It took us two days of looking, but we finally found a one-bedroom basement flat along an Edwardian block of mansion flats in Maida Vale. It was a long Tube ride from the Faunce Institute and from Addison’s classes, but it was in the nicest neighborhood we’d been shown. Addison told me it was the only place we’d seen that didn’t make her want to take a shower right away, so I agreed. I called my father—who was a visiting writer that semester somewhere in California—to tell him I’d taken a flat in Maida Vale, and he said how posh I was, mentioned a pub called the Prince Alfred, and ended by telling me that “the only bad thing about London’s all the bloody American students.”
Addison and I turned out to be good roommates, mostly because our schedules meant we rarely saw each other. About three weeks after our arrival, I began to see even less of her, because she had started dating a fellow Texan in her program who had a flat in Camden Town. “I know it’s lame that I come all the way to London and end up dating some kid from Lubbock named Nolan, but he’s a cute kid.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” I said.
“When’s your boyfriend—Eric, right?—when’s he coming again?”
I told her and she promised to be out of my hair during his visit. I insisted that it didn’t matter either way, even though I did want Addison to stay away while Eric was here. Along with immersing myself in my schoolwork at the institute, and exploring London’s bookstores and museums, I had been spending my time trying to figure out a way to kill Eric and get away with it. And I was pretty sure that I had figured it out.
The first part of my plan hinged on Eric’s competitive nature. I had spent enough time watching him play pool at St. Dun’s to know just how much he hated to lose. He tried to hide it, but when he lost, especially to someone he didn’t like, his eyes would go blank, and he would find a way to play that person again, and to win. And just this past summer, when Eric visited me at Monk’s, he’d asked me about the huge oak in the backyard. He’d spotted the two faded colored flags that had been nailed into its trunk, one at about the three-quarters mark, and one near the top. I explained that one summer my father’s best friend from childhood had come for a month, and how they had taken turns climbing the oak, each trying to get his flag higher than the other’s. It had gone on for weeks, only ending when my father, drunk, fell off the first branch one night and broke his wrist. After telling Eric this story I knew that he would have to try and climb the tree. And he did. It took him several tries but he made it higher than either my father or my father’s friend had.
“How do you think your father would feel if I put my own flag up there?”
I laughed. “I don’t think he’d care at all. He’d be amused.”
“I don’t need to, but if you thought he’d find it funny.”
“Have you always been this competitive?”
He frowned at me. “I don’t think I’m that competitive. You should see my brother.”
At the time, I chalked Eric’s denial up to a lack of self-knowledge, but now I saw it as part of his fraudulent nature. He genuinely did not want people to know about his driving desire to win at all costs. It gave away too much of himself. And it gave away a part of himself that was unchangeable. So, when I heard about the beer challenge at the Bottle and Glass, a dowdy pub at the end of my avenue, I knew that I could get Eric to attempt it. I didn’t need him to be drunk for what I had planned, but it would definitely help.
He arrived in London on a cold, wet Saturday. Addison, true to her word, packed a bag on Friday evening to spend a few days with Nolan. “Honey, you must be so excited,” she said.
“I am,” I said.
“Well, try and look it.”
“I’m just nervous,” I said. “I don’t really know why, but I am.”
“That’ll go away about five minutes after he gets here. You just both need to get laid.”