men. She kept dumping the foam off the top of the beer and refilling them. When she was finally done, she turned her attention to Corbin and he ordered a Foster’s as well, adding that he’d like a big glass. She’d smiled at that, and Corbin felt the urge to punch her in the teeth.
He took the Foster’s—so much better than the other beer—to a high stool along a paneled wall near the bar, and tried to look bored and uncaring. He scanned the room, not recognizing any of the students as Americans. There was a lull at the bar, and the bartender came out to pick up the empty glasses scattered around on tables. Coming back past Corbin, she stopped and asked if he was American.
“I’m a visiting student, yeah,” he said.
“D’you know anyone looking for a room in a flat? I have a friend who’s looking to sublet out a room.”
“Where?”
“Camden. Not far from here.”
Corbin told her that he might be interested, that he had a place already but hated it. He told her it was his dad’s friend’s sex flat, and made up that it was filled with dildos and bowls of condoms. The bartender threw her head back and laughed, exposing her creamy white throat. “You’ll look at this other flat, then?” she asked.
Corbin agreed, was given an address, and by the second day of classes had moved into an equally scuzzy apartment that was at least a lot closer to his school. He shared the flat with a morose Irish girl, whose main advantage was that she was never there, and when she was, she was in her bedroom, weeping on the phone. The other advantage was that she was an acquaintance of the dark-haired, blue-eyed bartender, whose name was Claire Brennan, and after the brief conversation at the Three Lambs, Corbin’s initial hatred had turned into a deep infatuation.
Before coming to London, Corbin had told himself that there was no way he was going to get romantically involved with anyone while overseas. The previous semester—his first of junior year—he’d been seeing a freshman girl named Sarah Scharfenberg, who lived down the hall in his dorm. She was a rarity at Mather, a midwestern girl who didn’t spend freshman orientation week trying to fuck every frat brother she met. She told him she was practically a virgin and wanted to take it slow. It was okay with him. He even drove her to see his mother’s home in New Essex on a weekend when he knew none of his family would be there. She’d been impressed. He’d loved seeing the expression on her face as she took in the enormous house, the view of the ocean, his mom’s art collection.
Back in his dorm that night, she’d produced a condom and whispered into his ear: “I want to make love with you. Right now.” The words sounded rehearsed, and her voice theatrically breathy. They stripped naked, but all Corbin felt was disgust. In the bad dorm lighting she suddenly looked cheap and pudgy, and Corbin noticed a discolored tooth he’d never seen before. He couldn’t get hard and told her that he wasn’t in the mood. She made it worse by repeatedly telling Corbin that it was okay. She even tried to rub his neck.
He’d stopped seeing her after that, although on the last night of first semester, he’d gotten drunk and pounded on her dorm-room door. He’d decided to give her what she wanted, after all. Her roommate answered, told Corbin that she was probably spending the night at her boyfriend’s dorm. The way the roommate looked at him it was pretty clear that she’d heard the whole story. “Fucking whore,” Corbin said before going to his own room to pass out.
And now he was in London, where he’d already decided to have nothing to do with girls and sex, and where he’d already fallen for Claire Brennan.
She was easy to find, because she worked most nights at the Three Lambs. Corbin would casually swing by, usually by himself. It turned out that he and Claire were in the same class—Intro to Macroeconomics—and some nights he’d bring a textbook, and they’d talk about it together, Corbin drinking Foster’s and Claire drinking wine behind the bar. Even though she was Corbin’s age, twenty, she seemed grown-up and sophisticated in a way that American girls didn’t. For one, she was working to put herself through school, and she despised most of the American students, who came over