The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [95]
The tiny airport consisted of a single runway and Quonset-hut-like terminal. Outside, in the fall sunshine, a small crowd of people was waiting, either chatting or staring into the sky for the arriving airplane.
To meet her mother, Madeleine put on a pair of khaki linen shorts, a white blouse, and a navy sweater with a white striped V-neck. One good thing about being out of college—and living on Cape Cod, not far from Hyannisport—was that nothing now prevented Madeleine from dressing in the Kennedy-esque style in which she felt most comfortable. She’d always been a failed bohemian, anyway. Sophomore year, she’d bought an electric-blue satin bowling shirt with the name “Mel” stitched on the pocket and began wearing it when she went to parties at Mitchell’s apartment. But she must have worn it once too often, because one night he made a face and said, “What? Is that your arty shirt?”
“What do you mean?”
“You wear that bowling shirt whenever you hang out with me and my friends.”
“Larry has one just like it,” Madeleine defended herself.
“Yeah, but his is all pitted out. Yours is in perfect condition. It’s like Louis the Fourteenth’s bowling shirt. It shouldn’t say ‘Mel’ on the pocket. It should say ‘The Sun King.’”
Madeleine smiled to herself, remembering that. By now, Mitchell was in France, or Spain, or wherever. The night she’d run into him, in New York, had begun with Kelly’s taking her to an off-off-Broadway production of The Cherry Orchard. The ingenuity of the production—baskets of cherry petals had been piled up between the seats, so that the audience could smell the fragrance of the orchard the Ranevskys were selling along with their estate—and the interesting-looking faces in the crowd put Madeleine on notice that she was in a great city. After the play, Kelly had taken Madeleine to a bar popular with recent Brown grads. No sooner had they walked in than they ran into Mitchell and Larry. The boys were on their way to Paris the next day, and in a celebratory farewell mood. Madeleine had two vodka tonics, while Mitchell drank tequila, and then Kelly wanted to go to Chumley’s in the Village. The four of them piled into a cab, Madeleine sitting on Mitchell’s lap. It was well after midnight, the windows open onto tropically warm streets, and she didn’t seem to be minimizing physical contact with Mitchell but leaning back against him. The fact that they ignored the sexual component of her sitting on his lap increased its excitement. Madeleine looked out the window, while Mitchell talked to Larry. Every bump conveyed secret information. All the way crosstown on East Ninth Street. If Madeleine felt guilty, she rationalized that she deserved one night to cut loose after her virtuous summer. Besides, no one in the cab was playing cop. Certainly not Mitchell, who, as the cab ride continued, did a brazen thing. Reaching under her shirt, he began stroking her skin, running a finger along her rib cage. No one could see what he was doing. Madeleine let him continue, both of them pretending to be absorbed in talking to Kelly and Larry, respectively. After a number of blocks, Mitchell’s hand moved higher. His finger tried to slip under the right cup of her bra, at which point she clamped her arm down, and his hand retreated.
In Chumley’s, Mitchell entertained everyone by telling the story of his own stint as a taxi driver over the summer. Madeleine talked to Kelly for a while, but it wasn’t long before she ended up in the corner next to Mitchell. Despite her vodka haze she was aware that she was purposefully neglecting to mention the name Leonard. Mitchell showed her the marks on his upper arms where he’d been inoculated that afternoon. Then he bounded away to buy more drinks. She’d forgotten how much fun Mitchell could be. In comparison with Leonard, Mitchell was so low-maintenance. An hour or so later, when Madeleine went outside to hail a cab, Mitchell followed her, and the next thing she knew he was kissing her and she was kissing him back. It