A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [78]
In Naples, when she ran out of money, she stole things from stores and sold them to Lars, the Swede, waiting her turn on his kitchen floor with other hungry kids holding tourists’ wallets, costume jewelry, American passports. They grumbled about Lars, who never gave them what they deserved. He’d played the flute in concerts back in Sweden, supposedly, but the source of that rumor might have been Lars himself. They weren’t allowed beyond his kitchen, but someone had glimpsed a piano through a closing door, and Sasha often heard a baby crying. Her first time, Lars made Sasha wait longer than anyone, holding a pair of spangly platform shoes she’d swiped from a boutique. And when everyone else was paid and gone, he had squatted beside her on the kitchen floor and unbuttoned his pants.
For months she’d done business with Lars, arriving sometimes without having managed to take anything, just needing money. “I thought he was my boyfriend,” she said. “But I think I wasn’t thinking anymore.” She was better now, hadn’t stolen anything in two years. “That wasn’t me, in Naples,” she told you, looking out at the crowded bar. “I don’t know who it was. I feel sorry for her.”
And maybe from a sense that she’d dared you, or that anything at all could be said in the chamber of truth where you and Sasha now found yourselves, or that she’d blown out a vacuum some law of physics required you to fill, you told her about James, your teammate: how one night, the two of you took out two girls in your pop’s car, and after you’d brought them home (early—it was a game night), you and James drove to a secluded place and spent maybe an hour alone in the car. It happened just that one time, without discussion or agreement; the two of you had barely spoken after that. At times you’d wondered if you’d made it up.
“I’m not a fag,” you told Sasha.
It wasn’t you in the car with James. You were somewhere else, looking down, thinking, That fag is fooling around with another guy. How can he do that? How can he want it? How can he live with himself?
· · ·
In the library, Sasha spends two hours typing a paper on Mozart’s early life and sneaking sips of a Diet Coke. Being older, she feels behind—she’s taking six courses a semester plus summer school so she can graduate in three years. She’s a business/arts double major, like you, but in music. You rest your head in your arms on the table and sleep until she’s done. Then you walk together through the dark to your dorm, on Third Avenue. You smell popcorn from the elevator—sure enough, all three suitemates are home, along with Pilar, a girl you quasi-dated last fall to distract yourself after Sasha paired off with Drew. The minute you walk in, the Nirvana volume drops and the windows fly open. You now seem to be in the same category as a professor or a cop: you make people instantly nervous. There’s got to be a way to enjoy this.
You follow Sasha into her room. Most students’ rooms are like hamster burrows padded with scraps and tufts of home—pillows and stuffed doggies and plug-in pots and furry slippers—but Sasha’s room is practically empty; she showed up last year with nothing but a suitcase. In one corner is a rented harp she’s learning to play. You lie faceup on her bed while she gathers her shower bag and green kimono and goes out. She comes back quickly (not wanting to leave you alone, you have a feeling), wearing the kimono, her head in a towel. You watch from the bed as she shakes out her long hair and uses a wide-tooth comb to get the snarls out. Then she slips out of the kimono and starts getting dressed: lacy black bra and panties, torn jeans, a faded black T-shirt, Doc Martens. Last year, after Bix and Lizzie got together, you started spending nights in Sasha’s room, sleeping in Lizzie’s empty bed, three feet away from Sasha’s. You know the scar on her left ankle from a break that had to be operated on when it didn’t heal right; you know the Big Dipper of reddish moles