Gods of Aberdeen Read online

  “Oh. I thought—”

  “Eric couldn’t handle me, anyway,” she said, and she stuck out her tongue. I slapped her shoulder, and she laughed and backed away.

  “Any how,” Dan said, “we didn’t hear from you and we just assumed you weren’t interested. But I’m sure the offer still stands.”

  I know I should have given myself more time to think about it, moving out of my room and choosing, more or less, to enroll in Dr. Cade’s home school. It was a glamorous proposition: working and living with upperclassmen, maybe hosting parties for faculty. I thought of Dr. Cade’s land, imagining it in the daylight…lazy afternoons on the lawn, playing croquet, sipping drinks. Ellen on a lawn chair, wispy skirt coiled around her willowy legs, rippling in the warm breeze. Arthur patting me on the back and motioning to Ellen with a sly, knowing wink. She fancies you, too, old sport. I don’t mind sharing, to tell you the truth. Even Howie had a role—the jovial drunk, swapping stories about big oil and industry, the sweet smell of scotch on his breath.

  “I think it’s weird,” Nicole said. “How come he has to live in the house?”

  “I don’t think he has to,” Dan said, “but Eric would have a big, private room, a pond in the back large enough for canoeing, about twenty acres of woods. And you should see it in the winter.” He looked to me. “Besides, the project requires teamwork. It certainly makes things easier living with your co-workers.”

  “Freshmen aren’t allowed to live off-campus.” Nicole nodded as if she had made a final, indisputable point.

  “I lived there last year,” Dan said.

  A squirrel chittered and bolted for the trees, chased by another squirrel. The two dashed for the trunk, twisting their way up.

  “Dr. Cade can make arrangements,” Dan said, and then he picked up his briefcase. “His name carries a lot of weight around here.”

  Say yes, I thought. Accept before you lose your nerve.

  “Let me think about it,” I said. “Can I call you tonight?”

  “Sure. Here.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket and took out a card. It was a calling card, embossed with his name, address, and phone number. Nicole leaned in and looked at the little white rectangle in the palm of my hand. Cool, she said.

  Dan said goodbye, and we watched him walk across the Quad, carrying his briefcase.

  “God, he’s such a nerd,” Nicole said.

  We continued our walk, following the footpath into the rolling forests that stood just beyond Thorren, staying on the thin trail that snaked down a ravine and along its edges, pebbles and twigs falling off the narrow embankment and splashing into the creek below. Nicole told me that confining myself to a house was crazy, and that I’d become a snob, hanging out with rich kids in a mansion “with a professor for a sugar daddy.” “We’d never see you anymore,” she said, putting on a mock pout. I promised her I’d have her over for tea and biscuits, and we could sit in the ornamental garden off the back porch and discuss the apathy of the bourgeoisie. She said I was already becoming an elitist, and then she pinched my side and scurried away, bounding down the trail, laughing and screeching like a child.

  I ran after her, ducking under branches, brushing by stiff leaves that scraped my face. The path cut sharply, making its way to the creek, where it continued on the other side and crawled back up the ravine. Nicole was standing on an algae-slicked stone, in the creek, water idly flowing past her sneakers. I leapt to her side but slipped on the rock, and she caught me with a surprisingly strong grip, her arm shooting out fast. My foot splashed into the water and I steadied myself.

  “Now you’re in trouble,” I said, grabbing both her shoulders.

  We stared at each other for a moment. I was aware of her breathing, and the wind exhaling through the treetops. Slats of speckled sun swept across her face. Her hands gently grazed against mine, and I could feel water filling my shoes.

  “What kind of trouble,” she whispered, bringing her lips closer to mine. There was a fleck of dirt stuck to her lower lip, embedded in the wax of her red lipstick. I saw us from above, standing on the water-smoothed rock, fallen leaves floating past. My attraction for her was purely sexual, almost autoerotic in its narrow scope.

  “Nicole,” I whispered. I inspected the ground on the other side of the creek, searching for a flat, dry patch of land upon which I could lay her down. Taking her to my room seemed like an impossible journey, too far away. I groped her breasts, searching under the stiff rasp of her shirt. She put her hand down the front of my pants and I returned the favor.

