Light Years (20 page)

I smelled coffee in the kitchen, and once I was fully dressed I peered in, but he wasn’t there. The coffee pot was half full and there were a clean mug, a spoon, and a small jar of sugar placed on the counter, waiting for me. There was a dirty mug in the sink. I crept around the duplex, listening for him, but he wasn’t there. Maybe he had more tact than I gave him credit for. Maybe he had a class to teach.

My stomach was a roiling mess and the last thing it could handle now was coffee. I debated about leaving him a note, but I couldn’t figure out what to say, so I just left: without writing one.

I hadn’t slept very long in his apartment. From signs outside, it was not much past nine in the morning. The night before seemed surreal. Now that I was out on the street again, surrounded by people rushing here and there, laughing and arguing, I might as well have dreamed it all. Had I really slept with him? Had I made good on my stupid threat to steal him away from Brook? I blushed thinking about it.

I walked to West Main Street and called my room from the pay phone in front of the bank to see if Payton was there. But the phone just rang and rang until our answering machine picked up.

*  *  *

I looked for Justin the rest of the day but couldn’t find him. I wondered briefly if he was avoiding me, but to give him credit, he didn’t strike me as the type of person who would hide. He wasn’t in his office, at the cafeteria, at home, or in the computer lab.

Around four in the afternoon, I ran into Brook while looking for Justin. When it rains, it pours, I thought sourly, noting her perfect golden hair, her caramel sweater and matching slacks. I, by comparison, was still wearing the jeans and sweatshirt from last night, had bags under my eyes large enough to carry my books in, and was so tired I felt like I’d been drugged. I had been debating whether I had the time to go to my dorm and nap when I saw her. My stomach sank. I expected her to walk by me without saying a word, but instead as she brushed past me, I heard her say, “Whore.”

I stopped and stared at her, just like she wanted me to.

“Excuse me?”

She looked over her shoulder at me. “You’re such a slut.” Her perfect face reflected perfect scorn.

“He told you?” The shock must have shown on my face. A look of satisfaction bloomed across her face.

“You slept with him just to spite me. That’s cheap.”

Feeling like my face was frozen in horror, I walked away without saying anything. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill that bastard. It hadn’t even been a full day since we’d slept together. He was a class-A bastard and I was off the hook. It was easy now; a part of me was even relieved. I didn’t have to worry
about falling in love or about hurting his feelings. He was a snake. That was what happened when you slept with snakes—they betrayed you.

I met Payton for dinner not long after that. My impulse from the morning to tell her about last night had faded. The less said about this gross mistake, the better; instead, I chatted about nothing in particular and made vague promises about weekend plans. I fought to stay patient as she told me about an irritating professor, fought to keep a steady face as she wandered off the topic and shared gossip about people I had never heard of. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I cut Payton off in mid-sentence and made a lame excuse about a huge test coming up. From the look on her face, I didn’t do a good job.

“I’m sorry, Payton, it’s been a miserable day. We’ll talk later, okay?”

She agreed, of course, because Payton always accepted an apology. But I saw that I had hurt her feelings, and she’d done nothing to deserve it. I left feeling even more depressed than before.

I walked to Alderman Library and spread out my books in a quiet corner on the fifth floor. I slid into the empty carrel and tried to concentrate on my astronomy text, studying solar wind. One day, spaceships might unfurl lightweight aluminized sails in space and literally sail through the galaxy on solar winds. I could see it so clearly, a three-masted ship made of glittering silver, gliding on currents of light. If I focused hard enough on that ethereal image, maybe I’d forget what a mess my life was.

I had been working for less than an hour when he found me. The first thing I noticed was a shadow over my notes. I looked up in alarm. I hadn’t heard him come up.

“You scared me.” I pressed a hand to my hammering heart.

Justin leaned against the carrel wall, arms folded over his chest, an amused little smile playing on his lips.

“How did you find me?”

“Your roommate Payton said you liked to study here.” I choose to ignore the fact that he remembered Payton from that short meeting when we’d sat on the bench in the sun. I tried to ignore the weird luck that he’d run into her tonight, the fact he’d asked her where I was, and that he must have had to walk up and down the rows of books, going floor to floor, looking for me.

