Lullaby of Love (5 page)

The campus buildings are left open for students to walk through on any regular day, just because I’m not in this program doesn’t exclude me from browsing, I tell myself nervously.

Really?

If she were to walk into this lobby
right now
and see only me standing here she’d probably hit the floor again, out of pure fear this time.

It wouldn’t be hard for her to find me though, if she were even interested to, but unless I hang around outside, and who knows what times or days, it’ll be nearly impossible for me to try to know who she is on this size of a campus.

No doubt this is a science building. The sterility of just the lobby says the only thing that needs to be present here is a high intellect, not to mention the litany of esteemed faculty whose somber pictures trail eye-level in glass cases down one side of the wall.

I step across to the other side looking at a large grouping of much younger faces that take up a shorter display length. The graduate students’ courses of study are listed under their names below their pictures. . . Elliott
Amesworth—Year 2-Dept. of Microbiology. . . Evan Anscott. . . Attenburg. . . Avery. . . B’s. . . She had a large B on her bag. I keep scanning. Pryce Baxter. . . Beatty. . . Bennett—found her! Shay Bennett—Year 1-Dept. of Molecular Biology. . . I step closer in. I feel calm all over, the way I had sitting next to her. Something about her face just has an ease to it.

“Can I help you young man?” The stark quietness in the lobby magnifies the voice and I lurch inside turning around to see a short, plump man in a gray custodian’s suit with a train conductor type hat resting lopsided on his head. He’s holding a mop staring at me blankly, as if the only thing he has to protect himself with is that mop and a giant ring of jangling keys.

I’m glad I have my track suit on so I can get out here. “Nope, just looking around at the pictures.”

“I’m about to lock up,” he instructs still somewhat curious at the loitering.

“Yep, headed out now. Thanks,” I say already walking towards the entrance.

shay

I unfold the note taped to my apartment door:
Made tuna salad and brownies. Come up to eat when you get back—if you can stand the mess. J.

I unlock my door and step in just far enough to drop my bag and head up to Jenny’s.

The rushed noises of returning from spring break can be heard coming from behind the closed doors in the hallway as I walk past them.

As I get to the top of the flight of stairs I prepare myself for the clutter in her apartment, knowing that for her it’s organized chaos, and lightly knock.

“Door’s open!” she calls over sounds coming from inside.

“Hey Jenny.
Thanks for the invite,” I say, looking at her effort of cleaning up, and actually it looks pretty good. I can see she’s tried to mimic my apartment a little and it flatters me, especially when everything else between us has always had me on the needing side. This morning she had stayed as long as she could in my lab. Something I didn’t even expect and was beyond grateful for, but after we got specimens checked in she had to get home and have a head start on things for classes to resume, having just gotten back a couple of days before me. I’m sure she’s been working all afternoon. Her futon is covered with folded, washed clothes and all of the dishes are stacked in a strainer beside the sink, even her old university newspapers that she collects each one of and are normally lying about everywhere like they’re wallpapering the floor, that she swears one day she’ll have the time to read, are stacked in a heap the height of a chair.

The sound of the dryer door slams shut from around the bathroom door. “Would you want to grab the red bowl from the refrigerator?” She leans out and smiles as she finishes up with a load of laundry, knowing I’ll be impressed with her effort.

“Sure. Looks great in here,” I say, taking it out and removing the plastic wrap off of the top. She already has plates and a loaf of wheat bread sitting on the small, old formica table, a prized possession that used to sit in her family’s basement, that her papa, nonno, and uncles would play craps at. She always says that Italians have these great, three-story houses, but they live in the basements. I look past the sink and see green grapes sitting wet in a colander. I grab a bowl from the cupboard and finish shaking them, dumping them into it.

“Hey,” she comes from around the corner. “How’d it go? You get everything done on your to do list?” She grabs two sodas from the door of the refrigerator and sits one in front of me.

“I did. Thank God. And not a moment too soon—Richards was never too far off after you left. Thanks again for helping out this morning.” I help myself to opening the bread, passing each of us two slices. “You’ve been a life saver and now you’re feeding me,” I say almost laughing.

“We have to stick together around here,” she grins, spooning tuna salad out.

It was the best tuna salad I’ve ever eaten. And I ended up eating two sandwiches as we laughed and talked about her eventful visit home with her brothers and sisters. Coming from a big Italian family she wouldn’t have any excuse not to be able to cook and lunch today proved that, right down to the brownies; that tasted like I bit heaven doused in chocolate.

“Hey Jenny,” I call from washing our dishes as she grabs the last load of towels out to be folded. “Do you think I could look through your newspapers fast?” We both had a full day ahead of us tomorrow and I didn’t want to hang around too much longer.

“Sure. Have at it.” She pops the towels onto the cleaned table and starts folding them. “Looking for anything in particular?”

“Well,” waiting for it, “I thought I’d see who that guy was that hit me this morning.”

“You’re endless,” she says, knowing most likely it had stuck in my head today, and whether or not she would admit to it, I’m sure she was a little curious too.

I take four or five papers off the top of her neatly formed pile and sit crisscross on the floor beside them across from where she’s folding and can see me.

Flipping through the first one, the sports section mainly boasts about the upcoming football practice soon to be starting. I turn it upside down to keep it in date order, placing it beside my leg, and reach for another one.

