Carrie Pilby (4 page)

I kept looking at him. He was so handsome, so smart, so steady. I doubted he'd ever been into getting drunk at parties.

The person who got the most attention in class that day was Brian Buchman. Not that Harrison had a choice. Buchman went on and on, and Harrison ate it up—one genius to another. I was filled with jealousy. I wanted to say something equally brilliant, but neither I nor anyone else in the class had a chance to get a word in with motormouth running.

Buchman talked about “The Stranger.” He said, “Not that, by the way, the English translation can even come close to the French…” and Harrison nodded in agreement. Buchman called Camus “superb” and made the “okay” symbol with his thumb and forefinger as he said it. I wondered if vomiting would cost me an A. An airheaded girl in our class, Vicki, stared at Brian the whole time, cocking her head to the side like an attentive terrier. Brian wasn't bad-looking. But what a phony.

Harrison didn't look at me once. I felt miserable.

When the class ended, Brian and the professor were still talking. Neither of them glanced up as I went out.

I left in a foul mood.

I walked toward the Square, and it looked like everyone on campus was having fun. Two people in down jackets pitched a Frisbee back and forth. A gaggle of fraternity guys was horsing around with a lumbering Saint Bernard. A girl and her boyfriend were fake-fighting in front of the library.

In my dorm hallway, I smiled when two girls from my floor passed me, but they kept talking and didn't smile back. That was
embarrassing. I opened my door, dropped my books on my dresser and climbed into bed.

I lay there for maybe half an hour in a fetal position, racked with malaise. It was almost a month into the semester, and already, everyone had crystallized into groups.

I listened to the end of a branch scrape repeatedly against my dorm-room window.

The phone rang.

“Carrie?” a voice asked. “It's Professor Harrison.”

“Hi.” I sat up.

“I just was wondering if you'd be up for dinner tonight. I know you probably have plans…”

Something inside me seized. A one-on-one dinner? Would this count as a date, or just a discussion? Would there be other students there? What had inspired this? How should I act? What if I said something stupid? At least I had already read half of the books on the syllabus, so I could hold my own in that respect. Besides, Harrison had enjoyed talking to me that first time, right? I shouldn't be nervous.

“Sure,” I said. My voice probably cracked.

“What kind of food do you like?”

“Uh, whatever you want.”

He laughed. “You ever eaten Moroccan?”

“No.”

“Then we'll do Moroccan.”

He seemed to like it when I hadn't tried something. I would soon learn that. He liked being a teacher.

I hung up and thought about what to wear. I didn't know if you were supposed to look good for a man who was asking you to dinner but who was a respected elder and not someone who could potentially have a romantic interest in you. I didn't really know how to look good, anyway. Looking good involves trying to look just like everyone else, and I don't spend a lot of time
looking at everyone else. I pulled on a blouse that I'd worn to a formal dinner with my father a year earlier. I did have an adult-type wool coat. I trotted down the stairs, glad to be joining the other people who had somewhere to be. A chilly wind blew. I felt excited and nervous at the same time.

I waited on the lawn. Harrison wasn't there yet. I gazed back at my dorm. It looked like a three-story Colonial house. Several of the lights were on. They represented people who were stuck inside, not about to step into the thrilling unknown.

Professor Harrison's car was so small that I didn't realize it was there for the first few seconds. I guess Harrison didn't notice me at first, either, because he peered in his rearview mirror for a second before realizing I was walking toward him. He got out, came around and opened the door for me. It wasn't necessary, but it was a nice gesture. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi.”

I climbed inside, and he threw the door closed. It was incredibly warm inside. The heat was blowing full force. He walked around the front of the car, illuminated for a second by his own headlights.

Harrison slid inside. “Any preference?” he asked, playing with the radio dial.

“Whatever you—” I started, and then became aware that maybe I was being too passive. I'd already let him pick the food. “Classical?”

Harrison found a classical station, and I sneaked a peek at his profile. He had a softly curving nose, and a pleasant expression on his face. We talked about composers. He knew a lot about their lives, even more than he knew about their music. I'm always impressed when someone is well-versed in a topic that has nothing to do with their main discipline. It shouldn't be so unusual, but when one keeps meeting person after person who doesn't have any academic passions, to find someone well-versed
in three or four really is a miracle. We talked about Edvard Grieg, whom I'd always been a little fascinated with. Harrison noted that he'd entered the conservatory around the same age that I'd entered college. The two of us talked about him for a half hour. Everything I knew, he knew.

We parked in a small lot behind the restaurant. Inside, it was dark but alive with people. When the waiter came up to us, Harrison said, “Back room.” The waiter escorted us through a doorway full of burgundy beads. The back room was small, the walls covered in fuzzy red felt. None of the four tables was occupied. “Hope you don't mind,” Harrison said to me. “I like privacy.”

“Me, too.”

“I wouldn't want students to see us and think I'm playing favorites,” he said.

“You don't take them
all
out to dinner?”

He winked. “Only the best and brightest.”

I looked down at my menu. There was a gold tassel hanging from it.

“It's too bad you're not old enough to drink,” he said. “They have this sweet kind of red wine here…”

My eyes glossed over the list of entrées but didn't really take anything in.

“Do you like sweet things?” he asked. I nodded. The waiter filled our water glasses, and David ordered a Coke for me and a glass of red wine for himself.

But when his wine came, he held it out to me. “Try?”

I hesitated, then took a sip. It was sharp and sweet at the same time. “It's good,” I said.

David took a sip. He was actually putting his lips where mine had just been, and it was a little exciting. He held the glass out for me again. The waiter returned as I was drinking it, and a look passed between him and David, but neither said anything.

After David took the glass back, he rested his chin on his hands and stared at me for a minute. “It looks good on you,” he said.

“What does?”

