chi, Cheri!” before she tried to lead Phoebe away.

“I'll just be one second,” Phoebe assured her.

Then she tapped Mindy on the shoulder to say good-bye.

“Oh, bye!” Phoebe's about-to-be-ex-best-friend turned around to fake an empathetic smile before she turned back around to continue freaking out with the other Tri Pi initiates, her mouth moving in exaggerated shapes, her eyes popping out of her skull like one of those rubber-man squeeze toys. That's when Phoebe knew Mindy had left her behind. And she hated her for it— suddenly hated everything about Mindy Metzger, from her self-deprecating humor to her desperate need to curry favor with the “right people.” Maybe that described Phoebe's personality, too. Only now Phoebe was the “wrong people.” Now she could stop trying to fit in. If only she had the nerve. But she didn't. She wasn't like Emily. She wasn't interested in overthrowing the patriarchy. She wasn't even sure what the patriarchy was.

She was just trying to find a place to call home so she wouldn't be so sick for the
real one.

So she climbed into the backseat of Cheri's wine-colored Saab 900 Turbo along with a half dozen other twittering Delta Sig pledges. And she made gratuitous noises of pleasure and victory on the ride back to the House, a crumbling white elephant with a wraparound porch located in the shadow of the agriculture quad. And she was first down the stairs that led to a basement meeting room with fake wood paneling and a flocculent red carpet where a mob of her future sisters stood around hugging, kissing, shrieking, and drinking fruit punch. (She hugged, kissed, shrieked, and drank fruit punch with the best of them.) And she waited patiently while speeches were made and more shrieking achieved. Then Cheri drove a few of them over to Delta Sig's “brother house,” Chi Zeta Epsilon, where Phoebe was fed brewskies at a rate of one every fifteen minutes and lifted onto the beefy shoulders of a crew team Adonis named Doug for a celebratory whirl around the pungent upper floors.

THE NEXT MORNING, the Greek Committee distributed the following memo:

Hoover University does not tolerate hazing. The following activities
are therefore prohibited in your pledge programs:

Denying pledges a proper night's sleep (six hours per night minimum), edible meals (three per day), and access to showers;

Preventing pledges from attending class or otherwise interfering with pledges' academic calendars;

Forcing pledges to consume any amount of alcohol;

Requiring pledges to don uncomfortable or degrading clothing such as dunce caps, girdles, lederhosen, or undergarments appropriate to the opposite sex;

Coercing pledges to eat or drink any foreign or unusual substances such as saltwater, raw eggs, or raw meat (raw fish may be employed in pledge week festivities only when prepared by certified dining establishments such as the Samurai Sushi House in Spruce Creek);

Throwing at, pouring on, or otherwise applying eggs, paint, honey, hot wax, or gasoline to pledges' bodies;

Making pledges participate in any activity in which the pledge is the object of amusement or ridicule (this does not include such traditional Greek activities as putting on skits, playing charades, or serenading sororities or fraternities);

Kidnappings or road trips that compromise the health or safety of pledges (e.g., no hanging pledges out car windows);

Subjecting pledges to cruel and unusual psychological conditions of any kind (e.g., forcing pledges to spend the night standing up listening to loud music);

Compelling pledges to participate in any activity that is illegal, indecent, or contrary to the pledge's moral or religious beliefs and/or the rules and regulations of Hoover University, such as they are.

THE NEXT NIGHT, Spitty Clark came over to the freshman dorm to “tuck Phoebe in.” That's what it was called. From what Phoebe had heard, however, it tended to involve something considerably less innocent than letting an upperclassman pull the sheets tight around your neck and shoulders. But Cheri said not to worry. Cheri said Spitty Clark was a “total cutie.” Cheri said Phoebe had to make sure to be back in her dorm room by midnight at the very latest. It was ten past when Phoebe heard a knock, went to the door, and flung it open onto a heavyset guy, not particularly tall but not particularly short, either.

His thick legs angled out beneath his torso like the supports of a sawhorse. His blue eyes were as narrow as the change slots on a public phone. His cheeks were pink. His curly blond hair poked through a bright red baseball cap. His meaty shoulders carried the weight of an overstuffed knapsack. He was wearing a pair of tan khaki pants and a faded T-shirt that read WHATEVER THE LETTER, GREEKS DO IT BETTER on the front and KAPPA OMEGA, SAN JUAN NIGHT '87 on the back. “Ho, ho, ho,” he chortled like some kind of Santa Claus on spring break.

“You must be Spitty,” said Phoebe.

“And you must be Pledge Fine,” said Spitty.

“That's me.”

“Well, it's a pleasure to make your blood-alcohol content rise,” he told her.

Then he burst into the cinder-block cell she shared with Karen Kong, out as usual though no doubt somewhere nearby, wasted out of her mind with her legs spread. That's how Phoebe's roommate spent most nights—like a zoo animal recently released from captivity. During Freshman Orientation Week she'd gotten so drunk she hadn't known she'd lost her virginity to the pothead on the sixth floor, who felt so bad about the whole thing—he hadn't been able to tell if she was passed out or not— that he'd asked Phoebe to tell Karen he hadn't meant any harm. Which Phoebe did, the next afternoon. She told Karen, “Danny came down to talk to me. He's worried that you didn't know you had sex with him last night.”

