The Virgins (22 page)

Sterne and Giddings take Seung out for a farewell dinner. They go to the Chinese place on the state road, a forty-five-minute walk, and Seung doesn’t let anyone order alcohol. “Do me a favor,” he says. He wants them in the library, he says, by six thirty. They had better do well on their final
exams; there have been enough fuckups already. The restaurant has paper lanterns and a plastic Santa Claus atop a bricked-up fireplace. The paper menus are stained with food. The boys toast the absent Detweiler with raised glasses of Orange Crush.

“May he return.”

“May he not return. May he have a better fate.”

“May he regain his sanity. May he be valedictorian of his two-bit high school and hike the Lake Superior Trail and sleep with many plump Midwestern babes.”

They’re drunk. Even though it’s only Orange Crush they’re drinking, they are woozy, sentimental, uncoordinated. Seung makes them both promise to look after Aviva. Make sure she’s all right, that she doesn’t need for anything. Giddings sweeps his arm to make a point and a glass goes spinning off the table. The waitress kneels to gather up the shards, telling them it’s no problem, no problem.

Out on the strip again, Giddings gives Seung his going-away present: two tabs of excellent acid he’s been saving since his last trip home. “One for you, one for Aviva.” There’s more where that came from. Giddings had planned a graduation gift for them all.

“Without you it won’t be much of a celebration,” Sterne comments.

“Sure it will,” Seung tells him. “You guys have made it. You got through.”

They clutch him to themselves, clap him on the back. Next year they’ll be in college; he’ll be in high school again.

Seung returns alone to the dormitory after the others peel off for the library. His feet hurt. Aviva said she’d meet him in front of Hiram at six thirty. They’ll go for a walk or sit in the common room. No one cares anymore what they do. No one watches. The campus is busy, students bent over their books for finals. Interest in the two of them is waning. Their story is wrapped up, it’s over. They were caught, they didn’t get away with it after all. Their mystery has been leached out of them.

Aviva holds a large book against her chest. Seung can’t see what it is; her arms are crossed in front. Without exchanging any words, they begin to walk. They pass the edge of campus and walk along a residential street. There’s a child swinging in the mellow evening light. When they are a few blocks from campus Aviva leans against a lamppost. She’s still holding the book to her chest.

“Seung, once you’re home . . .”

He waits. He knows. He is going to be subjected to her truth, those things she cannot refrain from saying because they happen to be so.

“It’s destroying me . . .” he hears. “The humiliation . . . lying there . . . I’m dead inside . . . you’ve made me dead . . . I can’t feel anything anymore . . .” There are no tears, not even a look of sadness. Her mouth is a hard, grim thing.

It
is
the truth. He can see that. He is destroying her. She’s lost weight; she has become all elbows and neck. Her cropped and brushy hair is growing out again, badly. She is slumped and drawn, like someone recovering from the
flu. He’s murdered her beauty. No, it isn’t that. That is still there. What, then? Her vitality. Her pride. Her love, if that ever existed.

“I don’t want you to call me. I don’t want you to write me . . .”

His hands ball into fists; he grits his teeth. Sweat springs out on his temples. He’s shaking, and then he begins to cry. Aviva thinks that it is crying, anyway. There are tears on Seung’s cheeks but he makes no sounds other than a choked sort of growling. His lips are closed, tight.

“Y-y-ou . . .” he finally forces out. “Y-y-you . . .”

She doesn’t know if he is cursing her or begging her. Perhaps he is going to strike her. If he does, she’ll hit him back. He begins to gasp and pound his head with his fist. Something shifts in Aviva and she feels that his actions have crossed the line into theater; he is trying to shame her into fear and pity.

“Oh, Christ, Seung, I won’t let you . . . you’re not going to
do
this . . .” She runs from him, back through the streets, all the way to her dormitory. She checks in with Señora Ivarra, drops her heavy book on the floor and gets in bed, clothed, curled up tight. As she ran she imagined him behind her, chasing her; there had been violence in his eyes.

