Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City

It was strange that a tour group from Europe would want to see St. Louis. Then again, the people Luisa had met in France hadn’t seemed to know what a boring place it was. Even the grownups had thought she must have a great old time living in San Louie and listening to the blues every night on a riverboat. People in Europe were convinced that St. Louis was a really hot town.

Spilling out along the front window of Dexter’s was a crowd of party people, loud people in their early twenties, people who instinct told Luisa weren’t professionals or good students. They clutched drinks. They laughed, their hairdos frosted flamingo pink by the glaring neon logo. Luisa looked in through the window. The place was packed. She hesitated, nervous, her hands in her pockets.

A man in a white shirt like hers had stepped out of the crowd. He had a foreign face, she almost guessed Algerian, except he was too decent-looking. He raised his eyebrows as if he knew who she was. She gave him a feeble smile. He spoke. “Are you looking—”

But her heart had jumped and she’d pushed through the doorway, hopping a little to keep her balance in the undergrowth of feet and shins. She squirmed and ducked laterally, listening for French. All she heard was English. Every word was a laugh. In every partying cluster there seemed to be one stocky woman, shorter and more flushed than the rest, who kept joking through her drink and almost spraying it. Near the blunt corner of the bar, where the crowd knotted up tightly, Luisa came to a dead stop. She wasn’t tall enough for a good view of the tables and booths, and she couldn’t move to reach them. And somebody hadn’t taken a shower this morning. She blocked her nose from inside and inched closer to the bar. Here she recognized a face in profile, but it wasn’t Paulette. It was a boy from high school. Doug? Dave? Duane. Duane Thompson. He’d graduated two years ago. He had both hands on the bar and a beer in front of him. He turned, suddenly, as if he felt her looking, and she gave him a feeble smile. His smile was even feebler.

She stuck her elbow in a fat man’s midriff and forged into the sitting area. Now she could see all the tables and still no Paulette. A waitress came careening by. “Excuse me—” Luisa caught her arm. “Is there a group of French people in here?”

The waitress opened her mouth incredulously.

Luisa had that sinking stood-up feeling in her stomach. She figured it was time to go back home, and she would have left if the Algerian hadn’t had his face pressed up against the front window. He was still acting like he had something in particular to say to her. As creeps went, he was handsome. She turned back to the tables, and then to the bar. Duane Thompson was staring at her. All this attention! She pushed her way to the bar, ducked under a shoulder, and faced him. “Hi,” she shouted. “You’re Duane Thompson.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “You’re Luisa Probst.”

“Right. I’m looking for some French people in here. Have you seen any French people?”

“I just came in a couple minutes ago.”

“Oh,” she shouted. She cast a futile glance into the haze. When she was a sophomore, Duane Thompson had been a senior. He’d gone out with a girl named Holly, one of those artsy liberal types who wore brocaded smocks and no bra and didn’t eat lunch in the cafeteria. Duane had been blond, shaggy, thin. He’d had his hair cut since then. He was wearing a jean jacket, a preppy button-down, black Levi’s and white sneakers. Luisa also noticed that he had the yellowish remains of a black eye, which made her uneasy. If you didn’t see a person every day in the hall or cafeteria, you didn’t know what kind of life they had, what kind of problems.

“Is there another room?” she shouted.

Duane spun around, surprised. “You’re still here.”

“Is there another room downstairs or something?”

“No, this is it.”

“Can I stand here with you?”

He looked down his shoulder at her, smiling as he frowned. “What for?”

Insulted and unable to answer, she took a step towards the door. The Algerian was hanging just outside, watching her. She gave him a vomitous look, took a step back, and plunked her elbow down on the bar. A bartender in a shiny shirt stopped in front of her. “I can’t serve you,” he said.

“What about him?” Luisa cocked her head towards Duane.

“Him? He’s a friend.”

“You’re not twenty-one, are you?” she asked Duane.

“Not exactly.”

The bartender moved away. It was time for Luisa to leave. But she didn’t want to go home.

“Are you waiting for somebody?” she asked Duane.

“No, not really.”

“You want to walk me to my car?”

His expression grew formal. “Sure. I’ll be glad to.”

Outside, after all the smoke, the air tasted like pure oxygen. The Algerian had left, probably to hide in the back seat of Luisa’s car. She and Duane walked in silence down Euclid. She wondered whether he was attached to someone.

“So,” she said, “do you, like, live around here?”

“I have an apartment near Wash U. I just moved out of a dorm.”

“You go to school there?”

“I did, but I dropped out.”

He didn’t look like a dropout, but she was cool enough to say only, “Recently?”

“A week ago Tuesday.”

“You really dropped out?”

“I barely even matriculated.” He was slowing down, perhaps wondering which of the cars parked on Euclid was hers.

“Don’t you love that word?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, not sounding like he loved it. “They gave me sophomore standing for my year in Munich—I was in Munich last year.”

“I just got back from Paris.”

“Was it fun?”

“Oh, non-stop, non-stop.” Luisa nodded him into the alley.

“This is your car?”

“Sorry, but. It’s my mother’s.” She stuck her hands in her back pockets and looked into his face. There was a meaningful pause, but it went on too long. Duane was very cute, his eyes deep-set and blackened in the dim light. She remembered the bruise. “What’d you do to your eye?”

He touched his eye and turned away.

“Or shouldn’t I ask.”

“I ran into a door.”

He said this as if it was a joke. Luisa didn’t get it. “Well, thanks for walking me here.”

“Sure, you bet.”

She watched him head back up the alley. What an obtuse person. Luisa would have jumped at the chance to jump in a car with someone like herself. She unlocked the door and got in, started the engine, gunned it. She was quite annoyed. Now she had to drive home and sit around and watch TV and be bored. She hadn’t even explained what she was doing down here in the first place. Duane probably thought she’d come looking for a fun time and was going home disappointed. She drove up the alley and turned onto Euclid and pulled up towards the bar.

Duane was on the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette. Luisa pressed the button for the passenger-side window. “You need a ride someplace?” she yelled.

He reacted with such surprise that the cigarette sprang sideways from his hand and hit a building, showering orange sparks.

“You need a ride someplace?” she said again, stretching painfully to keep her foot on the brake while she leaned and opened the door.

Duane hesitated and then got in.

“You scared me,” he said.

She stepped on the gas. “What are you, paranoid or something?”

“Yeah. Paranoid.” He leaned back in the seat, reached out the open window, and adjusted the extra mirror. “My life’s gotten kind of weird lately.” He pushed the mirror every which way. “Do you know Thomas Pynchon?”

“No,” Luisa said. “Do you know Stacy Montefusco?”