The City of Mirrors (The Passage 3)

“I have coke.”

I found myself, then, sitting beside her on a deep leather couch in a room that looked like something in a hunting lodge. From her purse she produced a small packet made of notebook paper, sealed by complex folding. She used my Harvard ID to arrange the coke in two fat lines on the coffee table and rolled a dollar bill into a tube. Cocaine was an aspect of college life that I had not experienced but did not see the harm of. She bent to the table, sucked the powder deep into her sinuses with a delicate, girlish snort, and passed me the bill so that I might do the same.

It wasn’t bad at all. It was, in fact, very good. Within seconds of the powder’s purchase, I experienced a Roman-candle rush of well-being that seemed not a departure from reality but a deeper entry into truth. The world was a fine place full of wonderful people, an enchanted existence worthy of the utmost enthusiasm. I looked at Stephanie, who was quite beautiful now that I had eyes to see, and sought the words to explain this revelation on a night of many.

“You’re a really good dancer,” I said.

She leaned forward and took my mouth with hers. It was not a schoolgirl’s kiss; it was a kiss that said there were no rules if I didn’t want there to be. It did not take long before our bodies were a confusion of tongues and hands and skin. Things were being slid aside, unlatched, unzipped. I felt like I had plummeted into a vortex of pure sensuality. It was different than it had been with Carmen. It had no edges, no roughness. It felt like being melted. Stephanie was astride my lap and drawing her panties aside and down she went, enveloping me; she began to move in a wondrous, aquatic fashion, like an anemone undulating on the tides, rocking and rising and plunging, each variation accompanied by the creak of leather upholstery. Mere hours since I’d been pacing my room, consigned to a night of humiliated loneliness, and here I was, fucking a girl in a cocktail dress.

“Whoa. Sorry, bud.”

It was Jonas. Stephanie was off me like a shot. A moment of frantic activity as the pants were yanked upward, the dress downward, various articles of underclothing rammed into adjustment. Standing in the doorway, my roommate was in a state of barely contained hilarity.

“Jesus,” I said. I was pulling up my fly, or trying to. My shirttail was stuck in the zipper. More comedy. “You could have knocked.”

“And you could have locked the door.”

“Jonas, did you find her?” Liz appeared behind him. As she stepped into the room, her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said.

“They were getting better acquainted,” Jonas offered, laughing.

Stephanie was smoothing down her hair; her lips were swollen, her face flushed with blood. I had no doubt mine was the same.

“I can see that,” Liz said. Her mouth was set in a prim line; she didn’t look at me. “Steph, your friends are waiting for you outside. Unless you want me to tell them something else.”

This was clearly impossible; the balloon of passion had been punctured. “No, I guess I should go.” She fetched her shoes from the floor and turned to me. I was, ridiculously, still sitting on the sofa. “Well, thanks,” she said. “It was really nice to meet you.”

Should we kiss? Shake hands? What was I supposed to say? “You’re welcome” didn’t seem like it would cut it. In the end, the gap between us was too wide; we didn’t even touch.

“You, too,” I said.

She followed Liz from the room. I felt miserable—not only because of my painfully blockaded loins, but also because of Liz’s unmistakable disappointment in me. I had revealed myself to be just like every other guy: a pure opportunist. It wasn’t until that moment that I fully realized how important her opinion of me had become.

“Where is everybody?” I asked Jonas. The building was remarkably quiet.

“It’s four o’clock in the morning. Everybody’s gone. Except for Alcott. He’s passed out in the pool room.”

I looked at my watch. So it was. Whether from the adrenaline or the coke counteracting the booze, my thoughts had cleared. Cringe-inducing snippets of the night came back to me: knocking a drink onto a member’s date, attempting a Cossack dance to the B-52’s “Love Shack,” laughing too loudly at a joke that was actually somebody’s sad story about his disabled brother. What had I been thinking, getting so drunk?

“Are you okay? You want us to wait?”

I’d never wanted anything less in my life. I was already calculating which park bench I could sleep on. Did people do that anymore? “You guys go ahead. I’ll be along.”