The Best Four Years of Adam Becker - 10. Freshman Year - Chapter 10

I landed at DCA at 11am, looking homeless.

Without a doubt, I was still a little drunk, but just tottering on the edge: my mouth was beginning to feel arid and cottony, my body bowing down to the starting gambits of hangover. I was wearing the same polo I had worn the night before, the same one that had been strewn recklessly across the white carpet in Kevin Malley’s room just eight hours before--underneath it, on my stomach, was still Kevin’s dried deposit.

That made me feel a little edgy. Was that dumb? I did--I felt a little renegade, the kind of guy who stumbled through an airport on a Friday morning with booze on his breath and semen on his stomach.

No, that was tacky.

I intended to take a shower, but I was a drunken sloth getting things together--there wasn’t time. My flight was at six in the morning. Kevin had packed a post-coital bowl, we smoked one of those, finished off the remnants of a case of Natty Light, and we stayed up, just shooting the shit like nothing had happened, like everything was the same between us, except we were both in our underwear and I was the Painted Desert. He played some records--“Borderline,” obligatorily, and then some Nat King Cole, and then we got a little more high, so he switched to his iPod stereo and put on some house music. Told me I had to hear this one DJ, People Will Talk, that I thought was only okay but he was in love with. He told me I’d have to go with him to Club Ampersand next semester, when he came, and I said I would.

But anyway, by the time I got back to Sharp--completely unpacked, unshowered, high and drunk and burning adrenaline from hooking up with Kevin Malley--I had less time than I thought I did. I threw clothes from each drawer into my suitcase at random, hoping I had enough matching sets to make a month’s worth of outfits.

When I finished packing, it was nearly four, and it was a little too early to get to MSY, but I knew I’d fall asleep if I stopped moving, so I just called a cab and went anyway.

Memories past that point were hazy. The cab driver woke me up. And, at some point, I’d managed to get a vodka-soda on the plane without getting carded.

I had a layover in Houston that I genuinely could not remember for the life of me--it was an hour and a half, which seemed like a long time to suppress, but I didn’t want to start dissecting my luck; I somehow wove through the airport sufficiently, because the next thing I knew, I could see Lincoln and Washington below us on the river visual, and we landed thirty seconds later in DCA.

I forgot how nice DCA was compared to MSY. Substantially brighter.

In general, other cities were nicer than New Orleans. New Orleans was charming, lovable, filthy; after four months, it felt like home, but it wasn’t nice in the ways other cities would consider nice.

DC was nice--the suburbs anyway. It didn’t have very much in the way of charm. The old Victorians downtown, I guess, and all the white federal buildings lining the Mall, and the personified power of the monuments and the Capitol, but I never really saw those. I was from Hamlet, Maryland, in Montgomery County, the town between Potomac and Bethesda. Our history was the 70s-era shopping center they were trying to tear down to build a mixed-use Harris Teeter with apartments on top, in Hamlet’s misguided attempt to kickstart development and steal the “urban village” conversation from the Rosslyn-Ballston swamp, all for a town whose wealthy, leafy residents actively didn’t want it.

Outside of the airport, it was freezing--literally, 31 degrees. I had only a peacoat on over my polo, which had been more or less sufficient for New Orleans, but was wildly impractical for December in Washington, D.C.

There she was, out in front, honking a blue streak in my dad's gray Lexus SUV, waiting with its hazards on. The Lexus was, officially--and this was a point of grave importance--my dad’s car.

Catherine Becker, nee Amico, had always been the one to sail the child-arks around Hamlet while we were growing up--a 1992 Town and Country with woodgrain sides, then a dark green 1998 Navigator; she was very hip to the soccer mom automotive trends. But, a few years ago--with Philip firmly in Yale and me threatening to go to college two years later, and Justine the year after that, and armed by this point with a white-hot career on K Street--she put her foot down and ordered herself the sleek silver E-class she’d been coveting for who knew how long.

If my dad wanted an SUV so bad, he could drive the damn thing, which was a solution that lasted about three months, before my dad quietly began switching the cars back--a little at first, a little more, until my mom was full-time cruising in another tank.

