Andrew's Brain

VIII

ALL RIGHT, if my life as an undergraduate is what interests you: I never expected to have him as a roommate. His family name, after all. And I, the financial aid student. But the college forbade preferential treatment — every freshman was no more than that. He laughed at my clumsiness. We would be in frequent trouble, a pair of misfits. [thinking] I guess it was just a matter of time and here we were again.

What was the incident of the bunsen burner you mentioned?

Our digs were a center of social life. People gathered around. It was mostly him, of course, but I too became known on campus — a second banana, as it were. I must have realized at some point that I had no identity without him. Because he was who he was, I was who I was. I did manage to keep up with my studies, which drove him mad. I’d be at my desk cramming for an exam and he couldn’t bear that, he’d drag me off to a bar. I’ll say this in his favor, hanging out with him I got braver with girls and by my junior year I was in a fairly serious relationship. But around him, the pressure was to be a clown, to find a way to make him laugh. Not just me but other guys too, that desire to fulfill his expectations. And every once in a while, after a few beers, what came to the fore was his mean streak, because he did have one. [thinking] His fooling around could segue into hurting people. Or humiliating them. His grades were dismal, he never cracked a book. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have done better by applying himself. He was a contrarian. He was making a stand.

And so what was that incident of the bunsen burner?

In the inorganic chem lab. I was standing right where it happened with a shard of beaker sticking in my cheek and blood running down my chin. Something had exploded, I didn’t know what, but the room was filled with smoke, people were coughing, shouting, the sprinkler system had turned on, in one instant the lab was a total disaster. It was funny, actually. The professor, running in and waving away the smoke, assumed I was the culprit. I didn’t argue.

Well, this doesn’t sound like something they would feel endangered by in an election thirty years later.

Well, it wasn’t the only thing. I tutored him on occasion.

So?

Onsite, as it were. Where we were taking the exam.

I see.

Yes. But why would I reveal something now that would make me look just as bad? Given an academic career to uphold. Such as it is.

I understand.

The incident of the bunsen burner got me a semester of probation. And an invitation to go home with him on the spring break.

A cold glance from the formidable mother, a limp distracted handshake from the father. That’s what I remember. Their son seemed to accept their rude offhand greetings as typical. I stood there with my backpack while staff ran by in some urgency. The household was busy preparing for dinner guests. I can tell you my roommate and I smoked dope in the upstairs of a huge floor-length duplex and not a book in sight.

Andrew looked out the window — one of those unopenable bronze-framed windows, and all he could see was a building across the wide empty street that was just like the one in which he stood looking out at what he thought might be a shadowed reflection of himself. These were condominiums designed to look like office buildings, architectural statements celebrating the prevailing culture. He’d never seen a city like this, spread out on a flat plane. It baked in heat that shimmered up in the afternoon, and with its endless parking lots all filled under a hot sky and, in the downtown center, these characterless skyscrapers covered in dark glass. Andrew believed it could not be called a city if it did not have narrow streets filled with people and shops, horns blowing, the sidewalks overflowing and a nightlife into the early hours. Here everything went still after sundown, the traffic lights mindlessly directing nonexistent traffic. The two college boys were invited to the dinner that first evening and seated down at the far end of an enormous table that stood under three glistening chandeliers. Even I could tell the place settings were of the finest china, with heavy silver, and thin-stemmed wineglasses that contained the light as small golden suns. And this was just their pied-à-terre. We sat below the salt along with the secretaries and family business flunkies, none of whom were interested in talking, a spiritless lot suffering their lesser stature in silence while the formal reception and many toasts went on at the far end. It was a colorful dinner, in fact, all these sheiks and princes in their keffiyehs and designer floor-length tunics, men without women, mustached, bearded, stately, impressive, and in fact dressed appropriately in cotton for this desert. But when it came to a close and everyone stood and moved en masse out of the dining room, this is what I want to tell you: Andrew accidentally stepped on the train — if that was what it was — of one of the princes. It ripped, a flap of it fell open, and there in front of me was this hairy leg. It wore a running shoe. The things we remember. A moment later my roomie pulled me into a side door, running me up some back stairs two at a time till we got to his rooms and fell on our beds laughing.

The next morning I was told to leave by one of the secretaries. The heir apparent excused the chauffeur and ruefully drove me to the airport. The airport had the family name and there were huge photographs of his mother and father above the escalators. I’ll see you back there, he said, uncharacteristically gloomy. And Andrew understood that for a moment he’d been brought into the family dynamic as an incidental player in his roommate’s ongoing struggle.