Teddy Wayne - Loner

I stopped walking. “I have to be somewhere,” I said — I had nowhere to be, nothing to do, all I wanted was to continue even this seemingly mundane conversation forever—“but if you’re having trouble, I’d be happy to help you come up with a topic later.”

Your eyes blinked at me once, as if you were taking my measurements for something. Your irises were three distinct hues: a fine outer ring of grayish blue like an overcast ocean sky that yielded to springtime emerald before melting into a striated core the color of bourbon. I couldn’t meet them for more than a second or two.

“How about Lamont at nine?” you asked.

Sara spent half her nights there. But Widener Library closed at ten, and there was no good alternative, other than my room, which I didn’t have the temerity to suggest.

“Works for me,” I said.

After getting a sandwich at Au Bon Pain, I holed up in my room to reread Daisy Miller along with the secondary critical texts Samuelson had assigned. I graffitied the pages with notes for once, just like Sara did.

I texted her that I’d be forgoing dinner to work on an essay for my art history class. “Good luck! I’m feeling a cold coming on ,” she wrote back. She was perpetually afflicted with some mild ailment, a sniffle or cough or epidermal reaction. A plastic kit in her room housed a pharmacy of purple syrups, nasal sprays, blister-pack tablets. The sight of her blowing her nose or swallowing an anti-diarrheal pill always made me consider how poorly she would fare if she’d been born in another time, weeded out by natural selection. Her sneezes, induced by a plethora of allergens, came in quadrupled, body-quaking blasts that pierced the eardrum and embarrassed me by association. You must have heard them through the door.

“Aww, feel better!” I replied.

As I left Matthews at 8:40 to arrive at Lamont early, I heard my name.

“Where are you going?” Sara’s voice echoed in the entryway. I looked back as she sped downstairs to catch me, tissue in hand, her nostrils ruddy and chapped.

“To work on my essay. What about you?”

“CVS.” She honked into the tissue, examining the deposit before folding it up. “I ran out of zinc lozenges.”

“That sucks,” I said, pushing the door open.

“Pun in tended,” she chirped. “Want to come with me?”

A detour to CVS would set me back ten minutes, maybe more. If there were no delays and I hurried, I would just make it to Lamont by nine.

“I should really get going on this essay,” I said.

“Please?” She pouted. “I’m going out of my mind — I haven’t talked to a single person today.”

The demerits for denying her this small courtesy would not be worth it in the long run. This is what chivalrous boyfriends did, and that’s what I was becoming: a boyfriend who held doors, who insisted upon paying, who told her she looked nice before she went out — grooming myself for the day I could extend this behavior to you.

“Okay, let’s go.” I clucked my tongue sympathetically. “Poor, sick Sara.”

Wandering the fluorescent aisles of CVS in search of zinc, Sara recapped the highlights of her most recent conversation with her grandmother. I pulled my phone a few inches out of my pocket: 8:48. Upon locating the medication, Sara studied the ingredient lists on two different packages, the now-familiar dimple forming on her forehead.

“The question is, should I get the generic brand or the real kind?” she asked herself.

I pictured you standing outside Lamont, wondering where that loser from your class could be, who did he think he was.

“They’re the same exact ingredients, but I always feel like the real one is better,” she reasoned.

“Get the real one, then.”

She struggled to fit the small hole at the top of the generic bag over its metal peg. “I’ll do it,” I said, taking it from her and hanging it up myself.

“Wait.” She shook her head. “This is silly. They’re the same, and the generic is cheaper.”

“Fine.” I pulled it back off the peg. “I’ll buy it for you,” I offered, to expedite the process, as I headed toward the checkout. An elderly woman monopolized the only cashier, paying with exact change, shakily counting aloud her nickels and pennies.

“Do you want to donate a dollar to pediatric cancer research?” the cashier asked when I paid.

“No,” I said. “And I don’t need a receipt.”

“What’s the hurry?” Sara asked as I raced outside.

“I’m eager to get back to this essay.”

“A few minutes isn’t going to kill your motivation,” she said.

The peremptory orange hand of the pedestrian signal had just lit up and a few cars were approaching from down Mass Ave.

“You’re right,” I said, putting my own hand on her lower back, resisting the urge to push her more forcefully. “Let’s cross.”

I guided her across the street. We had to break into a trot halfway to avoid being struck. It gave me a small rush.

“David!” Sara said when we made it to the curb. “We almost got hit!”

“We were fine,” I said.

We drew up to Matthews at two minutes to nine. If you were leaving from there at an appropriate time, you might see us and, thinking it was no big deal, tell Sara what we were up to.

“Feel better,” I said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I’ll walk you over. Lamont, right?”

Widener closed in an hour, which she knew, so I couldn’t reasonably pretend I was going there and then wait until she left. “You don’t need to walk me.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You really shouldn’t be out in the cold if you’re sick.”

The entryway door opened and my throat closed. But it was just a student from China I’d seen around the dorm.

“You know that’s a myth,” said Sara. “It’s because people are inside more during cold weather that germs spread. So, really, I should avoid the indoors.”

“Look, I don’t want to catch your cold,” I said, more brusquely than I’d intended. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. But I’m afraid of getting sick when I have a big night ahead of me.”

“No, I get it,” she said.

“Get some sleep,” I told her, and leaned down to give her a peck on the top of her head. Her hair felt like crunchy grass on my lips.

You were neither outside nor in the lobby when I arrived at the library at 9:05. I sat on the front steps, afraid you’d impatiently left, forgotten, or blown it off.

With each passing minute I grew more convinced you’d shown up and departed when I was ensnared at CVS. Your paper was due tomorrow; I wouldn’t get another opportunity to work with you like this. I should never have agreed to go with Sara.

You showed up nearly half past the hour.

“Sorry,” you greeted me, not looking all that apologetic. I suppose this was one of the privileges of being who you were: you didn’t have to care, because you knew I, or whoever was waiting, would be overjoyed simply to have an audience with you. Your cheeks were flushed from the cold and your hair was in slight disarray, like you’d recently woken up.

“No problem, I just got here.” I scrambled to my feet and opened the door for you.

I proposed we go to the less crowded second floor. In the event of a surprise visit from Sara we would be harder to find. If she did somehow see us, I would later tell her you and I ran into each other and decided to work together. The counterintuitive benefit of your preternatural beauty was that our meeting would prompt no suspicion, as it might have with someone closer to my weight class.