Still, it was my dad’s car. It was a distinction we did not fumble.

She flung open the door, ran in front of the car over to me, and engulfed me in a hug. Did I smell like Kevin? Did I smell like booze? Some lethal, pungent combination of both? She showed no change of emotion.

I loved my mother. I did. She was overbearing sometimes. But it was nice to be missed, at the very least. I didn’t think the gravity of me not returning for Thanksgiving had really hit her until it was final--that’s about the time the calls started proliferating in earnest.

She waved frantically through the window, and the rear hatch went up automatically. I went around to put my luggage away; she met me behind the car, to wrap me in a hug that nearly knocked me over.

“Peter!” she squealed. “You look so good!”

It was bizarre, almost, hearing me referred to as Peter, even though that had been my name my entire life--still was my name. It just didn’t feel right, but obviously I wasn’t going to correct her.

 

She planted an especially embarrassing kiss on my cheek, and then she let me free. "I'm so glad you're back."

She was in an armor of gray Chanel, pearls, which meant she had to work after this. If she was wearing a suit, it meant she had meetings on the Hill and she wouldn't be back to the Hamlet house until late, if at all. My parents kept a tragically under-furnished studio pied-a-terre on C and 3rd SE, the adult equivalent of a crash pad. It was mostly my dad's--my mom would almost universally make the trek back to Hamlet for the night, because she hated leaving us alone for the night, even if she was in after we were asleep and back out before we were awake, her existence proven only by the unmade bed and the good morning-cum-apology note left on the breakfast bar.

By this point, the cops had started blowing a whistle at her and waving their arms, frantically; I brought my suitcase towards the open trunk, she went back around to the driver's seat.

"I'm going, I'm going," she mouthed, once we were both piled into the car. She spun the wheel as far as it would go to the left, inched away from the curb. My mother was a famously nervous driver, which is why my dad had to be the one to teach all of us. I drove with Mom exactly once--against Philip’s advice--when I had my permit, and it devolved pretty quickly into both of us screaming at each other, for completely opposite reasons.

Too often, she didn’t have the time, anyway, to take us out. Somehow, after years at a stay-at-home mom, she was the one who wound up with a more demanding career than my Senator father: she was a lobbyist, which meant she had to do about fifty Senate jobs.

She started when I was in fifth grade--when the three of us were old enough to be parented on auto-pilot. Worked as a lobbyist for Countrywide Financial.

Even before that, back when she was the doyenne of affluent suburban motherhood, she always needed some sort of project to occupy her time beyond the three of us. And her projects had always been on a grand scale--she ran my dad’s first campaign for the House in 1992 back in Nevada, while shepherding a three-, four-, and seven-year-old--and then that segued into non-profit work and political social hosting, once we moved to Hamlet. She’d saved fetuses and wetlands; her Christmas party was a hot ticket in D.C.

Lobbying for the nation’s largest subprime mortgage lender wasn’t as noble a crusade as some of her volunteer ones, but it wasn’t really about the cause. It had never been about the cause--just about the work. My mother hadn’t saved fetuses because she was virulently pro-life--I’d never heard her discuss abortion before or after she was at a podium at the Million Mothers March--but because she was bored as hell while the three of us were in school all day, the optics were great for my moderate father, and she saw a chance to take charge of the du jour crisis Republican political wives were fighting that year. Countrywide and mortgage lending held no corner of her heart, but she was a perfectly lethal lobbyist--she was savvy, smart, and knew everyone’s wives.

Though the outrage in Mother Jones regarding her job, when married to a reasonably young Senator with clear national ambitions, was relentless and recurring.

"Did you have a nice flight?" she asked, as we turned onto Route 1. "Did you sleep? You look tired."

"I slept," I confirmed, which wasn't entirely false, but wasn't entirely true--did passing out from intoxication count as sleep in the truest sense? I never slept on planes.

