The City of Mirrors (23 page)

The remainder of the summer passed in an emotionless haze. At some point I received a letter informing me that I had been placed in Winthrop House with an as-yet-unnamed roommate who was returning from a year abroad. That I cared nothing about this news is a gross understatement. As far as I was concerned, I could have gone on living with the old woman and her dirty litter boxes. About my mother, I told no one. I worked at the lab right until the first day of the new semester, leaving no transitional interval in which I might find myself with nothing to distract me. My professor asked me if I wanted to continue working with him during the academic year, but I turned him down. Perhaps this was unwise, and he seemed shocked that I should decline such a privilege, but it would leave no time for the library, whose consoling silence I missed.

I come now to the part of the story in which my situation changed so radically that I recall it as a kind of plunge, as if I had been merely floating on the surface of my life until then. This commenced the day I moved into Winthrop House. Lucessi and I had sold off our Salvation Army furniture, and I arrived with little more than the same suitcase I’d brought to Harvard a year ago, a desk lamp, a box of books, and the impression that I had once again slipped into an anonymity so pure that I could have changed my name if I wanted to with nobody the wiser. My quarters, two rooms arranged railroad-apartment-style with a bathroom at the rear, was on the fourth floor facing the Winthrop quadrangle, with a view of Boston’s modest skyline behind it. There was no sign of my roommate, whose name I was yet to learn. I spent some time mulling over which space to choose as my own—the interior room was smaller but more private; on the other hand, I would have to endure my roommate trooping through at all hours to the toilet—before deciding that, to get things off on the right foot, I would await his arrival, so that we might decide together.

I had finished carting the last of my belongings up the stairs when a figure appeared in the doorway, his face obscured by the stack of cardboard boxes in his arms. He advanced into the room, groaning with effort, and lowered them to the floor.

“You,” I said.

It was the man I’d met at the Burger Cottage. He was wearing frayed khaki pants and a gray T-shirt that said
HARVARD
SQUASH
, with crescents of sweat under the arms.

“Wait,” he said, peering at me. “I know you. How do I know you?”

I explained our meeting. At first he professed no recollection; then a look of recognition dawned.

“Of course. The guy with the suitcase. I’m guessing this means you found Wigglesworth.” A thought occurred to him. “No offense, but wouldn’t that make you a sophomore?”

It was a fair question, with a complicated answer. Though I’d been admitted as a freshman, I had enough AP credits to graduate in three years. I’d given this matter little thought, always expecting to hang around for the full four. But in the weeks since receiving my father’s letter, the option to bang out my education at a quickstep and skedaddle had grown more appealing. Evidently the Harvard higher-ups had thought so, too, since they’d housed me with an upperclassman.

“I guess that makes you a real smarty-pants, doesn’t it?” he said. “So, let’s have it.”

He had a way of speaking that was both elusively sarcastic and somehow complimentary at the same time. “Have what?”

“You know. Name, rank, serial number. Your major, place of origin, that sort of thing. The history of yourself, in other words. Keep it simple—my memory is for shit in this heat.”

“Tim Fanning. Biochemistry. Ohio.”

“Nicely done. Though if you ask me tomorrow I probably won’t remember, so don’t be offended.” He stepped forward, hand extended. “Jonas Lear, by the way.”

I did my best to respond with a manly grip. “Lear,” I repeated. “Like the jet?”

“Alas, no. More like Shakespeare’s mad king.” He glanced around. “So, which of these luxury compartments have you selected as your own?”

“I thought it would be fair to wait.”

“Lesson number one: Never wait. Law of the jungle and so forth. But since you’re determined to be a nice guy, we can flip for it.” He pulled a coin from his pocket. “Call it.”

Up the coin went before I could respond. He snatched it from the air and slapped it to his wrist

“I guess … heads?”

“Why does everybody call heads? Somebody should do a study.” He lifted his hand. “Well, what do you know, it’s heads.”

“I guess I was thinking of the smaller one.”

He smiled. “See? How hard was that? I would have gone the same way. No promises, but I’ll do my best not to confuse your bed with the can in the middle of the night.”

“You never told me what you were studying.”

“Right you are. That was rude of me.” He tossed a pair of finger quotes into the air. “Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.”