“Where have you been all day?” I asked. A trick question, of course.

“Been looking for me?” Again I saw that little smile, but this time there was a definite leer to it.

“Something like that.”

“I went to Richmond to use the state archives. It’s been planned for weeks.”

“Oh.”

“You didn’t think I was avoiding you, did you?” The grin spread.

“No.”

“No?” He raised a single eyebrow.

“No!”

“Good, because I wasn’t. I’ve been thinking about you all day. We need to talk.”

“That’s right, we do. What the hell were you thinking?” Finally the frustration and humiliations of the day had found their target. I was almost shaking with a combination of emotions I couldn’t begin to name. “Why did you tell Brook we slept together? I told you not to say anything to her. Was that too hard? You couldn’t even wait a day?” I knew my voice was much too loud for the library. For all I knew, there were twenty students just on the other side of the bookcase—but I didn’t care.

“First of all, you left something at my place.” He reached into his pocket and drew out my watch. I looked down at my left wrist in surprise, but of course, it wasn’t there.

“But how—” I never took my watch off.

“The watchband broke during the night.” He managed not to smirk when he said that, but I felt my cheeks heat up. “I had it fixed and they put in a new battery since the old one was dead. Did you know you were walking around with a dead battery?”

“Yes,” I said, momentarily sidetracked. “I didn’t have the time to get it changed.” He handed me the watch and I clutched it like a talisman.

“Second of all,” he continued, “I didn’t tell Brook we slept together, which is what you told me not to do. I just asked her if she’d seen you. She said no, but asked why I was looking. I told her about your watch. No harm done, the lady not compromised. You’re a little paranoid, Maya.”

Was it possible that Brook had just been guessing? Could it be that the look on my face just confirmed what she suspected
but didn’t know for sure? I gave myself a mental kick. It didn’t matter.

“You knew very well what conclusions she would draw, and that’s exactly what you wanted her to think.” Nothing he said mattered. I couldn’t let this continue.

“I can’t help what she does or doesn’t think,” he said, finally showing some anger. “Look, Brook and I stopped dating months ago. Long before you ever came into the picture. We stayed friends, but that’s all we are. Maybe we won’t stay friends much longer if she can’t deal with the fact I’m seeing someone else. But what she thinks shouldn’t make a difference to you.”

He was so deluded.

“All I’m saying—” I said.

“Maya, stop hiding. If you don’t want to go out with me, that’s fine. But you need to decide why, and it can’t be because you think Brook has dibs.

“I like you a lot,” he said. “I want to get to know you. I also think you’re running away from something and, if you’d let me, I want to help. I want to know what happened. If you still think sleeping with me was a mistake, if you don’t want to go out with me, I think I deserve a better reason than because of Brook.”

“You have a very high opinion of yourself,” I said, heading for the jugular. “Maybe I just don’t like you. Maybe I was just looking for a one-night stand.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. “But why choose someone you know, someone you’re going to have to see every week until the semester ends? For a bright girl, that was a stupid thing to do.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?”

I took a deep breath.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “I made a mistake last night. I just want to forget it ever happened. Why won’t you let me?”

“Because I see you’re hurting and it started long before me.” He stopped himself. “I want to know what happened to you. And last night—” he shook his head. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was a mistake. I don’t think so. But you clearly do. And I’m sorry for that.”

I looked away from him, from his classic good looks, his wrinkle-free khakis, his well-meaning eyes and easy life. My heart ached and I curled my fingers inward, digging my nails into my palms to steady myself. Exactly the same move I made at Dov’s funeral to keep me standing straight as I felt every glance, every tear, shred me further.

“My past is none of your business,” I said as coldly as I could. “And morbid curiosity is not a reason to start a relationship. Flattering as that is.”

He looked at me in silence. I met his gaze. Held it. I saw his face close, his eyes shut down, and I knew I had won.

“That’s how you want it? A cheap one-night stand? Fine.” He straightened from his slouch against the wall, shoved his hands into his pockets. “Sorry it took me a while, but now I get it.”