Generally, I couldn’t sleep on planes because I’d have dynamic nightmares. All about aviation accidents. The plane nosediving. The plane going into aerodynamic stall, landing in a twist in the river like Air Florida Flight 90. Jackscrew failure, like Alaska Flight 261. Hitting another aircraft, like Tenerife. TWA Flight 800.

So many possibilities. I’d, thankfully, been drunk enough to pole vault over fear. When I usually nodded off on planes, I’d get thrown a brief image of us hurtling towards the ground at warp speed, which shook me awake and tended to sufficiently kill any attempts at sleep for the remainder of the flight. I wasn’t a very comfortable flier. I had never been. I knew the statistics and all, that you were safer on the ground than in the air, but that didn’t change my instincts.

We were passing the exit for the Fourteenth Street Bridge, to the District, incidentally--planes inches above our heads as they flung themselves towards the runway. It was a very nervous bridge. Air Florida Flight 90 took a whole chunk of it out in the 80s when it plunged into the Potomac; they named that single span after one of the guys who died in the water saving a stewardess. Died saving a stewardess and they didn’t even name the entire bridge after him.

"You look tired," she repeated.

"Five-thirty flight," I told her. "I didn't sleep last night. I just slept on the plane."

She pursed her lips in silent disapproval.

DC was covered in a breath of snow--I could see to our right, across the river, the Lincoln, and the Mall beyond that, Washington, the Capitol. I hated snow--there was nothing more depressing than the gray skies of winter, the naked trees, then bleaching out the last remaining stand of color with fresh snow. DC's whiteness, the buildings, looked far more menacing in the snow than they did on a brilliant summer day. Even GW Parkway was desolate, almost eerily empty of cars, the thick bog of trees haunting and brooding as they hung lifeless over the road.

I got a text from Kevin Malley: "Missed my flight. I blame you."

I shot back: "Hey, I made mine. Don't blame me for your mistakes."

"I didn't say it was a mistake?"

"Who're you texting?" Mom asked.

I angled my phone away, as discreetly as I could. "Friend of mine from school. We went out last night."

She pursed her lips again, stared straight out at the road.

We rounded Rosslyn: across was the Kennedy Center, the curvy ladies of the Watergate, Georgetown. I hadn't been away from D.C. for longer than two weeks at a time in more than a decade: there was a certain majesty to it that I never quite appreciated.

Once we passed Court House--which had always been arbitrarily my least favorite Metro station, because that wasn't how the word "Courthouse" was spelled and because it was in Arlington--the view to the river closed up again. More trees, dead in winter but still too thick to see very much.

“I'm going to take you home now,” she said. She paused, worked her way up to the next part. "Well, I have to go into work for a bit. Not long, I promise. We're just hammering out final language in committee and it has to get done today."

She looked at me, longingly apologetic.

It wasn't that we minded her working--it was nice that she was, that she had something to occupy life besides children and pet projects--but she picked the most time-consuming job in D.C.

“I want to be there,” she told me.

“Apparently,” I replied, and I felt bad for saying that--I was tired. I knew she tried.

"But then, home-cooked dinner," she added, hopeful.

I awarded her a thin smile at that; she looked relieved. "What are we having?"

"Chicken Piccata," she said. "Or Chicken Parmesan--I figured I'd let you guys pick."

"You guys" meant Philip or Justine--whose opinions were always far more vocal and firebrand than mine. Philip wasn’t coming home for another week, so that left Justine.

"That's good," I said. “I wish Philip was back sooner. Don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “But we get him for Christmas. That’s what counts. Even if he didn’t come back for Thanksgiving.” She paused, clearly thinking about the specific reasons why Philip didn’t come home for Thanksgiving--the same reasons as me, plus he’d gone with Lindsay to New Hampshire. “I wish he was bringing Lindsay.”

Philip started dating Lindsay McCoy in February--thus far, I'd been the only one to meet her, back when I visited Philip up in New Haven in March, when they were still "talking." Philip had told me that he wanted me to meet Lindsay first--to be fair, I was the least judgmental of my family--but it was obviously more that I just happened to be the only one who visited him in calendar year 2006.

