How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (21 page)

It's a sign. I know it. It's a message meant just for me and I shove myself away from the bar and weave across the room, drawn by the beckoning sound, determined to see the messenger sent to inspire and fulfill me. The singer holds the last sustained note for what seems like an eternity and just as he finishes I push my way to the front, the crowd around me applauding like mad, and right then he turns and looks straight at me.

“Edward?” he says.

“Mr. Lucas?”

M
r. Lucas's apartment looks just like him:
neat, compact, bookish. The kitchen is no bigger than a phone booth, but there's a little terrace that looks out on a quiet courtyard. The room is boiling from the steam heat and Mr. Lucas takes off his sweater. It's the first time I've ever seen him in anything but a sports jacket and I'm surprised at how muscular his torso is, particularly for a guy who must be forty. The sleeves of his polo shirt are tight on his thick, veiny arms, undoubtedly made strong from years of dragging his legs around. He traipses into the bathroom.

I've never thought of Mr. Lucas sexually before, but as I watch him I find myself wondering if his spinal cord injury prevents him from having sex. I flop onto the couch and spread my legs in what I hope is a seductive pose while I pretend to call Paula and claim to get no answer. You'd think that someone having erection problems would give it a rest, but hope springs eternal, I guess. Mr. Lucas returns with a glass of water and some aspirin. “Might as well get a head start on tomorrow,” he says, pivoting gracefully on one crutch.

I must say he's handling the whole running-into-a-student-in-a-gay-bar thing rather well. Then again, it's not like I can tell anybody; otherwise I'd have to admit that I was there in the first place. So Mr. Lucas and I are now linked in our shared secret. We're both part of the brotherhood.

“Izzit okay if I crash here?” I say.

He gives me a withering Mr. Lucas look over his glasses. “Apparently you already have,” he says, tossing me a blanket.

“Thanks.” I really want to take off my sweater, but I don't want him to see that I can't close the top button of my jeans. “Can I open a window?” I say.

“This place is either too hot or too cold,” he says. “And the pipes clang all night, too, just like Marley's ghost.”

Fuck it. I'm burning up. I get out of my jeans first, then peel off my sweater.

“It's a good thing I came along,” Mr. Lucas says, looking the other way. “You can't be too careful nowadays. I assume you've heard about AIDS?”

This isn't the sexy, precoital conversation I was hoping for. “Yeah, I've heard,” I mumble.

Mr. Lucas touches me on the arm. “It's serious, Edward. Gay men are getting sick all over this city.” He moves his hand away and shudders. “It's scary.”

All the more reason to have sex with someone I can trust, I think.

“Well, you better get some sleep,” he says. “You've got a big day tomorrow.”

“You sure gotta lotta books,” I say, stalling for time. I scan the meticulously alphabetized shelves, leaning on them so I don't fall over. There are a lot of authors I've heard of—Brecht, Shakespeare, Whitman, Woolf—but there are just as many I don't know—Isherwood, Lorca, Maupin.

Mr. Lucas smiles at his books like they're old friends. “What are you reading these days?” he says. “For fun, I mean.”

Fun. I haven't thought about fun since Dagmar moved in, let alone reading. “Nothin',” I say.

Mr. Lucas frowns. “What's the last book you read that wasn't assigned to you?”

I have to think about that one.
“Catcher in the Rye,”
I say finally. “I got pissed 'cuz all the other classes got to read it 'cept us.”

“You don't have to assign
The Catcher in the Rye
to get teenagers to read it,” Mr. Lucas says. He leans on the arm of an easy chair. “What did you think of it?”

“Salinger's an asshole.”

Mr. Lucas laughs, something he doesn't often do.

“Don't hold back,” he says. “What do you really think?”

“I mean, here's this guy, Holden Caulfield, that every teenager can, like, completely identify with, and what happens to him in the end? He goes nuts. Thazz not very encouraging.”

“I'm not sure it's supposed to be.”

“If you ask me, Holden's in a homosexual panic.”

Mr. Lucas strokes his beard. “Is that so?”

I pull a copy of Salinger from the shelf where it sits next to a volume of poems by Sappho, whoever he is. “It's in the part where he's sleeping at his English teacher's apartment.” I move next to Mr. Lucas and hand him the open page, leaning over his shoulder. “You see, right here, after his teacher makes a pass at him, Holden says: ‘That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid.' Twenty times! I'm sorry, but I've got just two words for Holden Caulfield: Ho Mo.”

Mr. Lucas hands me back the book, but I remain where I am, my crotch close to his face. “If you ask me,” I say softly, “I think Holden would have been a lot happier if he'd slept with his teacher.”

Mr. Lucas clears his throat and rises, placing his hand on my arm to steady himself. He takes off his glasses. His eyes are soft and pretty, like a deer's. “I don't think you're right, Edward,” he says. “I think sleeping with his teacher would've screwed up Holden even worse.” He pats me on the shoulder and takes a step away. I grab him by the arm.

“Even if Holden really wanted it?” I say. Just kiss me. Please, please, one kiss.

Mr. Lucas sighs. “I know you won't understand this, Edward, but a student places an enormous amount of trust in a teacher, more than the student realizes, and more than any teacher even wants. But no matter how tempting the offer . . .” he smiles at me “. . . the teacher just . . . can't.” He touches my face lightly and I sink into the chair.

Can't. Why is it always can't?

Mr. Lucas hobbles over to the bookcase and scans the shelf. “I'm going to tell you something important, Edward, and I want you to listen closely.”

“Will there be a test later?”

“I'm serious.”

I sit up.

