light bulb overhead, the fact that they are half naked and semi-crippled by hangovers, the fact that they just had sex with the same girl, the fact that they haven’t had a real conversation since the night Rank delivered to Adam his grotesque confession.
And, needless to say, Rank has insulted and ridden his friend Adam many times in the past — for being pretentious, for being fruity, for being slight of frame, for wearing glasses, for being overly interested in school, for doing poorly with the opposite sex. Yes, this is standard operating procedure as far as their friendship goes. But there was something in Rank’s tone just now — what’s the point of guys like you? — that can’t be ignored. Rank is ready to deny it, but he knows it was there as well as Adam does. He’d been helpless to suppress it. It had something to do with this new, improved version of boredom he’s been experiencing of late: the edgy boredom, the boredom that doesn’t seem to give a fuck one way or another.
“I’m going back to bed,” says Adam, turning.
“Hey!” calls Rank. “Is Jennifer with a V still around? You finished with her yet?”
It has to be understood at this point that Adam is entirely the kind of guy who would wave a dismissive hand — or finger — at this comment and continue on his way back to bed. Adam is a high-road kind of guy, the object of macho taunts and tough-guy jeers his entire life, one can only assume. So this kind of remark could typically be counted upon to bounce right off him for the most part.
Rank, therefore, is surprised to see him stop and turn back.
“If you’re pissed off at me,” says Adam, “just say it.”
“What,” says Rank. “Share and share alike, right?”
“She was completely shitfaced, Rank.”
“So you figured the gentlemanly thing to do . . .”
“A woman climbs on top of me in the middle of the night . . .”
“Look I’m saying I don’t care, man.”
“Okay, fine. And I’m just saying, if you do care I’d like you to tell me now because I’d rather not end up getting shoved across the room like Kyle some night when you’re pissed out of your head.”
Rank pauses to grind his molars. He’s at a loss for words due to the fact that his feelings are hurt. He certainly didn’t shove Kyle across the room. He knocked him off balance a little, yes. It was barely a shove at all — it was more of a gesture of aggression than an act. He is hurt that Adam could consider it otherwise, that Adam would portray his friend Rank as some kind of ongoing threat.
“Maybe,” says Adam, after Rank’s silence has entrenched itself, “you shouldn’t hang around here so much right now, you know? It’s almost exam time and you seem kind of out of control.”
“I have nowhere to go,” says Rank.
“Like . . . go to the library or something.”
Rank snorts so that Adam won’t notice him shudder. There’s no way to explain that the library is haunted for him now. T.S. Eliot lies in wait, crouched somewhere behind the stacks with a protective arm around his unfortunate friend Croft — still weeping angelically, still bleeding from the ears.
“Go to bed Adam,” says Rank. “Nighty-night.”
Instead, Adam takes a step closer and scratches his scalp in such a way to make his already preposterous bed-head even more mad-scientist than what he walked into the kitchen with. He now looks like he’s stepped out of a wind tunnel.
“Are you going home for Christmas?” Adam wants to know.
“No. I’m gonna work through the holidays. Make some money.”
Which, he knows, is stupid. What he’ll make over December working at Goldfinger’s, even behind the bar, won’t be anywhere near enough to cover his tuition next semester. At the same time, he doesn’t have to worry about his living expenses, because he’d paid for the room and meal plan in advance at the beginning of the year. So really, there is no compelling reason whatsoever to work at Goldfinger’s over Christmas break. And there is no good reason for him to stay on campus by himself in an empty dormitory over the holidays, with no one but a handful of lonely, language-challenged Chinese and Middle Eastern students to keep him company. He is just being perverse, and Adam seems to know it.
“You could come to my house,” suggests Adam, and Rank realizes something all of a sudden.