“I did?” said Karen. “Are you sure? Wait a second, how do you know? And, by the way, is it any of your fucking business?”

Since then, the two girls had drifted apart.

Maybe because Phoebe was still (humiliatingly enough) a virgin, and Karen wasn't.

Spitty scanned the room. Phoebe watched his eyes linger on Karen's votive candles, then shift abruptly to her buns calendar. February's featured attraction was the Lycra-clad backside of a competitive biker. “It's my roommate's calendar,” Phoebe told him, so he wouldn't get the wrong impression.

“Interesting roommate,” said Spitty before he flumped himself on her desk chair and rolled it over to where she now sat—on the edge of her bed, her knees tucked inside her pink-and-green floral-patterned flannel nightgown. Then he reached into his sack, pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniel's and two plastic cups. “Thirsty?” he asked while he poured.

But it was less a question than a command. So Phoebe said nothing, took a tiny taste, and gagged before she grumbled, “I hate tequila.”

“It's whiskey,” he scoffed.

“Well, then I hate whiskey.”

Spitty lifted his chin authoritatively. “Pledge Fine, I think Mr. Daniel deserves a little more of your respect than you're showing him at present. Otherwise stated, I'm trying to suggest that you reconsider your position on the Jimster.”

Phoebe wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Who's the Jimster?” She thought he might have been referring to one of his fraternity brothers.

It turned out he wasn't. He held up the bottle. “The Jimster, my good friend, goes by many distinguished names—among them, the Jackster, Jackie D., Jackie Boy, Jack of All Trades, Mr. D., J.D., Mr. Daniel, and finally, Jack Daniel's. In short, the Jimster is what our English majors here at Hoover University might refer to as an epaulet.”

“I think you mean epithet,” she said. “Epaulets are like shoulder pads.”

“Whatever.” He shrugged off the mistake. “I'm not an English major.”

“What major are you?”

“I'm in the Hospitality School.”

That's when it dawned on Phoebe that Spitty Clark looked a little old to still be an undergraduate. “Senior?” she inquired.

“I'm actually still a junior,” he conceded. “I took some time off last year. You know. Bummed around. Made some new friends. Saw some old ones.”

“Where'd you go?”

“Where didn't I go! Jamaica, Daytona, New Orleans, the Keys . . .”

“Where the sun shines.”

He seemed to like that. “Yeah—where the sun shines.”

“I hate the sun,” Phoebe told him.

“Hate the sun?” Spitty uttered her blasphemy out loud, as if he had to hear it again to believe those three words had ever been put together in the same sentence. “How can you hate the sun? 'Specially in this wrist-slitter of a town. I mean, it's a goddamn rain forest out here! Not that our annual ‘Fun-dra in the Tundra' celebration isn't among the premier keg spectaculars of the Greater Allegheny Region. But enough about the weather. PLEDGE FINE, I ORDER YOU TO IMBIBE!”

But Pledge Fine didn't want to imbibe. She didn't want to be ordered around, either. She wanted to quit college and get a job at the airport driving one of those little green shuttle buses back and forth between the arrivals terminal and the car-rental lot until she couldn't remember her own name. Couldn't remember a time she'd ever thought she was going somewhere in life—except back to the car-rental lot. Or the arrivals terminal. That's how much she hated college. Even more than she'd hated high school. All the bathrooms smelled like puke. All the white guys spoke like they were black. All the black guys spoke like they were white. All anyone cared about was getting wasted. It was so loud in the dorm she couldn't sleep at night. All the food tasted the same. None of her professors seemed to know she was alive.

She couldn't even figure out what to major in.

She'd begun with international relations—had attended eight-hundred-person lecture courses in Greek Revival amphitheaters, read articles by Henry Kissinger, and mastered terminology like “realpolitik,” “domino theory,” and “détente.” That was before she enrolled in “El Siglo De Oro 215.” It was the theme of trickery in
Don Juan Tenorio
that turned her on to Spanish literature. But then she read a book by Emile Durkheim about suicide being a constant in every culture. It seemed to validate her own inability to enjoy “keggers.” She promptly switched to intellectual history, then found she couldn't muster up any interest in Voltaire's coffee addiction— kept reading the first two sentences of Stendhal's
The Red and
the Black
over and over again:
The little town of Verrières must be one
of the prettiest in the Franche-Comté. Its white houses with their steep,
red tile roofs spread across a hillside, the folds of which are outlined by
clumps of thrifty chestnut trees.
What the hell were thrifty chestnut trees? And where the hell was the little town of Verrières? All of a sudden, Phoebe felt like crying.

Spitty must have seen it in her trembling lower lip. “Hey, look,” he said in a newly compassionate tone of voice. “If you don't wanna drink, you don't have to. I mean, it doesn't matter to me. I'm just doing a favor for your Big Sister, Cheri. And besides, it's supposed to be fun.”