Tim O'Brien - The Nuclear Age

“Et cetera?”

“You know,” she’d say, and smile. “Apply our educations.”

The drift was disquieting. It put a crick in my dreams, I could sense the conclusion, but the real bitterness came in March when Ned Rafferty joined the Committee.

“He’s not a fuzzball,” Sarah said.

“I know.”

“Not a son of a bitch.”

“Sure, I know .”

“And we need him,” she said.

There was no subtle way to express it. Chemical, I suppose—just hate. It was irrational, in a way, because on the surface Rafferty was a genuinely nice person, friendly and courteous, almost formal in the way he’d call people “sir” or “ma’am” without irony or affectation, as if he meant it. He had a solid handshake. He looked you in the eyes. A jock, of course, but he didn’t brag about it, he kept it in reserve, a certain power that was there in his shoulders and arms and gray eyes. It was a modest sort of strength, which is why I hated him. I hated the goddamn modesty. I hated the good manners and the firm handshake and the body mass and the quiet confidence and the way he’d stare at Sarah until she blushed and looked away. Partly, I think, it was the Crazy Horse connection—I couldn’t dismiss the feathers and war paint—but there were other factors too. His obvious affection for Sarah, for instance. They had a history between them, something more than friendship, and although she insisted it was over, I could read the subtext in their body language.

It wasn’t paranoia. A truly nice guy—that’s what I hated most.

When he walked into our strategy session that afternoon, I stood up and let him shake my hand and then backed off. For the next half hour I didn’t say a word.

The meeting, I remember, was in Tina Roebuck’s dorm room, which was small to begin with, and the place was cluttered with empty Coke bottles and dirty dishes and diet books. The air had a sweet oily smell, like scorched butter. For me, though, the really peculiar thing was the room’s décor: All the walls were papered with photographs of fashion models—trim, well-tailored girls out of Vogue and Seventeen , shapely specimens out of Cosmopolitan —and beneath the pictures were little hand-printed notes:

It was somehow touching. Leaning back, I found myself measuring the vast distance between reality and ambition. Tina with her Mars bars and anorexic dreams, Ollie with his short fuse and high-heeled boots. Even Sarah. Or especially Sarah, who wanted to be wanted and soon would be.

And there was Ned Rafferty, too, whom I hated, but whose strength and modesty I would one day come to admire.

That afternoon, however, my thoughts were unkind.

I remember Rafferty sitting on a window ledge, quiet and composed. The conversation had come to departure points. Unfinished business, Sarah was saying. College was one thing but the world was something else. We had to grow up. Time to make commitments. Turning, she looked straight at me. Bombs, she said. The war—did we care? Active or passive? Were we in for the duration? Were we serious? Then she smiled and looked at Rafferty. Her voice was low. She had access to certain resources, she told us. A network. Connections: people and places. First, though, we had to resolve the basic question. In or out?

A stirring little speech, I thought. The ambiguities alone carried weight.

I was considering the risks when Ned Rafferty cleared his throat.

“I’m new at this,” he said. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what you’re saying is we have to put up or shut up. Make a choice. That’s the gist, right?”

And then for the next five minutes he completely dominated the proceedings. A smooth talker, I thought, slow and deliberate, but there was a glibness that made me uneasy. Like grease. The whole time he kept his eyes fixed on Sarah.

“So anyhow,” he’d say, “here’s the gist of things.”

The gist of things: that was his favorite expression. The same phrase over and over, like dripping water. This gist, that gist. It was amazing how long I kept my composure. No doubt I was looking for an opening, some flaw in all that niceness, but the sheer enormity of it surprised me. The gists kept piling up. Whenever Ollie or Tina made a comment, he’d mull it over for a while and then smile and say, “I see what you’re driving at, but what you really mean is this—here’s the gist of it.” A couple of times I almost laughed. I couldn’t understand why Sarah kept nodding and taking notes.

Finally I had to cut him off.

“Hey listen,” I said, “you lost me somewhere. I see what you’re driving at, but what’s the gist of it?”

“Gist?” Rafferty said.

“The nub. The nutshell. I need the goddamn gist.”

A little muscle moved at his jaw. “William,” he said slowly, “I just gave you the gist.”

“You did?”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

For a moment I came close to backing down.

“Well, fine,” I said, “you gave me the gist, but I need the absolute gist. The gist of the gist. You have to step back and boil it all down for me.”

“Now listen—”

“Sum it up, put it in perspective.”

Rafferty’s eyes fell. There was puzzlement in his face, even hurt. I wanted to stop but I couldn’t.

“Nail it down solid,” I said. “The bottom line. I need the ultimate, final gist.”

Sarah stood up.

“Enough,” she said.

“Let’s get to the heart of it. Real fundamental basics.”

“William.”

Something in her voice stopped me. Apparently Ollie felt it, too, because he laughed and then busied himself with a fingernail clipper. Tina Roebuck studied the fashion models across the room.

After a moment Rafferty shrugged.

“A comedian,” he said. “Humor, I can appreciate that.”

“It wasn’t humor,” said Sarah. She looked at me for a long time. “Unnecessary. Whatever it was.”

“A joke,” Rafferty said. “No harm.”

“Harm, bullshit,” she hissed.

I felt some tension. There were things I could’ve said, and wanted to say, but I was already out the door.

That night, in bed, Sarah faced the wall.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You’re not sorry.”

“All right, I’m not. Slimy bastard. The way he looks at you, it’s almost like—” I waited a second, then said, “Are you sleeping with him?”

Sarah rolled sideways.

“And what does that mean?”

“What it means.”

“Cry wolf, William.”

“The truth.”

There was a long quiet. She leaned on her elbow and stared down at me. Her eyes, I thought, were a little puffy.

“Am I sleeping with him?” she said softly. She made it sound like a problem in mathematics. “Well, it’s not something a nice girl talks about, but let’s hypothesize. He likes me, I like him. It’s mutual. I said it before, life has this weird built-in factor called shortness. All this time I’ve been waiting and waiting, for you , just waiting, but the joyride never showed up. So maybe—it’s all hypothetical—maybe I decided to stick out my thumb and pull up my skirt and see if I could stop a little traffic. Conjecture. But what if?”

“I’m asking.”

“Ask.”

“Are you?”

Sarah closed her eyes.

“You know what it is, William? It’s a sickness.”

“Yes or no?”

Again, there was silence.

“Funny thing,” she finally said, “I thought I was sleeping with you . Appearances deceive.” She lay back and watched the shadows. “I care about you, William. A whole lot—too much. But this sickness I mentioned. There’s a name for it. Shall we call it by its name?”