He had strongly suggested that Lindsay was coming down for her Rainbow Tour this Christmas. Wound up not being the case--she was going skiing with her parents.

Which was probably for the best--I assumed Philip was anxious about the whole meeting-our-parents thing. I wasn't sure how my parents would like her; she was casual and free-spirited, change-the-world; my parents were the dark soul of establishment. Justine would like her. And I liked her. She was nice to me. Philip had a tendency to date women who looked like a Barbie doll but were horrible, horrible people. Lindsay was naturally pretty--of course, nothing compared to the startlingly striking Philip Becker--but she had substance that his previous women lacked.

"You'll like her," I said anyway, because what else could I say. "She's very nice."

"I've spoken to her on the phone," she said. "She seems like a good match for him. Very smart--she might go to Georgetown Law too."

I had heard that. Philip had been very excited about the prospect of the two of them hitting up the same law school.

I hoped that the conversation wouldn't transition over to Philip getting into Georgetown Law, because I'd spent enough hours of my life listening to my mother drone on about all of Philip's incredible accomplishments that I'd rather not be hit with it the minute I got off the plane.

"I don't know," she continued. "He hasn’t brought her down to us.” She paused, long and thoughtfully. "What did you think of her?"

I shrugged again. "She was nice. I told you. I think you'll like her. But you'll have to just meet her.”

There was a long pause. "That's true," she said. "It'd be so nice if they got to go to law school together though. Philip just got his packet."

I knew Philip just got his packet; Philip had texted us all a picture of said packet, even though it was so grainy you couldn't make anything out beyond "Georgetown University."

"That's cool," I said.

"He's going to live on campus," she said. "I said he should live at home. The Law Center's on the Red Line anyway."

"We don't live on the Red Line," I said. "We live four miles from the Red Line."

"Close enough," she said. "The BMW will just be sitting here anyway. He could leave it at Bethesda, be there in twenty minutes. I just don't understand why he'd want to live in some dorm room when he could live here and save money."

I scoffed. As if Philip was financing Georgetown with loans. As if my family was so conscientious that we had to scrimp and save a few thousands of dollars on Philip's room and board. I wasn't going to pretend we had limitless, private jet, trust fund baby kind of money, but we had the house in Hamlet, the pied-a-terre on the Hill, and the ranch in Pahrump. A dorm room in Judiciary Square wasn't going to send anyone over the financial cliff.

There were two very real reasons why Philip didn't want to live at home, and one of them was sitting about two feet away from me; the other was sitting behind a big mahogany desk in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Couldn't blame him, especially if Lindsay was living on campus anyway.

"Why don't we save the Philip part of the dialogue," I said, "until we have actual Philip?"

"I was just making conversation," my mom said, more exasperated than such a comment warranted. "Fine. Tell me about Tulane. Have you met anyone?"

I wasn't going to take the bait. I wasn't entirely sure if she was asking romantically, but if she was, the gender-neutral "anyone" would've been duly noted.

"I've met lots of people," I told her.

"Tripp," she said. "I know that name, at least."

"You've met Tripp," I told her. "My roommate. You met him."

"I know I did," she replied. "Jeez. Anyone else?"

There were so many people I'd met at Tulane--from top to bottom, Erik, Michaela, Jordan, Kevin, Chris, Morton, Justin, Charlie, Veronica. The list was literally endless--I'd added, what, two hundred new Facebook friends over the course of drunken meanderings?

"I don't know," I said. "There's a lot of people. I meet a lot of people. Why does it matter?"

She paused again. "I'm just curious. You never say anything."

I glossed over a lot because, when you removed drinking from our social calendar, there was very little else to tell. Video games, studying, long lunches in Bruff. Newfound extracurriculars with Kevin Malley. None of which drove a phone conversation.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't like to talk about myself. Is Philip flying or taking the train?"

“Flying," she replied. “Gets him here faster.”

 

My mom dropped me off in the circle drive at the Hamlet house--she said she wanted to walk me in, but she had to rush off.

