Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,217

I checked out on him for a long time. Eight months went by, the longest we ever went without talking.”

Eight months. April of my freshman year. When Rourke sent me the letter; when Rob came to see me in my dorm.

“Harrison called in April. We hadn’t spoken since that night in Montauk. He was coming to New York. He wanted to see you. He figured you and I’d kept in touch. I set him straight, but said, no problem, I’d find you. There was no listing in Manhattan. NYU had your dorm, the one on East Tenth, but no student phone number—I figured your roommate got the phone. I would have tried your mother, but her name is different from yours. Like an idiot, I called Mark, thinking he could get your number through Alicia. Well he’d been waiting for that.”

Rob stammers into a burdensome silence. Suddenly it hits me. I know what he’s referring to. Mark told Rob what happened to me. Rob told Rourke.

“Mark said you didn’t want anything to do with Harrison, then he explained why in no uncertain terms. How you were found practically dead in the street, how he had had to deal with the hospital, how he paid the doctor, how he cleaned up after that animal, how he was the only thing standing between you and a nervous breakdown.”

I must be in shock, because the first thing I think of isn’t Rourke. The first thing I think of is Mr. Ross. I can almost hear Mark say, Dad, I need to have a private conversation. How like Mark to use the tragedy of my private circumstances to elevate his image and dismantle Rourke’s. I can’t believe I’d allowed it. No wonder they’d all tiptoed around me. Next I think of Rourke, how I’d hurt him. Last is Mark. How Mark hurt him.

“First of all,” I say, “Mark loaned me money. I paid him back.”

Rob lays his elbows on the bar and rubs the inside of his eyes with his fingertips. “Sure, sure. Mark blew it out of proportion. The fact is, you could’ve called me. You should’ve called me. You gotta understand, men are funny about—well, you can’t have another guy stepping in like that—I mean—well, you know what I mean. It’s a big decision.”

“It wasn’t a decision. It was an accident.” He turns to me; our faces are practically grazing. “You know, like, a loss,” I explain. “I woke up in E.R. I didn’t know what happened until after it was over. Did Mark tell you that I—” I leave off with the question; I already know the answer. Mark had told Rob I’d been found practically dead in the street. Didn’t that imply I’d done it to myself, like with a coat hanger?

Beneath Rob’s eyes are the hard lines of misfortune. You cannot read him through his eyes. They defy, they oppose. Rob’s eyes are not how you see in, but how he sees out. He’s in shock, like me, only my shock is less and his is more. I live with Mark. I belong to a circle of people who are duplicitous, to a world in which friends are disposable. Rob’s is a world in which blood ties extend beyond blood. It’s difficult to see him forced to confront questions of betrayal among friends. It’s like he’s got rats in the house. It’s a shitty lesson, that of all the reckless ways to live, the most reckless of all is an absence of influence over your own affairs.

“What was I supposed to do?” he says. “Everybody knowing Harrison’s business but him, it wasn’t right. I had to tell him. If he ever found out that I knew too, it would be bad. Ever since his father died, it’s like he’s got this pressure. Everything goes back to that.” Rob shakes his head. “It’s bad luck all around. Except for Ross. He scored a triple win—retribution for Diane, a shot at you—which, I mean, he never stood a chance—and Harrison—he never fought again. Mark called him an animal, and he believed it.”

Rob shakes his head. “You know, it’s taken me a while to figure it out. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. Harrison left without me twice, not because he didn’t want me to come, but because he wanted me to stay. He wanted me to look out for you, once in Montauk and then later, after finding out about this. And I failed—twice.” He drums his hands on the