City Boy (6 page)

Forty minutes later Jack was sitting at a table in between Chloe and Dex in a Chicago bar of the fancy sort that his old self would not have had the nerve to enter. He ordered a beer and didn’t get carded. Sooner or later he was going to have to cop to being barely twenty years old but not, thank God, tonight. Tonight he was on a roll. He felt like a spy who’d bluffed his way into the palace. He studied Chloe’s hands on the blond wood of the table. They were restless hands, shredding a paper napkin, tapping, tracing those invisible spirals. Her nails were blunt and the skin was stretched tight over the small bones and knuckles. Warm hands or cold? He decided it was even a good thing Dex was there; it took the pressure off. And he was able to listen to the two of them talking in a way that she would not have talked to Jack alone. Dex asked Chloe how the new life plan was going and she said not bad, not bad. By this time next year, everything was going to be back on track.

Jack nursed his beer and pretended he was a turnip, deaf and dumb and incurious. Dex said, “Good for you, honey. You deserve a lot bet-ter.” Jack wondered if Dex was gay. He didn’t know any straight men who called people “honey.”

Chloe said, “He’s wondering what we’re talking about but he’s too polite to ask.”

“Who, me? No, actually I’m kind of slow-witted. People are always saying things I don’t understand.”

She laughed at that. Jack smiled and hoped he could keep his streak going. So far, attractive silence broken by witticisms was serving him well. Chloe said, “We were talking about this guy I used to be engaged to. I call him El Beefhead. Enough said.”

“And the new life plan?” Jack ventured, all spy casual.

“Oh, I left the Ph.D. program in English and started over in business school.” She seemed a little embarrassed. “I’ve taken a vow of pragma-tism.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“No, there’s not. It’s just different. Grad school that actually trains you to earn a living.”

“That can be important.”

She leveled her eyes at him. They were as blue as the impossible skies in a child’s storybook. “Yeah. Especially if you don’t want to depend on some total prick to support you.”

Dex said, “You gotta lay off the rich boys, Cece. There’s always hidden costs involved.”

“So this guy,” said Jack, not wanting to dwell on the topic of rich boys, “is he in school here too, do you have to trip over him all the time?”

“He’s not in school,” said Chloe, in a way that was meant to close off discussion, but here was that damned Dex winking at him, either because there was a good story that wasn’t getting told, or—He didn’t want to think for what other reason.

“So the poetry class,” he said. He knew he was asking too many questions, like an interview. “How did that fit into business school?”

“Oh, that was just like a last fling. My little humanities fix. And you know how well that turned out. Okay. Why did you say what you did that day, were you trying to shut me up?”

“I was trying to shut both of you up.”

“Ooh,” said Dex, appreciatively.

“Seriously. You were both getting your feelings hurt. I didn’t want that to keep happening.”

“
His
feelings,” Chloe snorted.

“Sure. You were telling him he was irrelevant and fusty and out of it.”

“Oh, let’s get off it. Let’s put it behind us.” She looked at her empty glass and Dex rose obediently to go to the bar. When he was gone, Chloe said, “So you think I was mean to him. I’m a mean person.”

“No. You had an opinion and you were very articulate in expressing it.”

“You think I’m opinionated.”

“I didn’t say that either. What do you care what I think, anyway?”

“It’s not really about you. El Beefhead used to tell me I was a smart-ass. That I was too competitive.”

“You mean, you were smarter than he was.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Why do you care what he thinks either? He’s not worth it,” said Jack. He thought this would be easy enough. A few cheap shots at the old boyfriend. Girls liked that kind of thing.

Chloe gave Jack another of her appraising looks. He was more used to it this time, but it was also from closer range, and it made all his ignorant gallantry cleave to the roof of his mouth. She said, “It’s just a confused time for me right now. I probably shouldn’t even be allowed out in public.”

“Sure.” Jack nodded, as if he knew what she was talking about. She was drinking faster than he was and he wondered if she was a little drunk now. He was trying to take it easy himself, which was a change from the way he and his friends usually operated, getting drunk enough to abdicate responsibility for anything they did. He wanted to keep a semblance of a clear head in her presence.

