The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [55]
Soothly it belonged to Owen: orderly and full of books, with a memory of marijuana in the air. In many ways it was better appointed than Affenlight’s: there were thriving plants, paintings on the walls, slim silver electronics. Messiness was confined to one unmade bed.
No lingering, he thought. No paging through books. Get what you came for and go. He scanned the room’s surfaces for a pair of eyeglasses. It was clear which desk was Owen’s—the tidier of the two. As Affenlight leaned across it his wrist brushed against the mouse that was tethered to Owen’s computer. With a whir the screen came to life. He couldn’t help but look. Open in the internet browser was a picture of a man, a muscled, bronzed, hairless, oiled twentysomething man, sprawled in a wooden chair with one hand cupped over the tip of his erect and outsize penis like it was the gearshift of Affenlight’s Audi. Affenlight clapped the laptop closed, tried to name the potted herbs that were growing along the windowsill. Mint. Basil. And was that thyme? Yes, thyme.
The first definable feeling that worked its way up to his brain was disappointment. Owen would never want me, he thought. If this is what Owen wants, then Owen would never want me. Maybe he’d been thinking of Owen as a creature of the mind, a pure spirit to be mixed with his own, but that wasn’t quite right, was it? Because Owen had a body too, and a need for bodies—and when it came to that, how did Affenlight feel about Owen’s body? Did he want Owen in a sexual way? Because that website, that photograph—that was sexual. That was what he was getting himself into, or trying to get himself into. Not that Owen wanted him. But if Owen did want him—if Owen wanted his aging, pasty, great-for-sixty, okay-for-forty, unthinkable-for-twenty body, which was seeming more unlikely by the second—then would he want Owen’s body in return? He thought he did, had fantasized about it, sort of, but compared to the sharp lines of that photograph his fantasies were all caresses and quiet confidences, sweetness and abstraction.
Two sets of questions swirled through Affenlight’s mind—one set to do with Owen’s erotic desires, the other with his own. He’d never thought of either of them in connection with hard-core pornography. And yet there was the website, right there. A part of Owen’s life, in whatever small way; and now, because he’d broken his no-snooping dictum, a part of his. He lifted the lid of the laptop, prepared himself to look and to gauge his reaction. There were footsteps on the stairs again—but this time they passed the third-floor landing.
BY THE TIME HENRY MADE it to the dining hall, the salad bar had been cleared, the stainless-steel bins in the entrée line pulled from their stainless-steel frames and dumped. He found a campus phone, called Rick O’Shea to see if he wanted to go to Carapelli’s.
“Sorry, Skrimmage,” Rick said. “Starblind and I ate a while ago. Where’s the big guy?”
“Working on his thesis.”
“Figures. Listen, I’ve got Grandma O’Shea on the other line. She’s telling me why Clinton was almost a better president than Jack Kennedy. See you bright and early, okay?”
Henry walked back into the dining hall, where he poured himself two glasses of skim milk. He’d have to double up on SuperBoost and be satisfied with that.
Chef Spirodocus came clip-clopping out of the kitchen on his wooden clogs, staring down at his clipboard. “Hey, Chef Spirodocus,” Henry said.
Chef Spirodocus looked up from his clipboard reluctantly, his fat-pinched eyes slow to focus. In general he didn’t like to talk to students. But when he saw it was Henry, he nodded. “Young man. When are you