Robert Parker - Love and Glory

I waited with a feeling of trembly exhaustion moving along my arms and legs. It was the same feeling I got when I’d finished squeezing out an extra repetition on the bench, one final shuddering dip on the parallel bars. I took in another deep breath. Control, I said to myself, control. The word helped me. I clung to it, fixing on it the way I used to fix on a light in the dark when I was drunk and the room spun. Control.

The chairman said something about more sherry and turned from her. She moved, as I knew she would, to find someone else. She would never stand alone in a social circumstance. Her eyes passed over my face and on. And stopped. And came back. They looked at me. They got wider. Her mouth opened and shut. And opened slightly and I saw her take a sharp breath.

I said, “Hello, Jennifer.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

“It is good to see you again.” My voice was steady and calm, far from me, off in some rational distance, proceeding in its rational way.

“Boonie,” she said.

“The very one,” my voice said.

“Boonie, my God, Boonie.” She took my hand suddenly and leaned over and kissed me on the mouth lightly, and pulled back. “Jesus Christ,” she said.

I nodded.

“You son of a bitch,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“Round the world,” I said, “and I’m going again.”

“I want to hear,” she said, her face now intent upon me, as it had been upon the chairman. “I want to hear about everything.”

“I’ll be happy to tell you,” I said.

“We’ll have lunch,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Here,” I said. “I’m a student.”

“My God, so am I.”

Her face was a little better than it had been when she was twenty-one. It knew more things. It was not — and the thought squeaked along my nerve lengths — the face of a virgin, for instance. Nor was it, as much as it had been, the face of a child. It contained that same sense of charge, of kinesis, of distilled and radiant femaleness that it had contained when I first saw it, but it had become more elegant.

“Here?” I said. “You’re a student here?”

“Yes, I’m working on my M.A. and I have an assistantship. I teach two sections of freshman English.”

She was right here. I hadn’t been lucky often in the last eight years, but the luck I’d had was mortal. It was luck that Tom Hernandez was hosing down his sidewalk in front of the restaurant. It was luck that Jennifer had gone back to school and here. Where we’d be near, where I had room to work. My hands felt like they were shaking, but I looked at the one that held the sherry and they weren’t, they were steady.

She had her hands on her hips and her head cocked looking at me. “Boonie,” she said, “you look wonderful. Whatever you’ve been doing it’s certainly been good for you.”

“Maybe,” I said. “When do you want to have lunch?”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Faculty Club.”

“Will they let me in?”

“Are you a teaching assistant?”

“No,” I said. “I’m a sophomore.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll meet you out front. I have a card as a T.A. and a card as John’s wife.”

“Noon?”

“I’ll be there. Boonie, there’s so much to talk about.”

“I hope so,” I said.

I had a studio apartment on Revere Street and that night I went over my outfit for the next day. I’d never been to a faculty club. But I’d seen a lot of faculty. My wardrobe was sufficient. I polished my cordovans, washed and dried and ironed my chinos, and went over my blue blazer with Scotch tape to get off any lint there might be. I had two clean shirts: blue and white. I chose the white one and put it out on the bureau. Tie selection was easy. I had a black knit and blue and red rep. I took the rep. I tucked a pair of dark blue socks into the cordovans, and put them on the floor at the foot of the bed. Then I stood back and surveyed, dressing myself in my imagination and, I realized, making slight indications of the dressing motions as I went through it: socks, pants, shirt, shoes, tie, coat. Belt. I had forgotten a belt. I had only one, a dark brown alligator belt. I got it from the closet and hung it over the hanger throat where my pants and blazer were. A pocket handkerchief would be a touch of class, but I didn’t have one. I checked my wallet. It would be awkward if I couldn’t afford the lunch. There were nine dollars in my wallet. I got out the checkbook and wrote a check for cash. I’d cash it at the bursar’s office after class. Tomorrow I had a nine and a ten. I’d be free at eleven.

