Such questions pass through her mind without answers in a pause in her reading.
[Nocturnal Animals 20 (continued)]
He waited at the bottom of the steps, where two students stood smoking. Louise Germane was slow, she did not come. He imagined Nora Jensen saying Come on, I’ll take you, and wondered if Louise could reply, But I want Mr. Hastings to take me.
Meanwhile others came down. Gabriel Dalton, still talking to two guys who followed. Nora Jensen herself, with Myra Slue but not Louise. He wondered if Louise had slipped away, fire escape, back stairs. He began to despair, before he saw a thin legged person at the top coming down, talking to someone further up, the jeans and laced shoes, the red and blue T-shirt, yes, Louise Germane. She looked at him eagerly, he thought she was going to take his hand. “Complications,” she said.
He walked with her to the car, the other students watching them, drawing conclusions. She walked fast with long strides.
“What complications?”
“Nothing important.” She said, “I appreciate this.”
“My pleasure.” He noticed the pleased look on her face. He let her into the car and she leaned over to unlock his side. She sat with hands folded in her lap and sighed, a mock sigh, he thought. “What’s the matter?”
“Jack Billings wanted to take me home too. I had to tell him I was going with you.”
Tony Hastings was alarmed. “Would you rather have gone with him?”
“It’s too late now.”
“I didn’t mean to take you from your friends.”
“Don’t worry.” He wondered, is Jack Billings her lover? “I wanted to go with you.” Adding quickly, “If you don’t mind.”
He thought, this is Louise Germane, a stranger, and I am driving her home. He tried to think what the ban was. She sat beside him like an intimate member of the family. Does she think she is Laura? There’s no law against giving her a lift, a politeness, a favor. But does she think I am merely giving her a lift? The students watching us leave will think we are lovers. But since we are not lovers. Unless Louise Germane herself thinks we are.
He wondered, what is this imperative thing I have been wanting to tell her? Do I know what I am doing? What if she invites me in? The ban again. He wondered, does it look as if he is trying to seduce Louise Germane? Would she think so? If so, she should be more wary, make excuses, evade. So perhaps she expects it of him. Is it possible she is trying to seduce him?
“Here we are,” she said. The question was desperate, that is, What question? It was a long white house going back, six mailboxes on the front porch. “Would you like to come in?”
He groped for why he must not. “It’s not too late?”
Her face in shadow. “I’d be honored if you did.”
“I’ll have to find a place to park.”
Probably she didn’t mean to seduce him, she merely meant to offer him coffee, in which case he need not worry about the ban. They parked a half block up the street, and walked together downhill to her apartment. The rough sidewalk, shoulders bumped. The windows in her house were dark, the hallway lit. She checked her mailbox: GERMANE. He followed her upstairs, stood beside her in front of the scratched piney door while she looked in her purse for the key, his raggedy heart wild.
It wasn’t the adultery, because Laura was dead. It wasn’t the mourning, because eleven months had passed, and life cruelly demanded to be lived. It wasn’t the child she was, because she was a grown woman of her generation, who at twenty-eight or thirty had probably had more lovers than he at forty-five. It wasn’t the crippling, because the wound the loveless singles lady could not heal had now been healed. It wasn’t the graduate student, because she had finished her courses and he had just tonight vowed never to have official authority over her again.
They went in. The living room was spare, a couch, a table. She turned on a light by the sofa, and put on a jazz piano record. She had a poster of Montmartre. He sat on the couch, broken down inside so that his bottom almost hit the floor.
“Wine?”
She sat beside him on the couch. Their knees pointed up like peaks. Whatever he wanted to tell her, now was the time. Probably it had to do with the events in Grant Center, but he had already told his story at the party, and still it was unsaid. As if the story had a secret commentary attached to it, reserved for her. So secret even he lacked the code. Other than that, all he could think to say was that he had been transformed from something into something else. The news was tremendous but vague.
If he could convey to her the emotional force, the prismatic meaning, that was gathered into the act of hitting Ray. “I really slugged him,” he said.
“You don’t know what it means to have you sitting here in my own place, Mr. Hastings.” Eyes in the subdued light, the face that wants to kiss. Student infatuated with teacher, sure enough, a good thing she is no longer his student.
She took the blue kerchief off her head and shook her hair loose, wild all around.
“I’ve often thought of inviting you here. Since your bereavement, I mean.”
He said, “You’re a good friend.”
“I want to be your friend. I don’t want to be just a student. Does that annoy you?”
“Not at all. I don’t think of you as a student, I think of you as—” Fill in the blank, he thought, I can’t do this by myself.
“As what, Tony?”
“As friend.” Which you already said. (She called you Tony.)
“I thought you were going to say, woman.”
“I was going to say it.”
She was looking at him solemnly, speaking slowly. He felt as if he was play-acting, she too, in spite of the tension. She stopped looking at him, then looked at him again and said, “Does that mean you want me to sleep with you?”
Catch your breath, man, this was faster than expected. “Is that what I mean?”
“It’s not?” Her eyes were big.
“Perhaps it is.”
“Perhaps?”
“Well yes. I mean it is.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
Quiet now: “Me too.”
She said, “There’s one problem.”
“You don’t have any—?”
“Not that. I’m not certain Jack Billings won’t come over in a little while. I’m not sure I’ve seen the last of him tonight.”
“Would he want to sleep with you?”
She nodded.
“You’re lovers?”
“He thinks we are.” She opened her hands, empty. “I’m sorry. I just never thought I’d have a chance with you.”
So that was the ban. “I shouldn’t intervene.”
“I want you to intervene.” She considered. “Let’s take a chance. If he comes I won’t let him in. I’ll tell him I’m sick.”
He had an idea. Why not? “Would you like to go to my house?”
“Hey. Great idea.”
Quick, before Jack Billings comes. She ran to the bedroom, brought out a white robe, looked about hastily trying to decide what to take, couldn’t think of anything except a toothbrush. “Hurry,” she said, as if Jack Billings were already at the door.
A car was going by slowly when they came out of the house. “Jesus,” she said, “that’s him.” The car went on.
“Why didn’t he stop?” she said.
He remembered the woods.
“He looked right at me.”
“I don’t want to make trouble for you.”
“Please don’t worry. It’s not your problem.”
In the car she said, “I’ll explain to him tomorrow. I’ll think of something to say.”