Teddy Wayne - Loner

You took a long drag and handed me your pack and lighter. “Suzanne—David,” you said, and exhaled through your nose.

“Ah, famous David,” said gap-toothed Suzanne. It wasn’t clear if this was sarcasm or if you’d actually discussed me with her.

“Nice to meet you.” I clumsily pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and looked at you. “Did you get anything back recently?”

“What?”

“Did you get anything back? Like in terms of school?”

“It’s okay,” Suzanne said, directing a small smile at me. “I know about your little study session.”

So you had talked about me with her.

“I got an A,” you said nonchalantly, as if this were something you’d expected all along.

“An A,” I repeated in a similarly measured tone, more pleased with this than I’d been with the A on my Moby-Dick essay. I puffed out an anemic em dash of smoke. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“David, are you free tonight?” Suzanne asked.

“He doesn’t want to go to a final club,” you said curtly.

“You’re going to a finals club?” I asked.

“Fin al club,” you quietly corrected me.

“Just a casual thing,” Suzanne said. “Not a big do. Probably boring.”

An invitation to an exclusive establishment with the elite members of my class — on a Tuesday night, no less, when all other Harvard students would be toiling away on problem sets and response papers. My foray into academic dishonesty was reaping unanticipated rewards.

“But I thought your Ethical Reasoning essay wasn’t due till next week,” said Sara, sitting cross-legged in sweatpants at her desk chair.

“It isn’t.” I thumbed through the Nietzsche reader I’d brought along with me for show. “But it’s twelve pages and I want to get started now. I’m really sorry.” I patted her on the head. We weren’t much for physical affection, and I worried that anything more would come off as blatant overcompensation, the husband who gives his wife a bouquet of roses after consorting with his mistress.

“I’ll give away my ticket and study with you,” she said. “They weren’t that expensive.”

“Don’t — you were really looking forward to the Philharmonic,” I said. “Besides, I’ll be distracted if you’re with me, and I’m already anxious about it.”

“But you never get anxious about work. It’s actually kind of annoying.”

She had me again.

“If I don’t usually get anxious, it’s because I plan ahead, like this.” I summoned a wounded look. “I know you think everything comes easy to me, but I actually have to work hard. It’s not always fun to be me.”

She rested a hand on mine. “I understand,” she said. “I’m the same as you, really.”

“Why don’t you invite that girl in your Chilean seminar you want to be better friends with?” I asked. “Lila?”

“ Lay la.”

“Layla,” I repeated. “You’ll have a much better time with fun new Layla than with boring old David.”

“You’re not boring,” she said. “Or at least you’re not old. Boring young David. Boring young David and Sara.”

Grinning, she pulled the drawstring of her sweatpants taut and strummed it.

“I should get out of here,” I said. “I’ll see you at dinner, okay?”

“Okay, Grandpa,” she said.

I arrived at the brick Colonial building near the upperclassman River Houses a few minutes before the time Suzanne had given me. I didn’t know if I was supposed to ring the bell or wait for you, and couldn’t see inside; the ground-floor windows were obstructed by curtains.

Standing by the entrance, I struck an indifferent pose as two girls came along and rang the bell. The door opened and they disappeared inside. A moment later it reopened and an Indian guy leaned out.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

It was well-known to everyone on campus, even the out-of-the-loop Matthews Marauders, that nonmember males couldn’t enter a final club unless invited; women, on the other hand, just had to meet certain physical requirements.

“My name should be on the list,” I said, sinking my voice an octave deeper. “David Federman.”

“We don’t have a list,” he said. “Who are you with?”

“It’s not a member,” I said. “But—”

He shut the door.

Twenty minutes later it opened again, and this time you and Suzanne spilled out, unlit cigarettes dangling from your lips. Under the yolky haze of an overhead lantern your hair gathered warmer tones, the butterscotch yellows of my van Gogh wheat fields.

“Oh,” Suzanne said, noticing me. “Did they not let you in?”

“I just got here.” My new line for all denials. Not I didn’t do it or I don’t recall or I can neither confirm nor deny but I just got here, I’m barely here, my restroom graffiti tag is “David wasn’t here.”

Without my asking, you passed me the smoking apparatuses. This time I opened the flue of my lungs a little, not so much that I’d cough. I grew lightheaded and reverted to simulation. Even a fraudulently inhaled cigarette, I was discovering, conferred upon the smoker divided attention, an interior life more compelling than the one outside, alleviating the burden of generating conversation.

Suzanne hugged herself with her free arm and shivered. “It’s fucking freezing out here,” she said.

“Do you want my jacket?” I offered. I’d broken out my winter parka for the nippy evening.

Suzanne gave it a once-over. “Thanks, I’m all right.”

“Okay, this is too cold,” you said, flicking your cigarette into the street. Suzanne and I did the same.

A front of temperate air embraced us as we entered the building. It wasn’t the human swamp that smothered dorm parties but well-stoked warmth, the cozy heat of hissing prewar radiators. “He’s with us,” Suzanne told the Indian guy.

This was no sophomoric party in a freshman dorm, with its frenzied frottage of ephebes like so many molecules in a chemical reaction, its deafening Top 40 songs, its disembodied arms holding out red Solo cups by the keg like baby sparrows squalling for worms. Upperclassmen mingled around button-tufted leather sofas and armchairs as the Kinks played at a soothing volume. Drinks were dispensed at a brass-rail bar. The walls featured framed black-and-white photos of notable alumni and vintage Harvard. From a far corner came the periodic crack of colliding billiard balls.

Having assumed there was a dress code, I’d worn the same outfit as I had to my college interview at New York’s Harvard Club: a check-patterned button-down, my single necktie, beige chinos, and black patent leather dress shoes. But I was the only one in a tie. Hardly anyone even had a blazer. For the most part the guys were in jeans, sneakers, and boots. I contemplated loosening my tie, but worried this would call more attention to myself, an exhausted middle-manager father home from the office.

I trailed you and Suzanne to a secluded nook where, splayed over a sofa in decadent repose like models in a unisex fragrance ad, were three members of your inner circle: Christopher Banks, Andy Tweedy, and the angular blonde, Jen Pelletier.

“This is David,” Suzanne said, omitting their names either out of laziness or inebriation.

They all looked up at me, then cut their eyes over to you and Suzanne as if to ask why you had invited me, why I had been granted entry, why I was standing next to you in public.

“Hi,” I said. I received nods from Christopher and Andy and a raised glass from Jen.