Jules said. “And there’s supposed to be thirty inches of snow next week. Please come visit me this weekend, before I am buried alive.”
Ash thought about it. “This weekend? God, it would be so great to see you. I hate that we still don’t live in the same place.”
“I know.”
“All right. We’ll drive up on Friday,” Ash said.
We.
Ash Wolf and Ethan Figman had become “we” and “us” the summer before senior year of high school, to everyone’s shock, and the
we
hadn’t ended, even with the two of them heading off to different colleges in the fall.
On Friday, as promised, Ash and Ethan appeared at Jules’s dorm in Buffalo, Ash small, beautiful, and bright-faced; Ethan oily and rumpled from the long drive. They had brought along some emergency New York City supplies that were meant to cure Jules’s upstate loneliness. The bagels were almost uncuttable, and the scallion cream cheese was slightly liquefied from sitting on the floor of the front seat beneath the heater of Ethan’s father’s old car, but the three of them sat eating in Jules’s tiny cinder-block dorm room with the door closed upon the voices of her terrible suite mates.
“All right, I see what you mean. You’ve got to get away from these girls,” Ash said quietly. “Just taking one look at them out there, I see that you haven’t been exaggerating.”
“Look, figure out who the smartest people in your classes are,” Ethan said. “Listen to the comments they make. Then follow them around after class and force yourself on them.”
“
Force herself
on them?” said Ash.
“Shit, I didn’t mean it that way,” said Ethan. “God, I’m sorry. I’m such an idiot.”
In the days after the weekend, Jules began to take their advice, and escaped her suite mates often. She found that there was serious intelligence in clusters all around her; in her unhappiness she had been unable to recognize it. She made eye contact with a couple of students from her Intro to Psych section, and then formed a study group with them. In the psych lab, and then afterward in the student union, she and Isadora Topfeldt and some other slightly alternative types sat on modular furniture and talked about how much they all hated their suite mates. Then they went to a bar on the other side of campus called the Barrel, and everyone drank as much as they did at Crumley’s. This was upstate New York, where the snow layered upon itself, rising like one of those out-of-control lemon meringue pies in the glass case at the Underhill Diner. They drank and drank, and were comfortable, tribal, if not particularly close.
Now, in November 1981, a full twenty-one years before Isadora Topfeldt’s death, and while the friendship still held, Jules sat at her dinner party in the West 85th Street apartment.
Isadora scraped around at the bottom of the serving dish and held up a scrap of food on a fork and said, “Is there anything sadder than the scrawniest little piece of uneaten chicken at a dinner party?”
“Hmm,” said Jules. “Yes. The Holocaust.”
There was a pause, then some ambivalent laughter. “You still slay me,” said Isadora. To the table she said, “Jules was very funny in college.”
“I had to be,” said Jules. “I lived with the meanest girls. I had to keep my sense of humor.”
“So,” Dennis Boyd asked her, “what was Isadora like in college?”
“Dennis, college was only last spring,” Isadora said. “I was the same as I am now. Watch your leg,” she warned, as the table seemed on the verge of being lifted once again by Dennis’s knee.
“Yes,” Jules said. “She was the same.” But of course she liked Isadora less now, because she needed her less and saw her more clearly. Ash and Ethan and, since he’d been returned to them recently, Jonah, were the friends she saw and spoke to all the time. “What’s she like
now
?” Jules asked. “You’re her neighbor.”
“Oh, she scares the shit out of me,” Dennis said. There
Ash thought about it. “This weekend? God, it would be so great to see you. I hate that we still don’t live in the same place.”
“I know.”
“All right. We’ll drive up on Friday,” Ash said.
We.
Ash Wolf and Ethan Figman had become “we” and “us” the summer before senior year of high school, to everyone’s shock, and the
we
hadn’t ended, even with the two of them heading off to different colleges in the fall.
On Friday, as promised, Ash and Ethan appeared at Jules’s dorm in Buffalo, Ash small, beautiful, and bright-faced; Ethan oily and rumpled from the long drive. They had brought along some emergency New York City supplies that were meant to cure Jules’s upstate loneliness. The bagels were almost uncuttable, and the scallion cream cheese was slightly liquefied from sitting on the floor of the front seat beneath the heater of Ethan’s father’s old car, but the three of them sat eating in Jules’s tiny cinder-block dorm room with the door closed upon the voices of her terrible suite mates.
“All right, I see what you mean. You’ve got to get away from these girls,” Ash said quietly. “Just taking one look at them out there, I see that you haven’t been exaggerating.”
“Look, figure out who the smartest people in your classes are,” Ethan said. “Listen to the comments they make. Then follow them around after class and force yourself on them.”
“
Force herself
on them?” said Ash.
“Shit, I didn’t mean it that way,” said Ethan. “God, I’m sorry. I’m such an idiot.”
In the days after the weekend, Jules began to take their advice, and escaped her suite mates often. She found that there was serious intelligence in clusters all around her; in her unhappiness she had been unable to recognize it. She made eye contact with a couple of students from her Intro to Psych section, and then formed a study group with them. In the psych lab, and then afterward in the student union, she and Isadora Topfeldt and some other slightly alternative types sat on modular furniture and talked about how much they all hated their suite mates. Then they went to a bar on the other side of campus called the Barrel, and everyone drank as much as they did at Crumley’s. This was upstate New York, where the snow layered upon itself, rising like one of those out-of-control lemon meringue pies in the glass case at the Underhill Diner. They drank and drank, and were comfortable, tribal, if not particularly close.
Now, in November 1981, a full twenty-one years before Isadora Topfeldt’s death, and while the friendship still held, Jules sat at her dinner party in the West 85th Street apartment.
Isadora scraped around at the bottom of the serving dish and held up a scrap of food on a fork and said, “Is there anything sadder than the scrawniest little piece of uneaten chicken at a dinner party?”
“Hmm,” said Jules. “Yes. The Holocaust.”
There was a pause, then some ambivalent laughter. “You still slay me,” said Isadora. To the table she said, “Jules was very funny in college.”
“I had to be,” said Jules. “I lived with the meanest girls. I had to keep my sense of humor.”
“So,” Dennis Boyd asked her, “what was Isadora like in college?”
“Dennis, college was only last spring,” Isadora said. “I was the same as I am now. Watch your leg,” she warned, as the table seemed on the verge of being lifted once again by Dennis’s knee.
“Yes,” Jules said. “She was the same.” But of course she liked Isadora less now, because she needed her less and saw her more clearly. Ash and Ethan and, since he’d been returned to them recently, Jonah, were the friends she saw and spoke to all the time. “What’s she like
now
?” Jules asked. “You’re her neighbor.”
“Oh, she scares the shit out of me,” Dennis said. There
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