After I use the toilet and wash my hands, I stand over one of the trash bins at the row of sinks to dry things off and hope that I can go back to sleep. I still don’t know what woke me.
Voices register and I look up. Over the sinks, there is a row of mirrors that are lock-in-step with the basins, dancing partners that are the flash to the static porcelain. The sounds of an argument are coming through the wall.
In my groggy state, my first thought is that it’s my mother and one of her boyfriends. This conclusion is immediately discarded. Wrong bathroom, for one. For another, there’s only the male part, low and defensive, the shriller, female counterbalance noticeably absent. There are plenty of pauses, however, which suggests the woman both has a lot to say and fights in the carpet-bombing manner Tera Taylor does.
I lean toward the wall to try to catch the words. Eavesdropping like this feels both wrong and delicious, a second piece of cake stolen out of the fridge after the party is over. I am suddenly much more awake.
“—please, don’t do this again with that Molly Jansen thing.” The tone turns exhausted. “It’s been a goddamn year and the charges were dropped—I’m sorry, what was that?” Pause. And then things get sharper. “You’re the one on the road, Sandra. You chose that job—look, I have to go.” There is a short silence. “I’m—because I need to clear my head, that’s why. I love you, but—have you been drinking again? You’re slurring…”
With a flush, I recognize who it is. It’s my residential advisor, and he’s fighting with his wife.
“I’m hanging up the phone, Sandra. I—” Another pause. “I’m not doing this tonight. I’m just not. I love you and we’ll talk in the morning.”
As he ends the call, my conscience gets the best of me. It was wrong of me to listen in, but the lives of adults fascinate me.
When I turn to go, I have a pause of my own. Between the mirrors and the sinks, there’s a frosted glass shelf that runs all the way down the lineup. At the far end, a curling iron is sitting on it, like an abandoned child, and on a hunch, I walk over to the wand. I’m not surprised to find that it’s still plugged in and turned on, despite some fifty girls having come here to wash their faces and brush their teeth before bed. No doubt it’s been smoldering and making plans to fall into a bin full of combustible paper towels since before dinner.
I yank the cord out of the socket, and reflect on how pretty girls who feel the need to dress up for meals at an all-girls school don’t worry about things like fire hazards. I believe it’s because with them having won a genetic lottery when it comes to their looks, they assume all of chaos theory’s consequences will inure to their benefit. For them, there is no tripping, no falling, no fender benders, and no lost car keys, sunglasses, or library books. All of their scratch-off tickets yield hundred-dollar payouts, any line they step into moves the fastest, and neglected responsibilities never come back to haunt them.
There’s an unintended consequence to all this entitlement, however. The attractive are often agents of the very thing that blesses them, stewardesses coming down the aisle with rolling carts of collateral damage. Curling irons left unattended are dangerous, for example, and even if my hypothesis is correct and their own rooms are not at risk, there are plenty of average-or below-average-looking girls trying to sleep within this nearly hundred-year-old dorm’s nest of kindling wood.
At least this night, I have saved my homely cohort with my vigilance, and as I exit out into the hall, I feel like a fire safety inspector who has protected the lives of the acne-prone, the pudgy, the socially awkward, and the slope-chinned. I want a medal—
Someone else is emerging at the same time I am. They are to the right of me, but I can’t see around the molding that sets apart the hallway from the main stairwell’s second-floor landing. I hear the creak of floorboards, however, as well as the subtle squeak of a set of door hinges.
Tilting forward out of curiosity, I freeze as my residential advisor turns toward me. Standing on the threshold of his apartment, he is in loose blue jeans that have been washed many, many times; what once was hardy denim is now more like thin cotton. His T-shirt is gray and of a similar, faded vintage as the jeans, the Snoopy silkscreen merely a fog of what it once was. On his feet are leather sandals that braid over his tanned toes, and I have to admit that on anybody else, I would have found the look hippie-ish and unattractive. On him, it is hipper-than-I and way out of my league.
His eyes are so very, very green, beneath the brown fall of his longish hair.
I’m not surprised my body vibrates with warmth again. Our paths have not crossed in a one-on-one fashion since that first day, although I did get a lot out of our dorm orientation meeting for the sole reason that I could stare at him as he did most of the talking about the rules and regulations of Tellmer Hall.
“Well, hello,” he says in an easygoing way. Like running into a student in the middle of the night is no big deal.
Then again, in spite of our curfew, there is no rule against using the bathroom after ten thirty p.m. We girls are wards of St. Ambrose, not prisoners.
“Hi,” I say back.
My voice is so soft, I’m not even sure it registers for my own ears. But I’m worried that he can guess what I heard through the wall and this makes me timid.
“Having trouble sleeping?” he says as he reaches back and closes his apartment up.
His car keys jangle as he locks the deadbolt and I wonder where he’s going. I also want to ask him if he’s okay, a reflex born from years of being a spectator to all the one true loves of Tera Taylor, undiscovered movie star.
Instead, I go with, “Huh?”
“I can’t sleep, either.” He draws a hand through his hair, and that which was spilling forward obligingly reorganizes around a cowlick that is off to the side. “I don’t know what my problem is. So I’ve decided to go for a drive. Have you seen the moonlight? It’s incredible tonight.”
His eyes shift to focus on the hall behind me, then go to the ornate window on the far side of the stairwell, and after that to the carpet runner beneath his funky sandals. This is what happens when someone is trying to manifest composure when on the inside, they’re stressed. I’m fascinated that somebody as beautiful as him has anything wrong in his life.
“I’m Sarah,” I blurt. Even though he didn’t ask me my name.
“I’m pleased to meet you.” He refocuses on me and puts his hand on the center of his chest. “I’m your RA, Nick, but you already know that.”
“Yes, Mr. Hollis,” I say. Because I’m clearly practicing for my future in public speaking.
“Call me Nick. Mr. Hollis is my father.”
As I flush, I look down at his sandals. He has perfect toes with nicely trimmed nails. “Okay.”
“I just have to go for a drive,” he says like it’s an afterthought. “Anyway, I hope you get some sleep.”
“Thank you. You, too.”
“Thanks.” As he starts down the stairs, he says over his shoulder, “Let me know if you need anything, ’kay?”
Nick Hollis, call-him-Nick, gives me a little wave and jogs off, lithe as someone who is a gold medal winner in descent decathlons around the world. In his wake, I stay where I am, rather as one would if one encountered a unicorn in the woods without a camera: I memorize exactly where I stand, and the sounds of him bottoming out down below and then continuing to the full stairs that will take him to the basement and the back exit of Tellmer are like a symphony in my ears.