He pulls a book down from the shelf. “After I had my accident, I thought my life was over. I was bedridden for a year and in muscular therapy for a very long time after that. I wasn't sure I'd ever walk again. My acting career was over, and as far as my love life was concerned—well, I had suddenly become invisible. I'll be honest with you, I wasn't entirely certain I wanted to go on. But what I did have was books. Some mornings I'd wake up and the pain would be so great I wanted to end it all, but then I'd think, ‘No, Ted, you can't kill yourself today. You're right in the middle of a really good book.' I know it sounds crazy, but I'm one of those people who, once they start a story, has to find out how it ends, even if I don't like it. So I kept reading, just to stay alive. In fact, I'd read two or three books at the same time, so I wouldn't finish one without being in the middle of another—anything to stop me from falling into the big, gaping void. You see, books fill the empty spaces. If I'm waiting for a bus, or am eating alone, I can always rely on a book to keep me company. Sometimes I think I like them even more than people. People will let you down in life. They'll disappoint you and hurt you and betray you. But not books. They're better than life. Even before I got hurt I relied on them. Back in the early seventies, there was this ridiculous ritual where you could signal to other gay men what you were into by what color bandana you had in your back pocket or by the way you wore your keys on your belt. I refused to take part in it, of course, but it did give me the idea to always carry a book with me. I'm sure it sounds ludicrous and terribly theatrical to think of me standing in a bar with a copy of Ginsberg poems, but it was my way of telling the world what I was into, that I was a reader. And believe it or not, it worked. It attracted other readers to me, men of substance and sensitivity. It didn't always get me laid, but it led to some very interesting conversations. So don't ever let me hear you say you're not in the middle of reading a book. It might save your life someday.”

He tosses the book he's holding at me in his usual offhand way. “Start with this.”

I look at the title.
A Boy's Own Story
by Edmund White.

“I think you'll like it better than
The Catcher in the Rye,”
he says.

“Thanks,” I say. I suppose he's got a point. If I can't be well hung, I can at least be well-read.

Mr. Lucas turns off the light in the living room.

“Hey, Mr. Lucas, can I ask you somethin'?”

“Yes, you
may,”
he says.

“How did you, y'know, get injured?”

His face is silhouetted and I can't tell how he feels about my asking, but he sighs and leans against the door frame. “I was at a cast party for a production of
Henry the Fourth, Part One.
I had too much to drink and I fell down a flight of stairs.”

I'm not sure what I was expecting to hear, but that certainly wasn't it.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

He flips off the light in the hallway, plunging us into complete darkness.

“Not as sorry as I am,” he says.

The rattling of Marley's ghost wakes me,
and I stagger into the bathroom, hunched over like a question mark, trying to figure out how I was able to turn my skin inside out while I was sleeping. Every part of me aches: my back, my head, even my hair. I flip on the bathroom light and squint to see myself in the mirror. Mother of God, I look like Sylvester Stallone at the end of
Rocky.
I turn on the faucet, but no, no, water loud, water bad. Not only am I totally hungover, but I'm also wide awake. And hungry. Great. The digital clock says it's 5:45
A.M.
I don't want to wake Mr. Lucas. As a matter of fact, I don't even want to see Mr. Lucas. Not after the way I acted last night. I creep back into the living room and put my Serious Young Actor clothes back on. They smell of stale smoke, as does my skin. I let myself out, forgetting to take my copy of
A Boy's Own Story.

The fog is so thick I can't see the other side of Washington Square Park. The sky is turning from black to gray and I stop to remember this melancholy moment for my acting. I huddle on a bench in my big thrift-store overcoat and my painful hair, watching my breath make clouds and thinking Holden Caulfield-y thoughts, like how come you never see any baby pigeons? This is what those people on black-and-white French postcards must feel like. I find myself craving a cup of coffee and a cigarette despite the fact that I neither drink coffee nor smoke.

I wander back to the diner where we ate last night and sit in the same booth. I figure maybe a little food will make me feel better, but when I get there I can only eat part of a muffin. I look at my ankle to see what time it is: 6:45. Three and a half hours until my audition. Maybe if I just put my head down for a few minutes. If I could just lie down on this banquette and rest for a while, I'm sure I'll be fine. I just need to sleep for a couple of minutes.

S
hit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
What the hell kind of diner lets you sleep in their booth for three goddamn hours?

I dash through the tangle of Greenwich Village streets, certain that they've been rearranged just to piss me off and make me late. The entire city, no, the entire
universe
is conspiring with Al to keep me from becoming an actor. Where the hell is the goddamn subway, or a bus or a cab? My kingdom for a cab!

There's not one part of me that's not sweating. My eyelids, my knuckles, the tops of my feet—every bit of me is wet. I finally find the subway, but from the top of the stairs I can hear a train coming. Like a nightmare, the stairwell seems to telescope in length. I'll never make it.

“HOLD THAT TRAIN!” I scream like a madman as I dash down into the depths. I thrust a sweaty, crumpled bill under the Plexiglas to the woman in the booth and see a young Hispanic guy on the train lean against the door to hold it open. I leap through the turnstile and into the car.

I bend over to catch my breath. “Thank you so much,” I pant at him. “I've got to be at Lincoln Center in five minutes.”

He shakes his head. “Then you need the northbound train, man. This here's the southbound.”

SHIIIIIIIT!

I throw my Sinatra hat on the floor and yank on my painful hair, while I grit my teeth and growl (yes, actually growl) in frustration. A tiny old lady with one of those little two-wheel shopping carts New Yorkers use reaches into her purse and quickly tosses a dollar in my hat, like she's afraid I'll bite her. I want to scream, “I'm not homeless, you stupid bitch,” but then I realize I kind of am and, what's more, I suppose I could use the dollar. Her kindness calms me for a moment and I kneel down to pick it up. I smile weakly at her and say, “I'll put this toward college.”