Seung lowers himself onto someone’s front steps and sits for a long time until his breathing loosens and slows. He always knew this day would come, knew he would lose her, that he wasn’t born to possess the things he wants. Not a creature like him, a Korean boy, a Number Two Son. Life
put this girl in his way so he could envision pleasure, taste it, and watch it run away.

When he feels capable of it, he makes his way back to Weld, jittery and spent, and knocks on Mr. Glass’s door.

“I’m in for the night,” he tells the teacher.

Mr. Glass looks at the boy’s raw eyes and damp skin. The dorm is almost empty. It’s Seung’s last night at Auburn.

“Seung. Would you like to come in?”

“No, thank you.”

“I didn’t want this outcome,” Mr. Glass tells him, not shutting the door, not letting him leave yet. The boy wears that mask the Asian kids often do, the one that says, “I will not speak. Do not ask.” But that unhealthiness about the skin and eyes betrays him. What a waste, Mr. Glass thinks. A talented kid, but one who liked to push his luck, always sure the cat had more lives. Still, so close to graduation, the committee could have bent for once, could have given him probation. But the old-timers wouldn’t have it. The Auburn disciplinary system is out of date, inflexible, in need of reform. Mr. Glass has always taken that position.

“I know,” says Seung.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come in?” Mr. Glass asks. “Ellen bought some new tea, blackberry something.”

“Thanks, Mr. Glass. I’m just going to lie down.”

As soon as he does, the shaking overtakes Seung so fiercely that he thinks his ribs will crack. The pain deep in his bones makes him want to howl. Frightened, he forces himself to get up and walk back and forth across the room.
Maybe it will be better if he stays in motion. When he passes the bureau mirror he sees himself as an elongated streak of darkness taking shape for a moment then sliding away. He stops and looks more intently. He’s motionless now, but he still can’t see himself. Is it because he is trembling so hard, or is something really wrong with his face? He drops his gaze and names the objects on the dresser: his sketchbook and two charcoal pencils, his penknife, a novel by Thomas Bernhard that he is leaving for Sterne. His heart beats very rapidly; he is sweating profusely again. Suddenly he fears that if he stays in this room he will die. He will literally die.

He hardly sees the stairs in his panic to get outside. It doesn’t even occur to him to stop and tell Mr. Glass he is going. He plunges past the dorms, the gymnasium, the practice fields and the track, into the woods in the late-slanting light, looking for a place to hide himself. He veers off the running path and into a thicket of brambly vines where he eventually finds a small clearing. He lies on his back on the cool ground and gives himself over to the disturbance inside. His legs jerk so hard that the joints pop. His head is full of loose stones. He is deaf to anything but the sound of his graceless, thrashing body. Something rattles at the back of his throat.

When the fit finally passes, he dozes: ten minutes, fifteen. He wakes, fishes in his pocket for a joint, and smokes it rapidly, waiting for the cloud of ease to come up and comfort him. The flame moves closer and closer to his fingers and he lets it burn there, licking and then enveloping the skin.
Finally he drops the last scrap into the dirt, where it flares up with a small bright light and shrivels out. He stabs his burnt fingertips into the earth. He aches all over. He pictures Aviva in bed at his parents’ house, her legs parted, the pale tender skin there and the dark hair, and hears the extraordinary sounds that, later, he discovered how to coax from her body.

He walks. After a few minutes he hears voices nearby, footsteps, and moves away from them. Instinct takes him in the direction of the Bog. He suspects it will be empty tonight, the night before the first day of finals. It’s so peaceful there; he’s always loved it, especially at this time of year, with the wildflowers and the light lingering late in the trees. He winds his way in and when he gets to the Bog he finds to his satisfaction that it is, in fact, deserted. He could be Robinson Crusoe on his own desert island; he could be a lone explorer on a kind and fertile moon. He lowers himself to his haunches and dips his smarting fingers into the shallow water. The water is very cold, and, after a moment of numbing, the pain returns even more fiercely. Seung can feel the blisters forming.