I checked out the wardrobe again, then I got undressed and read Piers Plowman until I got too sleepy. Reading Piers Plowman does not impede sleepiness. When I put Piers Plowman down and turned off the light I was sleepy but I couldn’t sleep. I hadn’t expected to and I didn’t fret. I lay as quietly as I could and kept my mind as empty as I could. I thought about what I’d do if I had all the money I wanted. And what I’d eat if I were to create my absolute perfect menu, and what kind of car I’d drive, and what kind of house I’d buy, and what kind of wardrobe I’d create. I thought about the all-time greatest ballplayers by position (I spent time deciding if Stan Musial would be a first baseman or an outfielder.) The all-time greatest ballplayer poll stopped somewhere in the mid-nineteen fifties because I didn’t know anything about the players in the second half of the nineteen fifties. After Jennifer had married John Merchent, I’d lost half a decade. I moved on, listing the ten most desirable women I could think of, but once again those lost years hampered me, and always there was the steady tension that centered in my solar plexus. The night seemed shorter than it should have, had I been continuously wakeful. Morning came.

I brushed my teeth carefully, showered for a long time, and shaved closely, lathering twice and going over it again. I dried my hair by rubbing it with a towel, and toweled the rest of me dry. I sat on my bed, put on my dark blue socks, stood up, unwrapped the white shirt from its laundry package, and put it on. I buttoned it from the top button down, and then put on my pants, right leg, then left leg. I tucked in the shirttail, smoothing it all around, and buttoned the pants and zipped the fly. I slid my belt through the loops and buckled it and lined up the buckle with the line of my shirtfront and the line of my fly. Then, using a shoehorn, I slipped into my shoes, and tied them with one foot on the floor and one foot resting on the edge of the bed. I tied the tie in a simple four-in-hand knot and shaped the knot after I had drawn it tight. With my thumb and forefinger I smoothed the roll in the button-down collar. My hair was dry. I had a very short haircut so it dried quickly. Looking in the bathroom mirror, I made a part with my comb and then brushed the hair. Back out in my bed-sitting room, I took the blazer off its hanger and slipped into it. I didn’t have many clothes, but what I had were good. The blazer was all wool with a full tattersall lining.

In the bathroom mirror I tried the jacket buttoned and unbuttoned and decided I’d arrive with it buttoned and unbutton it as we sat down. I held a small tietack against my tie and decided instead to tuck the shorter end inside the label loop.

I didn’t have a topcoat, so I went with no coat and shivered some waiting for the elevator at Charles Street Circle. But I’d spent too much time on my appearance to set it off with an army surplus field jacket. (Not mine. Mine had disappeared long ago during the years of exile somewhere west.)

I took notes in my medieval literature course, but automatically, listening only with my hand and pencil, and my U.S. history class went by unrecorded. After class I left my books on a windowsill in Memorial Hall and cashed my check at the bursar’s. I had fifty minutes until noon. It was too cold to walk outside. So I began systematically to pace the corridors in the Student Union, ascending the stairs at the end of each corridor and walking back on the next floor in the other direction. I wanted to smoke. I hadn’t in more than a year. I wouldn’t now. I kept walking. In my head the refrain to the Four Freshman version of “Take the A Train” reiterated without volition, over and over and over. Control, I thought. Control. You’ve been shot at in Korea and you’re afraid of this? Control. The faculty club was on the top floor of the Student Union. At five of twelve I was waiting outside the door. In the hall, near the elevator. I knew she’d be late. She was always late. But I wasn’t. And I wouldn’t be.

Across the table from me Jennifer ate a crouton from her salad. She had always eaten like that. If she were given a plate of peas she’d eat one at a time.

“Have you missed me, Boonie?” Her gaze was straight at me as she said it.

“Yes,” I said.

“There have been a lot of times when I wished you were around,” she said. “To talk to. To help. To explain things. You were always so good at that.”

I nodded. The dining room was large-windowed and bright with the winter sun. The walls were Wedgwood blue with white trim. The floor was carpeted in beige, and the tablecloths were pink.

“Have you been doing wonderful, exciting things, while you’ve been gone?” Jennifer said.

I smiled. “I don’t know. A lot of what I’ve been doing since your wedding is a little vague. I was drunk early and often.”

She nodded. Her eyes steady on my face. “You were drunk at the wedding,” she said.

“That was amateurish,” I said. “I got much more professional as I matured. By the time I got west of Chicago I was a major league drunk.”