The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [26]
It had to do with Leonard. With how she felt about him and how she couldn’t tell anyone. With how much she liked him and how little she knew about him. With how desperately she wanted to see him and how hard it was to do so.
In recent days, from her solitude, Madeleine had sent out feelers. She talked about Semiotics 211 with her roommates, mentioning Thurston, Cassandra, and Leonard. It turned out that Abby knew Leonard from her freshman year.
“What was he like?” Madeleine asked.
“Sort of intense. Really smart, but intense. He used to call me all the time. Like every day.”
“Did he like you?”
“No, he just wanted to talk. He’d keep me on the phone for an hour.”
“What did you guys talk about?”
“Everything! His relationship. My relationship. His parents, my parents. Jimmy Carter getting attacked by that swamp rabbit, which he was obsessed about. He’d go on and on.”
“Who was he going out with?”
“Some girl named Mindy. But then they broke up. That’s when he really started calling me. He’d call like six times a day. He was always going on about how good Mindy smelled. She had this smell that was supposedly perfectly compatible to Leonard, chemically. He was worried no girl would ever smell right to him again. I told him it was probably her moisturizer. He said no, it was her skin. It was chemically perfect. That’s what he’s like.” She paused and gave Madeleine a searching look. “Why are you asking? Do you like him?”
“I just know him from class,” Madeleine said.
“Do you want me to invite him for dinner?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’ll invite him to dinner,” Abby said.
The dinner had been on Tuesday night, three days ago. Leonard had come politely bearing a gift, a set of dish towels. He’d dressed up, wearing a white shirt with a skinny necktie, his long hair gathered in a masculine ponytail like a Scottish warrior. He was touchingly sincere, saying hello to Abby, handing her the wrapped gift and thanking her for the invitation.
Madeleine tried not to seem overeager. At dinner, she paid attention to Brian Weeger, whose breath had a dog-food smell. A couple of times, when she looked over at Leonard, he stared back, fixedly, appearing almost upset. Later, when Madeleine was in the kitchen, rinsing dishes, Leonard came in. She turned to find him inspecting a bump on the wall.
“This must be an old gas main,” he said.
Madeleine looked at the bump, which had been painted over many times.
“They used to have gas lamps in these old places,” Leonard went on. “They probably used to pump the gas up from the basement. If anybody’s pilot blew out, on any floor, you’d have a leak. Gas didn’t have an odor back then, either. They didn’t start adding methyl mercaptan until later.”
“Good to know,” Madeleine said.
“This place must have been a powder keg.” Leonard tapped the jutting object with his fingernail, turned, and looked Madeleine meaningfully in the face.
“I haven’t been going to class,” he said.
“I know.”
Leonard’s head was way up above her, but then he bent down, in a peaceful, leaf-eater motion, and said, “I haven’t been feeling well.”
“Were you sick?”
“I’m better now.”
In the living room Olivia called out, “Who wants some Delamain? It’s yummy!”
“I want some,” Brian Weeger said. “That stuff’s killer.”
Leonard said, “Were the dish towels all right?”
“What?”
“The dish towels. I bought you some dish towels.”
“Oh, they’re great,” Madeleine said. “They’re perfect. We’ll use them! Thank you.”
“I would have brought wine, or scotch, but that’s the kind of thing my father would do.”
“You don’t want to do anything your father would do?”
Leonard’s face