Teddy Wayne - Loner

Here you go, ahead of schedule. Hope you’re well.

A few hours later you replied:

Thank so much!

No sign-off; not even proper pluralization.

Saturday morning was sunny. Fall had peaked and denuded the trees. My breath fogging in the November chill, I set out for the Game after breakfast, passing over the Charles River on the Anderson Memorial Bridge, from which Quentin Compson leaps to his death in The Sound and the Fury , and arrived at the parking lots surrounding Harvard Stadium two hours before the contest kicked off.

I walked through the first passel of tailgates, among the striped tents, the picnic tables decked with buns and condiments, the sibilant grills, the dappled gallery of crimson Harvard and blue Yale sweatshirts, women in stoles lapping up mimosas next to their lock-jawed husbands in coarse black overcoats and wool scarves, students priming kegs and recent graduates nipping from flasks, classic rock guitar solos and hip-hop beats clashing in the air like opposing armies. Two schools equally elite, with imperceptible differences save location, feeding off their insatiable hunger to outrank the other as the Mozart to their Salieri, whose students would have happily attended the rival college had their acceptances and rejections been reversed, which might well have happened had an admissions officer had or not had a sore throat — a headache, eight hours of sleep, horrible commute — the morning their applications were reviewed.

Inside that welter I searched for you, the one person who could make the chaos fade away. I saw the tawny highlights of your hair first, ponytailed and swinging over a black peacoat, poster co-ed from another, more dignified era, as you stood with Suzanne in a mixed-age cluster, all drinking champagne from clear plastic flutes. I crept up behind and waited for an opportunity to catch your attention.

“How’s your cold?” I asked when you turned your head to blow out smoke.

Your expression was hidden by oversized sunglasses. “Much better,” you said in a raspy voice, tapping your cigarette to dislodge a glowing clump of ash. “See ya,” you added, ready to return to your crew.

“I know where you went the other night,” I said softly, so the others couldn’t hear. “After Lamont.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you said after a few seconds, also quietly, but the delay and volume betrayed the claim.

“Tom,” I mouthed.

Your sunglasses fixed me in a lengthy, hard stare. Then you ushered me in the direction of the cooler.

“You went to his place on Story Street,” I said once we were far enough from the others.

“You followed me?”

“There are no rules against walking around the streets,” I said. “But it is against university policy for a grad student to be with an undergrad he’s teaching. It’s considered sexual harassment, even if it’s consensual.”

You swallowed some champagne.

“And I assume you know he’s married.”

“I’m aware,” you said with a mirthless laugh.

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt. He’s not going to leave his wife for you, if that’s what you’re expecting.”

“Thanks for the concern, David.” You smiled sarcastically and turned to go back to your people.

I reached out and tapped your back. “You should report what happened to the Ad Board.”

You whipped around.

“If you’re scared, you can bring me along as a personal advisor and I can do most of the talking,” I offered. “I researched how it’s done. They’ll just need you to corroborate. You won’t get in any trouble, only him. No one else will even find out.” I sounded unusually confident, in charge, as if I made it a regular habit to save beautiful women from themselves.

You gave me another long look, but this time your mouth softened. Resting a hand on my shoulder, you shook your head. “Thank you, but don’t worry about me. I was about to break things off anyway.”

“You were?”

“Yeah.” You exhaled smoke with a rueful scowl.

“So you’ll go to the Ad Board?”

“I would. Except you know how these things always work out. Even if the guy gets punished, the girl gets shamed for it,” you said. “Sorry about my reaction before. I appreciate you looking out for me. Obviously, this is not something I want other people to know about. I hope I can trust you, David.”

“Of course,” I said, trying not to smile. I’d done it: Liam had never been the real competitor; Tom was, and now I’d knocked him, if not out of the school, then out of contention.

“How’s that champagne?” I asked as you started to walk back to the others.

You paused, trying to come up with a witty line for me. “It makes being around the alumni tolerable.”

“So getting drunk is a prerequisite for hanging out here?” I grabbed one of the open bottles submerged in a cooler of ice and a flute from a stack.

You shrugged. I poured myself a serving and took a cold, fizzy draft.

“You’re right,” I said. “It’s already making them better.”

Suzanne drifted over, looking at her phone. “Jen’s still in bed with a hangover,” she reported. “She said she wishes we’d gotten her stomach pumped last night. And she left her credit card at the bar.”

“Hi, again,” I said. “Famous David.”

Suzanne glanced at you. “The man who needs no introduction.”

As the two of you recapped Jen’s wild antics the previous night, one of the older men came along and inserted himself into our trio. He wore a corduroy baseball cap emblazoned with an H , the end of its adjustable strap dangling like a vestigial tail.

“You kids having fun?” he asked with the bluster of a host proud to have comely young women he didn’t know at his party.

“Absolutely,” said Suzanne.

“Go Harvard,” he cheered, making a small fist. Suzanne mimicked him with a smile.

“Beat Yale,” you said.

“That’s what I like to see,” said the man. “Good old-fashioned school spirit.”

“Destroy them,” you added.

“Our guys have looked good this year,” he said.

“Dismember them and send them back to New Haven in body bags.” You beamed at him as if you’d said something adorable. I felt the first pinpricks of an erection, ogling the scar on your forehead, a seam into your skull, wishing I could open it up, rappel inside, and suture it back together so I could swim around your brain undisturbed.

The man chuckled. “Well,” he said with a diplomatic smile he’d doubtless used in hundreds of hostile boardrooms, “you kids have fun.”

After he found shelter with a safer set of people, Suzanne cackled. “Cheeky,” she said. “Always biting the hand that feeds you.”

Marco Lazzarini, the aristocratic Italian among your friends, swanned over, talking about his upcoming trip to Barcelona. For the remainder of the tailgate I hovered by your side (maybe I hadn’t been overtly invited at first, but you weren’t going to evict me now), maintained a steady intake of champagne, and celebrated Thanksgiving early with gratitude that I wasn’t trapped with Sara and the Marauders. How dispensable are most people in our lives, collections of matter filling empty space until they’re recycled.

Throughout all this a cavalcade of males of varying ages found excuses to sidle up and talk to you and Suzanne — mostly you. Though you treated them with more civility than you had the patron of our party, you weren’t letting them into our circle, and inevitably they backed off. Their unabashed attempts to court your attention amused me. I didn’t need to do a pathetic song and dance for you. I was the one you trusted.

When the tailgates closed down at kickoff the three of us moseyed back over the Anderson Memorial Bridge (Justin and Kevin would have approved of our pregaming without going to the actual game). You led us to a final club — not Liam’s — where we rolled liquor around our mouths and sampled hors d’oeuvres of deviled eggs, sashimi, and goat cheese croquettes among an intergenerational assembly of alumni before progressing to a different establishment, the sun-slanted afternoon pushed away by gray early evening, which surrendered to inky night, hours and hours with you, eventually ending up, to my dismay, at the club of your school-sanctioned boyfriend.