Chapter 32

I was more tired than I realized, and as soon as my head hit my pillow I was out. I stayed that way until Larry banged his way back into the room the next morning.

“Oops. Sorry, Carter, I thought you’d be up already.”

“I needed some extra sleep.”

“Great party last night. Some of the frats really know how to throw a blowout. You should’ve come with.”

“You know I’m not much for those loud parties. I need to take a shower and get some breakfast.”

“Your loss, Carter.”

By the time I’d finished my late breakfast I was feeling a little better. I had work to do, even though it was the weekend. I had quizzes coming up and a paper to start researching. At minimum, I’d need a couple of Brain Sponge sessions for my classes and reading assignments.

But first things first, so I wrote an email to Karen. I was perhaps feeling a bit guilty after last night, so I made it up with a long email to her. It contained nothing new, no profound insights, just an email telling her about my days, my classes, ideas I’d had, questions I’d wanted to ask her but forgot when we were together. It took up several pages and I knew she’d take every sentence seriously and respond in kind.

When I sent it off I started to shut the PC down, but the email icon dinged and flashed first. I had mail. Was this Karen responding so quickly?

No, it was from Woj09@aol.com. Stan.

Hello, Tom. Nice to see you again over Christmas. There is some news that you might find interesting.

After our last conversation over coffee, I left, thinking over the problem and the things you had said. It took a few days, but I eventually decided that your idea about striking up a conversation with some former Wanamaker employees was pretty good, with some minor tweaks.

I couldn’t do it, for the reasons I cited, but then I thought that I already had a mostly anonymous former worker who could do that for me. Specifically, my amateur actor friend who could be convinced to do things like that for the acting experience. Plus a few bucks.

So I contacted him and asked. Sure, he said, sounds like fun. And the money wouldn’t hurt either, with all the Christmas shopping bills coming due.

So he stepped into his former ex-Wanamaker groundskeeper character and began frequenting some of the bars that were known as after-work hangouts for employees. It took a few tries. He had to become a recognizable figure before people would open up.

To hear him tell it, he played it just the right way, tilting the conversation toward the former workplace, trading gossip I’d fed him, then him dropping those little teasers about some loony academic paying people to talk about their former employment there. A few even got asked back for a second interview.

Anyway, most of the folks he talked to hadn’t heard about it or had chosen not to participate, but a number were interested and a few actually knew some of the ones asked back! He was able to get names, too, because he got comments like, ‘Did you know John Doe, used to work in Accounting? He got asked back.’

One or two people he’d talked to admitted that they’d done the interview themselves and had gotten paid, but weren’t among those asked back.

So in the end we were actually able to come up with a few names. Not all of them, of course, but it’s a start. And now I can start making some inquiries about these folks, maybe figure out what their new talents are and why they interest Beckham and McGuire so much. And we might be able to work our way around to the names of the ones we missed, too.

So that’s where I am right now. The two of them are still holed up in their little office, go in to work every day like regular people.

Small steps, for sure. Some days it feels like we’re getting nowhere, but we actually know a lot more now than we did at the beginning of last summer. I’ve got some people, former colleagues, keeping an ear to the ground at Stilling Pharmaceuticals in Atlanta. They’ll let me know if they see any changes in research direction, news of any new projects in the wind.

Thanks again for your help. I will try to keep you in the loop.

--- Stan

Well, that was interesting. I’d just made the suggestion to him off the top of my head, I hadn’t thought it through. It really sounded rather desperate, in retrospect, but damned if it didn’t work.

I fell back into my regular schedule, reading, studying, going to classes, writing papers. January turned into February, even colder and snowier. I made an effort to do things that were not class-related because, I was reluctant to admit to myself, I had become a bit of a tool, a nerd who is in his element only in the context of school. That was not the me I wanted to be.

So I forced myself to go out, to campus plays and movies, to music events in local clubs or hosted by the school -- anything that would make me grow a little. I even attached myself to some dorm people who were going out to drink beers and shoot the shit. Just because it was something I normally didn’t do.

