nib of that pen, the narrow way she formed the “O,” the strange height at which she dotted the two “i”s, the long graceful upswept tail at the end of the concluding “a.” I put my mouth to the page and kissed the “O.” Kissed it and kissed it. Then, impulsively, with the tip of my tongue I began to lick the ink of the signature, patiently as a cat at his milk bowl I licked away until there was no longer the “O,” the “l,” the “i,” the “v,” the second “i,” the “a”—licked until the upswept tail was completely gone. I had drunk her writing. I had eaten her name. I had all I could do not to eat the whole thing.
That night I couldn’t concentrate on my homework but remained riveted by her letter, read it again and again, read it from top to bottom, then from bottom to top, starting with “beauticious man” and ending with “I can’t see you.” Finally I interrupted Elwyn at his desk and asked him if he would read it and tell me what he thought. He was my roommate, after all, in whose company I spent hours studying and sleeping. I said, “I’ve never gotten a letter like this.” That was the bewildering refrain all through that last year of my life: neverbefore anything like this. Giving such a letter to Elwyn—Elwyn who wanted to operate a tugboat company on the Ohio River—was, of course, a big and very stupid mistake.
“This the one that blew you?” he said when he finished.
“Well—yes.”
“In the car?”
“Well, you know that—yes.”
“Great,” he said. “All I need is for a cunt like that to slit her wrists in my LaSalle.”
I was enraged by his calling Olivia a cunt and determined then and there to find a new room and a new roommate. It took a week for me to discover a vacancy on the top floor of Neil Hall, the oldest residence on the campus, dating from the school’s beginnings as a Baptist seminary, and despite its exterior fire escapes, a building commonly referred to as The Firetrap. The room I found had been vacant for years before I again filed the appropriate papers with the secretary of the dean of men and moved in. It was tiny, at the far end of a hallway with a creaky wooden floor and a high, narrow dormer window that looked as though it hadn’t been washedsince Neil Hall was built, the year after the Civil War.
I had wanted to pack and leave my Jenkins Hall room without having to see Elwyn and explain to him why I was going. I wanted to disappear and never endure those silences of his again. I couldn’t stand his silence and I couldn’t stand what little he said—and how grudgingly he said it—when he deigned to speak. I hadn’t realized how much I had disliked him even before he had called Olivia a cunt. The unbroken silences would make me think that he disapproved of me for some reason—because I was a Jew, because I wasn’t an engineering student, because I wasn’t a fraternity boy, because I wasn’t interested in tinkering with car engines or manning tugboats, because I wasn’t whatever else I wasn’t—or that he just didn’t care if I existed. Yes, he had loaned me his treasured LaSalle when I’d asked, which did momentarily seem to suggest that there was more fellow feeling between us than he was able or willing to make visible to me, or maybe just that he was sufficiently human to sometimes do something expansive and unexpected. But then he’d called Olivia a cunt, and I despised him for it.Olivia Hutton was a wonderful girl who’d somehow become a drunk at Mount Holyoke and had tragically tried to end her life with a razor blade. She wasn’t a cunt. She was a heroine.
I was still packing my two suitcases when Elwyn unexpectedly appeared in the room in the middle of the day, walked right by me, gathered up two books from the end of his desk, and turned and started back out the door, as usual without saying anything.
“I’m moving,” I told him.
“So?”
“Oh, fuck you,” I said.
He set down the books and
That night I couldn’t concentrate on my homework but remained riveted by her letter, read it again and again, read it from top to bottom, then from bottom to top, starting with “beauticious man” and ending with “I can’t see you.” Finally I interrupted Elwyn at his desk and asked him if he would read it and tell me what he thought. He was my roommate, after all, in whose company I spent hours studying and sleeping. I said, “I’ve never gotten a letter like this.” That was the bewildering refrain all through that last year of my life: neverbefore anything like this. Giving such a letter to Elwyn—Elwyn who wanted to operate a tugboat company on the Ohio River—was, of course, a big and very stupid mistake.
“This the one that blew you?” he said when he finished.
“Well—yes.”
“In the car?”
“Well, you know that—yes.”
“Great,” he said. “All I need is for a cunt like that to slit her wrists in my LaSalle.”
I was enraged by his calling Olivia a cunt and determined then and there to find a new room and a new roommate. It took a week for me to discover a vacancy on the top floor of Neil Hall, the oldest residence on the campus, dating from the school’s beginnings as a Baptist seminary, and despite its exterior fire escapes, a building commonly referred to as The Firetrap. The room I found had been vacant for years before I again filed the appropriate papers with the secretary of the dean of men and moved in. It was tiny, at the far end of a hallway with a creaky wooden floor and a high, narrow dormer window that looked as though it hadn’t been washedsince Neil Hall was built, the year after the Civil War.
I had wanted to pack and leave my Jenkins Hall room without having to see Elwyn and explain to him why I was going. I wanted to disappear and never endure those silences of his again. I couldn’t stand his silence and I couldn’t stand what little he said—and how grudgingly he said it—when he deigned to speak. I hadn’t realized how much I had disliked him even before he had called Olivia a cunt. The unbroken silences would make me think that he disapproved of me for some reason—because I was a Jew, because I wasn’t an engineering student, because I wasn’t a fraternity boy, because I wasn’t interested in tinkering with car engines or manning tugboats, because I wasn’t whatever else I wasn’t—or that he just didn’t care if I existed. Yes, he had loaned me his treasured LaSalle when I’d asked, which did momentarily seem to suggest that there was more fellow feeling between us than he was able or willing to make visible to me, or maybe just that he was sufficiently human to sometimes do something expansive and unexpected. But then he’d called Olivia a cunt, and I despised him for it.Olivia Hutton was a wonderful girl who’d somehow become a drunk at Mount Holyoke and had tragically tried to end her life with a razor blade. She wasn’t a cunt. She was a heroine.
I was still packing my two suitcases when Elwyn unexpectedly appeared in the room in the middle of the day, walked right by me, gathered up two books from the end of his desk, and turned and started back out the door, as usual without saying anything.
“I’m moving,” I told him.
“So?”
“Oh, fuck you,” I said.
He set down the books and
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