“You said we were getting As,” a big guy in the front row said. “This is not an A.”
“Had you been that astute on the exam, you might be looking at a different grade. However, for your observation, you now have a D. Does that make you happy, Mr. Winston?”
“Only slightly,” Mr. Winston said.
“That it makes you happy at all forces me to lower your grade once again.”
“How do we raise our grades?” I asked.
“Now, that is the question to ask,” Everett said. “Mr. Poitier has hit the screw on its head. That is the question. How? Pray tell, how?”
“This is bullshit,” another guy said and seemed to pull together his things to leave. “I’m dropping this motherfucker.”
Everett smiled at him. “You’re willing to give up an A in an upper-level course because you failed an exam?”
The student fell back into his seat, looked around at the rest of us, then back at Everett. “I’m just saying I’m confused. Is that it? Is that all you’re trying to do, confuse us?”
“Not all,” Everett said. “Not all. Class dismissed.”
“What if we don’t come back?” Maggie Larkin asked.
“Then you won’t know if I’m here waiting for you, will you?” Everett looked out the window at the sky. “On that rather shrill note, which is very close to a C-sharp, I’ll say again, and with a clarity unheard of in the hallowed halls of academe, class dismissed.”
“He’s crazy,” Maggie said to me as we stepped out of the building into the autumn air.
“He’s boring, that’s what he is,” I said. “May I ask if you find me in any way attractive?”
“You may ask,” she said.
“Do you?”
“I do.”
And so began my first relationship. Maggie Larkin was from Washington DC. Her father was a lawyer, her mother a physician in training only. Her older sister had graduated from Spelman and was in law school at Georgetown. She spoke proudly of her family, and I never mentioned mine, as there was none. To her questions about my past, I told her I’d come to Atlanta after the death of my mother. She asked me why, and I deflected the question by telling her that I needed to get away from Los Angeles, which was true enough, and lied to her about an uncle with whom I lived until his death. When she asked me where I got my money, I told her that I had worked three jobs to save up for college. I lied stupidly and clumsily, and I am afraid with little gusto as my story was anything but detailed. Though not well thought out, my answers for some reason went unchallenged, though I could sense a raised eyebrow. We kissed and rolled around on the little bed in her private dorm room. I soon was spending most of my time with her. We sat beside each other in Everett’s class, which we continued to attend despite his insanity and lack of coherence, but our being together at least made it more bearable. Everett even noticed us once as we made eyes at each other, and I believed he nodded approvingly. The man unnerved me, but his nonsensical rambling became a sort of entertaining white-noise sound track to everything that I pretended or perhaps hoped would entify, crystallize, or coalesce at some point into something vaguely useful or at least coherent, however shapeless.
Thanksgiving came around, and Maggie haltingly invited me to DC to meet her parents.
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” I asked. “I mean, isn’t it a little soon? You seem a little nervous.”
“You’re nervous,” she said.
“I’m scared to death. Aren’t you a tiny bit nervous?”
She nodded. “My family is slightly class conscious,” she said. “A lot class conscious. Hell, they’re snobs.”
“I see.”
“They expect me to be with someone whom they consider to have a pedigree. It’s not enough for them that he be a doctor or a lawyer or a CEO, his parents have to be as well.”
“I see. I have no parents.”
“Oh, but Not Sidney, I don’t think like that. Honestly, I don’t know how they’ll be. I just want you to be aware that they might, I emphasize might, try to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“Then why should I go?” I asked.
“Because I want you to.”
That, I found to be the most interesting and persuasive argument she could have offered.
That night Maggie and I had awkward but sweet and finally probably unsatisfying sex, but we held each other afterward, feeling closer than we’d felt before we’d started. I considered that a very good thing and found myself more relaxed, all the more for the absence of oral sex; even then the thought of it conjured disturbing recall of Beatrice Hancock’s incisors and canines. We lay there, her head was on my chest, a campus lamp was burning outside her second-floor dorm room. There were voices in the hall, Friday-night joking and chortling. I felt suddenly a part of the college world, and then I laughed at myself, knowing how untrue that was.
The phone rang, and Maggie turned over to answer it. “Oh, hi.” She pulled the sheet to her chest. “It’s late. I know. I’ll be in DC for Thanksgiving. You too? I guess I’ll see you then. I can’t talk now. It’s late.” She hung up the phone.
I didn’t ask any questions, just let her head fall back onto my chest. I breathed in the fragrance of her hair.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
I said nothing.
“That was Robert. He’s like my brother. We used to go out.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s at Dartmouth.” She dragged her nails along my shoulder. “He’ll be in DC over break. You’ll get to meet him.”
“That’ll be nice.”
In a fine example of returning to the well, Gladys Feet called and arranged a lunch with me downtown. She didn’t look the part of the corporate porn star that day, but a regular porn star. She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and high heels, and if not for the absence of knee socks and her being black instead of white, she could have been Beatrice Hancock. At least I felt the same vibe. We sat not far from the bar in a hotel restaurant.
“How are classes, Mr. Poitier?”
“How much do you need and what for?” I asked.
“No foreplay or anything?”
I have to admit that her sexually charged attempt at a joke gave me pause, and as I paused I imagined that that was the desired effect. She wasn’t trying to put me at ease with a bit of humor, but to put me on notice, to cast up a flare, to warn me that there was a fellatio somewhere looking for me.
“Is Dudley Feet your husband?” I asked. A pail of icy cold water on her fire, I thought.
“Yes, he is.” Her eyes did not move away from mine. “Why do you ask? He’s not a good husband. He’s inattentive and he cheats. The latter I could live with. Why do you ask?”
“Feet is not a common name,” I said.
“Tell me about it. My maiden name is Birdsong.”
“That’s beautiful,” I said.
She shot me a look that for the first time let me see her as an interesting person. She then turned her attention to the menu.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s not that he’s an awful man.” She was weeping now. “But my life is awful. I’m just so lonely.”
“Ms. Feet, please, don’t cry.”
“Gladys,” she said.
“Gladys. I’m sure your husband loves you.”
“Who gives a fuck whether that little-footed monkey loves me or not. I’m not thinking about him. I’m thinking about me. I have needs.”
Her voice carried. I looked around to find a few pairs of eyes on us. As was my custom, I was embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” I said, again, like the imbecile I was. “I’m sure everything will be okay.”