The Faculty Club: A Novel (17 page)

"Why bring such a nice camera on a prank, I wonder . . ." the other cop finished.

Chance mumbled something about taking a picture in the dining hall.

"Huh," the cop said.

"Say, Officer Peters," the man behind us said. "If I'm not
mistaken, this is one of those James Bond cameras, good in the dark and so forth."

"Huh," the officer said again.

Ever so slightly, I saw Chance rise up on the balls of his feet. I felt voltage building in my arms and legs.

The officer reached back into Chance's bag. His hand came out holding a piece of paper.

My heart sank as I realized it was our map.

Chance started to say something, but the cop raised his hand. He unfolded the paper. His eyes scanned the page. The corner of his mouth flickered.

I felt a body close behind me.

The cop looked up. His face was still a mask of pleasantness, but all the warmth had drained from the eyes, the smile.

"What were you boys looking for down there, exactly?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

There was a moment of perfect stillness.

Chance ran.

There was a crack as the cop behind us rammed Chance into the wall. The camera fell and slid along the floor. The other cop went for me. I saw a baton rise up in the air above Chance. Without thinking I jumped toward it and knocked them apart. Chance leapt up and ran blindly into the other officer. "Go," he yelled.

I ran out the door and down the hall. The hole of the window came closer and I jumped, hit the ground outside, and tumbled over the rocky grass. I saw Chance pass me and keep running. Back on my feet I ran through the gate and didn't stop, didn't even think, took off in the opposite direction from Chance and ran until the gloom factory was out of sight behind me. I kept running across the far edge of the campus, on service roads and then
through the woods of the west side, looping around to the edge of the river. When I couldn't run anymore I walked, cutting a winding path through the woods until I was sure no one was following me. I rubbed the black off my eyes with my sweatshirt and threw it into the river. Now I was in a gray long-sleeved T-shirt and black pants. I still looked like an idiot, but now it was the kind of idiot who just stumbled drunk out of a club. I cut toward the middle of the campus. I passed an upper-class dorm and heard a party upstairs. I went to the party and blended into the anonymous shoulder-to-shoulder crowd in the small room, purple and red lights, loud bass, everyone jumping to the music, the smell of orange juice and liquor saturating the air. I stole a green coat from the pile in the bedroom by the door. Now I was an alcohol-soaked, green-coated student blending into the throngs of Saturday night revelers on the main campus. I wound my way to the quiet side street of my dorm. No one followed me. I waited in the hallway around the first corner for ten minutes. No one came in the door after me. I got to my room, locked the door behind me, switched off the lights. I checked the lock on every window. I doubled-checked the lock on my door. Remembering the invitations placed on my bed, I moved my chair to the door and wedged it at an angle under the knob, the feet digging into the floor.

I sat on the floor below the window and peeked out the blinds. No one on the street below. No one in the yard beyond.

I looked at the poster of Albert Einstein on my wall.
What are you smirking at?
I asked him.

I was safe.

In the plant, my face had black paint smeared all over it. And no one had followed me home.

They didn't know who I was.

This was my warning. This was my rock bottom, my chance at salvation. Done. Finished. Take the Incompletes. Work hard, get straight A's in the spring.

A normal career. A normal life. No fame. No glory. No secrets. No power.

That was fine.

I could be a person again.

The next morning, I felt lighter than I had in months, confident and full of purpose. I called Chance to make sure he was okay, but he wasn't in. I called the hospital and learned that Sarah had been discharged. I walked to her brownstone and rang the bell. Sarah's roommate answered the door, still glum, with thick glasses and a pink barrette in her hair.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm here to see Sarah."

A slight pause.

"She's not here."

"I know she's here. She got discharged yesterday."

She leaned toward me and puffed out her chest, ready for battle.

"I know who you are."

"Look, um . . . what's your name?"

She eyed me suspiciously, as if revealing her name would grant me some secret power over her. Finally, she said, "Carrie. But she doesn't want to see you."