He walked away, and I stared at his retreating back, listening to his quiet footsteps until he reached the staircase, and then I heard only the hum of the vents above my carrel.

I uncurled my hands and watched the blood fill in the little half-moon indents. I noticed that he’d chosen the same chestnut color for my new watchband. I wanted to cry.

“Fuck,” I said, relishing the word. It was one of those English words that just rolled off my tongue.

Then I took some deep breaths à la Daphna and her yogis. There was a reason for this. I could not be in a relationship again. Safer, better to be alone. I’d transfer out of his discussion section in the morning. I couldn’t imagine facing him in class, giving my opinion on the importance of the Marshall Plan.

I put Justin firmly out of my mind and spent the next three hours reading how one day the sun will become a red giant and grow so large it will engulf Mercury. Sometimes there was nothing better than astronomy to put things in perspective.

Once when I was very young, I woke up in the middle of the night. I was lying perfectly still in my narrow bed, afraid to move but not sure why. Then I saw it. Two burning red eyes glared at me from above my dresser. When my eyes adjusted to the nighttime gloom, I saw the rest of it. It was the size of a large cat, with four paws that had wickedly curved claws, huge black nostrils that flared at the scent of me, and those red eyes shaped like lemon wedges glowing in the dark. I must have made a sound, because its massive head turned toward me and it raised its black lips in a soundless snarl. Its jagged teeth were like a mouthful of nails. I screamed and, finally able to move, I hurled myself out of bed and tore off to my parents’ bedroom, expecting at any moment to be attacked from behind. I made it to their room, launched myself between their two sleeping lumps, and burrowed under their warm covers.

Of course, when they heard my story, they soothed me and said that it was just a dream. No such thing as monsters, they promised; it was just my imagination. But I knew the difference. I refused to return to my bed and spent the rest of the night with them.

Afterward, when I returned in daylight to my room, I carefully approached my dresser. There was no sign of the monster at first. It had left no scratches or claw marks or coarse black hairs sharp at the ends like needles. But I looked closer, my face so close to the dresser that I could see the whorls of the grain in the wood. When I was only millimeters away from where it had crouched in the middle of the night, watching me sleep, I noticed a smell. In itself it was not unpleasant, a mix of cloves and allspice, but underneath there was something sickly sweet. Like the peach that had rolled behind our stove and lay there, forgotten for a week, until it blossomed with rot.

I drew back in alarm. There was my proof. I dragged my parents in, demanded that they sniff, that they smell it and know it was real. But they smelled nothing. No one could smell it but me.

That is what it was like when Dov was killed. No one believed me. No one would listen when I said it was my fault. Another nightmare. Another monster. They kept insisting it wasn’t real.

It was so hot and bright during Dov’s funeral that sweat dripped down everyone’s faces like tears. Sweat stains bloomed on the backs of people’s shirts and under their arms. I kept my sunglasses on because I couldn’t bear to look at anything without a dark shield. I was a murderer. I was attending my victim’s funeral, and people were consoling me. I wasn’t sure how much worse it could get.

There were three other funerals at the same time. All victims of the same bombing. There were not many cemeteries to choose from, even in Tel Aviv. I watched the other groups because it was easier. Each open grave had nearly a hundred people huddled around it. I wondered why the other victims had chosen Café Shtut that afternoon. Were they meeting someone there too? Would everyone here still be alive if I had never spoken with the manager, if I had never gotten that boy fired?

It was so hot that I felt sick. I fought back a wave of nausea and my skin prickled with heat and goose bumps. The hair on my arms was standing up. My father put his arm around me and I could feel his sweat seep through my shirt to my shoulder. My mother held my hand. Dov’s mother buried her head in her husband’s chest. He was not in the office today. I could see his whole body convulsing with sobs.

The rabbi cut Dov’s parents’ shirts as a sign of their mourning. And it was over. We stumbled out of the cemetery. His parents would start sitting shivah at their home. I would go see them later. But not yet. Not now, when they still had dirt from their son’s grave on their shoes.