I explained this to Karen in an email, hoping she would tell me I was misusing my time, but she said she was glad I was doing it, and wanted details.

To my surprise one day, I got an email from an unrecognizable address. When I clicked it open, I read

Yo, Carter, I told you I’d email you! Bet you thought I wouldn’t!

Well, I’ll be damned, it was Jeff!

I’ve been up to my ears with school. At least Monday through Friday. Weekends are for parties. I’ve been thinking that maybe I should become a sociology major, then I could focus on researching the American college student and the stress relief mechanisms employed by them. I’d have to immerse myself in the party scene. For research purposes. To gather experimental data.

I may need to fiddle with that a bit, make it it sound more scholarly before I try to sell it to the department.

Kate has been sounding a little distant recently, maybe not as interested in what’s going on in my life as she used to be. It worries me some. I hate that we’re so far apart. This stuff is easier to talk out when you’re together, a lot harder to do via email.

Frankie Binkowski went to a party last weekend and got so drunk that he fell down the front steps of the frat house and broke his ankle. He was so wasted that he didn’t know he’d broken it and tried to walk home. Kept falling down. One of his buddies finally saw that it was bent oddly, and said, “Dude! You broke your leg!” Frankie said, “No way. I did not.” The guy says, “Lookit your leg!” Frankie looks at it for a minute, then says, “No shit,” turns white as a sheet, passes out and falls down. They had to call an ambulance for him. He’s got a cast on now.

Anyway, I just wanted to stay in touch, let you know I’m still alive. Write when you get a chance.

I was glad to hear from him, and bad luck about Frankie, also one of my oldest friends. I think Jeff and I didn’t have much in common any more, but he was my friend for the longest time so I still want to know what’s going on in his life, as he would want to know about mine.

I was sorry to hear about Kate, but actually not very surprised. He was smitten with her, but I thought that she might be maturing differently than he was, and she was feeling like they weren’t a good fit any more. It would hurt him, because he was nuts about her.

I sometimes worried that the same thing would happen to Karen, that she would grow in a different direction, grow apart from me. It hadn’t happened yet, but there was lots of time for it to happen yet. I stared at her picture until I could force that thought from my head.

We had a winter break in February, as we did last year when Larry and I had stayed at his parents’ mansion (for that’s what it was, complete with servants). But this year, his family had made plans to fly to the Bahamas for a week. Because they could. It was a family thing, so I wasn’t invited. In the end, I took the train home because I didn’t feel like being alone on a mostly empty campus for a week.

Not much happened there. My mother fed me till I was almost bloated, her subtle reminder that I shouldn’t leave home otherwise I’d miss all this. I remembered to ask her how my sister had done on her finals in January.

She stopped what she was doing, then sat down across the kitchen table, looking serious.

“I have been thinking about all the years past when report cards would come in and Mindy would do her best to stay out of sight until I finally pulled her out from wherever she was hiding and confronted her. ‘Why is it that you won’t study?’ I’d ask her. ‘These grades are awful, maybe even worse than last term. What are you going to do when you graduate? You won’t be able to go to college, and no one’s likely to hire you with these marks.’

“I’d get so frustrated because nothing got through to her. She’d just shrug and say something like ‘I did my best. The teachers are really bad. Not my fault.’ It made me crazy.”

I waited, but she’d gone silent.

“So,” I asked, “are you saying she did poorly last term?”

She looked surprised. “Oh, dear me, no! I wasn’t clear. She got A’s and B’s in everything. I’m just amazed because it’s so different from past years and I don’t know why. It bothers me that I can’t figure out what’s changed to make her improve so much.

“And the other thing? In the past, any time she’d talk about school -- the scholarly side of school life, I mean -- she’d moan and groan, complain about the teachers, the textbook, the papers they had to write, how hot or cold the classroom was. It was unrelenting. The only thing that got her excited was the social side, the parties, the boys, her friends.

