Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,205

was Rourke.

“I got in to the East Coast a week ago,” he said. “I left six messages at your dorm. Then there was no answer. I guess your roommate went home for the holiday.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, slipping the phone around the corner into the hall. That wasn’t a lie. I was sorry. For everything.

“I’m flying into Boston the day after tomorrow.”

“What for?”

“A fight.”

“Oh,” I said, “a fight.” Him getting hit. Him bleeding. Him being watched. Imaginations laying claim. “Are you fighting?”

“Not me,” he said. “A friend of mine. Jerry Page. I can get you a plane ticket.”

I thought of—I don’t know what. Nothing good. Lorraine, waiting, “minding her own business.” My parents, how they had loved each other and still loved each other but it wasn’t enough. And Jack. I thought of Jack. Everything damaged, everything broken, everything lost. No effort, it seemed, could ever be good enough.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I can’t.”

When he hung up, I hung up. I sat numbly, like I’d just received news of death. To get out of it, I kept telling myself that I was not some possession that he had lent, that he could not appear out of nowhere to reclaim me, that I’d already done the work of losing him. But the words in my head sounded stilted, like when you memorize a phrase in a foreign language or a phone number when you have no pen.

“Who was that?” Mark asked. He was half-wrapped in a towel at his dresser, holding a glass of Cabernet, looking for collar stays.

I said, “Harrison.”

Mark froze. “Harrison? What did he want?”

“He wants me to meet him in Boston for the weekend.”

Mark set down the glass he was holding and it teetered and nearly fell. He caught it, then sighed with annoyance because wine splashed out.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I told him I couldn’t.”

And then that was it. After that, there was nothing. No more calls. No messages. No letters or visits. I got what I wanted, something to hold, to control. Something dead—a memory.

40

With the shower off, I hear a bottle pop and voices.

“So, what’s up with Lorraine?”

“Same old shit.”

“Same old shit,” Mark repeats. “I mean, where is she?”

“She couldn’t make it,” Rob says.

“What do you mean, couldn’t make it? It’s a Friday night. Didn’t you say we have something to celebrate?”

“She had plans.”

“You didn’t even tell her about the engagement, you prick, did you? And why are you dressed like that? You look like a manager at the movies. I have clients coming tonight.”

Mark stops talking when I come out of the bathroom, and Rob stands. Rob looks great, actually. His vintage jacket is tan and black plaid, and his Western shirt is tan also, with snap buttons and a pearl-white collar with white stitching on the edge.

“Congratulations,” he says, kissing me spiritlessly. “Lorraine couldn’t make it. She has a virus.”

I try to think of what to say. I’m speechless. It never occurred to me that Mark would tell everyone so fast.

Rob helps me despite his disgust. He takes up my hand. “So where’s this rock I had to hear about?”

Area is the hot new club downtown. It has themes. Tonight the theme is night, so the place is practically black. I am left dancing with Dara while Mark and Rob step outside to argue. At least I think they stepped outside; I can’t see through the darkness.

Mark returns alone. He walks past me, going straight to the bar, where he orders a drink and confers with his clients, Miles, who works for the State Department, and Paige, a pharmaceutical heiress and an equestrian. Miles and Paige are up from their estate in Arlington to attend a reelection fund-raiser for Reagan. They are very high; they are frequently high, injection-high. If it’s hard to notice, it’s because they are professional about concealing. Miles has this way of locking down, of stiffening and leaning like plywood against a wall, only there is no wall. Except for an occasional Buddy Holly–type spasm of his left leg that comes so fast and hard you think his knee has buckled backward, you might believe him to be musing and meditative. Paige adjusts—constantly. She flicks her feathered rabbit-brown hair and reapplies lipstick and tweaks nonexistent particles from her shoulders and straightens her skirt even if she is wearing pants. When she takes up the fabric on the thigh of her pants to descend a flight of stairs, she is the picture of Southern refinement.

We don’t call them drug