The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [41]
That Friday, Jay caught up with Martin on the quad. “Good news, Vallence: Ms. Perry is amenable to a brief excursion. You are to meet her at the pottery studio tomorrow at four, after which I would suggest something informal, perhaps a stroll through the woods—bring some entertainment, of course”—he tapped his backpack, where he kept his one-hitter—“to determine if there is the necessary rapport.”
The next day Martin met Amanda at the studio, where they talked about music—she liked Roxy Music and David Bowie—which seemed to confirm that they were two lost souls who against incalculable odds had found each other. Still, because there was a part of him—even deeper and less acknowledged—that was afraid of exactly what Amanda might help him find, he remained somewhat aloof and was careful to mask the depth of his feelings for her as he mentioned older or more obscure bands—the Stooges, the Modern Lovers, Big Star—that he professed to love more than any others.
They eventually left the studio and walked around the lake to the Greek amphitheater in the woods behind the girls’ campus. In a shaded alcove next to the stage, Martin extracted a joint from his pocket. As the sun disappeared below the tree line and the forest around them became somber, the smoke they exhaled mixed with a wet mist that covered the entire theater in a shroud. Martin was struck by how attuned she seemed to his desires; like him, she was not incapable of enthusiasm but never appeared too earnest or overbearing. When they kissed, her mouth fit over his in a perfect mix of cool passion and—somehow, again—detachment that left him simmering, if not quite ignited.
This “date”—a word they never used—was followed by others, until at some point, back at the amphitheater, she mysteriously extracted a foil-covered package—a rubber—and pressed it into his palm. When he admitted to her that it was his first time, she tore it open and unrolled it into place before she pushed him onto his back.
“Don’t worry—it’s a lot easier than calculus,” she teased before she kneeled down and officially began the exercise.
At first, as she rocked back and forth and he tried with mixed success to match her rhythm, he feared that this, too, would join the decidedly muted delights offered by—among others—Monica Gittens and his first hand job; Julie Hayes, who had kissed him for an hour; and Barb Peters, who had somewhat presciently put a finger up his butt. Then he detected something dispassionate in Amanda—never once did she lose that faraway look, even when she came a few minutes later and instructed him to do the same—which seemed to be the perfect complement to his own ambivalence and—miraculously—left him wanting more.
SHE BROKE UP with him just before graduation. They had been accepted into different colleges, and when Amanda declared that a long-distance relationship would be untenable, Martin listened to the words as if they were being whispered at him from across a desert. Though he felt sorry, he was not close to tears, for it had already occurred to him over the last few months that his feelings for Amanda had not crossed—and would not cross—into the realm of serious love or infatuation.
A decade later, when one day on the subway platform he heard a low female voice, eerily familiar, which did not so much call out his name as state it—“Martin. Martin Vallence. Hey, Martin, over here”—he was no longer so presumptuous, and his longing for Amanda was not so obtuse, but rooted in a more tangible hope to alleviate the far more acute desires that had taken hold during the intervening period. So when he confirmed that it was Amanda, still vaguely but unapologetically masculine in the manner of certain runway models, and she examined him with the same passive but not displeased expression he