Quinn (7 page)

Quinn and Will plunged into the frozen night outside the dormitory. After the warmth of Will's drowsy room each breath felt like the inhalation of something solid that filled their throats and lungs with microscopic icicles. The streetlights lining the sidewalk were great hazy globes, a parade of winter moons. Will put his hands over his ears.

“My brains are freezing,” he said.

Quinn laughed, took his hand, and tugged him across the grass. It crunched underfoot, each blade stiffened by frost.

“Aren't you cold?” Will asked, eyeing Quinn's open jacket with concern.

“How could I be cold after what we just did?” She held his palm to her face so he could feel the warm skin. With the toe of her sneaker, she drew a scalloped pattern in the frost.

A figure stopped under a light across the expanse of grass. “Ingraham, that you?” it shouted.

“Henry?” Will called back.

“Yeah! Got the History notes?”

“On my desk!”

Henry stood still, watching them approach.

“He's trying to figure out who you are,” Will whispered.

“Quinn Mallory here!” Quinn shouted.

“Great!” Henry waved at them and walked into the darkness. “Good night, Heathcliff! 'Night, Cathy!”

“Will, you think everyone on campus knows what we've been up to?” Quinn whispered. “That we just … that you just … that I'm not …” She hopped a little, making quotation marks in the crystallized grass.

“In the dark from fifty yards?”

“Yeah, but I'm screaming it. Can't you hear me? Tonight I am a woman!” Her toe traced an exclamation point. The ground was slippery, and she had to grab Will's arm to keep from falling over.

Will smiled at the jubilation he saw on her face. “Nice. Quaint. Very turn-of-the-century.”

“Personally, I prefer ‘I have just been' ”—she dropped her voice to a stage whisper—“ ‘fucked.' ” Then, in her normal voice, she continued, “But they don't let you scream that around here.”

“Where'd a little convent girl like you learn to talk like that?”

“I said ‘fuck' in front of Ann once. My mom. And she smacked me across the face. It's a perfectly good English word. Chaucer used it, Shakespeare used it, and if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for Mallory. Besides, there's no substitute. Is there?”

Will ran through the euphemisms in his head. “No. Except maybe ‘grumpled.' ”

“I've just been grumpled!” she shouted. Then she peered at him. “You made that up,” she accused. He grinned.

Quinn dragged on his arm, bringing him to a halt. “Look.” She pointed at the footsteps trailing off behind them. “Are there people who analyze footprints? You know, like handwriting?”

“Sure,” Will said. “Pedographists. My aunt was one.” Quinn looked up at him, fascinated. He returned her gaze sideways through half-open eyes.

The light dawned. “You turkey,” she said. “I think I'll just trip you up.” She poked her foot out in front of him.

“I wouldn't be at all surprised,” Will said.

Lou's was an oasis of warmth. Faces glowed in the soft light of the jukebox while Diana Ross's smoky Motown sound undulated and throbbed.
Baby, baby, where did our love go?
The booths were crammed with students drinking beer, consuming hamburgers the size of grapefruit and Lou Rizzo's heavily embellished pizzas. Quinn and Will squeezed their way to the bar, ordered cheeseburgers, fries, and a pitcher of beer. Will began to talk about Professor Buxby.

“The man's a true pedant,” Will was saying. Quinn reached out a finger and ran it along the line of his nose, across his lips, and down under his chin. “Don't accuse
me
of not paying attention,” Will complained.

“I am. Our Buxby, a true pedographist. You're craggy.”

Will shook his head. Quinn's neighbor at the bar got up and headed for the jukebox, leaving an empty stool.

“Thank God,” she murmured. “I have to cross my legs.” After a moment she looked up at him plaintively. “It doesn't help.”

“What?”

“In your experience,” Quinn said, “have you ever encountered a nymphomaniac?”

“Nadine Kowalsky in seventh grade.”

“How did you know?”

“My brother told me.” Will's eyes were half-mast again.

“I think I'm one.”

“The Catholic kind are always the worst.”

“I wish we were back there in your bed.” She stuffed three french fries into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

“You just got started late.”