“So you’re some kind of undergrad.”

“That’s right.”

“Jack.”

“Right again.”

“Well, let’s just have a good time tonight. Let’s forget there’s any such thing as intelligent conversation.”

“Sounds fine to me.” As long as she let him stay, he’d agree to anything. Dex returned with her drink and she downed a good portion of it in short order. It had never occurred to Jack before that beautiful girls had the capacity to be unhappy.

They stayed at the bar until nearly closing. Jack remained on the edges of their talk, which was mostly about people he didn’t know, history he had not been a part of, the inbred feuds common to graduate students. He kept his mouth shut, kept listening. He was beginning to form a new, or more shaded, impression of her. The part that was sharp edged, that was glib and argumentative, was also brittle, like a crust, something of a deliberate effort. In much the same way, she laughed and carried on with Dex and from time to time her gaze lifted to survey the room, as if inviting people to observe just how bright and carefree she was being.

Every so often Chloe or Dex asked him a question or lobbed some
joke in Jack’s direction and he smiled and said something in return. He was trying to imagine how the night might end, just what configuration it might take, everything he was capable of imagining. He guessed they wouldn’t stay in the bar much longer. Dex was showing signs of wear. He laughed with a kind of whinny, and he kept rubbing his eyes. Chloe was increasingly silent. Cunning Jack kept smiling and doing his turnip routine. “Okay, I’ve had it,” Dex announced. “Shit faced.”

“Shit Faced ‘R’ Us,” agreed Chloe.

They straggled outside. It was always disorienting to find yourself on the sidewalk in the darkness, with the city coming at you from all different directions, and even Jack, who had been cautious about his drinking, took a moment to get his bearings. Chloe and Dex were giggling and holding hands as he led them to the car. There were some real advantages to being gay, he decided.

“Where to?” Jack asked, once he was behind the wheel. As if he didn’t know exactly where Chloe lived. They gave him directions back to Evanston. Chloe was in the front seat but she kept turning around to talk to Dex. She both was and was not sitting next to him. If only Dex boy would get himself dropped off first.

Praise the Lord. Dex said, “Take a left here and go down to the end of the block. See that light? That’s it. My man Jack. Chloe darlin’.” He made a couple of passes at opening the car door but couldn’t figure out how the handle worked.

“Are you gonna be all right?” Chloe asked, concerned.

“Tip-top.”

“Because I could come in if you need me to.”

Jack gritted his teeth and prayed a small, ugly prayer. Dex gave the door handle another whack and it popped open. “Le voilà.”

“Good night, then.” Jack waited until Dex got himself out on the sidewalk, gave him the big wave, and sped off. “Why does he dress like that?” he ventured.

“He thinks it’s funny.”

“I guess it’s a grad student thing.”

“I guess.”

Without a third person in the car, she seemed to be receding from him. “Where am I going?” Jack asked after a space of silence.

“Oh, sorry. Go down to Ridge, turn right, then straight for a while.”

For all Jack knew, she’d already planned her exit strategy, had it all timed down to the second how she was going to escape him. He wasn’t going to push anything, he decided. Wasn’t even going to ask for her phone number. He knew the damned number, he was just going to wait a couple of days, then call. He was already practicing his own good-night speech, how he was glad to see her again, maybe something else about the class, or even about poetry, nah, deadly. He pulled up in front of her apartment building, on one of those tidy, tree-lined streets that were thought to be beyond the reach of students. “Come on in for a little if you want,” Chloe said, and let herself out of the car without waiting for his answer.

“Can I park here?” he managed, and she said over her shoulder that he could. She was up her front steps and had her keys out while Jack was still trying to get one stumbling foot in front of the other.

The door was standing open when he approached it across the wooden porch. It was one of those old frame houses that had been divided into apartments. He registered antique details like carved fretwork and white wood trellises supporting the remnants of last summer’s vines. “Hey, Chloe?”

A narrow entry hall, and a room beyond it, both empty. He heard a toilet flushing, stopped where he was.

She came out still tugging at her clothes; Jack looked away. “Come on in. You want a beer? Oh never mind, I don’t have any.”

“That’s okay. Really.”

