Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

“Oh, no,” she groaned. “I’m the other one.”

“There are two of you?”

“There aren’t two of you, are there?” she asked hopefully.

Since there was one of him, they shared. Lyndy wanted to be a lawyer. They were both interested in their future careers, planned to stay single until they were well established in their professions, and then get married and have one child each. Or twins. They saw other men besides Daniel, and while Jay Jay seemed jealous and Robbie admiring, Daniel sometimes had the disquieting feeling that his sex life was only comedy relief for most of the people in the dorm. If only they hadn’t been identical twins.… It was like a joke. Still, it was unusual, and he had to admit he liked the idea. Kate teased him about it, good-naturedly, and asked him whether he planned to take the two of them out together on their birthday.

“They have the same birthday, you know,” she said.

“Then they can go out with someone else.”

“What a rat! You can’t screw them and then not take them out on their birthday. And you have to buy them a present.” She giggled. “Give them the same thing in different colors.”

Robbie had practically moved into Kate’s room now, and they were inseparable. Daniel decided to wait and see if their romance survived the term, and if it did, then he would suggest they all use Robbie’s room to play the game. He didn’t like having to use his own room for everything: studying, sleeping, entertaining the twins — who roomed together in a different dorm — and playing the game too. What he liked least about college life was the lack of privacy. At night everyone played their stereos, all full-blast, and people thundered up and down the halls and talked in loud voices. If you wanted to study you needed to almost hypnotize yourself, or buy earplugs, or go to the library, which was a nuisance. The library was just a ten-minute run from the dorms, but it closed at eleven, and now that the weather had turned sharply colder and it rained often, a chill, unpleasant rain, people liked to stay put.

Daniel had always been a loner. That was why he liked to run. For his mandatory gym class he chose track, although he disliked having to compete in something he only wanted to do for pleasure. Robbie was still on the swimming team, Jay Jay was taking fencing — mainly because he liked the paraphernalia, particularly the mask — and Kate was continuing her karate. None of them planned to go home for the brief Thanksgiving holiday. Kate said it would be too expensive to fly to California and she didn’t want to spend her whole vacation driving to get there and back. Jay Jay and Robbie didn’t want to go home to see their families. And Daniel thought it would be nice for the four of them to stay in the nearly empty dorm and play the game every day. The others agreed happily.

They all told their parents they were going camping, so as not to hurt their feelings.

On Thanksgiving day they ate turkey sandwiches washed down with beer, played the game for nine straight hours, and then went out to take a walk in the cold night air to clear their heads. They walked past the huge, dark dorms, where only a few lights showed in windows, past the empty class buildings of the Grant campus, and along the narrow sidewalks that led into the town. Small houses were set side by side on the outskirts of Pequod, each with its car in the driveway, and inside these houses families were finishing their Thanksgiving dinners. Daniel could see them through some of the windows: sitting around dining tables or watching television. In one house he saw a father and son playing cards under the light of a lamp in front of a picture window, and he suddenly felt very lonely. He was sorry he hadn’t gone home for the holiday. There wouldn’t be many more family times — then he’d be an adult and out in the world alone. In the eyes of the world he was an adult already.

Ahead of him Kate and Robbie were walking with their arms around each other. Daniel wondered how long it would last. He liked Robbie, you couldn’t not like Robbie — but he just wasn’t enough for Kate; she was special. This was just fun and games. Not that there was anything wrong with that.… And there was Jay Jay, all alone, in his fat down coat and Mickey Mouse Club hat, looking like a kid; Jay Jay who had never been a kid. Daniel felt a wave of sad affection for Jay Jay. Really, when you thought about it, Jay Jay had nobody to love but his mynah bird.

And what about me? Daniel thought. When he’d been very young he had been a devotee of the TV show Star Trek, and he’d always identified with Mr. Spock, the logical, objective, half-alien with no human feelings. Now, at nineteen, he wondered if he was turning into that sort of creature. He’d never been in love, never felt really insecure, never been hurt. Whenever he was disappointed he could always reason it out with common sense. Maybe it was better to be someone like Kate, willing to care enough about someone that she could take the risk of having her world come smashing down. Better to be Robbie, walking around with that goony look on his face, carried away with his dream of romance even if he knew it wouldn’t last. Maybe even better to be Jay Jay, always living on the edge, looking for excitement, never satisfied. It was better than being Mr. Spock.

But Daniel had never found anyone who seemed the right one to fall in love with. There was always something wrong with her — she was too silly, too demanding, too unfeeling, always too something. Sex was easy for him, but love seemed impossible.

On special occasions his mother always said: “Next time …” and made a wish. “Next time we’ll celebrate for you. ” She would pick out one person whose turn it seemed to be to have something nice happen and she would say her little charm to him.

Next time … Daniel said to himself, and wondered.

The weather turned just after Thanksgiving, as if winter could not hold off any longer. Chill winds blew, and it snowed. All dressed alike, in their down coats or jackets, jeans, boots, scarves wrapped around their faces, the students trudging from class to class seemed like the inhabitants of some totalitarian country; asexual, dogged, unfrivolous. Underneath their colorless uniforms, however, they seethed with life. People fell in love and out of love, they had food fights in the cafeteria, they gave impromptu parties where they drank and smoked whatever they could get their hands on and shared without reservation, they surrounded themselves with the music that spoke to them of their own inarticulate dreams — and they always studied, in a constant state of terror. It was important to get good marks, because after you graduated you would have to make a living. Most of them tried to make plans. The world seemed both open to them and closed. Open because anything was possible, but closed because it was so hard to get a job. They wanted success, fame, riches; and if that was not to be then at least they wanted security. The world was so insecure, there was little to believe in, but they would have money. People didn’t protest very much this year at Grant, although there was one student who stood outside the library every morning, her face raw with cold, and shouted: “Save the whales!” At Grant there was room for everyone.

Jay Jay felt he was losing his mooring. Everyone he cared about had someone to hold on to, but he was alone. He sat in his warm room and talked to Merlin, his best friend. “Poor Jay Jay,” Jay Jay said. “Poor Jay Jay.”

“Poor Jay Jay,” Merlin said, finally.

“Speak to me,” Jay Jay said.

“Birds can’t talk,” Merlin said sternly.

“Where’s Jay Jay?”