She offered him the catsup bottle. “You gonna help me ketchup?”

He leaned over to give her a kiss. He smelled deliciously of beer and salty potatoes. “Don't do that,” Quinn cried, pressing her knees together hard.

On their way out they met Stanley and Van at the door. Will held the door for them as everyone said hurried hellos. Then Quinn ducked out under Will's arm, turning to catch Van staring at her through the steamy glass pane. Her face was pursed with obstructed curiosity. Quinn flashed her a quick goofy grin. A debauched grin, Van told Stanley later over her whiskey sour.

Quinn lay in bed that night, trying to assess the evening. She had expected to feel changed, as if something momentous had happened. She wasn't disappointed. At first it had been quite painful with him inside her. He seemed much too big. There was a burning, stretching sensation. But Will was gentle. He eased himself in and out of her slowly, carefully, until the time came when she only wanted that particular pain to go on and on, until her body arched toward his and her legs wrapped around his hips, urging him into her again and again. She didn't think she had had an orgasm. She was confident that she would recognize one when it occurred, but in the meantime, the excitement of Will's naked body against her naked body and of part of him buried so deep inside her, well, it hardly made sleep come easily. She smiled into the darkness. There was a scuff mark on the ceiling directly above her pillow, put there by a high-flying Statistics textbook in a moment of midterm exasperation. The splotch was invisible in the dark, of course, but she often imagined it there and pretended it was the footprint of an angel who guarded her sleep. Tonight she could see only the face and body of William Ingraham. Some angel.

The nuns at St. Theresa's had warned her about sex, pointing their white fingers and whispering warnings about “going the way of Mary Frances DeFalco,” poor Mary Frances, who compensated for her flat chest and buckteeth by dispensing favors from the backseat of her brother's Chevy. Well, Quinn had finally accomplished the unmentionable, and despite all predictions had not fallen under the wheels of a truck on the way back from Lou's, nor had she become crippled, or blind, nor even, she was confident, pregnant.

She stretched, aware of the texture of the sheets against her bare legs. The things her body knew how to do—amazing. She would never get to sleep. Not tonight.

Fifteen seconds later Van poked her head through the door and whispered, “You awake?” There was no answer. Quinn lay on her back with arms flung out to either side in a posture extravagantly relaxed, like a sleeping child. The blanket had been kicked off onto the floor. Van retrieved it and gingerly covered her friend's bare legs. She studied Quinn carefully, but was unable to determine a thing from the quiescent face. She left the room, tiptoed down the hall, and resigned herself to postponing the questions until morning.

Will kept drifting in and out of his dream, not sure whether it was a good one and worth continuing. When it began, he and Marianne were on a large wooden raft that looked as if it might have been constructed by Thor Heyerdahl. Seagulls swooped overhead, and great mountains of turquoise water swelled beneath them. Marianne was explaining something unintelligible and sad, and Will was crying. When he half awoke from this section of the dream, his throat felt tight with a kind of nostalgic grief he sometimes felt when he remembered some perfect moment that was forever lost to the past.

He sank back into sleep, but now the wooden raft had become a haphazard structure beside a river that was too narrow to be the Salmon and too wide to be the creek that ran along behind the house back home. Fragrant smoke emerged from a hole in the roof, and Will was drawn inside. A naked girl sat cross-legged in the dirt. Her skin was golden in the firelight. Her hair was the color of the flames that she stirred with a long stick. She looked at him solemnly, then dropped the stick and held out her arms.

In the morning Will woke up feeling luxuriously warm and snug, but when he tried to recapture the dream, he could see only the water of the river rushing over dark stones.

There had been no romantic episodes in his life since Marianne's accident nearly two years ago. Her death had siphoned off his vitality, as if he had lost a Siamese twin who had been attached to him in many crucial places. His brain no longer hummed and clicked. His heart was indifferent, continuing to beat out of a sense of obligation rather than joy. His perceptions were dulled by dispirited nerve fibers. That first year Will had marveled that he didn't actually limp from the crippling effects of losing her.