She sat down on the couch and after a moment of stupid hesitation, Jack closed the front door and sat down next to her. It was a small room and there wasn’t anywhere else to sit or anything else to do with himself. Everything was middle-of-the-night quiet, except for an occasional car passing outside. The couch was low and soft and just sitting on it made them sink toward each other. Jack tried to lift himself up, discreetly put some space between their hips. He was afraid she was
going to come to herself, realize she didn’t know him, start screaming and slapping him away.

But she only said, “You don’t talk a lot, do you.”

“Oh, once you get to know me, I’m a babbling brook.”

She looked up at him, a touch of a frown between her eyes. He had the disconcerting impression that from moment to moment, she actually did forget who he was. If he leaned back slightly, he could see down her shirt. He was attempting to disassociate from his body, will it into dullness. Should he start talking, was that what she wanted? “So where are you from?” he began.

“You know that guy I was talking about, my ex?”

She waited until he said yes, he did, and still she looked at him suspiciously, as if he’d said something wrong.

“I wasn’t going to marry him because he was rich. That was totally, totally not important.”

“Of course not.”

Again, that look of heavy disbelief. She was on the edge of a quarrelsome drunkenness and anything he’d say would be a mistake and he was something other than sober himself. He shut his fool mouth.

“It started off perfect. It was perfect for the longest time. Is that supposed to be bad? Is it some kind of tip-off? Hey, I didn’t know that, I just thought it was all perfect. Sex too. You mind if I say that? Or I guess I already did.”

She was arching her back, trying to get herself turned around to face him, and here was one leg in its black leather boot wriggling open so he could see without effort up the length of her blue-jeaned thigh. “It’s okay.”

“Then all of a sudden, or no, not sudden, more like a faucet that starts to drip. There’s all these things wrong with me. I laugh too much and it gets on his nerves. I was taking these elitist classes. I spent too much time with my friends and they were elitists too, and what did I do to my hair, it looked like crap, and I better let him drive because I was such a lousy driver. Get the picture? When I’d ask him what was going on, what was the matter, he’d say, Nothing. I was just overly sensitive.”

“Well good riddance. He sounds like a tear-down artist. Somebody who was just so insecure and threatened—”

“Yeah, I know how it works.”

“Sure. I’m sure you—”

“Everybody thinks if you talk about something enough you can make it go away. Therapy is such a total, total … Oh, goddamn him. Know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna write a poem about him that’ll clean his clock. A hate poem instead of a love poem. Can you do that?”

“I’m pretty sure you can.”

“Forget it. A poem. He’d laugh his ass off. Steal his money. That’s what gets to guys like him.”

“We can do that,” said Jack loyally. Robbery didn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to consider.

“Great. Steal it all.”

“Or you could just write him off. Move on. You know, living well is the best revenge. Have a little fun. If there’s things you like to do for fun. So are there?”

Silence. Her eyes had closed, she had fallen off the edge of drunkenness and into sleep. As quietly as he could, he eased himself off the couch and made his way to the bathroom. The combination of desire and having to piss made him hobble.

She was still asleep, passed out, maybe, when he returned. Jack looked around him, tried to fathom something from her books and pictures, but he felt as circumspect as if he was in a doctor’s waiting room. He supposed he should leave, get himself home, call her later and hope she remembered him in some vaguely positive way. He knelt down in front of her. “Chloe?”

She didn’t stir. Her lips were parted and a tiny whistle of breath drew in and out. Her forehead was damp and her hair clung to it. Jack reached out and with the tip of one finger touched a strand of it.

Her eyes opened. Blue floodlights. The lids drooped but she focused in on him and said, “What?”

He drew his hand back. “You okay?”

“Sick.”

Her skin was pale and sweated and Jack thought she might throw
up. That didn’t seem disgusting to him, rather, almost a kind of intimacy. “Can I get you anything?”

“Water.”

“Hold on.” He went into the kitchen and ran water into a glass, found two frozen-solid ice-cube trays in the freezer, forget it, hustled back to her. It amazed him that he was here at all, much less that she might turn to him for any sort of help, that there was anything in him she might find of use or value. “Here you go,” he said, offering the glass.