  Suddenly, Nicole took a step back and wrinkled her nose. “Jesus that stinks,” she said. She pulled her shirt down. “Do you smell that?”

  Something smelled like rotting garbage. I looked upstream, downwind, bending over in an attempt to shift my eyes away from the sun sparkles darting across the water’s surface. The creek sloped upward and broke into small steps, jutting slivers of shale and bedrock formed tiny waterfalls, crisscrossed with fallen limbs and brown vines. I walked toward the wind. Nicole scampered across the creek to the opposite bank, her clay-stained sneakers picking their way through brambles and leafy mud puddles.

  Ahead I saw a limp tail, its fur dark and matted, dangling over the upper ridge of the creek. I scrambled up the slope.

  There was a big golden cat, half-rotted, its guts burst open and spilling their greasy contents into the water. It had died in the middle of the stream. A small pool had gathered within the cat’s stomach, and there it swirled in currents the color of broth, leaking back into the creek, dissolving into the clear water that bubbled and skipped over the layered shale.

  Nicole moved to my side. “The poor thing,” she said. “How do you think it died?”

  “Probably rabies,” I said. I found a stick and poked the cat. Its flesh gave like a rotten apple.

  “Don’t touch it. It’ll give you rabies.”

  “I’m using a stick,” I said.

  “Still,” Nicole said, wrinkling her nose again. “It’s gross.”

  A greenbottle fly landed on the cat’s naked eye and sat there, rubbing its forelegs together. The tip of the cat’s tongue poked out from its mouth.

  “Memento mori,” I said.

  Nicole grabbed the stick from me and poked the cat, puncturing its side. She squealed and dropped the stick in the creek.

  “‘Remember that you must die,’” I said. “In medieval times, objects of art were decorated with a skull or some other symbol of mortality to remind the viewer of the frailty of his own existence. Like this.” I pointed to the scenery around us. “The dead cat contrasts with the beautiful forest.”

  “Whatever,” Nicole said. “I just think it’s fucking gross.” She picked a leaf off a tree branch near her head and held it up to the light, staring through its venous skin. I was waiting for her to say something typically Nicole—about my mother, maybe, or a quote taken from Carlos Castaneda (she was in the middle of his Teachings). I had told Nicole a little about my mother’s death, one of those late-night confessionals the intimacy of dorm life seems to demand. But I didn’t want her to think about me within the context of my loss; pity has a very short shelf life, especially for those on the receiving end. The irony of such tragic events is that you don’t want people always taking into consideration what has happened to you, and you resent knowing they harbor the illusion of you living within the confines of bad memories, unable to escape. But you do live within those confines, shackled to them, some with longer chains than others. Every new tragedy puts another manacle around your wrist, and demands you build up the calluses to bear it.

  “You’re staring at me like you want me to say something,” Nicole said, dropping the leaf. It landed in the stream and I noticed an ant trapped on it, scurrying frantically from one curled end to the other. A line from the Aeneid popped into my consciousness: It breaks eternal law for the Stygian craft to carry living bodies. I picked the leaf from the running water, shook off the ant, and dropped the leaf back into the creek. It floa
ted and spun and got caught in the cat’s stomach.

  “This might sound weird,” Nicole said. “But I’m really hungry.”

  The mood had passed. We left, in search of food and drink to satisfy the urges that had gone unheeded.

  After eating I returned to my room and fell asleep. I hadn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours when the nap came unexpectedly, slamming into me just as I sat at my desk to finish my Latin readings. I awoke to darkness and disorientation—television blaring in the next room, music playing above, a woman laughing outside my door. I clicked on my desk lamp and saw 7:00 P.M. in green numbers glowing from the clock near my bed. I had slept for five hours. I pushed the curtains aside and peeked out over the Quad’s edge, at three students sharing cigarettes, one of them kicking aimlessly at a bunch of leaves. The other two were gesticulating wildly, waving their cigarettes around, the glowing tips like orange fireflies.

  The phone rang and I snatched it up.

