“Why don’t we go seeAliceand then walk to Chinatown?” Margaret suggests, looking from Andie to me to Noah to Pam.
Everyone murmurs quiet agreement. Noah looks at Pam and says he feels like “such a tourist.” Margaret really is one, having flown in from Minnesota. She is dressed for weather twenty degrees warmer than the forecast, wearing a too-short skirt and a T-shirt under a too-thin jacket. It’s maybe forty-five degrees out, but Margaret doesn’t shiver. When Andie asks, “Aren’t you cold?” she replies, “Aren’t you warm?”
“No, I’m not,” Andie says. “That’s my point.”
Freshman year has been strange so far. I don’t feel like I chose my friends; it’s more like whoever made the dorm assignments chose my friends. The only thing we have in common is that we all decided on the same school. Which is something, but not much. My high school friends felt earned, because we rose through the grades together and had years to figure out who we belonged with. I still hope college will feel that way by the end of it. Right now I can’t tell whether people genuinely like me or if I was just part of the welcome pack.
I am, at least, familiar with everyone’s most obvious traits. Pam, for example, is the one who tells us it’s time for dinner, the one who knocks on the doors when it’s time to go to a party. She decides which room will house a last-minutepaper-writing session and wheels her TV into the lounge so we can watchThe Simpsonson Thursdays. I don’t know why she’s like this. But I also know I’ll follow whatever she says, because I don’t feel I have the wherewithal to lead anyone anywhere.
I’m relieved when Pam tells us “Let’s go, then” and guides us back onto the plaza. We start by trying to walk five across, but that lasts only a matter of seconds. Pedestrians make us twist sideways and apart as they batter their way through. All the open umbrellas add a certain horizontality to the maneuvering—the rain has just about stopped, but who has the time to notice? All of us have umbrellas except for Noah; I offer him a place under mine, and he says he’s good. I’m grateful when, a minute later, Andie makes him the same offer and he gives her the same response.
We start to go through a roll call of the people from our dorm who couldn’t hang out today.
“Paul told me he was banking up his solitude before being forced into dorm life again,” Pam reports.
“Am I allowed to say I’m glad he chose solitude?” Andie asks. “He’s such a downer.”
“Probably the most cynical person I know,” Pam says.
“So damn bleak,” Noah agrees.
“Sure,” I say. “But isn’t there a part of Paul in all of us—a Paul quotient that sees the bad in everything?”
“I hope not,” Pam says.
“That’s pretty scary,” Andie says.
“Not really,” I go on. “Some of us have higher Paul quotients than others. If we all had high Paul quotients, we’d be a pretty caustic bunch. Luckily, there’s a force that works opposite the Paul factor. Let’s call it the Mister Rogers effect. You, for example, have a higher Mister Rogers effect than a Paul quotient.”
“And me?” Pam asks.
“Situational. You’re Mister Rogers as long as things are going the way you want them to go. If they don’t, your Paul spikes.”
“What about me?” Noah smiles.
I reply with a punctuational “What?”
“What about me? What kind of split do I have?”
I look at him and blurt, “I don’t know. I haven’t spent all that much time with you, have I?”
He doesn’t look as startled as I feel. I haven’t said it maliciously, only as a matter of fact. We’re only-in-a-group friends. Cafeteria-table friends. He has nothing to say in response, and I have nothing I want to add.
My interest in knowing him kindled the day we moved in. I’d said goodbye to my parents and was carrying boxes to the trash area when I heard R.E.M. pouring out of a room down the hall. When I peeked in the doorway, I saw Noah standing on his bed, thumbtacking a poster of Sinéad O’Connor into place. He was struggling with whether it was even or not, so I called out, “A little higher on the left.” He adjusted it, smoothed it down, then turned and saw me standing there.
“Thanks,” he said, introducing me to his smile. “I’m Noah.”
He held out his hand, and as I shook it, I told him my name. He clocked my 10,000 Maniacs T-shirt, and I felt that between my 10,000 Maniacs and his R.E.M., we were at least opening-act adjacent. But I didn’t say this out loud. Instead, I said something like, “I really like R.E.M. too. And Sinéad O’Connor.”
A gleam in his eye. “I think it’s safe to say we’re going to get along.”
Then there was a cough, and his roommate, Sid, who’d been hidden to me behind the door, leaned into sight andintroduced himself. He told Noah to get his shoes on, there were other Dalton friends to go see. (I would later learn Dalton was a prep school, not a town.)
I told them I’d see them around, and that didn’t end up being untrue. I saw them around a lot. But the only time I saw Noah solo was when I played good music with my door open and he heard it and stopped by for a moment.
I had thought that everyone in college would listen to R.E.M. and 10,000 Maniacs and The Cure and The Smiths, but apparently “college radio” was something most people learnedincollege, not beforehand. Noah and I were early adopters. Within a few weeks, he’d begun working at our college radio station, and every now and then he’d tell me when he was going to be on the air—usually an inconvenient afternoon hour because freshmen get the worst shifts. I’d tune in and learn about new bands, so when I saw him next in a group gathering, I’d be able to say, “Thanks for the intro to Lloyd Cole and the Commotions” or “I think Everything But the Girl is such a great band name, especially because the singer’s female.” One time I told him, “I couldn’t find that band Ecstasy when I went to look for the tape at Tom’s Tracks,” and he told me, “That’s because it’s XTC. Start withSkylarking. Or come over and borrow mine.”
I didn’t go over and borrow his tapes, because while my interest in XTC was understandable, I was utterly self-conscious about my interest in Noah. It felt like such a stupid word to apply to a friendship—if I’d told anyone “I’m interested in Noah,” they would’ve gone, “Wait, you want to date him?” And that wasn’t/isn’t it. It’s just that somewhere in my head, I’m aware that I’m lonely, and something in my brain is constantly telling me that he might be a person who’d make me feel less lonely.
