Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [55]
“We found it,” Amit said, feeling triumphant. And then, just as instantly, he felt thwarted. He saw an open box on the table containing a few eclairs. The sight made his stomach churn up in hunger, and he picked one up, consumed it without pause.
“Looks like we missed brunch,” Megan said. After a while she added, “You have chocolate icing around your mouth.”
Lacking a napkin or the wipes he always had with him when he was with the girls, he drew the back of his hand across his lips. The bells of the chapel chimed as if for the two of them alone. He thought of Pam and Ryan on their way to the airport, to their honeymoon in Scotland. He thought of the other guests heading back, pleasantly hungover, and the Bordens relaxing at home, commenting on the evening, saluting themselves on a job well done.
They headed toward the parking lot to get the car. The rain was heavy now, the sound of it percussive against the leaves of the trees. Had the wedding been today instead of yesterday, Amit thought to himself, everything would have been different; they would have gathered in the chapel, everyone would have remarked what a shame it was. The rain came down harder and they both began picking up their pace, half-jogging side by side, Megan keeping a hand pressed over her head. They approached Standish Hall, the dorm in which they could have stayed. The front door was open, held by a large rock.
“Let’s wait this out for a few minutes,” Amit said, panting for breath. “I need to use the bathroom.”
In the entryway, on a bulletin board, was a list of room assignments for the wedding guests. He left Megan standing there, reading the names on the list, while he went to the bathroom. All along the hallway the doors were open, beds stripped, sheets folded up on top of them. In the bathroom, the shower stalls, separated by slabs of gray marble, still had beads of water on them from the morning’s use. When he returned, Megan was no longer in the entryway. He began walking down the remaining length of the hall and found her in one of the rooms, perched on the edge of a desk. She was looking at a xeroxed sheet of paper that someone had stepped on, leaving the dusty imprint of a shoe’s sole. “The brunch ended at eleven,” she said.
The arrangement of the room was familiar to him but things had been redone since his time here. There was a new fire alarm, blond wood furniture. The mattress looked firmer, without the black-and-white ticking he remembered. There was a tan carpet covering the floor. The shade half-pulled on the window was fresh, with a ring attached to the string. The effect was more sanitized, less charming, a lot like the inside of the Chadwick Inn. He opened the closet, barely deep enough for a hanger.
“You know, we should have just stayed here,” Megan said. “We would have saved two hundred dollars, and I wouldn’t have spent half the night worried you’d vanished into thin air.”
He closed the closet, then shut the door to the room. There was no way to lock it from the inside. “My fault for trying to have a romantic getaway.”
“But this is so much more romantic.” She spoke objectively, but he also detected a note of regret. When he turned to her she was preoccupied, slightly frowning. She had removed her glasses, raised her fleece pullover, and was wiping the delicate lenses on the T-shirt underneath. Her pulled-back hair was slick against her head, her cheeks flushed from running. She held out the glasses in front of her face, inspecting them before putting them back on. “Was it in a room like this that you had sex for the first time?”
It was something, after all these years, that she didn’t know about him. In spite of her anger his past still preyed on her, if only because she hadn’t been a part of it. “I didn’t have sex at Langford. Anyway, it was a boys’ school back then.