Sparta (16 page)

“Yeah, well. Maybe not an idiot.” Josh was Conrad's friend, barrel-bellied and chubby-faced, cheeks covered in dark stubble. His girlfriend, Lisa, was a junior, a girl from Chicago, redheaded and noisy, with a big, boisterous laugh. Conrad liked her.

“No. She is,” Claire said. “I couldn't believe what she said about date rape.”

The sidewalk was getting steeper, and they slowed, walking in step. Conrad put his arm around Claire's shoulders and she put her hand in his back pocket.

“Yeah,” Conrad said vaguely. He couldn't remember exactly what Lisa had said. Had they even talked about date rape?

“Didn't you think—” Claire asked.

“I don't know,” he hedged. “I'm not sure exactly what her point was.”

Claire stopped and looked at him. She took her hand out of his pocket. “You're not sure? How can you not be sure?” They were under a streetlight, and the light struck straight down. Claire's eyebrows were beetled. “Conrad, she was basically saying it doesn't exist.”

“Yeah,” Conrad said. “That's not what I thought she said.”

“Well, she did.” Claire turned away and started walking again, her head down against the hillside. “She said what happens is that women have sex with somebody and then the next morning they kind of wish they hadn't, so they claim date rape to make themselves feel less like sluts. Which, she implied, they basically are.” She turned to him again. “Don't you remember that?”

“I thought we were talking about, uh, sex in general.”

“She was showing off, Conrad,” Claire said. “Like she's Miss Sex. Like let's all think about how horny she is.”

Conrad had not been thinking of how horny Lisa was. She didn't attract him, with her narrow, red-rimmed eyes and bushy, gingery eyebrows.

“I thought she was talking about how horny guys were,” he said.

“Well,” said Claire. “You're supposed to think she knows that because she's so hot they can't keep their hands off her.”

“Uh,” Conrad said, focusing on the sidewalk. “I thought we were talking about something else.” They walked on for a few moments in silence. Conrad thought they were done, but suddenly Claire spoke again.

“You don't remember we were talking about date rape?” she asked.

“I thought she just said that women should take more responsibility with the whole thing,” Conrad said. “Like, from the get-go.”

Claire stopped. “Why would you use a word like ‘get-go'?” she demanded. “It's not even a word.”

“Okay,” Conrad said. He wondered if Claire had had more beers than he'd noticed. “I don't know why I would, you're right.”

“Honestly,” Claire said severely. “It's an idiot's word.” She shook her head and started walking again, then stopped. “I honestly don't even know why we're having this conversation if you're going to use words like that.”

She stood still on the sidewalk, her legs slightly spread. Her head was lowered and set strangely to one side. She was weaving.

“Conrad,” she said, “I'm sort of getting the whirlies.” Her voice was now muffled and sorrowful. The streetlamp was behind them, casting her crooked shadow ahead. Beyond her was the deep darkness of a fir tree, dense against the night.

“Hold on.” Conrad put his arm around her. “Don't move. Keep your eyes open. Don't close your eyes.”

“My eyes are closed, Conrad.” Her voice was despairing. “They're already closed.”

“Can you open them?” he asked. “Try to open them.”

Claire shook her head. “It's too late,” she whispered. “I'm going to be sick.”

He took her by the shoulders and guided her to the edge of the sidewalk. She swayed, then suddenly bent over. He held her by the waist as she shuddered; he pressed his hips against her butt, holding her against him. He was surprised by the violence inside her frail frame. She retched, convulsive, struggling. He held her blue-jeaned hips. She gagged, and the smell rose up at him. He kept a firm grip on her, keeping her steady. He was touched by her helplessness. She was alone in her body, swept by waves of anguish here in the wideness of the night, the dark sky rising above. What he felt was tenderness. He was grateful to be there, holding her.

She wasn't listening yet, but he whispered, “You're okay. I've got you.”

*   *   *

In March, when Claire turned twenty, for her birthday Conrad gave her a scavenger hunt based on the
Iliad
. He handed her the first clue, which he'd printed out in an antique font.