I’d never heard of it. “That’s an actual major?”

He’d bent to open one of the boxes. “So my transcript tells me. Plus, it’s fun to say. It sounds a little dirty.” He glanced up and smiled. “What? Not what you expected?”

“I would have said—I don’t know—something more lively. History, maybe. Or English.”

He removed an armload of textbooks and began loading them onto the shelves. “Let me ask you something. Of all the possible subjects in the world, why did you choose biochemistry?”

“I suppose because I’m good at it.”

He turned, hands on his hips. “Well, there you have it. The truth is, I’m just crazy about amino acids. I put them in my martini.”

“What’s a martini?”

His face drew back. “James Bond? Shaken, not stirred? They don’t have these movies in Ohio?”

“I know who James Bond is. I mean, I don’t know what’s in one.”

His mouth curved into a mischievous grin. “Ah,” he said.

We were on our third drink when we heard a girl’s voice calling his name and the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.

“In here!” Lear yelled.

The two of us were seated on the floor with the tools of Lear’s enterprise spread before us. I have never met anyone else who traveled with not only a fifth of gin and a bottle of vermouth but the sort of bartending gizmos—jiggers, shakers, tiny, delicate knives—one sees only in old movies. A bag of ice swooned in a puddle of meltwater beside an open jar of olives from the market up the street. Ten-thirty in the morning, and I was completely hammered.

“Jesus, look at you.”

I hauled my addled eyes into focus on the figure in the doorway. A girl, wearing a summer dress of pale blue linen. I note the dress first because it is the easiest thing to describe about her. I do not mean to say that she was beautiful, although she was; rather, I wish to make a case that there was about her something distinctive and therefore unclassifiable (unlike Lucessi’s sister, whose ice-pick perfection was a dime a dozen and had left no lasting mark on me). I could note the particulars—her figure, slender and small-breasted, almost boyish; the petite formation of her sandaled toes, darkened by street grime; her heart-shaped face and damp blue eyes; her hair, pale blond, unmanaged by clips or barrettes, cut to her shining, sun-touched shoulders—but the whole, as they say, was greater than the sum of its parts.

“Liz!” Lear made a big show of getting to his feet, trying not to spill his drink. He threw his arms around her in a clumsy hug, which she pushed back from with a look of exaggerated distaste. She was wearing small, tortoiseshell-framed eyeglasses, perfectly round, that on another woman might have seemed mannish but in her case didn’t at all.

“You’re drunk.”

“Not in the least. More like in the most. Not as bad as my new roomie here.” He propped his free hand against the side of his mouth and spoke in an exaggerated whisper: “Don’t tell him, but a minute ago he appeared to be melting.” He lifted his glass. “Have one?”

“I have to meet my adviser in half an hour.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Tim, this is Liz Macomb, my girlfriend. Liz, Tim. Don’t recall his last name, but I’m sure it’ll come to me. Say your hellos while I fix this girl a cocktail.”

The polite thing to do would have been to stand, but somehow this seemed too formal, and I decided against it. Also, I wasn’t sure I could actually accomplish this.

“Hi,” I said.

She sat on the bed, folded her slender legs beneath herself, and drew the hem of her dress over her knees. “How do you do, Tim? So you’re the lucky winner.”

Lear was sloppily pouring gin. “Tim here is from Ohio. That’s about all I remember.”

“Ohio!” She spoke this word with the same delight she might have used for Pago Pago or Rangoon. “I’ve always wanted to go there. What’s it like?”

“You’re kidding.”

She laughed. “Okay, a little. But it’s your home. Your
patria.
Your
pays natal
. Tell me anything.”

Her directness was totally disarming. I struggled to come up with something worthy of it. What was there to say about the home I’d left behind?

“It’s pretty flat, I guess.” I winced inwardly at the lameness of the remark. “The people are nice.”

Lear handed her a glass, which she accepted without looking at him. She took a tiny sip, then said, “Nice is good. I like nice. What else?”

She had yet to avert her eyes from my face. The intensity of her gaze was unsettling, though not unwelcome—far from it. I saw that she had a faint swirl of peach fuzz, dewy with sweat, above her upper lip.