"I understand. I wouldn't want to see me either. And you're a good friend for trying to keep me out. But I'm here for a reason. I want to make things right."

"Oh. I didn't realize you were Jesus," she said.

A voice called down from the stairs beyond their living room. "Carrie, who is it?"

"It's the guy," she replied. "The
lawyer
."

"Law student," I said.

"He won't go away," Carrie explained.

There was a long pause, and then Sarah said, "It's okay. Let him in."

Carrie narrowed her eyes at me.

"Whatever," she said, stepping aside.

I walked into a neatly appointed living room, the complete opposite of Miles's philosopher's cave. They had self-assembled modern furniture, the kind that comes in a box and lives in a world halfway between student and adult. There was one bedroom off the living room; the staircase led up to a second. Sarah waited at the top of the stairs, her door cracked. I could see half her face, one bright hazel eye, one rosy cheek.

I took a breath and started up the stairs.

When I got to the top, I saw her in a blast of sunlight from the window. She glowed, without makeup or jewelry, her cheeks flushed, eyes iridescent. She was somehow ordinary
and
enchanted at the same time: the tomboy you know your whole life before you see her at the prom and realize she'd been beautiful the whole time.

"Sarah," I started to say, but she walked away from the door, leaving it open.

She sat down on her bed and hugged her legs. She nodded at a chair by her desk.

"Thanks," I said.

All the speeches I'd practiced on the way over seemed inadequate now, flimsy and childish. Instead, I just looked at her.
She was watching me, quietly. Her room was cheerful, with light yellow walls and framed Delacroix prints of Parisian life: Ferris wheels, hilltop churches, kids with scarves in the snow, warm orange windows. But then I saw the cardboard box filled with books on the floor, next to other boxes, with sweaters, socks, folders: she was packing? On top of the books was a model brain, with every hill and valley labeled, though they all looked the same to me.

When our eyes met, there was a tense energy between us, but also, I noted, curiosity. Whatever else, she wanted me to say
something
. I noticed my hands were shaking.

I pointed at the model brain.

"May I?"

She sighed into her folded hands. "Why not?"

I turned it over in my hands. It was made of rubber and felt pleasantly spongy.

"Is part of my brain really called the Sylvian fissure?"

She nodded.

"Sounds like a place where you'd meet a witch. Or a talking wolf."

Stop talking,
I willed myself. She looked at me for a long time. Then she nodded at the brain.

"There's also an anterior commissure."

"Where soldiers buy toothpaste."

"And a cingulate gyrus."

"A dance craze. The Cingulate Gyrus."

"Everybody's doin' it," she said. For a split second, the corners of her lips flickered into a smile. Then, as if she suddenly remembered why we were here, a wave passed over her face, her eyes hardened, and we were back to square one. She didn't say anything for a moment, and when she did, her voice was strangely bland.

"I quit my program."

There was no rebuke in her voice, but it felt like a hard slap anyway.

"I'm sorry, Sarah."

She shrugged.

"It was that or an investigation. I didn't want my dad to get in trouble."

"I don't know what to say. I'm so sorry."

She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

"After the trial, all I could think about was how much I hated you."

I started to tell her I understood, but I saw her face and shut my mouth.

"Not just minor hate, understand. I wanted to . . . I spent a whole week wanting to kill you. I blamed you for everything wrong in my life. By the time I got home yesterday, I was
tired
of hating you. That's when I realized something . . . I felt relieved."

"What?"

She smiled.

"That secret. It was killing me. A little bit, every day. Like my whole life was based on a fraud, and everything that came after made that fraud heavier, more impossible to escape."

She looked at me.

"What I'm trying to say is, I forgive you."

The strange thing was, I didn't feel better. I felt worse.

"I'm not sure I forgive myself."

I saw that look again, the one that made me imagine her in a hospital, caring for patients. "You were just doing your job," she said.