“Now ... well, it’s hard to explain. The teachers have become people to her now, rather than ogres or martinets. She may not always agree with them, but now she can see them as people with an opinion, who have a job to do, to get students to learn.

“And she can get wrapped up in some idea that was talked about in class or in an assignment, working it out in her head, the pros and cons. She used to hate to read assigned books, it was like torture for her, a struggle to get through to the end. Now I walk by her room, chances are she’s lying on her bed with a book open.”

She sat up straight, and smoothed a crease in the tablecloth. “So the best I’ve been able to come up with is that she’s been taken over by some alien life form. I’d be more worried, but I’m coming to prefer the new Mindy.”

I had to smile at that. I’d wondered how these little tweaks I’d given Mindy would last. So far it’s looking pretty good. She was unlikely to need another booster.

“Is she still going out with ... What was his name? Evan?”

“Yes, though not exclusively. Evan’s a nice kid, polite, well-mannered, but I don’t think there’s a lot upstairs. The old Mindy was a better fit for him, now maybe not so much. She’s complained to me once or twice about having had to explain something to him she thought he should have known. She’s been asked out by a couple of new boys, nothing serious yet. They seemed a bit sharper to me when I talked to them than Evan is.”

I was pleased that Mindy had learned to acclimate to school life. I wondered why some people got a rush from understanding something taught in school, and others actively tried to fight it off. That might be something to think about as I went further in psychology. It seemed to be quite fundamental. I reasoned that we were all born with a desire to learn, but somewhere in the development process many of us lost it. I didn’t know why.

In another few days I headed back to school. My mother packed a dinner for the trip, though she had also given me lunch before I left, and I had not even a twinge of hunger by the time I got back on campus.

I knew there’d be an email from Karen. She was always very good about writing me when she went away for even a few days. And sure enough, the email icon was flashing when I booted my PC.

I’m back, Tom. I told you I was going to stay with Martina for the break, right? So we based ourselves at her place for the duration, but mostly just slept there. There was always someplace to go.

Last year, you remember, I was a little overwhelmed by all the movie star glitter that seems to permeate this town. Everyone looks like they play some very important role in the industry. I mentioned it in passing to Martina, who just looked at me like I was a rube and laughed.

“Oh, honey,” she said, “almost none of those people are important. They’re all wanna-be’s dressed up to look like they’re important, so they’ll impress someone who is important. It’s all about getting an edge in this town. It’s how you inch your way up the ladder.”

We went out to lunch at some fancy place that Martina knew. We were eating (and I confess I was gawking a little) when this scruffy-looking guy came up to the table and said hello to Martina, asked how she was doing, say hello to her father for me, like that.

When he went off, she leaned across the table to me and whispered, “Do you know who that was??? It was -- I’ve already forgotten his name, but apparently a very big and important guy in the industry. He looked like one of the guys who parked the cars. Nothing is as it appears in Beverly Hills.

We went swimming at the beach one afternoon. The air was warm, but the water a little cold. Still, I tried to imagine doing that back in Ohio. Lots of bodybuilder types, women in very tiny bikinis, like everyone was showing off, y’know just in case there was a producer on the beach who was looking for exactly that type of person for their next project.

It started to feel a little weird after a while, how everyone’s constantly on the lookout for the next opportunity, which might happen while they were in line at the deli, tanning on the beach, driving down the road in their car. They’re “on” all the time. A hell of a way to spend your life.

The rest of the time it was mostly just hanging with her friends, though we went out to eat a lot. Her father was out of town for part of the time we were there and gave the cook some time off, so the two of us went to a different restaurant every night. It was a little indulgent.

We went to an informal party that one of her high school friends was giving. The friend goes to UCLA and knows a lot of the local folks. She’s got an apartment near there. Pretty big place, I guess her parents are paying the rent while she’s at school.