“There really isn’t very much to tell.”

“And your people? What do they do?”

“My father’s an optometrist.”

“An honorable profession. I can’t see past my nose without these things.”

“Liz is from Connecticut,” Lear added.

She took a second, deeper sip, wincing pleasurably. “If it’s all right with you, Jonas, I’ll speak for myself.”

“What part?” I said, as if I knew the first thing about Connecticut.

“Little town called Greenwich, dah-ling. Which I’m supposed to hate, there’s probably no place more hateable, but I can’t seem to manage it. My parents are angels, and I adore them. Jonas,” she said, gazing into her glass, “this is really
good.
”

Lear dragged a desk chair to the center of the room and lowered himself onto it backward. I made a mental note that this would be how I sat from now on.

“I’m sure you can describe it better than that,” he said, grinning.

“This again. I’m not some dancing monkey, you know.”

“Come on, pumpkin. We’re totally wasted.”

“ ‘Pumpkin.’ Listen to you.” She sighed, puffing out her cheeks. “Fine, just this once. But to be clear, I’m only doing this because we have company.”

I had no idea what to make of this exchange. Liz sipped again. For an unnervingly long interval, perhaps twenty seconds, silence gripped the room. Liz had closed her eyes, like a medium at a séance attempting to conjure the spirits of the dead.

“It tastes like—” She frowned the thought away. “No, that’s not right.”

“For God’s sake,” Lear moaned, “don’t be such a tease.”

“Quiet.” Another moment slipped by; then she brightened. “Like … the air of the coldest day.”

I was amazed. She was exactly right.
More
than right: her words, rather than functioning as a mere decoration of the experience, actually deepened its reality. It was the first time in my life that I felt the power of language to intensify life. The phrase was also, coming from her lips, deeply sexy.

Lear gave an admiring whistle through his teeth. “That’s a good one.”

I was frankly staring at her. “How did you do that?”

“Oh, just a talent I have. That and twenty-five cents will get you a gumball.”

“Are you some kind of writer?”

She laughed. “God, no. Have you met those people? Total drunks, every one.”

“Liz here is one of those English majors we were talking about,” Lear said. “A burden on society, totally unemployable.”

“Spare me your crass opinions.” She directed her next words to me: “What he’s not telling you is that he’s not quite the self-involved bon vivant he makes himself out to be.”

“Yes, I am!”

“Then why don’t you tell him where you were for the last twelve months?”

In my state of information overload, and under the influence of three strong drinks, I had overlooked the most obvious question in the room. Why had Jonas Lear, of all people, needed a floater for a roommate?

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Liz said. “He was in Uganda.”

I looked at him. “What were you doing in Uganda?”

“Oh, a little of this, a little of that. As it turns out, they’ve got quite a civil war going on. Not what the brochure promised.”

“He was working in a refugee camp for the U.N.,” Liz explained.

“So I dug latrines, handed out bags of rice. It doesn’t make me a saint.”

“Compared to the rest of us, it does. What your new roommate hasn’t told you, Tim, is that he has serious designs on saving the world. I’m talking major savior complex. His ego is the size of a house.”

“Actually, I’m thinking of giving it up,” Lear said. “It’s not worth the dysentery. I’ve never shat like that in my life.”

“Shit, not ‘shat,’ ” Liz corrected. “ ‘Shat’ is not a word.”

These two: I could barely keep up, and the problem wasn’t merely that I was smashed, or already half in love with my new roommate’s girlfriend. I felt like I had stepped straight from Harvard, circa 1990, into a movie from the 1940s, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn duking it out.

“Well, I think English is a great major,” I remarked.

“Thank you. See, Jonas? Not everyone is a total philistine.”

“I warn you,” he told her, wagging a finger my direction, “you’re talking to another dreary scientist.”

She made a face of exasperation. “Suddenly in my life it’s raining scientists. Tell me, Tim, what kind of science do you do?”

“Biochemistry.”

“Which is … ? I’ve always wondered.”

I found myself strangely happy to be asked this question. Perhaps it was just a matter of who was asking it.

“The building blocks of life, basically. What makes things live, what makes them work, what makes them die. That’s about all there is to it.”