I shook my head.

"Was I? Was that the way to do it? The only way to do it?"

"I was lying."

"I know."

I closed my eyes. "This could take a while to figure out."

"Well," she said, smiling, "your life's not over yet."

I nodded. If it weren't for my recent burst of good sense, she might have been wrong about that. But now I saw a different path. I took a deep breath and hoped I wouldn't screw up what I was about to say.

"I brought you something."

She looked surprised, even skeptical.

"I can't change what I did. I know that. It's just a token. To say I'm sorry."

"Okay," she said slowly. She waited.

"Well, it's not here."

"What?"

"We have to go get it."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No."

"Where is it?"

"I can't tell you. But we have to take a train."

"Are you crazy?"

We waited for someone to flinch. No one did.

"You're crazy," she said.

"Know what I thought, the night we met?"

She shook her head.

"I thought you'd forgotten how to have fun."

"Oh. I thought you were going to say I had nice eyes."

"You seemed so sad. I wanted to fix that."

"Why?" she asked.

I think I must've blushed. She just said Oh and looked away.

"Listen. This morning I had two hundred dollars in my bank account. Now I have twelve. I'll probably have to give blood under a couple of names to make it to the end of the semester. At least come see what I blew it on."

"So," she said softly, "my choices in life are: one, go off with the guy who ruined my career, or two, stay home and think about the fact that I have no job, no friends, no money, and no plan? Does that sound right?"

I said it did.

"Big day," she said.

I waited.

"Well," she said finally. "I'm curious." She stood up and looked around the sad, half-packed room. "And curiosity beats
this
."

We rode the train for an hour and a half. Mostly she looked out the window at the towns and fields passing by. I saw the orange blue light reflect on her face.

She spoke only once. She turned to me and said, "If you're some psychopath who's planning on killing me, don't bother. You already did." Then she turned back to the window.

When we left the train we took the subway, then went the final blocks on foot through the bright, crowded city. Everything felt fresh, alive. She didn't ask where we were going. But when we came to the broad plaza with the central fountain and the glass temple beyond, her face went to recognition, then surprise.

"Do you know where we are?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Have you been here before?"

She shook her head.

She looked around, taking the whole piazza in: the men in black tie, the women in regal dresses. There was a look of wonder in her eyes. It
was
wonderful. Before us was a glass wall, enclosing two giant paintings of angels, each a hundred feet tall, one red, one yellow, both swirling and arching up toward heaven. We walked past the fountain to the Metropolitan Opera's grand entrance.

"It's beautiful," she said.

"Come on."

"We're going in?"

I nodded.

"
In
in?"

I nodded. Her face lit up.

"You look like a kid," I said.

We walked through the immense atrium. Everything was upholstered in red and gold. We waited as an ancient man in a tuxedo tore our tickets. Then we took our seats under the glass chandeliers that looked like splintered stars, bursting with faint white light.

Sarah kept looking around, soaking it all in.

"How did you know," she asked, "how I felt about opera?"

"You told me. The night we met."

The opera was Mozart's
Magic Flute
. It was a fairy tale, with dancing animals, a Sun King, and a pair of flirtatious parrots named Papageno and Papagena.

It all would have been ridiculous if it weren't for the music. I'd never heard anything like it: celestial, pure, gliding like a hummingbird. When the curtain came down, the audience leapt to its feet, roaring with applause. I watched Sarah. She faced the stage, smiling and clapping, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Afterward, we walked the city. We came to a bright street filled with Indian restaurants. Each one was decorated with Christmas lights, inside and out; entire walls and ceilings were covered. Every restaurant seemed to be trying to outdo the ones around it until the whole street was flickering red, yellow, purple, and green in a beautiful, benign arms race. We sat on a bench and watched the people pass in and out of the restaurants.

"Can I ask you a question," Sarah said.

"Sure."

"When did you decide to be a lawyer?"

"When I was thirteen."