The City of Mirrors
Page 54

“I guess that makes you a real smarty-pants, doesn’t it?” he said. “So, let’s have it.”
He had a way of speaking that was both elusively sarcastic and somehow complimentary at the same time. “Have what?”
“You know. Name, rank, serial number. Your major, place of origin, that sort of thing. The history of yourself, in other words. Keep it simple—my memory is for shit in this heat.”
“Tim Fanning. Biochemistry. Ohio.”
“Nicely done. Though if you ask me tomorrow I probably won’t remember, so don’t be offended.” He stepped forward, hand extended. “Jonas Lear, by the way.”
I did my best to respond with a manly grip. “Lear,” I repeated. “Like the jet?”
“Alas, no. More like Shakespeare’s mad king.” He glanced around. “So, which of these luxury compartments have you selected as your own?”
“I thought it would be fair to wait.”
“Lesson number one: Never wait. Law of the jungle and so forth. But since you’re determined to be a nice guy, we can flip for it.” He pulled a coin from his pocket. “Call it.”
Up the coin went before I could respond. He snatched it from the air and slapped it to his wrist
“I guess…heads?”
“Why does everybody call heads? Someone should do a study.” He lifted his hand. “Well, what do you know, it’s heads.”
“I guess I was thinking of the smaller one.”
He smiled. “See? How hard was that. I would have gone the same way.”
“You never told me what you were studying.”
“Right you are. That was rude of me.” He tossed a pair of finger quotes into the air. “Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.”
I’d never heard of it. “That’s an actual major?”
He’d bent to open one of the boxes. “So my transcript tells me. Plus, it’s fun to say. It sounds a little dirty.” He glanced up and smiled. “What? Not what you expected?”
“I would have said—I don’t know—something more lively. History, maybe. Or English.”
He removed an armload of textbooks and began loading them onto the shelves. “Let me ask you something. Of all the possible subjects in the world, why did you choose biochemistry?”
“I suppose because I’m good at it.”
He turned, hands on his hips. “Well, there you have it. The truth is, I’m just crazy about amino acids. I put them in my martini.”
“What’s a martini?”
His face drew back. “James Bond? Shaken, not stirred? They don’t have these movies in Ohio?”
“I know who James Bond is. I mean, I don’t know what’s in one.”
His mouth curved into a mischievous grin. “Ah,” he said.
—
We were on our third drink when we heard a girl’s voice calling his name and the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
“In here!” Lear yelled.
The two of us were seated on the floor with the tools of Lear’s enterprise spread before us. I have never met anyone else who traveled with not only a fifth of gin and a bottle of vermouth but the sort of bartending gizmos—jiggers, shakers, tiny, delicate knives—one sees only in old movies. A bag of ice swooned in a puddle of meltwater beside an open jar of olives from the market up the street. Ten-thirty in the morning, and I was completely hammered.
“Jesus, look at you.”
I hauled my addled eyes into focus on the figure in the doorway. A girl, wearing a summer dress of pale blue linen. I note the dress first because it is the easiest thing to describe about her. I do not mean to say that she was beautiful, although she was; rather, I wish to make a case that there was about her something distinctive and therefore unclassifiable (unlike Lucessi’s sister, whose ice-pick perfection was a dime a dozen and had left no lasting mark on me). I could note the particulars—her figure, slender and small-breasted, almost boyish; the petite formation of her sandaled toes, darkened by street grime; her heart-shaped face and damp blue eyes; her hair, pale blond, unmanaged by clips or barrettes, cut to her shining, sun-touched shoulders—but the whole, as they say, was greater than the sum of its parts.
“Liz!” Lear made a big show of getting to his feet, trying not to spill his drink. He threw his arms around her in a clumsy hug, which she pushed back from with a look of exaggerated distaste. She was wearing small, wire-framed eyeglasses, perfectly round, that on another woman might have seemed mannish but in her case didn’t at all.
“You’re drunk.”
“Not in the least. More like in the most. Not as bad as my new roomie here.” He propped his free hand against the side of his mouth and spoke in an exaggerated whisper: “Don’t tell him, but a minute ago he appeared to be melting.” He lifted his glass. “Have one?”
“I have to meet my adviser in half an hour.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Tim, this is Liz Macomb, my girlfriend. Liz, Tim. Don’t recall his last name, but I’m sure it’ll come to me. Say your hellos while I fix this girl a cocktail.”
The polite thing to do would have been to stand, but somehow this seemed too formal, and I decided against it. Also, I wasn’t sure I could actually accomplish this.
“Hi,” I said.
She sat on the bed, folded her slender legs beneath herself, and drew the hem of her dress over her knees. “How do you do, Tim? So you’re the lucky winner.”