Age—goddess, sing the age of Helen's daughter Claire,

Gorgeous, fortunate, she that turned the heads of countless Williams guys.

Begin, goddess, in the place where our illustrious bard begins and ends his eponymous journey.

The answer to the first clue, of course, was Homer, the home plate at Bobby Coombs Baseball Field. He had made ten clues, and the hunt took them all afternoon. When Claire wasn't getting it, Conrad whistled and looked away, and when she was getting hot, he shook his hand hard and said,
“Ow!”
in a high falsetto. They went all over Williamstown: the answer to one clue was at the supermarket, among household cleansers.

Mighty warrior from Greece.

Mighty great and mighty little.

O Achaean, once invincible, once your fierce and noble self,

Now your ancient might is altered, now you're always on the shelf.

That was Ajax. Conrad had gone over in the morning and wrapped the clue on the outermost container, hoping it would be there when they arrived. He had brought an extra as backup in case it was gone, but when Claire strode down the aisle, it was still there, tied with a green ribbon, and she snatched it up, delighted.

The last clue of the hunt was:

Proud warriors, you stood your ground,

Upon the ramparts made your stand

You were undone, your walls were breached

The gods here played a dooming hand.

The answer, of course, was Trojans. Since that was the brand Conrad used (partly because of the name), the solution brought them back to his room, and they ended up in bed, his plan from the beginning.

*   *   *

When Conrad first told Claire about joining the Marines, she thought he was joking. They were eating lunch at the health-food store, where Claire had persuaded him to go. They were sitting at a table crammed in the corner near the refrigeration units. The table was tiny, and their knees bumped. Behind Claire's head were the cooler doors, misted pale by condensation, and behind them shelves of strange frozen products in bland packaging.

“The Marines?” Claire said. She cocked her head. “Have you ever tried one of those paintball weekend warrior things?”

“Paintball?” Conrad said, offended. “This is serious. This is the Marines. I'm really planning to join.”

She lowered her sandwich and looked at him. “You really are? Why would you do that?”

He shrugged, disappointed. She was supposed to get it. “I want to do something for my country.” It sounded totally false, pompous, hypocritical.

Her sandwich was full of sprouts, and they kept drifting out of her mouth. She licked her lips to capture them, and this was distracting to Conrad, who kept watching her mouth and her supple, active tongue.

“What would you be doing for your country?” she asked.

“Protecting it. I don't want other people to have to fight for me.”

“But we're not at war,” Claire said. “No one has to fight for you.”

“We have a standing army,” Conrad said. “Someone has to be in it. I believe in national service. It's a patriotic duty.”

He sounded like a recruitment poster. Watching Claire's face turn quizzical and wary, distant, he began to wonder if he was making some irretrievable move, abandoning his own peers, his cohort. He'd be stepping across some line, and they'd be staring at him from the other side, the people he knew, all his friends, and why did he want to abandon everyone he knew, and where was the sense of ethical clarity he had thought was illuminating this decision?

Claire put down her sandwich. “This is completely mysterious to me. I never knew you liked to shoot guns.”

“I'm not doing this so I can shoot guns,” Conrad said, though secretly he was excited about exactly that.

“There are lots of other ways you could serve your country,” Claire said. “This is like resigning from the world.”

“The opposite,” Conrad said stiffly. “I'd be joining the world. The real world. The larger world.” Christ, he sounded like an ass.

“You'd be resigning from normal life. The military is not normal life, it's like the priesthood. You'd be turning your back on the rest of the world,” Claire said. “How long does it last?”

“Everything you do means turning your back on something,” Conrad said.

Claire shook her head. “Not like this.” She took another tack. “You think it's glamorous? The uniforms, the tanks, all that stuff? Is that why you're doing it?”

“Yeah, I'm doing it for the uniforms,” he said. “The white gloves.”

She raised her eyebrows, then picked up her sandwich.