As he lay thinking about Marianne with her quiet voice and serene intelligence, it occurred to him that what he had anticipated was someday meeting a similar woman who would plug in the holes and revitalize the parts that had died with her. What he had not expected was Quinn. Thinking of them both was like trying to compare pearls with sapphires. Will had spent the first quarter of his life with Marianne. He had only just begun to know Quinn. How could it be that he was already wondering about the children he and Quinn would produce? Would they be redheads? Would they be fiery and extroverted, or contemplative and withdrawn? Where would this new family live, in the valley near Will's school, or would they build a place far up in the mountains?

These speculations seemed an affront to Marianne's memory. But despite the guilt, Will was powerless to snuff them out. Quinn was not gradually healing his wounds. She was cauterizing them.

Will thrashed his legs, trying to untangle himself from the wreckage of his sheets. He felt as if these past two weeks he and Quinn had been living in a glass bubble. They floated just off the ground, rotating lazily together in their luminous sphere. Any separation—for class, for Quinn's jobs, to say good night—seemed excruciating, as if the bubble were being shattered by a cruel thrust from the ice-cold winter reality outside.

Harvey Jackson was the first guest to be invited into their world. Today, he and Quinn would meet. Will sat up on the edge of his bed and tried to generate some enthusiasm for getting dressed. He would just as soon lie around and dream all day. Besides, he was beginning to feel some uneasiness about how Harvey and Quinn would get along. It would be nice if they could get acquainted without him; he wasn't sure he wanted to watch.

On the bus to the North End, Quinn itemized her plans for the afternoon. “We'll take him to the movies. No, that's not social enough. We can't get to know each other. Let's go bowling. That's it. Perfect. Kids like bowling. Then we'll take him for fish fry. It tastes good and it's even got some vitamins.”

Will looked out the window. Fat, wet snowflakes fell against the pavement and melted on impact. If he were outside, he would stick out his tongue and catch them.

“Okay?” Quinn said.

Will imagined the sweet bite of the crystals in his mouth.

“Will!”

He turned his head to look at her. His eyes were cloudy.

“Anybody home?” she asked. Will blinked. “We're taking him bowling. Okay?”

“Fine.” His eyes began to drift toward the window again. Quinn put her hand on his chin and brought his face around. “Oh, no, you don't.” She kissed him lightly, and then once again not so lightly. His mouth responded and finally his eyes. He initiated the next one.

“Do you think it's an obsession with us? Sex?” she asked.

“No question about it.” With the bus window behind her, she was a blaze of colors against the snowy blur. Looking into her eyes was like leaning over the edge of his canoe—bright blue Clearwater River, deep pools among the rocks. He felt like diving in.

“Maybe it's just the physical thing,” she was saying.

“Possible.” Absently, he took her fingers and blew on them, although they weren't particularly cold.

“Aren't you worried about it?” she persisted.

“Why?”

“Well, what if we're not compatible? I mean besides in bed.”

“Could be.”

“Will, you're a pain in the ass.”

He slid a hand between the legs of her blue jeans. Quinn shot a quick look at the hulking black man in the seat across the aisle. “My hand's cold,” Will explained.

“If we're not compatible, we have to do something about it. Fix it.
N'est-ce pas?”

“Absolutely.” His fingers moved against the tight denim fabric. She leaned her head on his shoulder, making every effort not to squirm.

“I know we'll be okay, though. We have this basic thing in common.”

“Is that so?” Will said.

“Yeah, haven't you noticed? Our pubic hair matches.”

Will laughed and tugged on her ear with his free hand.

They reached the North Side Elementary School in time to see Harvey explode from the doorway. He hopped down the steps with a quick and agile body and an expression lit with anticipation. When he caught sight of Quinn, however, his face fell. Almost instantaneously, disappointment darkened into hooded suspicion. He folded his arms and leaned back against the railing by the stairs. He kept his eyes averted.

“Is that Harvey, over by the steps?” Quinn asked.

Will nodded. He knew Harvey had spotted them as they rounded the corner from the bus stop.

“Looks pretty tough,” she whispered.

“Tough as chocolate mousse. Hey! Harvey!” Will beckoned to the boy. As if the effort were almost more than he could muster, Harvey straightened up and ambled slowly toward them, arms still crossed on his chest.

