On the steps of a library sheathed in metal and glass, hungover students were catching rays. Walking across the quad I stopped to help tap a keg (and sneak a beer) in front of a new art installation. Soccer players in DKNY sportswear loped across the quad’s green field, and except for a few Goths sitting beneath the overhang of Commons (where I dropped off the stack of The Informers, placing it on the “Free with Student ID” table) everyone looked as if they’d stepped out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. It all resembled something extremely enticing, and again I was taken back into the past, to my years at Camden. In fact the whole campus—the vibe, the placement of the dorms, the design of the main buildings—reminded me of Camden, even though this was just another small and expensive liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere.
“Yo, Mr. Ellis, great party last night—what’s going down?” someone called out. It was a jock from my writing class who had a modicum of talent.
“Yo, I’m down, I’m very down, Jesse,” I called back good-naturedly and then added, as an afterthought, “Rock on.”
Students kept calling out as I walked up to the Barn, thanking me for the party none of them had been invited to but that they all had apparently attended nonetheless. And so my professorial smile was followed by their gratified laughter. There was also the nervous-looking Jewish student (David Abromowitz) I nodded to as I passed and who, I must confess, I was a little into. The compliments about the rad party kept rolling in, and I returned friendly waves to students I’d never even seen before.
On the door of my office was a note from a student I never heard of canceling an appointment I didn’t recall having made, apologizing for her “outburst” in last Wednesday’s class. I tried hard to remember the student and what the outburst had been about but couldn’t come up with anything, because the class was a sleepwalk—so laid-back and comfortable and informal that even the suggestion of an outburst was worrisome. In class I always tried to sound lighthearted and encouraging, but since I was so famous and probably closer to their age than any other teacher (though I was completely autonomous from the rest of the faculty and really didn’t know for sure) my students looked at me in awe. While critiquing their stories I tried to ignore their expressions of fear and alarm.
I sat down at my desk and immediately flipped open my laptop and started making up a dream to feed Dr. Kim, the diminutive Korean shrink my wife found through our couples counselor, Dr. Faheida. Dr. Kim, a strict Freudian and a big believer in how the unconscious expressed itself in dream imagery, wanted me to bring in a new dream every week so we could interpret it, but because her accent was so thick that half the time I had no idea what she was saying, and the added fact that I was no longer having dreams, these sessions were almost unbearable. But Jayne insisted on (and was paying for) them, so it was easier to endure these hours than face the hassles of not showing up. (Besides, this charade was my only means of keeping the Klonopin and Xanax prescriptions up to date—and without them I was a goner.) Meanwhile Dr. Kim was catching on—becoming more suspicious with each new made-up dream—but my assignment was to bring in one today, so while waiting for Aimee Light to arrive (and hopefully undress) I dutifully concentrated on what kind of dream would be burbling in my unconscious at this point. Glancing at my watch I saw this had to be quick. I had to make up the dream, type it up, and print it out, and then—after somehow having sex with Aimee Light—dash over to Dr. Kim’s office by three. Today: water, plane crash, being chased by . . . a lively badger (remember: animals were not my friends); I was naked on the plane, the lively badger was . . . also on the plane, and maybe its name was . . . Jayne.
When I looked up a student had appeared in the doorway and was staring at me sheepishly. There was nothing unusual about him at first glance: tall, handsome in a generic way, a lean face, slightly chiseled, thick reddish brown hair very tightly cropped, a backpack slung over his shoulders. He was wearing jeans and an antique olive green Armani sweater with the designer’s emblem—an eagle—on it (antique because it was a sweater I had once owned when I was a college student). He was holding a Starbucks cup and seemed more alert than the squinty-eyed slackers that populated the campus. And though I couldn’t place him I knew I’d seen him before, and so I was intrigued. Plus he was holding a copy of my first novel, Less Than Zero, which made me stand up and say, “Hello.”
The boy seemed almost shocked that I’d acknowledged him and was suddenly incapable of saying anything until I quickly spoke again.