A laugh breaks out of me(burst out laughing), the force of it like an egg cracking in my chest, spilling out warmth to coat my nerves.
It’s a photo. A blurry, ineffectual selfie of Alex, under a streetlight, making the infamous face. As with nearly every picture he’s ever taken, it’s shot slightly from below, elongating his head so it comes to a point. I throw my head back with another laugh, half-giddy.
You bastard! I type. It’s one a.m. and now you’ve got me headed to the pound to save some lives.
Yeah right, he says. You’d never get a dog.(take care of a dog)
Something like hurt pinches (squeeze) low in my stomach. Despite being the cleanest, most particular, most organized man I know, Alex loves animals, and I’m fairly sure he sees my inability to commit to one as a personal defect (shortcoming).
I look up at the lone dehydrated succulent (the plants that have lost a large amount of water from the body.) in the corner of the balcony. Shaking my head, I type out another message: How’s Flannery O’Connor?
Dead, Alex writes back.
The cat, not the author! I say.
Also dead, he replies.
My heart stutters(talk with continued involuntary repetition of sounds). As much as I loathed (unwilling) that cat (no more or less than she loathed me), Alex adored her. The fact that he didn’t tell me she died slices through me in one clean cut, a guillotine blade from head to foot.
Alex, I’m so sorry, I write. God, I’m sorry. I know how much you loved her. That cat had an amazing life.
He writes only, Thanks.
I stare at the word for a long time, unsure where to go from there. Four minutes pass, then five, then it’s been ten.
I should get to bed now, he says finally. Sleep well, Poppy.
Yeah, I write. You too.
I sit on the balcony until all the warmth has drained out of me.
3
Twelve Summers Ago
THE FIRST NIGHT of orientation(the determination of the relative position of something or someone) at the University of Chicago, I spot him. He’s dressed in khaki pants and a U of Chicago T-shirt, despite having been at this school for all of ten hours.
He looks nothing like the sort of artistic intelligentsia I imagined befriending when I chose a school in the city. But I’m here alone (my new roommate, it turns out, followed her older sister and some friends to college, and she ducked out of O-Week events ASAP), and he’s alone too, so I walk up to him, tip my drink toward his shirt, and say, “So, do you go to University of Chicago?”
He stares at me blankly(without expression or understanding).
I stammer out (speak with sudden involuntary pauses) that it was a joke.
He stammers something about spilling on his shirt and a last-minute outfit change. His cheeks go pink, and mine do too, from secondhand embarrassment.
And then his eyes dip down me, sizing me up, and his face changes. I’m wearing a neon orange and pink floral jumpsuit from the early seventies, and he reacts to this fact as if I’m also holding a poster that says FUCK KHAKIS on it.
I ask him where he’s from, because I’m not sure what else to say to a stranger with whom I have no shared context apart from a few hours of confusing campus tours, a couple of the same boring panels on life in the city, and the fact that we hate each other’s clothes.
“Ohio,” he answers, “a town called West Linfield.”
“No shit!” I say, stunned (amaze). “I’m from East Linfield.”
And he brightens a little, like this is good news, and I’m not sure why, because having the fact of the Linfields in common is sort of like having had the same cold: not the worst thing in the world, but nothing to high-five over.
“I’m Poppy,” I tell him.
“Alex,” he says, and shakes my hand.
When you imagine a new best friend for yourself, you never name him Alex. You also probably don’t imagine him dressing like some kind of teenage librarian, or barely looking you in the eyes, or always speaking just a little bit under his breath.
I decide that if I’d looked at him for five more minutes before crossing the globe-light-strewn lawn to talk, I would’ve been able to guess both his name and that he was from West Linfield, because these two facts match with his khakis and U of Chicago shirt.
I’m sure that the longer we talk, the more violently boring he’ll become, but we’re here, and we’re alone, so why not be sure?
“So what are you here for?” I ask.
His brow furrows. “Here for?”
“Yeah, you know,” I say, “like, I’m here to meet a wealthy oil baron in need of a much younger second wife.”
That blank stare again.
“What are you studying?” I clarify.
“Oh,” he says. “I’m not sure. Prelaw, maybe. Or literature. What about you?”
“Not sure yet.” I lift my plastic cup. “I mostly came for the punch. And to not live in southern Ohio.”
Over the next painful fifteen minutes, I learn he’s here on academic scholarships, and he learns that I’m here on loans (borrowed from someone or something for a period of time). I tell him that I’m the youngest of three, and the only girl. He tells me he’s the oldest of four boys. He asks if I’ve seen the gym yet, to which my genuine reaction is “Why?” and we both go back to shifting awkwardly on our feet in silence.
He is tall, quiet, and eager to see the library.
I’m short, loud, and hoping someone comes by and invites us to a real party.
By the time we part ways, I’m fairly confident we’ll never speak again.
Apparently, he feels the same way.
Instead of goodbye or see you around or should we swap numbers, he just says, “Good luck with freshman year, Poppy.”
《People We Meet on Vacation》
by Emily Henry 从朋友到恋人
只是搬运工加个人笔记。
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