A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [112]
“I was . . . what was I? Elated? Sober? Relieved? Sexually delirious? I needed to find the girl, to touch her again. To tell her that I loved her, which seemed as urgent a message as I’d ever had to deliver. Said message still undelivered, I might add. So I went in search. Quickly darting out to the porch. No Nora there. Then back through the squalid rooms of the chicken coop that passed for a beach house. No Nora there. Had she gone back to the dorm? A decision that would have been sensible, yes, but a dull ending to my tale.”
Harrison studied the floor, reluctant to enter the portal of this particular part of his story, the only bit that really mattered.
“So I went out again to the porch. And there, to my horror, was Stephen, whom I was decidedly not looking for. Stephen was stumbling and, I could scarcely believe this, crying.”
“Please, Harrison,” Nora said.
“He said—and I quote—Oh man, oh fuck. Repeatedly. Not knowing I was standing there. I thought he was distraught at having found the girl and me in the kitchen, and I was moved. I spoke. I said something. Maybe only his name. Stephen. He turned and saw me. I was keeping my eye on the empty and potentially lethal bottle in his hand. He said, Oh, shit, I can’t go back in there.”
Harrison paused.
“I took a step toward Stephen, and he yelled, Don’t come near me! He started to back away.”
Harrison stopped now on the brink of revealing a detail he had never told anyone. But he had come to Nora’s room to do this, to tell this story, which had to include this terrible fact.
“And that was when I smelled him,” Harrison said quickly.
Nora covered her eyes with her hands.
“I’ve shit myself, man, Stephen said.”
Nora rose in one motion from the chair and walked to the bed. She sat at its edge.
“This was a phenomenon I’d heard about but never witnessed,” Harrison said, “this extreme manifestation of inebriation. I was struck dumb, astonished, made ashamed by the pure physicality of being drunk. I was, if I’m not mistaken, actually frozen in place.
“I’m goin’ in the water, Stephen cried. Wash out the pants. You get me somethin’, man. Steal it from the closets. Anything.”
Harrison glanced at Nora.
“Stephen turned,” Harrison said, “and started toward the porch steps that led down to the beach and the water. Stephen, don’t, I said.
“What? he asked. What?”
Harrison bit the inside of his cheek and stared up at the ceiling, remembering.
“The water wasn’t rough, but it wasn’t entirely calm either. You could see the white edges of the waves. What was I to do? Realistically? Stephen had to wash himself off. He couldn’t let anyone see. Better to let the others think he’d gone for a quick swim to sober up than that he’d shat himself, no?”
Harrison took a long breath.
“I started down the steps with him, but he turned and shouted at me to stay where I was. He was still crying.”
Harrison could hear the tightness in his voice.
“There wasn’t much light that night, and I could just barely make him out as he walked out onto the beach. He kind of stumbled to the water’s edge and waded up to his knees.”
Harrison swallowed hard. “But, you see, realistically, I could have helped him, couldn’t I? I could have given him my own pants, walked back to school along the beach in my boxers, and snuck into the dorm before anyone saw me.”
And Harrison wondered for the thousandth time why he had not done that.
“Stephen kind of lost his balance and sat down in the sand. He let the tide wash over his legs. I could see him struggling to undo his belt.”
“Harrison,” Nora said, and he steeled himself to finish his story.
“And then I heard this noise behind me,” Harrison said. “A door opening. I turned, and it was Jerry Leyden. Come out to find