Emily Winslow - The Whole World

I followed her lead across the road and up her staircase. We stood close. We had to; there were too many people in the corridor and the music was loud. We were close enough that the bottles in our hands clinked together as we pulsed to the rhythm unconsciously.

The porter broke it up half an hour later. Students dispersed to their rooms.

“Well, good night, I guess,” Liv said, shrugging. “Thanks for coming anyway.” She was right in front of her door.

I pushed it open. She pulled me in.

Liv stood up. I kissed her on the forehead, like a niece would be kissed.

Ridiculous. She was half-naked.

Her sweater was on the bed. Somehow, I was standing on her bra. I’d tossed it to the floor. First I’d struggled to unhook its clasp, scraping my knuckles on the wall behind her. Then I’d thrown it on the floor, not caring about anything except getting my hands on her skin. In the ensuing tangle it had got under my foot.

The blue cotton was now marked with dirt from my shoe. I picked it up. “Sorry,” I said. She took it, and lifted her shoulders, like she didn’t mind. She covered her mouth and laughed or sneezed, some small sound. Her breasts bounced and she crossed one arm over them. But she didn’t dress. She smiled.

“I have to go,” I said. I did up my trousers. I looked around for my coat and realized, in amazement, that I was still wearing it.

She shivered. I got her sweater from the bed. The coverlet was dented where the sweater had landed, but the rest was all smooth. Everything we’d done had been against the wall. She’d untucked my shirt and rubbed her hands over my stomach. She’d turned us to switch places, to steady my back against the wall, right next to the window well, where the side edge of a short red curtain had tickled my ear.

I offered her the sweater now. I righted the inside-out sleeves and held it out, limp.

“I don’t want to get dressed,” she pouted, again with that smile. She reached out to me, again with that hand; she has soft, avid hands, with short fingernails, and one smooth, cool ring.

“I have to go,” I repeated, backing up and knocking into her fan heater. The corridor must have been empty by then; at least I hoped it would be.

Her hair was wild. The light from the long-armed desk lamp made strange shadows that elongated one of her nipples. Everything that had urged me on had finished. I shouldn’t have done this.

“I have a meeting, Liv,” I lied. “Richard’s expecting me.”

“Isn’t it a little late?” She laughed nervously.

“I meant to see Richard earlier, but you, uh, you distracted me.” Actually, I’d come only to collect my mail and Richard was the last person I’d wanted to see. He wouldn’t approve of what I’d got myself into with Polly. How could I possibly explain this?

“Did I do it right?” she asked.

I stopped breathing. She looked at me so hopefully. She was still bare. She was lovely and waiting.

“I’ve never done that before. Was it okay?” she persisted.

My fingers grazed the door handle.

I exhaled the answer: “Yes,” I finally said. “It was very good. Thank you.”

I got out the door.

Stairs, then the whoosh of the outer doors sliding apart like in a grocery store. I sucked in the cool air outside.

Knock, knock, knock. I looked up. She waved from her window. She had the sweater on now. I wonder how much of us had been visible, or audible, from outside.

I waved back and ducked around to the front of “O” building. It was far too late to call on Richard, but I had to make a show of an appointment, for Liv’s sake. So she wouldn’t think I was escaping her.

The walkway leading out to the street was in full view of her window, so I waited. She’d think Richard had let me in. I stood in the dark against a brick wall. My hands were cold. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my gloves. I’d had them on when I got to Magdalene, but later I’d put bare hands all over her.

I sat on a bench, between the river and an alley with a locked iron gate.

I hid there until I was sure she’d given up on me for the night.

I showered for half an hour. I didn’t usually waste the Chanders’ hot water that way. Nothing about me was as usual, nothing. Polly had been right to run away from me. I evidently wasn’t to be trusted.

I pressed my wet hair with a towel, then rubbed my face, hard. I had to be honest with Liv tomorrow, and early. I couldn’t let her think that this was the start of something.

If she had a phone I would have called her then. Liv was the sort to tell all of her girlfriends, wasn’t she? I had an obligation to spare her the embarrassment of bragging and then being broken up with.

Laughs pumped out of me: “ha-ha-ha!” I hadn’t even got her off. I’d got mine and got out. What would she brag about?

But her face. She’d looked… grateful.

A knock rattled my bedroom door. I wrapped myself in a dressing gown and opened it. There was Aashika. She’s eight.

“You should be asleep,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “But I made you something at school. I heard you in the shower and I waited.”

She offered a carefully painted ceramic tortoise. She’s been studying Darwin and the Galapagos. The paint had glitter mixed in. She held it out with both hands, and I took it.

That look on her face, so pleased and proud that I’d accepted her gift? Liv had looked just like that.

I didn’t recognise her at first. She had on a skirt instead of jeans. The expression on her face was sweet. “Hi,” Liv said softly. I’d never heard her speak softly before.

“You look nice,” I said, only to acknowledge the effort. She clasped her hands under her chin.

Gretchen drummed her fingertips impatiently. I’d finally found Liv there, after missing her at Magdalene, and outside a lecture that had been rescheduled, in between appointments of my own.

“I’m so happy to see you!” Liv said. “But I need to finish up here, and then I have an appointment with my supervisor…”

“Back at Magdalene? I’ll walk you.” Perfect. There would be an end point to cut short her inevitable acrimony when I told her that last night had been a mistake.

She was satisfied too with her own expectations. She bounced as she followed Gretchen. I trailed them into the library. Gretchen opened a first edition of one of the Susan Maud books to the title page. “I received this in the mail yesterday. It had been flagged by the bookseller as having an inscription. Please read it to me.” Her finger stabbed right down onto it, having found the indentations by feel.

Liv said, “To Mickey with gratitude. Linda Paul, 1959.”

Gretchen strained to remember a Mickey she’d never met. Liv packed up notebooks and pens into her bag, out of which she pulled a sheet of paper. “Gretchen, this is a list of my hours. I know the index isn’t quite done yet, but I figured you could pay me for these now…”

“Yes,” said Gretchen absently. “Put it with the mail.” There was a stack of it on a table near the door. “I’ll have a cheque for you when you come next.”

“Oh! Thanks. Yes. But I was wondering if maybe you could deal with these hours now…”

I stared at the handwriting. “Linda didn’t write this,” I said.

“What do you mean she didn’t write it?” Gretchen wanted to know.

“This is Ginny’s handwriting.” The loopy one, same as copied the poem.

“I guess Linda got Ginny to do some of the autographs,” Liv said lightly.

Gretchen turned on her. “Is your time so precious that you weren’t going to tell me?”

I knew that tone. Once, one of her students had plagiarised and she’d dressed him down right in the centre of Magdalene’s First Court, on a warm day when everyone’s windows were open.