Martina said as we were going in, “These folks may be a little more informal and open-minded than some of the other people you’ve met here.” I asked her what she meant, but we’d already gone in and she shook her head. I figured it out pretty quick.

It was loud and a bit crowded, lots of drinks available and other forms of intoxication, too. Everybody had that kind of Southern California fake friendliness, a little touchy-feely, laughing like everything you’ve said is hilarious. It’s a patina, an act they put on to fit in, make everybody think you’re relaxed and happy to be there.

I chatted with some of Martina’s friends, staying in a known group, while I watched. After a while I started noticing people -- mostly guys, but some women too -- who’d go up to someone, flirt with them for a bit, whisper in their ear, then lead them off toward the back of the place.

My curiosity got the better of me, so I made an excuse about finding a bathroom, and went where the others had gone. There were a couple of decent sized bedrooms there and there were naked people everywhere, doing it in twos and threes, on the bed, on the floor, bent over a chair. And more people, dressed, standing around holding drinks, and offering comments and criticism!

It was like a parody of a parlor game, perhaps a group doing charades, and the crowd on the perimeter commenting on how well they were acting out the clues. And not one of them thought it was at all out of the ordinary! I felt like it was my first time to the big city and I didn’t know how to behave.

I went back in to rejoin my group. I hadn’t been there long when some guy came up and started chatting. Seemed like a nice guy, fairly good looking, well dressed, and after a few minutes he says casually, “Would you like to go in the back with me so I can eat your pussy?”

It caught me so off guard that I just stared at him. Fortunately, I think Martina caught on to what was happening and she rescued me, saying, “Oh, Karen, I didn’t realize how late it was. We need to hit the road.” I said to the guy, “Not this time,” so I wouldn’t seem rude.

In the car I asked her if she’d grown up going to parties where people acted like that. She admitted that there was some of it even when she was in high school, but it got more common as they grew older. She knows enough to be aware that it’s going on and how to avoid it if she wants.

If she wants? That’s what I asked myself. Then I decided that maybe this wasn’t the right time. Maybe when she has a little wine in her when we’re back at the dorms I’ll ask her again. I’m trying to imagine myself in the middle of a group like that. While people watch.

I had a visceral reaction to the image she’d painted, hating it, people leering at her. I also knew she’d have all the guys lined up for a chance at her. I could feel it making me crazy. I wasn’t sure how to respond to her email. I’d think about it. She went on with tales of more ordinary life events.

The days are so repetitive that I sometimes forget where we are in the week. I’m constantly having to check my calendar to see what’s due and what I’ve already done. I have nightmares sometimes when I wake up from a sound sleep sure that I’ve forgotten to complete something that’s due in the morning, just a few hours from now. Then I remember that I’ve already done it, but it’s hard to calm down enough to get back to sleep.

The web coding seminar I signed up for is getting interesting now, talking about how to embed database queries in the code and pull them from a back-end database. I’ve sketched out my sample project, and I’m going to demo a book store website, pulling up a few book pages with pictures and blurbs and reviews and a way to order the book online. I’m sure it’s been done before, and better, but it feels kind of familiar because of all the time I spent in my uncle’s bookstore last year. I’ll have to ask if the server is set up for outsiders to connect via IP so you could see it.

She was so far out of my experience when talking about this that I couldn’t even visualize what she was explaining. I was embarrassed to ask her what an IP was. Maybe somebody here could explain it to me.

I was interrupted by Larry stumbling through the door with several bags. He had more of a sunburn than a tan, but he wore it like a badge to show he’d spent some time in the sun.

“Hey, Carter. Wish you’d been able to come. I had a great time. What’d you get up to over the break?”

We traded details, and his were definitely better than mine. He finally said he was going off to look up some buddies. I think it was mostly to show off the tan/sunburn.

And with barely a hiccup we were back in the grind: classes, tests, reading, papers, problem sets. The abruptness of the transition should no longer surprise me.

