The City of Mirrors
Page 59

Jonas caught up with us, all grins and apologies. We made our way to the party, which was just three blocks away. Previously, he had pointed out the Spee Club building to me, a brick townhouse with a walled side garden I had passed a thousand times. A college party is usually a loud affair, belching out a wide perimeter of sound, but not this one. There was no evidence that anything was going on inside, and for a second I thought Jonas might have gotten the night wrong. He stepped up to the door and withdrew a single key on a fob from the pocket of his tux. I had seen this key before, lying on his bureau, but had not connected it to anything until now. The fob was in the form of a bear’s head, the symbol of the Spee.
We followed him inside. We were in an empty foyer, the floor painted in alternating black and white squares, like a chessboard. I did not feel as if I were going to a party—parachuting at night into an alien country was more like it. The spaces I could see were dark and masculine and, for a building inhabited by college students, remarkably neat. A clack of ivory: nearby, someone was playing pool. On a pedestal in the corner stood a large stuffed bear—not a teddy bear, an actual bear. It was rearing up on its hind legs, clawed hands reaching forward as if it were going to maul some invisible attacker. (That, or play the piano.) From overhead came a swell of liquor-loosened voices.
“Come on,” Jonas said.
He led us back to a flight of stairs. Seen from the street, the building had appeared deceptively modest in its dimensions, but not inside. We ascended toward the noise and heat of the crowd, which had spilled from two large rooms onto the landing.
“Jo-man!”
As we made our entry, Jonas’s neck was clamped in the elbow of a large, red-haired man in a white dinner jacket. He had the florid complexion and thickened waist of an athlete gone to seed.
“Jo-man, Jo-Jo, the big Jo-ster.” Unaccountably, he gave Jonas a big smooch on the cheek. “And Liz, may I say you are looking especially tasty tonight.”
She rolled her eyes. “So noted.”
“Does she love me? I’m asking, does this girl just love me?” With his arm still draped around Jonas, he looked at me with an expression of startled concern: “Sweet Jesus, Jonas, tell me this isn’t the guy.”
“Tim, meet Alcott Spence. He’s our president.”
“And roaring drunk, too. So tell me, Tim, you’re not gay, are you? Because, no offense, you look a little gay in that tie.”
I was caught totally off guard. “Um—”
“Kidding!” He roared with laughter. We were being pressed on all sides now, as more partygoers ascended the stairs behind us. “Seriously, I’m just messing with you. Half the guys in here are huge fags. I myself am what you call a sexual omnivore. Isn’t that right, Jonas?”
He grinned, playing along. “It’s true.”
“Jonas here is one of my most special friends. Very special. So you just go ahead and be as gay as you feel you need to be.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m not gay.”
“Which is also totally fine! That’s what I’m saying! Listen to this guy. We’re not the Porcellian, you know. Seriously, those guys cannot stop fucking each other.”
How much did I want a drink at that moment? Very, very much.
“Well, I’ve enjoyed our little chat,” Alcott merrily continued, “but I must be off. Hot date in the sauna with a certain sophomore from the University of Loose Morals and some cocaina más excelente. You kids run along and have fun.”
He faded into the throng. I turned to Jonas. “Is everybody here like that?”
“Actually, no. A lot of them can come on pretty strong.”
I looked at Liz. “Don’t you dare leave me.”
She laughed wryly. “Are you kidding?”
We fought our way to the bar. No lukewarm keg beer here: behind a long table, a white-shirted bartender was frantically mixing drinks and passing out bottles of Heineken. As he shoveled ice into my vodka tonic—I’d learned my freshman year to stick to clear liquor when I could—I had the urge to send him some clandestine message of Marxist-inspired fellowship. “I’m actually from Ohio,” I might have told him. “I shelve books at the library. I don’t belong here any more than you do.” (“P.S. Stand ready! The Glorious Workers’ Revolution commences at the stroke of midnight!”)
Yet as he placed the drink in my hand, a new feeling came upon me. Perhaps it was the way he did it—automatically, like a high-speed robot, his attention already focused to the next partygoer in line—but the thought occurred to me that I’d done it. I’d passed. I had successfully snuck into the other world, the hidden world. This was where I had been headed, all along. I gave myself a moment to soak in the sensation. Joining the Spee: what I had believed utterly impossible just moments before suddenly seemed like a fait accompli, a thing of destiny. I would take my place among its membership, because Jonas Lear would pave the way. How else to explain the extraordinary coincidence of our second meeting? Fate had put him in my path for a reason, and here it was, in the rich atmosphere of privilege that radiated from everywhere around me. It was like some new form of oxygen, one I’d been waiting all my life to breathe, and it made me feel weirdly alive.
So caught up was I in this new line of thought that I failed to notice Liz standing right in front of me. With her was a new person, a girl.
“Tim!” she yelled over the music that had erupted in the room behind us. “This is Steph!”