“Uh-oh,” Quinn murmured.

Will reached out a hand and drew Harvey close. “I think I mentioned I'd be bringing a friend today.”

“I forgot,” Harvey said with eyes trained on a bottlecap beside his foot.

“Harvey Jackson, this is Quinn Mallory.”

Quinn extended her hand. “I'm pleased to meet you.”

Harvey touched her fingers briefly and stuffed his fist back into his pocket. He shot Will a look of accusation.

“Come on, we're going to do something special.” Will draped an arm around each of them as they started toward the bus stop.

“How'd you like to go bowling?” Quinn asked him.

“What for?”

“For fun,” Will said. “Don't be such a curmudgeon, Harve.” He gave the frizzy hair a swipe.

“Don't use them fancy words with me, man,” Harvey muttered.

Will held up his hand placatingly. “Okay, okay.”

During the ride to the bowling alley Quinn chattered about fourth grade at St. Theresa's. Her teacher, Sister Mary-Margaret, was so pious and soft-spoken that it was hard to remember she was even in the classroom. Quinn did forget one day, and during a whispered conversation with Margery at the next desk, took God's name in vain. Miraculously the pale seraphic nun appeared at Quinn's side, whipped a thick wooden ruler out of her habit, and rapped Quinn's hand with a snap that could be heard all the way to Salem.

“Wicked elbow action. She would have made a great tennis player.” Quinn looked hopefully at Harvey, but the boy continued to stare out the window in silence. She mouthed at Will,
Your turn.

The bowling alley was crowded. Quinn guessed that most of the white people were Italian, since the place straddled the border between the black ghetto and the Italian blue-collar neighborhood.

“I been at one of these once,” Harvey said.

“When was that?” Will asked.

“I dunno. Last year maybe. With Leroy you know, Ma's …” His voice trailed off.

“I think I remember you telling me.”

“It was bigger than this, lots more lanes. Cleaner, too.” He kicked at a paper cup that had missed the trash can.

They rented shoes and bowling balls and set off for the far lane. Quinn was grateful at not having to share a scoring table; the other bowlers' stares seemed openly hostile.

Will went first. He took two long steps, sent the ball rolling smoothly down the alley, and picked off all but two pins. His next roll toppled them for a spare.

“Yay!” Quinn yelled. She smiled at Harvey.

“You go next,” he grumbled.

Quinn approached the line with an erratic skipping motion and flung the ball onto the lane with a clunk. It teetered at the edge of the gutter, then rolled slowly down the alley in a slow curve and knocked over all the pins.

“Holy shit! Did you see that?” she hooted.

Will applauded, and Harvey said, “They don't even have a soda machine around here.”

Over hamburgers he asked Quinn if St. Theresa's was a Catholic school.

“Yes,” Quinn said. So he'd been listening after all.

“Are you one?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so. I don't think you ever stop being one even if you never go to mass.”

“Like Jews?”

“Sort of.”

“Can't they throw you out if you do somethin' the Pope don't like?”

She nodded. “Excommunication.”

“That don't sound like democracy to me.”

“Most religions aren't very democratic.”

Harvey kept up a steady battery of kicks against the frame under his seat. “There ain't no way I can see where the bill of rights, and all that America stuff, can mix with Catholics.”

Will's eyes were dancing. “Harvey's into American history this year.”

“I guess so,” Quinn said, impressed.

On the way back to campus she sagged limply in her seat and moaned. “I felt like I just spent the afternoon trying to melt an iceberg by breathing on it.”

“I didn't think he'd be so tough. You were terrific.” He kissed her on the cheek.

“I was a terrific failure.”

“The iceberg will melt eventually.”

“That's what they told those good folks on the
Titanic
.”

He laughed. “Christmas is coming. We'll try again after vacation.”

“I don't know, Will. Maybe we're being cruel. He gets so little of you as it is.”

“You're a bonus. He just doesn't know it yet.”

“Uh huh,” Quinn said dubiously. “Anyway, he sure as hell is a smart little monster.”