Behind her, a bright-faced middle-aged woman wearing jeans and a fleece jacket squeezed past Claire's chair to get to the freezer. The woman's hair was short and gray, her cheeks pink. She took out a couple of frozen packets and then turned, meeting Conrad's eye. She smiled reflexively. It was a generic health-food-store response, mindless, friendly, like,
We're all family.

It irritated Conrad. Health-food stores were exactly the opposite of the Marines: soft and gooey, homemade idealism, peace and love, sentimentalism, crunchy raw vegetables and tasteless expensive food. What kind of response was this to mega-farms, supermarket chains, pesticide companies? A bunch of pink-cheeked do-gooders, impractical, ineffective, no hope for their hopes.

Conrad put down his fork. “You know, this stuff is really disgusting. What am I eating? Tofu burger? It tastes like old socks. It's not food.”

“It's not meant to taste like hamburger,” Claire said.

“It's meant to taste like old socks?”

After that they argued about food, and Conrad behaved badly and demanded that they go to Burger King, where he ordered a real burger. Claire ostentatiously ordered water, and he sat and ate his burger in complete silence and felt like a dick.

They didn't talk about the Marines again until the next morning. Conrad lived on the top floor of an old dormitory building. His room was narrow, with a a single dormer window projecting out of the eaves. A monolithic silver radiator stood below the window, and Claire was convinced that it looked different depending on its temperature. Before the heat came up, she claimed, the radiator looked cold and withholding, frigid. As it warmed, it began to glow, expansive and benevolent, giving off the fine, dry scent of heat. Conrad said that was impossible.

That morning Conrad and Claire lay under the covers of his single bed, their limbs entangled, the covers pulled up to their chins, waiting for the heat to come up.

“I have a biology lab to finish,” Claire said, not moving. “I have to be there by nine-thirty.”

“Look at the radiator. Does it look hot yet?”

“It looks cold. I can't get up.” Her arms wrapped around him, she lay on her side, pressed against him. “But don't you think it's kind of crazy?” she asked. “Four years of your life—what will you be at the end of it? What will you do then?”

“I can do anything afterward,” he said. “Graduate school, anything. It doesn't mean I've stopped my life.”

“It sort of does. You'll have stopped the life you lead now.”

He wasn't thinking of afterward. He was thinking of himself made different, better, more powerful, more effective. He would enter into a state of moral clarity.

“Anyway,” he said, “it's not like I know, right now, what I want to do, even if I don't go in. This will give me a better sense of everything. Who I am.”

“You'll be a killer.” The way she said this did not make it sexy. “They'll train you to kill people.”

“It's not about killing,” he said. “Don't be a jerk, Claire. You're so melodramatic.” He rolled away and sat up, raising the sheet unkindly, letting in a flood of cold air. “Look at it, it's hot.”

“Don't do that,” Claire said, grabbing for the sheet, but he was up, he was gone.

*   *   *

They'd argued about it for weeks, but they hadn't broken up. They were still together for the rest of that year and after his first summer at OCS. They were still together right up until the next summer, when he went in full-time. Even then they didn't break things off completely, though each told the other they were free to pull away.

“You'll get too busy blowing up things to write,” Claire told him. “You'll be doing too many missions to think about me. You'll have your buddies.”

“Right,” said Conrad, sort of sarcastic, but also thinking of his new life, which would be exciting and demanding, and that she was partly right. “No,” he said, “I won't. Duh.”

The night before he left, they were together in Katonah. They sat up late in the library, sitting side by side on the small sofa, drinking beer and talking.

“You're free to see anyone you want,” Conrad told Claire again. She was curled up next to him, her knees drawn up against her chest, her feet tucked underneath her.

“I know that.” Her eyes were pink around the edges. She'd been crying. She sighed and ran her fingernail along the label on the beer bottle. “But I don't want to see anyone else. I want to see you. I still don't see why you're doing this.”

At that moment he didn't know why. At three o'clock in the morning, Claire's warm body next to him, his parents asleep upstairs, the countryside dark and silent beyond the windows, he couldn't remember. There was this life, living with people, in houses, and there was the other, and why exactly had he chosen the other?