  “Hey, sexy.” It was Nicole. She was yelling at me over the strained whine of a hair dryer. I got an image of her sitting on the floor, hair dryer in one hand, phone cradled between neck and ear, hunched over her freshly painted toenails separated by folds of toilet paper.

  “I was just going to call Dan,” I said.

  “Who?”

  Nicole had a habit of pretending not to remember anyone she had just met.

  “That kid we saw in the Quad,” I said, annoyed. “I’m calling to accept Professor Cade’s offer. About having me stay in the house…remember?”

  “Oh, that.” She sounded as if it were old news. “Listen, I’m about to leave for a party. You want to go? It’s in town; this girl Rebecca Malzone, in my design class, is throwing it. Nothing too crazy, just some cool people, drinks, maybe a joint or two.”

  “No thanks,” I said.

  The hair dryer clicked off. “Have you suddenly become a scotch-and-soda man, now that you’re moving in with an older crowd?” Nicole sighed. “Don’t make me beg,” she said. “I’ll do it because I’m fucking shameless, but I’ll never forgive you.”

  The possibility that it would be my last college-type party injected just enough romanticism into the scene to make it appealing. I told her I’d be at her room in ten minutes, and then I called Professor Cade’s house. I left a message on the machine, rambling and stuttering through my acceptance, and told them I was going to a party in town and that they could call me tomorrow. After I hung up I considered calling again to say if it made it easier I could just call them, but I resisted that compulsion and showered instead.

  “In town” usually meant one of two streets: the aptly named Main Street, or the incongruously named Governor Lane. Main Street cut straight through downtown Fairwich, and it had, at one time, been entirely cobbled, but now it was mostly blacktop, patches of it laid over the cobblestone like caps on rotting teeth. Main Street had the Cellar—a small, dingy bar below a pizza place—and that was about it. Governor Lane offered the only college housing outside of Aberdeen proper, mostly massive old homes barely clinging to their respectful pasts.

  Rebecca lived on Governor Lane, on the second floor of one of the bigger, well-maintained homes, a French provincial stuccoed gray with dark windows overlooking the street. The party was exactly as Nicole had promised: no more than ten of us, conversation kept to a low rumble, with frenetic jazz playing in the background. No one talked to me and I found myself sitting in the corner on an orange chair that looked like something out of those “house of the future” films from the 1950s. The walls were poorly painted, with streaks of nonmatching white skidding across their surface, canvases painted with geometric shapes hung crookedly, perhaps for effect. There were photography books filled with nude photos stacked on the chrome and glass coffee table. Nonpareils sat in a heavy cobalt bowl, whose glass surface was covered in glued pictures cut from magazines. Disembodied heads had been connected to animal bodies, bikini-clad torsos had been stuck under the faces of old men. A crow and a baby had switched heads, and a pacifier was glued over the crow’s feet.

  Nicole was across the room, standing in the corner with an upperclassman. He had a shaved head and he wore tiny, black-rimmed glasses, and every so often he’d give me a mean look. He no doubt thought I was staring at him because he was talking to Nicole, but that wasn’t the case—I had smoked half a joint and was trying to keep the room from swiveling out of control, and I had chosen him as my shoreline, so to speak, trying to ignore the tilting floor beneath me.

  “Are you a friend of Nicole’s?”

  I slowly looked to my left and saw an older-looking man sitting Indian-style near the coffee table, one of the photography books in his lap. It was opened to a scene of a skinny man bound in leather and gagged with what looked like an egg and black electrical tape.

  “Are you okay?”

  I smiled and laughed. I had tried to answer his first question telepathically, convinced that my thoughts had taken shape and substance, formed into small blots that I projected toward where I imagined his frontal lobe to be. I could see the wet contrails of my thoughts, and the tremor of his forehead skin when the blots hit and penetrated through.

  “I’m doing fine,” I said, and sat back. “It’s just that this weed is really strong.”

