Read Online Loner by Teddy Wayne - Free Book Online Page A

sight—though very much on my mind.
    Location was also a problem the next two Prufrock classes, when you snuck in late and chose seats out of my field of vision. You were the whole reason I was taking the class—and dating your roommate—but we might as well have been at different schools.
    One evening Sara and I attended a lecture by a visiting economist with the elaborate title “Antisocial Mobility: The Impossible Transcendence of Previously Permeable Socioeconomic Borders.” I daydreamed about you through the whole talk, but snapped to attention when, as we shambled out of the auditorium, Sara at last asked if I wanted to study in her room.
    On the way back to Matthews, the excitement leavening my step had little to do with the sexual promise of what lay in store. In fact, while I wasn’t about to reject the leap forward we were about to take—maybe even hurdling over all the preliminary obstacles straight to the final one—I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed that Sara might be my first.
    â€œThose stats he brought up were scary, about how the situationyou’re born into more than ever determines your economic fate,” Sara said as we walked back.
    â€œMmm,” I said.
    â€œI was getting really depressed listening to him, but at the end, in a weird way, I started thinking all his pessimism about America is actually almost optimistic, because he’s also basically saying, ‘If we made this, it means we can unmake it.’ And the real travesty isn’t what’s already happened, but continuing to let it happen and resigning ourselves to it.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Good point.”
    Your door was closed. Sara’s room was neat, contrary to her previous claims, and modestly appointed. Around her desk were framed photographs of her family: the diffident younger sister who closely resembled her; the gregarious older brother who was a blunt-­featured male version; the jolly, ursine father whose genes had been lost in transmission; the graying, bifocaled mother into whom Sara would someday evolve.
    Sara sat on her bed, knees propping up Anti-Imperialist Marxism in Latin America . I stationed myself at her desk and began reading The Scarlet Letter .
    â€œYou can sit here, you know,” she told me a few minutes later, patting the mattress. I moved over, leaving enough space for a phantom body between the two of us and resting against the cool wall that separated her room from yours.
    â€œAt least she’s quiet,” I whispered, pointing toward your door. “Nothing worse than a noisy roommate.”
    â€œI doubt she’s home,” Sara said. As she read, her forehead squinched around a central point and the tip of her tongue explored the corner of her mouth, an expression of concentration I would come to know well. After a while she announced she was tired and asked if I wanted to go to bed.
    â€œOkay,” I said, unsure if this was an invitation or a tactful request to leave.
    â€œI’ll go brush my teeth and change,” she said.
    She left for the bathroom, carrying her toiletries kit, a pair of gray athletic shorts, and an oversized shirt that said RAISE OHIO’S MINIMUM WAGE NOW ! I stayed put, alone in the room, desperately waiting for your entrance.
    A few minutes later I heard a key in the door. Too nervous to look up, I kept my eyes on the book, pretending to read, but then the door opened and Sara’s voice was muttering, “People waste so much water here.” I waited for her to extinguish the light before removing my jeans. My shirt I kept on; if she was going to remain clothed, so was I. My physique, I knew, wasn’t much to look at, but as a purely tactile experience in the dark, it would be unobjectionable.
    I climbed in under the pink flannel sheets, a reprieve from my own scratchy, cotton/poly-blend bedding (which, if I ever got you into it, I would claim was my backup, and