On my way to class a couple of days later I saw Al Marquez on one of the pathways between buildings, a few textbooks tucked under his arm, smiling his special smile at some young woman who positively beamed when he looked at her. As I passed them he nodded at me and she shyly passed him a folded slip of paper, looking hopeful. If I had the charm that Al seemed to have been born with, I’d have women falling all over me.

Saturday afternoon I came out of one of my Brain Sponge sessions in a carrel at the library and stretched my back on the library steps. I still hadn’t found a way to completely forestall the cramps and aches in my back from hunching over a book so intently. Maybe I should take up jogging? Nah, I could live with the cramps.

I dropped my books off in my room and decided I might as well have dinner, mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else to do at the time.

Roast beef was on the menu tonight. It had a strangely iridescent green sheen, which I didn’t notice till after I’d ordered it, and it did nothing to improve its taste so I concentrated on the baked potato and the peas.

“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I took one look at that and hurried right on past.” I looked up to see who was talking to me.

“It was a mistake I’ll have to live with. How was your break, Mindy?”

“Not bad. I went to stay with one of my girlfriends in Albany, New York’s capital. The best thing about Albany is that it’s not Utica. Mostly we played video games and binge-watched Northern Exposure for a week. You?”

“Went home for a week, did nothing, mostly. The best part was that there were no classes.”

“Yup. What’s on the calendar for the weekend?”

“Nothing. I should do something. It’s a bad habit of mine that I get into ruts. I should try to do something that’ll make me laugh or make me cry or make me think. We spend so much time trying to process the ideas that are thrown at us in class that when the weekend comes I just want to shut it off for a while.”

“I hear you. Sometimes when I get like that a movie will pull me out of my funk.”

“Me too, but I didn’t see anything that rang my chimes playing in town.”

“You try the art houses?”

“You mean museums?”

“No, art houses. Theaters that play art films, foreign stuff, classics, like that. Not current Hollywood stuff.”

“I wouldn’t know where to look.”

“Mostly they’re not in the daily paper, ‘cause the art film audience mostly doesn’t read that. You find ‘em in the student paper sometimes, or one of the free papers. Wait here.”

She jumped off and ran out to one of the corridors. In a couple of minutes she was back.

“Okay, here’s a couple of the free papers. I haven’t looked this week, but let’s see.”

She skimmed them quickly till she found the page she was looking for.

“Okay, the Stuart is having a French 60’s retrospective with films by Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. There’s some Swedish films at the Main. The 5th Street Theater is doing a Marx Brothers orgy. What do you like?”

“I am putting my ignorance on full display here. I have never seen a French film other than ‘The French Connection’. Nor any Swedish movies either. I’ve seen a couple of Marx Brothers things.”

“I will try to keep your secret, Carter. You wouldn’t want that to get out.”

“What can I say? I’m just a naive farm boy.” That made her smile, because that was what she’d called me jokingly before our last hookup.

“Any of those pique your interest?”

“I could be talked into a Marx Brothers movie.”

“Maybe not in the mood today. Wait, you speak French, don’t you?”

“I’m pretty rusty. It’s been a while.”

“Maybe we should try one of the Godard or Truffaut movies. You’d probably get more out of it hearing it in French than I would by reading the subtitles. Carter, you know sometimes you’re a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. These are some of the greatest movies ever made. You should see some.”

She wasn’t wrong. I could be a bit stiff, unwilling to try new things because I might not like them and then I would have wasted my time. It was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Fine. I’ll see a French movie. Which one?”

“I don’t know yet. The paper doesn’t say, it’s different movies on different days and times. That’s why they call it a retrospective. We’d have to go and see what they’re showing today at...” She looked at the ad. “ ... at 7:40. You in or are you gonna chicken out?”

“Ooo, you can be kind of harsh when you want to be, Mindy.”

“Well?”

“Oh, what the hell. Why not? It beats staring at the ceiling.”

“I knew you’d see the light. Let’s dump these things and find the bus.”