  He nodded and closed the book on his lap. He appeared to be in his early thirties, dressed in all black, a turtleneck sweater swaddled around his skinny torso. His black hair was stretched back into a ponytail, glistening with oil, and a couple of strands, black as ink, had broken free and spilled down over his forehead. He was barefoot and his toes were incredibly white and very long, almost like fingers.

  “I’m Peter,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Rebecca’s yoga instructor.”

  “Are you Hindu?”

  He looked taken aback at my question. “Not quite…” He straightened his shoulders. “Being a yogi does not require the acceptance of Hinduism. I have attained kaivalya through my own spiritual beliefs.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. He sniffed and rubbed his nose. “Have you ever practiced yoga?” he said.

  His eyes were red-rimmed but focused. I attacked an itch on my elbow, scratching it so intensely I thought it was bleeding, but when I looked I saw only a raised weal. “No,” I said, “but is it true that yogis can slow their heart rate to undetectable levels?”

  Peter shifted his posture and straightened his back, slowly, deliberately, and not without some showiness.

  “Yoga can give one control over one’s bodily sensations. Like a spigot.” He mimed turning a faucet. “One can choose whether to ignore pain, or experience pleasure. And just like the spigot, one can adjust and manipulate the intensity of a given sensation.”

  “Peter is fucking ama-zing.” Rebecca Malzone appeared at his side, standing over him with her hand on his head. She was a short, very thin girl, with long, curly red hair and dark blue eyes. She wore a lacy sweater, showing her black bra beneath its white filigree. “I’ve been his student for almost six months. Peter says I have excellent balance.”

  Rebecca took a hit from her joint, tapped the ash on the coffee table, then took another hit.

  “Watch this,” she said. She handed the joint to Peter and proceeded to stand on one leg, lifting her other leg straight behind her, bending forward and grabbing her supporting leg while lowering her head to her knee. Her lace top yawned and showed me the finer details of her bra. Its fabric was frayed at the top.

  “Very good,” Peter said. He put the joint on the coffee table, pinching it between the tips of his fingers as if it were something dirty. “Would you like to try?”

  I held up my hand, watching Peter between my fingers. “Not now…I’d fall,” I said. The top of my head felt like someone was pouring icy water over it, cascading into each follicle and probing to the center of my brain. I touched my head to assure myself it wasn’t melting. The jazz had degraded into one long, frantic horn solo, buzzing inside my ears like a fly bouncing off my eardrum. I s
canned the room for Nicole but couldn’t find her—the kid she’d been talking to earlier was now on a gray leather couch, sprawled over some cushions with another girl. The both of them looked very stoned. My brain sat in a placental sac, surrounded by gray, silty water. Swish swish, it shifted inside its bag, pressing against the side, like soft white meat swimming in dirty soup.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” I said.

  Peter had stood and had his hand on my shoulder. “You don’t look so well,” he said. His gray eyes narrowed. “There is something we do in yoga called dharana. It means ‘steadying of the mind.’ It is preceded by restraint of the senses and regulation of the breath. I have used it myself for situations such as these, when it seems my mind has spun out of control.”

  Dharana. What a perfect name for a child, I thought.

  “Come with me,” Peter said, squeezing my shoulder. Rebecca was gone and the horn solo droned on. I banged my shin against the coffee table but felt nothing. Dharana was already at work, its name like an incantation, warding away pain. I saw myself following Peter toward a door with chipped white paint. The living room was closing in behind me, walls expanding like a membrane filling with water. Wall cracks became blood vessels, pulsing and straining. I wanted to tell Peter to hurry, that we must get through the door before the walls burst, but we had already escaped, and I breathed in the blessed silence of the dim room we were now in, while behind me the wall’s stretched skin split with a wet pop, and the horn crescendo became a flood, spilling forth with thousands of bubbles clinking against one another like hollow metallic globes.

  I rubbed my face and took a deep breath. Peter was sitting on a bed, hands folded across his lap and his face expressionless. We were in a small room, furnished with the single bed and a chest of drawers. The overhead light was dim. The room smelled unused, the odor of a guest bedroom, decorated sparsely—a vase with mummified flowers on the chest, above the bed a crooked print of some busy city street, everything captured in movement, streaky and blurred.