Or a leaf. Or song lyrics written on a matchbook.
Or Chris himself. Leaning against my door on a Wednesday afternoon, waiting for me to get back from economics. Maybe he’d stay for 15 minutes. Maybe he’d leave that night after I fell asleep. Or maybe he’d talk me into skipping classes for the rest of the week. Maybe we wouldn’t leave the room until Saturday morning when we’d finally exhausted my supply of salsa and Popsicles and Diet Coke.
He made me nervy. I spent a lot of time looking out of windows, trying to will him to me. I rented movies about girls who chewed on their hair and had fever patches on their cheeks.
I’ve never been happier.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I think I’ve figured out why we weren’t friends in college. You were kind of scary.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Not scary. Single-minded.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Scarily single-minded.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I was focused. I knew what I wanted in life. I wanted Chris. And it was such a relief not to be distracted by anything else. I had no boring subplots.
Weren’t you ever like that with Mitch?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Never like that.
I mean, I was definitely head over heels. But, if anything, he was more caught up than I was, which is probably why we’re still together. I needed Mitch to wear his heart on his sleeve. I was so insecure, I needed him to bang down my door and fill my room with flowers.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Did he actually fill your room with flowers?
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Yep. Carnations, but flowers nonetheless.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Hmmm. In theory, I think that sounds wonderful. But in practice, I was drawn to Chris because he didn’t do that sort of thing. Because he would never do anything that was romantic in a traditional sense. And not just because he was trying to be different, but because his instincts were ( are) so different from every other guy’s. It was like dating the man who fell to Earth.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m glad you finally told me all this. I hated feeling like there was this major part of your life that we couldn’t talk about.
That said, I don’t think you ever have to worry about me running away with or making a drunken pass at Chris. He’d make me insane.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Ditto on the being glad we talked about this. But I can’t give you a ditto on the drunken pass thing. Mitch is a hottie.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Now I’m rolling my eyes.
THEY MUST BE about his age. Jennifer and Beth and Beth’s boyfriend. Twenty-eight or so. Maybe they’d all been in college together. After Lincoln transferred to the state school, after Sam broke up with him, he’d stayed in school a long time, through multiple degrees. There was a good chance he’d seen Beth on campus.
So much for stopping. So much for what he technically, ethically, knew he should do.
He’d meant to throw Beth’s and Jennifer’s messages away, as soon as they showed up in the WebFence folder. But then …he didn’t. He opened them, and once he was reading them, he got caught up in their stories, in their back and forth and back and forth.
I’m getting caught up, he thought to himself after he was done reading about how Beth met her boyfriend, after he’d read through the whole story a second time and spent a few minutes thinking about it, thinking about them, wondering what they all looked like …What she looked like …
I’m getting caught up, he thought. That’s not good …is it?
No. But maybe it isn’t exactly all bad …
From: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder
To: Beth Fremont
Sent: Fri, 09/10/1999 1:23 PM
Subject: Herring cassoulet.
You shouldn’t be allowed to eat fish at work. I swear to God, whenever Tony works, I go home reeking of the sea. I know he’s from Rhode Island, where they eat fish all the livelong day, but he should assume that everyone around him here is disgusted by the stink of it.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I’ve seen you eat fish sticks before. And popcorn shrimp.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> Both of those have protective fried coatings. I’ll eat fish that’s processed beyond recognition, but I would never eat it at work. I don’t even pop popcorn here. I don’t like to inflict my food odors on others.
<<Beth to Jennifer>> Very thoughtful.
I’ll trade you Tony’s orange roughy stench for Tim’s fingernail clipping any day.
<<Jennifer to Beth>> I thought you stole his fingernail clippers …
<<Beth to Jennifer>> I did. He has new ones. I’m not sure what bothers me more …the constant clip-clip noises or knowing that his cubicle is completely contaminated by tiny fingernail slivers.