“So,” said Stu, after the take-off, “why you going to New York?”
“Visiting.”
“Isn’t that where you go to school? You got into Columbia, right?”
“No. Berkeley.” I glanced at him. Was he really in the dark or was he merely inviting me to confess? “But I didn’t go.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. How about you? You go to Bates College or what?”
“Where’s that?” Stu asked.
“Oh, I thought that’s where you got in.”
“No. I’m at Downstate.”
This was how Chicagoans referred to the University of Illinois in Urbana. Urbana was only a half hour’s drive from my alma mater in Wyon—in fact, some of the Rockville staff took courses at the University. Once, on one of our outings, my parents took me to Urbana to hear Oscar Peterson play in an auditorium that looked like a cross between a gymnasium and a space station. We were of course surrounded by students my own age. They were a serene lot, for the times—Urbana had more fuzzy sweaters and plaid pants than most college towns in the late sixties. I did my best to enjoy the music but my sense of isolation finally degenerated into feelings of true hatred. Rose frowned at me and shook her head and I realized I was scowling so outrageously my face hurt. We left during the intermission, stalking up the inclined aisle like a defeated minority caucus leaving a convention. The trip back to Rockville was a screamer, with me making my parents feel guilty for submitting me to the humiliation of viewing two thousand unencumbered college students, Arthur shouting his apology that was mixed with the implication that he’d known all along it was a bad idea, and Rose exploding into a fury of human pain—accusing me of making the day more difficult than it needed to be, accusing Arthur of hypocritically avoiding responsibility, and accusing the both of us of using any opportunity to conspire against her. “I’m always on the outside. You two want me to feel like a piece of dirt.” Sitting next to Stu, with the nose of the jet still pointed up, I heard Rose’s voice so clearly it made me shudder. It was summer and her school was closed. I knew she was feeling monstrously alone.
“How come you fly around so much?” I asked. I threw the conversation back to Stu, like a medicine ball.
“Summer job. I work for this guy named Dr. Schaeffer. Ever hear of him? He’s the best dentist in Chicago.”
“No.”
“I mean he’s famous. He’s been on Kup’s show, there’s been stuff about him in the papers. He’s fantastic.” Stu pulled a large attache case from beneath his seat. “He has his crowns and inlays made by this terrific place in New York. It’s right above an art gallery and they’re the best in the world.” Stu snapped open the case and revealed a dozen or so plaster molds of Dr. Schaef- fer’s patients’ mouths. “I drop these off and they do the rest. While I’m there they give me the crowns they made the week before. Each one comes in a little box, lined with purple felt, like you’d buy a diamond.”
I tried to think of something to say and we drifted into silence. Clouds and vapor rushed by the windows as if we were flying through fire. Stu tapped my knee and cocked his head toward the front of the plane. A stewardess wheeled a cart filled with plastic cups, ice, soft drinks, and miniature liquor bottles.
“You like?” he asked with a friendly smile. I wished I knew him better so I could tell him to shut up. I shrugged, creating the impression, I suppose, that I didn’t know what to make of the stewardess.
“Say,” Stu said, “what ever happened to that chick you were going with? She was the best-looking flat-chested girl I ever saw.”
I noticed a slight tension in the muscles around his scrupulously shaved jaw and it struck me with great, sickening force that Stu knew full well where I’d been the past years, knew all about the fire and the trial, and was for some reason teasing me with it. Maybe he was too shy, or too embarrassed for me and the wreck I’d made of my life, to simply admit his knowledge. Or perhaps some old adolescent score was being settled, some slight I’d forgotten. He’d never been treated as if he were terribly interesting or important and I was now conceivably ensnared in his dreary revenge.
“I don’t know where she is these days,” I said.
“Jade,” Neihardt said.
“What about her?”
“That was her name, right? Jade Butterfield. She had that whole weird family. Her father was some kind of faith healer or something.”
“No. He was a doctor. He had an MD. He just was into a different kind of medicine.”
Stu shrugged, as if I were splitting hairs. “I knew her brother Keith. He was a brainy one. What’s he doing now?”
“I don’t know.”
“He was weird, too. He never wanted to be friends with anyone but then he’d come up to you and say, ‘I’ve been thinking about you. Can we talk after school?’ He actually pulled that on me, if you can believe it. And I was stupid enough to go along with it.” Stu smiled and shook his head.
“What did he say?” I asked. I felt caught in the logic and momentum of our conversation: it was like being accosted by one of the black kids after school and being taunted and misunderstood into insulting him, at which point you’d have to fight.
“Oh, I don’t know. Psychological bullshit. You knew him better than I did. But the weird thing was it made me think he’d been studying up on me behind my back and all I knew about him was he never raised his hand in class but every time he got called on he knew the answer. Where’d you say he was now?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
“That’s how it goes,” Stu said, with satisfaction. He looked at me and raised his large eyebrows, inviting me to ask him to share his wisdom.
“That’s how what goes?”
“All the great high-school romances. I always thought I was missing out on the best but you see I wasn’t missing a thing. You and Jade were such a big deal, right? And now—poof—you don’t even know where she lives. Am I right?”
“That I don’t know where she lives?”
“No, David. The whole thing. Did you know Kenny Fox?”
“Slightly.”
“Well, I see him around. Remember him and Arlene Kirsch? They went steady for two years, she had an abortion because of him, the whole bit. So what does Kenny do when I mention Arlene? He smiles. He can hardly even
“You sound pleased.”
“No, it’s just interesting. Here’s me feeling like Mr. Asshole all through high school because I’m not part of some big romance. Never knowing what I’ll be doing on New Year’s Eve. Everyone and his brother losing their cherry and me going steady with Mrs. Thumb and her four skinny daughters.”
“Sounds pretty normal to me,” I said.
“Hey,” said Neihardt, his voice sharpening. His aggressions were beginning to show more clearly; it was like ice melting off a pond, exposing the dark, brackish water beneath. ’
The stewardess was next to us now, asking what we’d like to drink. I asked for an orange juice and Stu said, “Make that two, honey.” As she poured our juices, Stu said, “What else you have today, huh?” The stewardess, who was at least five years older than us, began to rattle off the various fruit juices and soft drinks available, but Stu broke in, saying, “No, I was just kidding.”
Stu finished his juice in one swallow and pushed back in his seat as far as it would recline. “I remember you two walking around the halls of old Hyde Park High,” he said. “Couple of first-class hand-holders. Jesus Christ, you hand-holders used to drive me nuts. I mean, what was it? A school or a fucking lover’s lane? You know what I mean? Kenny and Arlene were the same way—worse! One day I’m walking out of trig and goddamned Kenny whips his finger under my nose and says, ‘Breathe deep, old pal. I just finger-fucked Arlene.’” Stu made one of those old-
