Loner by Teddy Wayne Page A

sounds up my alley,” I said. “Or up my galley, so to speak.” Samuelson chuckled again at the maritime pun. Wonderfully cogent, very nuanced. Six weeks in and already the star pupil in the Harvard English department. My fancy prose style wasn’t going over Samuelson’s head. It had finally found its proper audience, a potential mentor. I didn’t have to be a lawyer; I could be a professor of literature, wear one of those jackets with patched elbows, stroke my beard in an armchair and apply nuanced close readings without breaking a sweat. You’d stand by my side at stultifying faculty parties and jet around the world with me as I was crowned with laurels at academic conferences, joking with the awestruck attendeesand protégés about how impenetrably dense my books were while shooting me a private look that said you did, of course, understand them (I had taught you so much), these are the self-effacing comments we must make so as not to appear full of ourselves, when can we get out of here and fuck in our hotel room?
    Samuelson’s phone rang. “Excuse me, I have to take this,” he said, picking it up.
    â€œNo problem,” I said, taking out my own phone.
    He cradled the receiver by his ear. “Thanks for dropping by.”
    â€œOh, okay,” I said, a little miffed all my reading prep was in vain, but that was fine—I would have plenty more opportunities in the spring. “I’ll be sure to sign up for the Hawthorne seminar.”
    On my way out I stopped in the ground-floor Barker Café to order a cup of coffee. This is what a young literary mind did on campus: met with his professor in the morning and caffeinated himself for an afternoon of rigorous reading. I was about to leave when I noticed you in the corner, bowed over a table with your TF, Tom, presumably holding his own office-less office hours, with what had to be your— my —essay between you.
    Riding high on Samuelson’s praise, I approached, though it was a cavalier move. For all I knew, my Melville essay had made the grad-student rounds, and alerting Tom to our friendship could put us in academic jeopardy if he’d identified the writing in your James paper as suspiciously similar to my own.
    â€œHey,” I said, standing over your table.
    You looked up, uneasily, and casually pulled a notebook over the essay, as if to hide the evidence from Tom. Our little secret.
    â€œHi,” you said.
    â€œDavid,” I said, addressing Tom. “I’m also in Prufrock. Harriet’s section.”
    I paused to let him remember who I was.
    â€œYou’re lucky, you got the best one.” Tom scratched the underside of his beard. His eyes swerved to you. “The others tend to devolveinto prurient discussions about nineteenth-century sexuality. Very juvenile stuff.”
    You giggled.
    This wasn’t how it was meant to go, with inside jokes from your section. You were supposed to ask what I was doing in Barker; I would blushingly admit that, well, I sort of just had my meeting with Professor Samuelson, I guess he wanted to see if I’d take his Hawthorne seminar in the spring; then Tom would say he was also taking it, he thought it was only for grad students, and he’d read my essay, too—well done, man, pull up a chair.
    I waited for one of you to say something else.
    â€œYour memory of poetry lines in class is impressive,” I said to Tom. “It seems like you’ve read just about everything.”
    â€œI’m actually a robot,” he said. “I have no soul.”
    Another giggle from you.
    I evah on luos .
    â€œAny chance you’re taking Samuelson’s Hawthorne seminar next semester?” I asked.
    â€œNo,” he said, sipping his coffee.
    There was another stretch of dead air.
    â€œWell, I should get going,” I said. “See you guys later.”
    â€œNice meeting you, Dave,” Tom said as I walked away.

    After