Beefeater gin at the end of a departmental party in late spring; the bottle had a long way to go yet. I liked to read while listening to music. Often a couple sat next to me, reading and drinking as well. One of them, in a bikini, liked to chat every once in a while. She introduced me to John Fowles. I introduced her to Tom Collins. Sometimes she brought cookies or sliced fruit. On that terrace above the fourth floor overlooking Cambridge, all I had to do was stare at my book, smell the suntan lotion around me, and, in the silence of a weekday morning right there on Concord Avenue, drift away and think I was finally lying by some beach on the Mediterranean, or my long-lost Alexandria which I knew I would never again set eyes on except in sleep.
Sometimes I would offer to fill an iced drink on my next trip downstairs for another neighbor who like me was also reading for her orals. She’d accept, and for a few seconds we would talk. I loved her glistening tan shoulders and slim, bare feet. But before I was able to have a conversation with her, she’d be back to reading. Was my music too loud? No, it was fine. Sure it wasn’t bothering her? It didn’t. Apartment 42 was clearly not interested. Apartment 21, who also came up to sunbathe sometimes, was a bit more talkative, but she lived with her twin sister, and there were times when I could hear them go at each other, some of the vilest insults I’ve ever heard flung between two humans. Better stay away—though the idea of twin sisters in the same bed at the same time never failed to arouse me. Apartment 43, who lived next door to me, already had a boyfriend, which explained why she was so seemingly forthcoming. Like me, they were both in their mid-twenties. In the morning, they would leave the building together, the spitting portrait of the world’s healthiest relationship. She’d accompany him to the Square, where he’d catch the train to Boston and she’d turn around with their collie and come back by way of the Cambridge Common. We shared the same service landing, their kitchen door facing mine. They liked pancakes in the morning. Sometimes, the smell of their breakfast wafted into my kitchen, especially when I opened my service door and they left theirs open for cross-ventilation, which is when I’d catch them in boxers and pajamas. On weekends they cooked French toast and bacon. I loved the smell. It stood for family, hearth, friendship, domestic bliss. People who cooked French toast lived with people, liked people, understood why people needed people. In three years, tops, they’d have children. On Saturdays sometimes he would head off to work. Later she’d come upstairs on the terrace in her bikini, eager to make small talk, carrying a towel, suntan lotion, and always something by a British author. Did she know I could hear her passionate cries at night? I was sure she knew.
When she stepped onto the roof terrace on Sunday mornings carrying her folding chair, she’d beam a smile at whomever was lounging there, amused, sly, and self-conscious. She wanted me to know she knew I knew. But it stopped there. When I would take a break and offer to bring her a Tom Collins, she’d decline with a smile—as always amused, sly, and self-conscious. She knew what I was thinking.
On weekday mornings, I loved to look down from my window and watch them leave. Their life was perfectly rounded. Mine had transcendental homelessness written all over it. They headed out and came back, while I stayed put, getting progressively more tanned, more bored. There was nothing to do but read all day. I was not teaching, barely tutoring; I was not writing; I didn’t even own a TV. I would have loved to drive out somewhere. But no one I knew had a car. Cambridge was a fenced-in, isolated strip of parched land.
Upstairs, on the terrace, is where I had decided to reread in the space of six months everything I needed for my comprehensive exams on seventeenth-century literature. Mid-January was far off yet, but in the middle of the night it felt like minutes away. Every time I was done reading a book, I’d discover many more I needed to read or reread. I’d budgeted two books a day. When it came to French prose writers I’d read