Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude

Then she was gone, leaving us shocked into silence under the buzz-saw music.

Karen dropped the rolled dollar she’d held and covered her mouth in theatrical astonishment.

Euclid spoke first: “ What. Was. That. ”

“Ho, snap,” said Arthur. “That’s fucked up.”

“I totally forgot she was there,” I whispered to no one in particular, my mind reeling at the insane mistake.

“Did she see?” said Karen, her black-ringed eyes wide like a bird’s.

“Of course she saw,” said Moira. “What do you think ?”

We knew what we thought, but none of us knew what it meant. A famous Camden story-I was certain Moira at least also knew it-concerned a student dealer at Fish House, a few years earlier, who’d been discreetly warned by the school of an imminent bust by the Vermont Police. A sympathetic faculty member had suggested the dealer lock his door and take a long weekend off campus. The point being: Camden had a monumental stake in protecting us from tangles with the law. Talented and eccentric children shouldn’t be judged by society’s harsh adult standards. Let them be eased through their difficult years-this was the deal implicit in the huge tuition, and in the school’s quarantine deep in the woods.

So what did it mean if one of the little people knew I dealt coke from Oswald Apartment? Maybe nothing. She might not tell. She might not have caught the full implication, anyhow, might not have seen money change hands. It was easy to imagine nothing crucial had occurred, only something freakish and funny. I could hear Runyon’s voice in my head, urging me to understand it that way. I tried not to race through recollection of the words we’d said aloud, the words she might have overheard.

“Well, I consider it appalling,” said Euclid, breaking the long silence. “The notion of keeping a cleaning woman locked in your bathroom as some kind of sexual pawn. I can’t imagine how you thought you’d get away with it.”

“Ew, she was definitely not my sexual pawn,” I said.

“Of course she was,” said Euclid. “You and Arthur both, you’re animals. It’s lucky we created a diversion so she could escape. Were you even intending to give her any food? Were you even intending to give her any drugs ?”

“Hey, man,” said Arthur, getting with the joke now. “Everybody pays.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Euclid.

“Well, I’m glad she’s gone,” said Karen. “Because I have to pee.”

“That would have been a shock,” said Moira.

“Go see if she built a fire,” directed Euclid. “She probably tried to send smoke signals, to others of her kind.”

“Maybe she ate the soap,” suggested Arthur.

The scandal passed, and we resumed our evening’s plot. When Matthew appeared, we recounted the story, competing to exaggerate the details: the woman’s demented scurry, Karen’s nearly wetting her pants, Arthur certain it was narcs and ready to swallow his stash. The five of us were still laughing about it over ten o’clock cassoulet at Le Cheval, courtesy of Karen Rothenberg’s mother’s Mastercard. The next day I described the incident to Runyon, who, as I’d expected, waved it off. And so it was forgotten.

Two weeks later Arthur’s visit was a distant memory for us all, folded behind a dozen other dramas. Moira and I had had our third fling and imploded in misunderstanding, each hurt in a way we could never have articulated, each consoled by newer friends. And as the campus, wreathed in cold and dark, prepared to shut down for the long winter break, the whole term just past dwindled into twee irrelevance. Where were you spending January, that was the question now. Mustique? Steamboat? Well, I was going to Dean Street, but never mind. The future hurtled toward us-who would be our new lovers, in February, when we returned? We had our eyes on a few alluring prospects, ones we’d somehow overlooked the first time. The past term was already mute, and our glories and mistakes there were mute as well.

That was how it felt the afternoon of my conference with my faculty advisor, Tom Sweden, the last day of classes. Sweden was also my sculpture teacher, and he was a typical Camden sculptor, a gruff, inarticulate chain-smoker in a permanent proletarian costume of work boots and plaster-clogged jeans, a bit of a Marlboro Man. We didn’t like one another-I had as much use for his romance of faux poverty and mock illiteracy as he did for mine of faux privilege and mock sophistication. Yet somehow I’d imagined my wit and vigor put Sweden on my side of a line dividing the hipster students and teachers from the square administration. I don’t really know why I thought this, except that I was drunk on college.

Sweden was seated in his wreck of an office in the basement of the arts complex, ringed in a chaos of scrap dowels, overrun ashtrays, and unsorted paperwork. When I arrived, ten minutes late, he was already scowling at a sheaf of pink forms, final evaluations from each of my four classes that term. So he knew, as I did, that I’d failed sociology outright and taken an incomplete from my English professor.

“This ain’t so great,” he said, wrinkling the papers.

“I’ll take care of the incomplete,” I said, approaching the meeting like a negotiation. “I’ve got the paper half-written.” I didn’t have it begun.

Sweden rubbed his bristly chin with stained fingers. Like Brando, he was superior to the part he was playing, and it pained him. He couldn’t fit his deep thoughts to the banal language at hand, so he only frowned.

“I was just more excited about sculpture this term,” I said, trying flattery.

“Yeah, but…” He trailed off, leaving us both guessing.

“And I passed Unorthodox Music,” I pointed out.

Sweden raised an eyebrow. “Dr. Shakti?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, but that ain’t really a class, is it?”

If Sweden didn’t know he was the only one on campus. I kept silent.

“Was there anything…” Sweden kept glancing at the door. “Was there anything, ah, bothering you this term, Dylan?”

“No, I just think it was a period of adjustment and I’ll probably focus better when I come back. On classes and stuff. But nothing’s wrong.”

He scratched his chin again. Perhaps my little speech was enough to get us both out of the conference-he seemed to be weighing this. Then there came a knock on his door.

“Yeah, come in.” Sweden sounded disgruntled, but not surprised.

It was Richard Brodeur, president.

“I thought I’d just run these over myself,” he said, showing Sweden a clutch of folders. Sweden grunted, gestured at his desk. Brodeur dropped the folders into the mess there.

“Richard, uh, Dylan Ebdus,” mumbled Sweden, painfully reluctant with his lines. “We’re just, uh, having ourselves a conference here.”

Brodeur reached for my hand and, as he gripped it, looked deep into my eyes. “Yes,” he said gently. “We’ve met.”

“Sure, hi,” I said.

“Gave you a lift on 9A, didn’t I? In the snow.”

“Yes,” I said.

“How’s your friend?”

“Fine, I think. Fine.”

“Well, look, I shouldn’t interrupt,” said Brodeur abruptly to Sweden. “Those papers aren’t urgent. Get to them whenever.”

“Right,” grimaced Sweden.

There was nothing to interrupt. With Brodeur gone Sweden had little to say. He managed to wish me a happy holiday, and good luck with the paper. He had to light a cigarette before he succeeded in telling me to take care, man . That was apparently all he’d wanted to get across.

The letter arrived less than a week later, in Brooklyn. It was addressed to my father. We were at the breakfast table when Abraham turned it over to me, replaced in its torn envelope, with no more than a dry, “This is for you, I believe.” But the letter had come the day before-Abraham had taken it upstairs and contemplated it for an afternoon and evening before deciding to say nothing.