How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,160
and never looked back. At first she found his boundless self-confidence absurd—a freshman wooing the most popular woman in the sophomore class—but eventually it won her over. He was precocious intellectually as well as sexually, and he was also a willing student. He wrote her a sonnet cycle, twelve strictly constructed love poems modeled on Wyatt's and Shakespeare's. And there was the tribal connection—they had a common set of cultural references and a common enemy in the subtle prejudice of all those who assumed that a southern accent was a sign of slow-wittedness.
Under Eve's influence, A.G. began to write poetry in the runic, oracular manner of Merwin and Strand; her own was high-pitched and baroque, reminding some of late Plath. Eventually he gave up verse, after realizing that he was a better critic than a poet, and a lesser poet than his girlfriend. He would provide the intellectual framework for her creation. In fact, he would've done almost anything for her. Accustomed to being intel lectually and emotionally dominant, he happily acceded to her whims and opinions. He started smoking Gauloises and briefly abandoned the preppy wardrobe of his youth in favor of colorful long-collared shirts and flared pants. Eve, who had a breathtaking figure to show off, hid it beneath drapey vintage dresses and scarves. His devotion was extreme; he couldn't believe his luck in finding, so early in life, all the answers to his desires in one woman. They shared a destiny. While they gathered around them a group of friends and admirers, they were often criticized for being a universe of two.
They spent their second summer together backpacking in Europe; her family had offered to pay for a deluxe version of the grand tour, but Eve refused their money on principle. They bought Europasses and stayed in youth hostels, dined on bread and cheese and vin du pays and screwed like minks. By day they retraced the lives of the poets and sought out ancient churches. One afternoon in the cool, musty interior of a Romanesque church near Saint Paul de Vence, Eve knelt down on the stone floor and gave him a blow job. It was the most shocking thing that had happened to him in his life, though he didn't say anything, more fearful that she'd think him prudish and stop before she finished than he was of discovery or blasphemy.
They worried about what to do after graduation, which would come a year earlier for Eve. Marriage was discussed, but they agreed—or rather, Eve assured him—that they didn't believe in it. Finally she decided to go to Columbia for her master's. She'd take the four-hour train ride to see him every weekend, and in the meantime she could scout out Manhattan, a territory they planned to conquer together. Her senior year, Eve was invited to be a Fellow at Bread Loaf. A.G., interning in Chattanooga at a law firm, couldn't understand the diminishing volume and ardor of her letters and phone calls. She herself was almost impossible to reach. Frantic, he drove one Friday night from Chattanooga to Vermont, arriving at the mountain outpost of literature sixteen hours later, just in time to find a tousled Eve walking to breakfast, hand in hand with a middle-aged poet A.G. recognized from dust-jacket photos. Her surprise turned almost immediately to defiance. A.G. punched the poet, knocking him down. Eve jumped on his back and scratched his face as a small crowd of aspiring writers looked on.
In his young man's heart he believed he could never forgive her, but she astonished him by refusing to ask him to. Back in Chattanooga, he waited for the letter or the call, in his mind conducting the dialogue she refused to initiate. How could she? After all that time, after all they'd been through together. For all his intelligence and eloquence, the sentiments and even the words were the same as those of all spurned lovers. He spent hours engaged in this furious debate, but his side amounted to the repetition of a simple question: “How could you stop loving me?” This was his first experience of rejection. He had never been in love before, and some of his friends wondered if he ever would be again.
At his father's insistence, A.G. had taken half a dozen economics classes already, and having finished most of his course work in English, he decided to do a double major in literature and economics. He took up with a new set of friends, avoiding most