“The wine. It turned your lips red.”

I didn't know what to say to that. I picked the menu up again. It was odd that he could stare at me without feeling embarrassed.

He only stopped staring when the waiter came to take our orders. David asked if I'd decided, and I said I hadn't, and he asked if I minded him ordering for me because he knew some things I should try.

After the waiter left, he said, “So, what do you really think of our class?”

“I like it,” I said. “I like the way you incorporated our own writing—”

“No,” he said. “Not the curriculum, the students.”

“Oh. I guess…they're fine.”

“What about Vicki?”

I shrugged. “She seems nice.”

“Tell me what you really think.”

“Well—”

“Come on. Our secret.”

“Well, she's a little…”

“…bit of an airhead?” Harrison said.

I laughed.

“You agree?”

“That's what I was thinking of.”

“Between you and me,” he said. “We can both keep secrets, right?”

“Right,” I said. “Almost everything about me is a secret.”

He smiled. “There's something so fresh about you,” he said. “As brilliant as you are, you still have this youthful spark. I can't get over it.”

I looked at the table and sipped my Coke.

“What about Brian Buchman?” he asked. “Smart kid, right?”

“He is pretty smart.”

“Is he not the biggest ass-kisser in the history of academia?”

I laughed with glee. “I thought you loved him!”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, Camus is
superb.
”

“‘I found the
French
version to be
far
superior,'” I mimicked.

“Oui,”
Harrison said. The waiter came, and I glared at him. His appearance was becoming an annoyance.

For all David said about my having a youthful spark, he seemed to have one, too, even though he was a well-respected academic. Some of his stories indicated that he was still just as insecure as he'd been growing up, which I liked. There was something else that was thrilling to me: We were laughing together about our class, as if they were below us and we were both high above them.

When the food came, David took his fork and pushed a little of everything onto my plate. “Eat up,” he said. “Don't hold back. Enjoy yourself.” We ate greedily and took turns drinking from the next glass of wine. We giggled until we'd finished it. Then David ordered more.

We ate, we drank, we laughed, and I knew I was acting completely empty-headed and silly, and for the first time, I didn't care. I was with someone brilliant, who could protect me if need be, and I wasn't worried about anything.

As soon as we left, the cold air hit us. “Don't worry,” he said. “I'll turn on the heat as soon as we get in the car.” He put his hand on my back for a second. A shiver went up my spine. All sorts of feelings darted through me, but they didn't gel into a consistent whole. I was just feeling an amorphous anticipation. I didn't know what to do with it, as it was new to me.

He backed out of the parking lot and I felt the heat come on. Through the windshield, in the dark, a row of pine trees looked
like a spiky sine wave. A few stars were out. It seemed like we were a world away from campus.

“You know, you really make me feel at ease,” he said, pulling onto the road.

“I'm glad,” I said, because I couldn't think of anything else.

“It's true.” He smiled.

“Are you usually not at ease?”

“I don't know if any of us is usually at ease.” He looked at me for a second. Something made me shiver again.

David put the radio back on and told me how impressed he was with my knowledge of music. I mentioned my four years of piano lessons. I remembered that my father had put up a poster of Uncle Sam that he'd gotten from the local music store, and it read, “I WANT YOU to practice every day.” David talked about a recital he'd been to where his cousin had played Beethoven's Fifth, and just as he'd gotten to the last note, a panel in the ceiling fell down, raining white dust on everyone. The way David described his cousin Stevie, in a little navy-blue suit and bow tie, which got powdered up like a jelly donut, I had to laugh. The two of us talked at length about good and bad childhood music experiences, about the odd teachers we'd had in our music classes in school and for after-school lessons, and about other extracurricular activities, and before I realized it we were back at my dorm.

I didn't know what time it was. I'd had a lot of wine. I knew it must still be early, but it felt late. Only two or three windows were lit up. I sat there, feeling the alcohol wash through me. I waited for my eyes to focus.

“Well,” David said. “I had a nice time.”

“I did, too.”

“Got your keys?”

“Hope so.” I began digging through my purse.

David reached into my purse and grabbed my left hand. I looked up.

“Do you really want to leave?” he asked me.

He slowly began massaging my palm with his thumb, in a circular pattern. I returned to staring into my pocketbook.

“If you could do anything right now, what would it be?”

I knew he wanted me to be the one to suggest going somewhere else. If it was my idea, it would be less illicit. But I didn't know what to say.

Before I could decide, he leaned over, put his hand behind my head and brougt his lips to mine. He stopped for a second and looked at me uncertainly. I turned to face him, and he kissed me again. I could hear the motor running. Soon he had his hand on the back of my neck.

Then he pulled away. “I told myself right after we had that talk in my office the other day that I wouldn't let myself do this.”

He actually had been thinking about this since our talk the week before! And he hadn't been able to resist! I couldn't believe it. It was the first time I'd been wanted that much, and not just to be on someone's spelling bee team.

“Look,” he said. “I can let you go, or we can go somewhere.”

I paused.

I had no choice. “Let's go.”

 

He had some of the same paintings in his living room that I'd had in my bedroom growing up. Before I had a chance to tell him, he was walking down the hall, calling for me to come on a tour. His apartment felt like the warmest place I'd been since leaving home. There was a fireplace in the living room, thick rugs everywhere, and fat pillows smothering the couches and bed.

We didn't linger in David's bedroom. I followed him back to the kitchen.

“Anything to drink?” he asked, heading around the counter.

“I think we already did that,” I said. The wine had smoothed my speech, hammering out the kinks and stumbles.

David laughed, unscrewing the top of something. He poured himself a glass and set it down.

“Do you ever use the fireplace?” I asked, walking over and sitting on a corner of the couch. It was charcoal-gray, with light and dark areas where it had been rubbed.