A headline this time mentions track.
Yale Track Brings Home Wins.
It’s a lengthy article. All articles are written by student staff trying to one up each other and doing their best to get the attention of large papers reading an
unforgettable
article and having to have them on staff straight from graduation. You find out a lot of useful-not-useful information as you get through them. Reading on. . .
Continued on pg. 5
.

I flip to the back to page five. It has three pictures. The largest picture’s caption reads,
“Sprinter Dane Montgomery claims personal best time in 100m, taking first place against Big Red—Cornell.”

I bring the page closer to my face, peering at the small figures in black and white all clustered together running down the track, except one, who seems to have broke free and leads them.

“That’s him!” I surprise myself at my reaction. I straighten my legs out of the stiffened position and get up to bring the paper over for Jenny to see.

She leans in to where I’m pointing. “Are you sure it’s him? That’s a pretty small image.”

“I’m sure—those facial bones—his profile sitting on the bench. . . ” I stop, becoming aware of myself and catch her eye and coy smile. “Alright, alright. I don’t know what’s gotten into me either. . . at all.”

“Let me see more closely.” She takes the paper for herself and reads the caption, “Dane
C.
Montgomery. He’s a hottie alright.”

I grab it back. “It didn’t say
C.
”

“Dane
Clod
Montgomery—you never know—that’s all I’m saying,” she hurriedly interjects as I’m locating his name under the picture.

“Jenny!” I take one more look at the picture before folding the paper and putting them back on the stack. “You’re relentless, really.”

“Come on, Shay. His only admission’s requirement may be that he needed to know how to put one foot in front of the other—a little faster than most,” proud of her analysis.

I slap my forehead. Sometimes her Italian wit catches me off-guard.

“No, really. How is it that all of the athletes each year get this big send off after the
exact
four years here—no extra year or two to scramble getting their degree. When half of the students here have to wait at least an extra semester with pre-requisites—at minimum, just to get into the next sequence of courses? Think about it,” she probes me.

How do I defend that? She’s right. “Yes, yes. I hear you.” I pull a chair out from under the table and help her finish folding the last few towels.

I let the busyness of folding consume the few seconds of silence hanging in the air.

Finally.
“Montgomery? As in Senator Reginald Montgomery of South Carolina?”

“I don’t know Jen. I have no idea. Could be,” I put out there, not having thought in the last few minutes about the last name, just liking the sound of his first name.
Dane
.

“Well, I hate to burst your bubble as small as I know it is with your
dart and run
exercise around any good-looking guy in our building, but unless your name is Little Miss Sally May Yoo-hoo and your
daddy’s
in oil, there’s not a chance. Those types are betrothed from infancy.”

In the short time we’ve known each other Jenny knew me inside-out, and now, even with my timidity near boys, I’m unable to conceal from her the slight curiosity I’m feeling—and that comment mostly deflated the
little bubble
forming in me, but not entirely.

“Right.”
Still, he could be talented
and smart
, and not from a wealthy family—not too wealthy anyway.

I remember something my dad said to me years ago, probably at the age when any other young girl might have invited the idea of beginning to date.
“Just remember, getting a sense someone is a delicate thing; it takes time. It took me a month of showing up at the same 11:00 church service, when there were two other services on Sunday, just to be sure I could see your mother as the greeter, and for her, she was asking others if she could take their spots to be at that door just to get to see me.”
He had said it with a laugh, as if it was an intricate dance they performed, each not knowing—but knowing.

Not a word to Jenny. I’m going to be near that bus bench at 7:00 tomorrow and put dad’s theory to the test. There aren’t too many risks in it; I have to walk past it obviously to go up the steps to my building, whether it’s 7:00 or 8:00. And in all likelihood he won’t be there anyway. Yes, what am I saying? I’m sure he has a girlfriend, maybe more than one
girlfriend
. What type of guy would still act that way—like any semblance of a gentleman, especially when so many girls are in full pursuit meeting at after-game parties or one of the dozens of clubs that snake the outside of campus. Even though it’s not for me, it seems to be just about what it is for most everyone else.

“Thanks again for a great late lunch.” Shifting my thoughts and stacking my towels onto hers.

“Take some brownies,” she calls, headed off to the bathroom to put them away. “There’s plastic wrap in the drawer beside the stove.”

I wrap up a couple, dipping my finger into the icing on the top of the last one I set in, licking it.

“See you in the morning Jen!” I say loudly, opening the door to leave.

“See
ya there!”

dane

“Gretchen, right?” I ask, closing the door and walking further inside to see the two of them curled up on the sofa watching tv.

She lifts her head up to Vince for reassurance of being there and then turns to me, “Yeah, hey Dane.”

“Hey,” I say with my back to them reaching for the phone to take into my room. She must possess something the others don’t. It’s the first time the same girl has returned—at least two days in a row.

I push my door closed and kick off my shoes, falling back on my bed outstretched, staring up at the ceiling. I know until I at least attempt to talk to this girl it’s going to keep drumming in my head. I’ve got to find a way to run into her again—
Jesus!
—without actually
running into her again
.

What’s wrong with me?

How stupid did that sound?

I let out a long breath, pushing away the thought of her and reaching for the phone I let drop beside me on the bed. It feels good to lie down.

Kate and mom will be expecting a call from me any day now and it’s as good of a time as any to catch up for a minute.

I dial the number. It only has to ring twice before Kate answers.