“Here.” I thrust my phone out my window. “Choose whatever phone you want. It’s the least I can do to make up for your first near-death experience.”
“Can’t say it’s my first, but thank you.” The runner wipes his hands on his shorts before accepting my phone.
“Put your address for shipping in my phone, and I’ll do the rest,” I encourage.
“Can I still get your number?” The question catches me off guard as I’m handed back my phone to fill in my credit card information. He wants my phone number? Is it possible I’m being picked up within an hour of Dr. Kwan telling me I have one foot in the grave if I don’t shed the weight of a midsize toddler from my body? It’s been a minute since anyone has flirted with me, so I don’t know how to react other than surprised. In my twenties I might have leaned on the car’s window frame, sure to exaggerate my perky breasts, and encouraged this beautifully bodied man to chance a pickup line or two. Today I’m smarting from my health assessment, and I’m sadly aware that my breasts can no longer reach the window without a two-handed boost. Despite this ugly truth, I feel a jolt of self-congratulations for still being a woman who is asked for her phone number.
“Um, sure,” I respond as breezily as possible, flashing what I hope is construed as an open-but-not-scurrilous smile. I pray he can’t smell my desperation as much as I can smell his endorphins.
Callie Kingman
212-555-0210
“Two-one-two?”
“New York City.”
“You live in New York?” Do I detect a hint of disappointment in his voice that I may not be local? I intensely want to say yes, but my California license plates say otherwise.
“I live here, but I’m trying to make my way home,” I settle on as an answer, going for coy and mysterious. My cell phone number may be older than this man-child I’m semi-flirting with, but I’m giving myself credit for not completely forgetting how to do it. And getting over my old husband with a much younger model may make my time in Sacramento not a total waste.
“Thanks for your number. I’ll give you a call if the package doesn’t arrive. I can’t be without a phone,” he laments as he purposely folds thepaper with my number on it and tucks it into the key pocket on the waistband of his shorts. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a torso that tight.
“Of course,” I eke out.Of course he wants to be able to track down his phone if it doesn’t show up.I can feel my cheeks burn the same color as the cherry-blossom print on my sundress.What was I thinking?I couldn’t hold the interest of a man in his mid-fifties; how could I possibly think a twentysomething might see me as anything other than a woman his mother’s age?
“I didn’t get your name.” I deflect from my embarrassment, scrolling the Apple order on my phone to find it.
“Chap. Chap Beaumont.”
Chapter Eight
February 1990
By winter freshman year, it seemed that Quinn, Charles, and the vast majority of Princeton students had caught on to the hidden tenet of student life that suggests avoidance of 8:00 a.m. classes. I had a floor-mate go so far as to change her major from bio-chem to economics to avoid Friday early-morning labs. I, however, thought I was outsmarting all the other smarty-pants students at Princeton by stacking my Friday classes between 8:00 a.m. and noon so that I could start my weekend early. The collegiate weekend, it turned out, officially started on Thursday night. By the time I learned that lesson, it was too late to change my schedule. I was stuck attending class with those who were at Princeton to prioritize their intellectual rather than social development, otherwise known as not-my-immediate-friend group, who were in bed, sleeping.
Initially I prided myself on making it to my Monday 8:00 a.m. Rewriting the World literature class in McCosh Hall, loaded up on coffee and with plenty of time to grab a seat mid-auditorium with a few minutes to spare to check my schedule for the week. By Wednesdays I was throwing myself into a seat, breathless, as the professor strode to the front of the lecture hall, and by Fridays, forget it. Quinn and I had found our Thursday-night social scene on campus, and our antics rarely ended before 1:00 a.m. Fridays, I came rolling into class, Pop-Tart inhand, five to ten minutes late and disheveled, hoping I had grabbed the right notebook and remembered to brush my teeth.
I delicately opened the lecture hall door barely wide enough so that I could squeeze my body through, then quietly shut it behind me. To avoid being noticed, my eyes would dart around the room, looking for the most inconspicuous place to sit in the very back of the auditorium.
“Excuse me,” I whispered, tapping the shoulder of a student sitting in the aisle seat of the last row whose body was built like a man who had five years on him. He didn’t look up. I spied his pen gripped tightly, forcing his forearm to flex as he took notes with an intensity that led me to believe I could be standing next to him naked and he wouldn’t notice.
“Excuse me,” I murmured slightly louder, growing increasingly self-conscious that I was the only one standing up in a full classroom. His right index finger shot up, telling me to hold on while his left hand continued to scribble. Finally, shaking out his wrist, he moved his legs to the right to allow me to pass. His eyes stayed singularly glued to the professor.
Slowly taking my own notebook out of my backpack, I stole a lingering glance at the chiseled form of my classmate’s high cheekbones and distinct jawline. I was pretty sure it was the guy I’d seen lugging a box of books under my dorm-room window on move-in day. Bent over and pretending to search for a pen, I noticed that in a room filled with boot-clad students, his pant legs and sneakers were sopping wet from the six inches of snow that had fallen overnight. Without a break in concentration, he subtly drew both of his feet under his chair, sensing my appraisal of him.
As he put his hands behind his head and leaned back to stretch, I snuck a look at his notes to figure out what I missed from the beginning of class. His penmanship was one of all caps and baffling precision, more akin to that of an architect or engineering student than an English buff prone to persuasive prose. And then there was his startlingly taut lower stomach that peeked out between the hem of his T-shirt and thewaist of his jeans, causing me to catch my breath. It took every ounce of willpower for my tired eyes to avert my gaze.
When the class ended, I was sure my last-row partner was going to say hello and introduce himself; we had obviously shared a moment. But he packed up his notebook, pulled out his copy of Plato’sThe Allegory of the Cave, and left with the same precision with which he took his notes.
Intrigued by the brusque bookworm, I purposely showed up late for class on Monday. My understanding from high school AP Psychology was that adhering to habits is a predictable pattern of human nature; therefore, my mystery lit classmate should be in the same seat, in the last aisle, and he would, once more, have to make room for me.
Yep, there Mr. Box of Books was again. He was hunched over the flip-out armrest desk, hanging on every word the professor uttered, while other students yawned and shifted, trying to shake their minds and bodies free of the weekend. Today, however, while he was again sitting in the last row, he was one seat over from the end. A heavy winter jacket I assumed was his, lay draped over the back of the aisle seat.
Was he saving the spot for a friend? Drying out his coat? Had he scooted over for a slight change of perspective? For a guy so into the class, I wondered why he was all the way in the back when it seemed to me his people would be the studious folks in the front row. Or was this his indirect way of letting other students know he wanted to be left alone? Though I couldn’t help myself in the moment, I did recognize I was most definitely overanalyzing this guy’s seating preferences.
“Is this seat taken?” I asked, clearing my throat, before I chickened out. Last night over lasagna at Mathey Dining Hall, Quinn and I had played out multiple possible scenarios for when I entered the classroom. My having to announce my presence and ask if I could sit down didn’t enter Quinn’s mind. She encouraged me when I sidestepped in front of him to find a seat, to go slowly so he could admire my backside, which she was convinced was the best view in the room.
“No, ma’am” was his response, along with a swift removal of his jacket from his right to his left. I blew out a chuckle between my closed lips. I was nineteen, with one pair of clean underwear shoved into a drawer of mismatched socks; I was far from ama’am.
