The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [45]
Madeleine leaned over the rickety railing, looking at the lawn.
It must have been the lover in her who wept, not the romantic. She had no desire to jump. She wasn’t like Werther. Besides, the drop was only fifteen feet.
“Beware.” A voice suddenly spoke behind her. “You are not alone.”
She turned. Leaning against the house, half obscured in the vines, was Thurston Meems.
“Did I scare you?” he asked.
Madeleine considered a moment. “You’re not exactly scary,” she said.
Thurston accepted this good-naturedly. “Right, more like scared. Actually, I’m hiding.”
Thurston’s eyebrows were growing in, framing his wide eyes. He was leaning on the heels of his high-tops, his hands in his pockets.
“Do you usually come to parties to hide?” Madeleine asked.
“Parties bring my misanthropy into focus,” Thurston said. “Why are you out here?”
“Same reason,” Madeleine said, and surprised herself by laughing.
To give them room, Thurston moved the trash can aside. He picked up the book, brought it close to his face to see what it was, and violently flung it off the balcony. It made a thud in the damp grass.
“I guess you don’t like Vanity Fair,” Madeleine said.
“‘Vanity of vanities, saith the prophet,’” Thurston said, “and all that shit.”
A car stopped in the street, then backed up. People carrying six-packs got out and approached the house.
“More revelers,” Thurston said, staring down at them.
A silence ensued. Finally, Madeleine said, “So what did you do your term paper on? Derrida?”
“Naturellement,” Thurston said. “What about you?”
“Barthes.”
“Which book?”
“A Lover’s Discourse.”
Thurston squeezed his eyes shut, nodding with pleasure. “That’s a great book.”
“You like it?” Madeleine said.
“The thing about that book,” Thurston said, “is that, ostensibly, it’s a deconstruction of love. It’s supposed to cast a cold eye on the whole romantic enterprise, right? But it reads like a diary.”
“That’s what my paper’s on!” Madeleine cried. “I deconstructed Barthes’ deconstruction of love.”
Thurston kept nodding. “I’d like to read it.”
“You would?” Madeleine’s voice rose half an octave. She cleared her throat to bring it back down. “I don’t know if it’s any good. But maybe.”
“Zipperstein’s sort of brain-dead, don’t you think?” Thurston said.
“I thought you liked him.”
“Me? No. I like semiotics, but—”
“He never says anything!”
“I know,” Thurston agreed. “He’s inscrutable. He’s like Harpo Marx without the horn.”
Madeleine found herself, unexpectedly, liking Thurston. When he asked if she wanted to get a drink, she said yes. They returned to the kitchen, which was even louder and more crowded than before. The guy with the baseball cap hadn’t moved.
“You’re going to guard your beer all night?” Madeleine asked him.
“Whatever’s necessary,” the guy said.
“Don’t take any of this guy’s beer,” Madeleine said to Thurston. “He’s very particular about his beer.”
Thurston had already opened the refrigerator and was reaching inside, his leather biker’s jacket hanging open. “Which beer is yours?” he asked the guy.
“The Grolsch,” the guy said.
“Ah, a Grolsch man, eh?” Thurston said, moving bottles around. “Lover of the old-school, Teutonic, rubber-stopper and ceramic-cap thingy. I understand your preference for that. The thing is, I wonder if the Grolsch family ever intended for those rubber-stoppered bottles to cross the ocean. You know what I mean? I’ve had more than a few Grolsch go skunky on me. I wouldn’t drink it if you paid me.” Thurston now held up two cans of Narragansett. “These only had to travel about a mile and a half.”
“Narragansett tastes like piss,” the guy said.
“Well, you’d be the one to know.”
And with that, Thurston took Madeleine away. He led her out of the kitchen and back through the front hall, motioning for her to follow him outside. When they reached the porch he opened his biker jacket to reveal two bottles of Grolsch