So then it was just me and my old compadre, 14 Mary Kay Place, Hamlet, Maryland.

I went in through the garage. My green BMW was gone, off in the Harrington student lot with Justine, who was still in school.

In the kitchen, my mom had left balloons and a box of cookies from Hamlet Bakery on the breakfast bar. Otherwise, I was alone: Justine was still in class, Philip was on the train from New Haven, my parents were making their last attempts to save the country, or push a conservative agenda down a hostile electorate's throats--depending on one's political beliefs. There was something so sinisterly grim about politics, especially lame duck.

Had this been Tulane, I'd light up a bowl with Chris Baker or Kevin, or drink with Tripp or Erik, but there was nothing to do around here, Hamlet in the middle of a Friday afternoon. The house seemed so big, like an empty theater--how each room flowed into the next one, how many iterations of a family of five a six-thousand square foot house could fit, how I'd managed to fit myself into a mere half of a 12x15 box in Sharp.

The living room had a two-story ceiling, a big fireplace. The room lingered behind a velvet rope, like at the American Wing at the Met--no one went in there. On top of the piano were three framed charcoal sketches of me, Justine, and Philip, respectively, all age two: we all looked roughly identical, except Philip had a bigger smile and Justine had a bow. All wearing the same late-80s, early-90s sartorial atrocities.

It was a room never used by the family, but my parents entertained in there. The chair that had to be reupholstered when John Ensign spilled a glass of red wine; the piano once played by Condoleezza Rice at a Christmas party; the ass prints on the couch from Harry Reid or Sam Brownback.

There wasn't any of that--it was pristine. Right now, you could still see the creases in the rug from the vacuum. My mother loved to vacuum, or at least vacuumed compulsively: she had a cleaning lady now that she worked, but she still vacuumed herself, whenever she got a chance. You could hear her coming, the chaotic whir of the vacuum. We never had a dog because Justine hated anything with fur and Mom hated fur itself. The whole room had been Early American until about three years ago; now it was Tuscan, except for the hulking piano, which would outlive all of us. My mother had an etagere in the far side of the room, filled with Lladros that our grandma gave her: you could tell from the pained smile, whenever my mom opened one on Christmas or her birthday, that she didn't care for collecting figurines like my grandma did; she made the mistake of praising them once, and now she was forever stuck smiling on a loop.

We always joked: someone would get punished by inheriting the Lladros, someone would get bestowed upon them Queen Charlotte's cup, a teacup and saucer gifted (read: probably stolen) from Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz's personal set that somehow came into possession of an enterprising Becker ancestor. Light and dark. Philip would get the cup, I'd get stuck with the Lladros, we'd placate Justine with all the jewelry. Obviously.

It was surreal being home, after four months. Being home alone. I'd always been home alone--I preferred the house when it was still, when it was mine. There was a certain amount of freedom with being alone. Everything was evocative in the house, had a story, had a million stories and tethers. I preferred the chaos of Sharp, the frontier of stories.

The foyer was the only room without hardwood--it had marble--and it was easily another ten degrees colder than the rest of the house. I was wearing socks and the cold seered through to my feet. The Christmas tree--not yet decorated; my mom was waiting for us--spiraled up to the ceiling. In the middle of the room, the hall table had been cleared and replaced with a creche from the Uncanny Valley. The leering, lifeless eyes of the wooden wise men, the carved shapes of fur into their livestock. Jesus was not present at this juncture--he'd be busted out on Christmas Eve.

The last real person's house I'd been to was Tripp's house. I felt like Miss Julia was the kind of person who would go high-volume on Christmas decorations; the Beckers were a discreet bunch, tastefully minimalistic because who had the time.

My dad's office was through the French doors off the foyer; he had a big executive desk, a big executive chair, and bookcases ladened with mostly decorative books. Baby pictures of us, arts and crafts from Father's Day, painted handprints.

I sat down behind the big desk, in the big chair, the center of American power. I wondered if my dad sat here and imagined the Oval Office. I bet he did.

