Paullina Simons - Red Leaves

Men are good in one way but bad in many, wrote Aristotle. Kristina wondered about that. To her badness had always meant lack or suppression of conscience.

Gently touching Jim on the neck, Kristina kissed the top of his head. ‘Jimbo, I’m sorry.’ And she was sorry for innumerable things. ‘I just don’t feel like studying right now. Come back soon, okay? We’re going to have cake.’

‘Yeah,’ he muttered without looking up.

* * *

They were gathered around the complex torte Conni had made for Albert. The cake had uneven puffs of mocha icing, ground nuts sprinkled over the top, some chocolate chips, and twenty-two candles.

Conni, though dressed up for the occasion, did not seem to want to celebrate. Underneath the perky pink lipstick, her lips were tense, and the blue eye shadow couldn’t hide the hardness around her eyes.

The five of them were looking at the cake as if it were a slaughtered lamb. Aristotle, however, gazed at the cake as if it were the last piece of food on earth.

Frankie Absalom arrived. Usually it was hard to get Frankie out of Epsilon House, but there was little that Frankie wouldn’t do for Albert, his old roommate.

Albert had moved out of the room he’d shared with Jim and in with Frankie during the last semester of the freshman year when Jim and Albert decided it would be best if they didn’t room together anymore. Now Albert had a single a couple of doors down from Kristina, and Frankie was an Epsilon brother.

Kristina glanced at Conni, who forced a happy smile and started to sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Everyone sang, including Albert, who sang loudest of all.

‘Albert!’ exclaimed Conni. ‘Make a wish, and blow out the candles. But make a really good wish,’ she said suggestively, standing close to him with her hand in his back pocket. Kristina thought Conni was trying too hard to act normal. What was bugging her, anyway?

Albert glanced at Conni to his left, and Kristina to his right, and Jim across the table from him, and said, ‘A really good wish, huh? Well, all right.’ He closed his eyes and blew out the candles, every one of them. Conni and Kristina clapped, Frankie hollered and began singing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,’ while Jim just stood and halfheartedly said, ‘Yeah.’ Aristotle barked twice.

Kristina stood stiffly as Conni fussed over the cake and plates and plastic forks. She did not want to be here. The high of this afternoon, first with Howard and then with Spencer, was replaced by depressing thoughts. Conni had told her a few days ago that Albert and she were thinking of getting engaged. Oh, that’s nice, said Kristina. How nice. Are you going to have a party? Engaged to be married? Gee, that’s swell.

And then Jim had been acting awful today. Never a particularly affectionate guy, Jim had been acting stranger and stranger. Tonight, he doesn’t even want to stand next to me, Kristina thought sadly. Some couple. Maybe we can become engaged to be married.

Frankie was talking heated nonsense to Jim, but then Frankie always talked in a heated nonsensical manner that reflected his eccentric attire - plaid shirts and striped pants, hot neon track suits, and jeans so big they had to be held up by rainbow-colored suspenders. Conni handed a piece of cake to Kristina, who ate it, nodded, and said, mmm, it’s good. The cake was dry and terrible. She watched Albert’s face when he put the cake in his mouth and chewed slowly. Oh, he said, this is not bad at all, not bad at all. And Conni stood beside him and beamed, her hand never detaching itself from his shirt. She laughed in delight.

Conni’s high-pitched, squeaky voice grated on Kristina, but her laugh was infectious, and Kristina liked that. Conni also made it a point to dress sexy. She wore black bras and black underwear, bustiers and too tight jeans, and occasionally stockings and garters under her skirts. Kristina felt that sometimes Conni dressed to upstage her, because Kristina never dressed up. She was a jock and dressing up was uncool. Track suits and spandex shorts, and leggings, and Dartmouth sweatshirts, were cool. Jeans were cool. Basketball players did not wear bustiers.

She and Conni had been best friends until Kristina started playing basketball. That’s what Kristina said when asked what had happened to their friendship. But it was a lie. It wasn’t basketball that had happened to their friendship.

Why is she laughing so loudly? thought Kristina as she sat there trancelike, not laughing at all. Jim, too, was stone-faced. Albert bantered with Frankie, flirted with Conni, and when he hoped Conni wasn’t looking, pushed his cake toward Kristina, who immediately pushed the plate back to him. Kristina lifted up her eyes and saw Conni watching Albert push his cake plate toward her. The laughter faded in Conni’s blue eyes. Kristina ignored the plate, didn’t even glance at it.

They had all chipped in and bought Albert a Pierre Cardin watch, because he was never on time, anywhere. Rather, Conni and Jim - the only ones with money - chipped in.

Kristina wished Jim would stop looking at her with that unhappy expression. What right does he have to be unhappy? She thought. He studies as much as I practice, he works at the Review as much as I work at Red Leaves. He is the one who never wants to sleep over because he has to be in bed by eleven.

Trying not to look at Jim, Kristina sat across from him at the table, an old university-issue Formica table with steel reinforced legs. She felt bad for him without even knowing why. Kristina fed Aristotle the rest of her cake, and the rest of Albert’s cake, too. They got up; other people were waiting to use the kitchen facilities. The party was over.

The Hinman lounge was a semicircular TV room and kitchenette, attached like a peninsula to the front of Hinman Hall. The kitchenette, or the ironically named Hinman Café, didn’t even have a refrigerator. It had an ice maker, where the students stored their drinks, an electric stove, a microwave, and dirty dishes in the sink. The chairs in the TV lounge were so old they must have come with John Holmes Hinman, Class of 1908.

Kristina and Jim sat in the low maroon chairs, while Conni and Albert sat together on the torn brown sofa, and watched the 32-inch Mitsubishi. Other residence halls had rear-projection screens. Not Hinman. Kristina remembered Mass Row fondly, where in their freshman year they had study lounges, separate kitchens, and a TV lounge with a 50-inch Sony in it.

Conni held Albert’s hand. She was always holding some part of Albert, Kristina thought uncharitably, and then caught herself and felt ashamed. She is his girlfriend. That’s what she’s supposed to do.

Frankie had gone back to Epsilon House. Aristotle lay on the floor. The four friends watched TV and didn’t talk, though Kristina could recall a time when they gabbed so much that other students often asked them to leave. They usually left, and went up to one of their rooms and played cards on the floor and argued politics and philosophy and God and death. Or they argued about movies that no one ever got to see, but argued about in principle anyway. Most of the arguments were in principle.

Only the history major Jim wanted facts in his arguments. Albert would try to explain that philosophy and religion majors were not that interested in facts, but Jim didn’t understand. Conni was a sociology major, and Kristina wasn’t convinced Conni knew the difference between fact and theory. When they first became roommates, Conni had once looked up innocently at Kristina and said, ‘Krissy, what’s socialism?’

A year earlier the four of them discussed the party conventions, then the presidential debates, and then the lurid revelations in Penthouse about a would-be president.