Thao finished talking and we sat listening to the air conditioner. I knew Thao was giving me time to absorb everything, but it was impossible, naturally, there was too much to take in, and in the days afterward I would be going about my life and suddenly be stopped in my tracks as I recalled yet another strange thing Chase had said or done that now made sense—such as Chase’s infamous breakdown during the Purple and Gold Game, which I saw had been caused by Henry breaking up with him.
—I’m not putting myself through something like that, Thao told me.
—That’s not the only way we can be together.
—Then how? You couldn’t sit with me in an empty restaurant, but you think we can date?
—I—I don’t know.
—Well, you need to know. You need to prove it. He didn’t explain what “prove it” meant. I was too cowardly to ask.
Chase still lived on Central, two blocks away from the place I shared with Reshawn, and I parked outside his apartment on my drive back from Carsonville. On the façades of all Central units the front door and a sliding glass door stood side by side. The drapes were pulled over Chase’s glass doors, but I could see the living room light burning around the drapes’ edges. He was home, likely sitting on his big leather couch halfheartedly flipping through the French textbook for Monday’s exam. All those times I’d sat close to him on that couch. All the times we’d walked together to practice. All the times I’d stretched him, or he me. His almost rapacious need to annoy, to prod and goad, to simultaneously push and pull whoever was around him in public, and the deep, pouring shyness and delicacy he was capable of when it was just the two of us. What if I knocked on that door right now? He’d stare, doubtless, ask me what the fuck I wanted, but it probably wouldn’t take much effort to get him to let me in. And what would I want to do, what could I say, once I was?
I didn’t knock on his door, and didn’t see him again until Monday afternoon, when our class met in the language lab for the final exam. Chase arrived with Errol. The two of them were growing thick as thieves, and as they settled into neighboring carrels I recalled the story Errol told here a few weeks earlier, the one in which the girl asked the two of them to fuck her at the same time. Assuming the episode actually happened, how could Chase have felt while the negotiation was happening? Was he hopeful, sick to his stomach, both? I remembered thinking it strange that, when Errol said they fucked her separately and Errol had had her first, Chase hadn’t been embarrassed by having her second. I wondered if Chase had been happy it happened in that order. Had he liked knowing Errol had just been inside her? Had that seemed like the closest he could ever come to touching Errol in that way?
Thoughts like these kept breaking my concentration during the exam, and when Reshawn finished the test I was only halfway through my questions. He tapped me on the shoulder and whispered:
—Give me your keys.
—You’re not coming to Skellie?
—Messieurs, Mademoiselle Carter said from her desk. Ne parlez pas pendant l’examen.
—Pardon, I said, and handed Reshawn my keys.
I ended up staying with the rest of my teammates for the full three hours. Mademoiselle Carter finally called time, I reviewed my essay for any stray missing accents, then hit the Submit button. As we filed out of the lab, Mademoiselle Carter said:
—Errol, stay behind a minute?
Errol smirked. The summer session was officially over, and it seemed like his talk about bedding Mademoiselle Carter might not have been as idle as we thought.
We left the Romance Languages building, standing in the useless shade of an oak tree on the quad and asking each other about this or that exam question. We kept an eye on the door for the moment Errol triumphantly walked outside.
—How old you think she is? Cornelius asked.
—Like thirty, thirty-five.
—Yo, O’Connor said. Her pussy’s probably so dry he’s gonna get paper cuts on his dick.
—Nah, Chase said. That’s the best pussy…. What, Furling? —Nothing.
Errol walked out through the double doors, the expression on his face anything but triumphant.
—What happened, Machen? Cornelius asked, grinning. Mademoiselle tell you she needs a real man? You give her my number?
—She asked to see my pencil case.
We went silent.
—Fuck.
—Yeah, “fuck,” Errol said. She opened that shit and emptied it out. I made my sheet this morning and everything, but then I did the math and I thought, I can get a D on that exam and still get an A-minus for the summer. So I left that bitch at home.
—So, wait, she didn’t catch you?
—Nope.
—How’d she know, then?
Errol looked at me.
—I didn’t tell her shit, I said.
—But what about your boy? I told you Reshawn was a jealous motherfucker, but I didn’t know he’d be on some Judas shit.
—No way, I said.
—How else would Carter know? Tell me one time she got up from her desk during an exam.
—Maybe a different player snitched.
—Who? Errol asked, gesturing incredulously at the players standing with us.
I didn’t have an answer, and my case wasn’t helped when we entered the Hay and everyone else learned that Reshawn was skipping Skellie for the first time since
