Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

"Jack." He looked up and the Band teacher who'd supervised the Lola Quartet was standing by their table. Jack hadn't seen him come in.

"Hello, Mr. Winters," he said. He was unsure of the etiquette, postgraduation. Should he have called him Steven? Mr. Winters was talking about Holloway College, the excellence of the program in which Jack was enrolled, how he hoped Jack was taking full advantage of the opportunities before him. A note of wistfulness in his voice.

"I'm proud of you," Mr. Winters said, and Jack managed a smile. His midyear review hadn't gone well. His teachers had noted a spaciness, an inattentiveness in general, an overall lack of improvement. It hadn't occurred to him that flunking out of music school would mean disappointing Mr. Winters, but he saw now that of course it would. Jack called Sasha and Daniel the next night and left messages, but neither of them called back. He returned to Holloway a few days early.

Th e d r i v e from Sebastian to Holloway College took him a little more than ten hours. Jack drove slowly, in no particular rush, stopping every so often to stretch his legs. A part of him wanted to remain suspended between school and home forever. He hadn't played piano at all over the break, and the thought of the hours he needed to spend in the practice rooms made him tired.

The sense of limbo was increased by the landscape he traveled through. He pulled off the interstate into towns that all looked the same to him. He tried to find things to differentiate them, some kind of proof that he was passing through parts of three different states, but there was almost nothing. Only the names of the towns varied, and the towns were like envelopes with all the contents the same. The same gas stations, the same restaurants, the same chain stores with the same logos shining out into the deepening twilight. It was a relief to him at the end of the day to make the last exit off the interstate, to drive along the narrow roads that led up to the college, to turn the corner on the sweeping drive and see the white buildings and lights of Holloway rising up at the top of the hill. At least, he thought, this wasn't a place that could easily be mistaken for somewhere else.

He parked the car and walked up the long pathway to the hall where he lived. The security guard nodded at him when he flashed his identity card. He saw no one else. It was still only the day after Christmas, the building deserted, almost everyone home with their families.

There was a baby crying when Jack stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor. He stood still in the hall for a moment, listening. The presence of a baby in Lewins Hall seemed so impossible that he wondered fleetingly if he might be listening to a ghost: could a baby have died here? Maybe a hundred years ago? The idea of a baby ghost was interesting. The building seemed like the kind of place that would lend itself to hauntings. The crying subsided. Silence descended over the halls. The corridor was so quiet now that it was possible to entertain notions of being the last man on earth as he walked past closed doors, but when he opened the door to their room Deval was there, sitting on Jack's bed with a baby in his arms. He'd forgotten that Deval was staying at school through the holidays. The child, who had a wisp of dark hair and a face red from screaming, was drifting off into a fitful sleep.

"Congratulations?" Jack said.

" Thank you. It's a girl."

" Whose is it?"

"A friend of yours came by," Deval said. "She brought a baby."

"I don't think I have any friends with babies."

"Oh," Deval said, "I think you do. Unless she's some kind of con artist and she's just using us for our shower facilities."

Jack dropped his bag on the floor and sank into an armchair they'd rescued from a dumpster together a month or two earlier. "What's my friend's name?"

"Anna. She's in the shower."

"Anna?" The only Anna he knew was Gavin's lost girlfriend. He was having a hard time imagining the chain of events that would result in her appearing in his dorm room in South Carolina with a baby. "Anna Montgomery?"

"I think so," Deval said. "I can't remember her last name, but it was something like that." He was smiling at the sleeping baby. "I got the baby to stop crying," he said. "I think I should get a medal or something."

"She just came today?"

"An hour ago. You mind if she spends the night? I already told her it was okay."

"I don't mind," Jack said. The door opened just then. It was Anna, but an Anna greatly changed. She looked older, far more tired, and she'd cut off all her hair; it was dark with water but he could see that she'd dyed it blond.

"Jack," she said. She still sounded the same.

"Anna. What are you doing here?"

She smiled instead of answering him. "Is it okay if I stay the night?"

"It's fine with me," he said. Anna reached for the baby. Jack didn't

know much about babies, but it seemed to him that this one was very small. "How old is it?" he asked.

"She," Anna said softly. "Not 'it.' " She was gazing at the baby's closed eyes. "Her name's Chloe. She's three weeks old."

"That's young," Jack said. " Where are you going with it? I mean her. Sorry. I didn't know you had a baby."

"I'm on my way to Virginia," she said. "My sister has a friend there who I can stay with for a while."

"But I just saw your sister over the break," Jack said. "She didn't say anything about. weren't you with an aunt? I heard you'd gone to live with your aunt in Georgia." He'd also heard a crazy rumor that she'd had a baby and it had been stillborn, but he decided not to bring this up.

"I've been in Utah," Anna said.

"Utah? Why Utah?"

"Long story," Anna said, in a tone that made it clear she didn't want to tell it.

She slept that night in Jack's bed. Jack slept on the floor. The baby slept on the floor too, lying on her back on the seat cushion from the armchair. The baby kept waking up crying. Toward morning Jack drifted off to the sounds of Anna singing the baby to sleep, a lullaby about a night bus out of Salt Lake City, and when he woke he was alone and the room was filled with sunlight. It was almost noon. He showered and set off in search of breakfast. In the dining hall he sat alone with a sandwich in a sea of plastic chairs and then wandered the campus looking for someone to talk to, anyone, but the only people he saw were security guards and the maintenance crew and they all seemed busy. Later he ran into three other students whom he knew— two violinists and a singer, from places too far away or from families too poor to travel home for the winter break— and he sat with them for a while in the cafeteria. The singer, Bernadette, was talking about George Gershwin's "Summertime." She thought it was about death. Her argument seemed solid to him and the conversation was interesting but all his thoughts were of Anna. Sixteen or seventeen years old with her impossibly young infant, traveling by means unknown up the coast to Virginia. The dorm room was still empty when he returned there in the late afternoon. Could Deval have gone with her to Virginia? It was the only explanation he could think of.

De v a l w a s still gone when Jack woke in the morning. He ate alone in the cafeteria again and wandered the campus without finding anyone to talk to, but Bernadette called him in the late afternoon. "It's me," she said, as if they'd ever spoken on the phone before, and then added, "Bernadette."

"The Summertime girl," he said, and caught himself wondering how she'd obtained his number.

She giggled. "You must think I'm incredibly morbid," she said. "But listen, I'm having a party tonight."

"A party? Seriously? Is there anyone left on campus?"

"That's why I'm having it," she said. "We should all stick together. It's cold."

It was nice to think of not being alone for another long evening, so when night fell he put on a clean shirt and left the dorm. It was an unusually cold night, the coldest he'd ever seen. There was a light frost and the grass sparkled underfoot. Jack wasn't sure that he'd encountered frost outside a freezer before. He knew what it was but couldn't stop staring at it, stooped down once to touch it. The sparkling turned to cold water on his fingertips. Jack stood for a moment in the middle of the Commons, looking up at the stars. He'd meant to practice today but hadn't. It had been two weeks since he'd played the piano and nothing about the thought of sitting down at a keyboard was appealing to him. He closed his eyes for a moment. He had a feeling of slippage, of pieces coming apart around him. He opened his eyes quickly and he was still on the Commons, the air cold on his face. There was movement around one of the girls' dormitory buildings at the far end of campus, an impression of voices, he hurried on and in a few minutes he was safely among other people, fifteen or twenty students in the suite where Bernadette and her roommates lived. He hadn't thought there were this many people on campus.