You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [74]
“Elizabeth, I tried to convince him otherwise, but Mr. Attwater’s decided that as long as you’re here, you’re not to have visits from a volunteer. God knows it’s the last thing I wanted to tell you today, but I wanted it at least to be me who told you.”
Elizabeth tilts her head to one side. “No visits?”
Mrs. Johnson folds her hands in her lap.
“I see,” Elizabeth says. “Mr. Attwater. He’s decided.”
“Yes.”
HE CANNOT EVEN commence an attempt to concentrate on the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. As he sits in the cinema with Lauren on one side and Heather and Stevie, who’ve started dating, on the other, the deep irrelevance of the movie strikes him like an epiphany. In a few hours he, Ted, will be naked in a bed with a girl he loves, and the whole miserable material world seems a mighty petty thing in comparison to this. It seems it might never matter again. The date has been set for a week, her Christmas present to him whispered in his ear, the whole thing so damn sophisticated he feels like one of those men in top hat and tails who dance on moonlit balconies in the black-and-white movies his parents used to watch. “Suave” is the word.
Finally, the stupid flick ends and they follow the crowd out into the parking lot, where the snow has begun to fall heavily now and the plows have started their work for the night.
“You guys coming to the party?” Heather asks.
Ted squints, shrugs, looks off into the distance. “Sounds kinda cool, I’m thinking maybe not, though, you know. It’s getting late.”
“Hello? It’s New Year’s Eve.”
Lauren, dressed in sheer black club pants and a simple black leather jacket, interrupts Ted’s nonchalance by informing the others that her parents are away and she and Ted are going back to her place—no interruption of his hipness, he realizes, but a cubing of it.
“What do you think, Heather?” Stevie asks, rolling onto the balls of his feet. “Maybe you and me could go play some cops and robbers too.”
Heather gives a mocking snort. “Please. I’ll probably be bailing you out when you get arrested with your gay little drugs.”
“Have fun,” Lauren says, taking Ted’s hand, something she’s never done in front of other people. Instantly, he has an erection. As they walk toward his car, he wonders how premature premature ejaculation is, if men come miles from their girlfriends’ homes, if they’ll make it to her house in time.
On the highway, Lauren puts in an ambient house tape, a slow beat, the volume way down. Wet flakes zoom into the windshield out of the dark hills of the sky. The mall lots they pass are lit and empty. The stores are closed, the car dealerships vanishing beneath the snow. Tonight, Ted doesn’t see this familiar landscape as a present fact, but already as a memory, a scene he will one day recall. It’s strange and exciting to perceive things from such a distance. He glimpses how beautiful even this world can be if you aren’t actually in it.
On the passenger’s side, Lauren sits quietly, her leather jacket unzipped, the orange cardigan they’ve joked about buttoned underneath it. Her face has an oddly purposeful expression, her eyes fixed on the dashboard. In the month they’ve been going out, there’s been a fair amount of silence between them, which Lauren doesn’t seem to mind, though it makes Ted anxious. They’ve talked about her family some. At first he thought she loathed her parents in the way some of his other wealthy friends do, with a kind of casual cynicism, as if their mothers and fathers were minor officials in the national corruption—illegitimate people living illegitimate lives. He’s always thought with bitterness it was a luxury to view your parents this way—as people strong enough to withstand your derision. But the more time he spends with Lauren, the more he thinks she understands this, that she could hurt her parents. Her determination, her careful plan for their getting together, it’s about something different, about being in control.
Her house is a six-month-old mock château