And that is where I discover him, squatting by the water, trailing his fingers in it. I’ve been following the path to my meeting with David, and, pushing through some tangled brush in an attempt to take a shortcut, I find myself in a magnificent clearing. I’ve never actually been here before. The Bog is not technically a bog but rather a little lake with some algae buildup along the shallow margin. It lies in a
hollow, the birch trees rising up all around it to create a secluded and otherworldly effect. You can pass within a few feet of it in the woods and not see it or even hear the kids hanging out there. Or so I’ve been told. For obvious reasons the earnest druggies at Auburn, the career visionaries, the ones who need several hours on a Sunday to take an uninterrupted acid or mushroom trip, favor it, and they have passed along certain proprietary methods for finding one’s way here. On a few occasions, Voss and Cort and I tried, for sport’s sake, to locate it, but always failed. Now here I am, having meant to go somewhere else, and I have Seung for company. It is rare to see him alone, without that gang of his. I am surprised they are not with him, on this last night. He looks less himself without them, smaller.

I can’t tell if Seung senses my presence. I could just dip back into the woods, try another route to my destination, but instead I head toward him. I make noise as I approach, coughing, but he doesn’t look around.

“Rough luck,” I say, when I reach him. “Administration bastards.”

He nods slightly, without lifting his head.

I toss my knapsack on the ground and crouch next to it.

“You all right?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says. Finally he looks at me. I see the telltale redness in his eyes, but his pupils are enlarged rather than constricted. What’s he been taking?

I don’t say anything, Seung doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t ask me why I’m here. The silence goes on for a long
time. It’s only for the first few minutes that it feels strange, that I fidget and am tempted several times to make a noise, any noise. Then, slowly, that urge dissipates and begins to be replaced with the most remarkable sense of ease. I watch the spots of light on the surface of the water and hear, once or twice, a bullfrog. There’s a faint buzzing that is the sound either of tiny insects or of the silence itself. Seung squats next to me, quietly, occasionally shifting his weight. It’s as if we are friends who have known each other so long we no longer need to speak in each other’s presence. Perhaps I remember this silence as longer than it was. It felt beautifully endless. I’ve completely forgotten about David Yee and our rendezvous. And sitting here, next to Seung, I begin to sense what’s going on in his mind. No words come to me, but I feel his heaviness, his confusion and his fear. I can feel the way he’s pinned, that even his breath comes at a price. For him to raise his head, lift an arm to throw a pebble into the water: these things require supreme effort.

At long last, I open my knapsack for the flask of 151, take a swig, and offer it to Seung. He accepts it, unsmiling, and takes a modest tipple. I urge him to continue, tell him there is plenty. That’s what we do for the next little while, pass the flask back and forth. My throat and belly sting and warm. By this time I’ve remembered David Yee but I figure the hell with him, he can wait.

The sun slips steadily down the sky, as if making up for dawdling during the day. The rum has made me thirsty. I take off my shoes and socks, walk a couple of feet into the
water to where it grows clear, and scoop handfuls into my mouth. By this time, I need a piss, so I walk a distance away and take care of that. When I return Seung is in the water. He hasn’t bothered to roll up his wrinkled army surplus pants or anything. He gets well in, up to his waist or so, then tosses himself onto his back. I stand at the edge watching him. His black hair is plastered against the sides of his face; with those sharp cheekbones he looks Indian. He strokes his way to the center of the Bog and then butterflies back, his powerful arms churning up waves. Near the bank he sinks into a back float, his eyes closed. He is smiling, serene. Water is, after all, his element.

Afterward he stretches out on the bank.

“Seung,” I say. “You’re lying in the dirt, man.” Why that bothers me I can’t at the time rightly say. I will swear to you now that it was a protective instinct. I didn’t want him to get his hair filthy. Anyway, Seung doesn’t hear me, or pretends he doesn’t. He lies as still as a sunbather in his soaking clothes in the growing dark and chill.

All right, I think. I stretch out next to him, using my knapsack for a pillow. More silence. I feel again that unexpected comfort, as if Seung and I often come here and lie quietly with our thoughts, not feeling any need to communicate.