She knew the bus routes better than I did, and got us on the right bus. It wasn’t more than ten minutes till we got off and found the Stuart’s marquee lighting up the sidewalk.

“Okay, let’s see what’s on the menu,” she said, looking at the list of films on the display board outside.

“Hah!” she told me. “It’s Truffaut tonight, ’Les quatre cents coups’ -- ‘The 400 Blows’. I haven’t seen it, but I hear it’s one of his best. Last chance to bail, Carter.”

“Vive la France, I told her, fist raised in solidarity.”

We bought tickets, I got popcorn, and we found seats somewhere in the middle. When the theater darkened and the title rolled, I let myself fall into the rhythm of the movie, trying to let the dialog hit my ears without translating it into English, to hear it as a French person would. It was harder than I thought. I’d lost some vocabulary, and the street French sometimes strayed from the textbook French I knew.

I occasionally had to look at the subtitles to figure out a word I didn’t know or had forgotten, but within fifteen minutes I had almost got the rhythm of it back. By the time the closing credits appeared I was fully in my French head.

When the lights came up I looked over at Mindy who was wiping a tear away. “Wow,” she said, “that was powerful. I’m glad I saw it. What’d you think? Did you understand the language?”

“It took a few minutes to get back into it, remembering the syntax, the vocabulary, even the slang, but I mostly got it. I’d been complaining to everybody that I was losing my language skills, French and Italian, because I didn’t have anyone to practice with. But movies are almost as good. I should do this again.”

“Did you like the movie, though?”

“Oh, yeah. I got caught up in his life, how nobody really understood him. I did like it. Maybe I’ll take one of those fliers on the way out, which movies are shown when. I might want to do this again.”

“Okay. Give me a call if you do. If I have time, I might want to see another. Ready to go?”

We collected our coats and trash and headed for the exit. “I’m gonna hit the ladies before we leave. Go find a flier, I’ll meet you here.”

I perused a flier until she returned. She got us back on the bus back to campus and she sat close to me, legs touching. We talked about the movie and foreign movies in general till we got off.

She slowed down as we got into the campus. I could see something was on her mind.

“Still thinking about the movie?” I asked.

“No, something else. It’s been bouncing around in my head for the past couple of months. You kind of reminded me of it.”

“I did? What is it?”

She shook her head. “I can’t talk about it, not here. If you’re not in the mood to hear me ramble, then maybe another time would be better.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s because I’m not explaining it well, I’m being evasive. Look, fair warning, I don’t want to drag you into a long, convoluted discussion about something that’s really my problem.”

“Mindy, I’ll help if I can, but I don’t know what it is that’s worrying you. Something I did? Did I upset you somehow?”

“No, no, it’s nothing to do with you, really. You’re just the one who reminded me of it. It’s my problem to figure out.”

“Now I’m going to be worrying about what it is. Is it serious?”

“Not in the way you think, just me trying to adjust to real life.”

“It’s early enough. If you want to talk, I can listen.”

“Careful what you volunteer for, Carter.”

“I’m serious, Mindy.”

She stared at me for a while, the cold wind blowing through us on the pathway. “Okay. If you’re volunteering, then let’s go to my room. Katrina’s out again, of course, ‘cause it’s the weekend, so we won’t be interrupted. You may regret this, Carter. Let’s go.”

I was curious now. Why did I remind her of what was bothering her? I was getting nothing on my e-dar. I could look in her epicenter, but I’d find out what it was pretty soon anyway.

We went in the lobby of her dorm. Skippy, the guard behind the desk, was again reading The National Enquirer, whose breaking news this week seemed to be that Bigfoot was actually an alien sent here to monitor Earth, and that was why nobody could find him, because he flew off periodically on his little spaceship. I wondered if he ever read anything else.

She let us into her room and pulled out a chair for me. She reached down beside the desk and lifted a bottle of wine and a couple of paper cups. She raised a cup to me, asking the question with her eyebrow and I shrugged. She poured two cups of wine.