On his desk was a black and white photo of him as a five-year-old with Gramps, on a trip to South Africa. The Becker clan was South African: Gramps an English speaker from Stellenbosch, Ouma an Afrikaner from Pietersburg; they came over the year before my dad was born to grow pinotage in Napa. Prairie Chapel Winery, still around, still tiny and local, but now owned by my dad's two younger brothers; my dad sold his stake to invest in the Mirage. It would've been fun to own a piece of a vineyard someday.

My dad liked to joke that being South African made him an African-American, but of course he wouldn't cop to that kind of phrasing in public. Gramps died when I was fourteen, which was sudden. I wondered if my dad sat here, imagining he was in the Oval Office and looking at the black and white picture of him as a toddler in 1961 and thinking about how his dad wouldn't be around to see it, if it happened.

I picked up the landline, and I just dialed out Kevin Malley's cell phone number and he picked up, caught off-guard.

"Hello?" he tentatively greeted.

"Hi," I said. "It's me. Adam. Becker."

There was a pause. "Oh. Where are you calling me from?"

"My dad's office."

He gave a breathy laugh. It felt good to hear his voice--I missed it, somehow, even though I'd seen him ten hours ago. "Charging this call to the American taxpayer?"

"Oh, no," I told him, leaning back in the chair--I hadn’t sat in it in ages; it was very comfortable, leaned far back. "His home office. In Hamlet. I'm home alone."

"Cool," he said. "I'm in the airport."

"MSY?"

"Yeah," he said, sighing. "Standby. They have me on the four o'clock for sure, but I'm trying to get out earlier."

"Sorry," I told him, "for making you miss your flight."

"I was the one who slept late," he said. There was a long pause. "Hey, I'm glad you called. I thought for sure you'd get weird about it."

Did they tap Senators' home phones? I didn't know much about the Patriot Act except that, as a libertarian, I was diametrically opposed. This was my dad's personal line, formerly known as the AOL line.

"Let me call you back on my cell," I said, and then I hung up and I did.

"I thought you were being weird," he greeted.

"What?"

"I said I was glad you weren't being weird," he said, "and then you darted off the phone."

"No," I said, rolling my way out of the desk chair. "Just calling back from my cell."

"I can tell," he said. I started heading upstairs to my room, just instinctively: it felt safer.

My room was an exercise in extremes, because the furniture had that ten-year-old boy feel to it--quality stuff, but designed for someone smaller than me, with a twin bed and a desk that seemed slightly too low. At one point, the whole room had been nautical-themed. My mother’s designer had themed me sailing ships, had given Philip’s room, on the other side of our jack-and-jill bathroom, steam ships.

My ships were long gone. Philip’s were longer gone. Now, my desk was covered with things from high school. Trophies, mostly. Speech and debate trophies. Four leatherbound yearbooks. Photos tacked up against the wall behind it, skewering the wallpaper. Photos of me, Sarah, Grant, everyone from speech and debate. People that, honestly, I hadn’t given a ton of thought to in the last four months. People that, even at high school graduation, I knew I’d never see again.

The walls had been papered over with posters for bands I was only vaguely a fan of. Bands Philip was a fan of, actually. When we were in high school, I tended to like everything he liked by default.

The curtains still had embroidered sailboats, though. I never put any thought into curtains.

Sometimes it felt like a stranger's room. My room in Sharp, even with Tripp sleeping on the other side, felt more like my room. More like what I wanted my room to be. Even though my mother would kill me if I told her that, with the formica desk and the dresser drawer that wouldn’t close all the way on the bottom.

"I'm in my room now," I said.

"Posters of boy bands or supermodels?" he asked. "I'm trying to gauge if you're in the closet doorway or back by the coats."

"Neither," I said, ignoring that last bit. "Regular bands. My room's kind of nautical themed. Not my choice."

"Sure," he said, sarcastically. "I bet you interior-designed the shit out of that place. So, you’re doorway. Got it. What else is in your room?"

"Twin bed," I told him. "We have these huge bedrooms with these tiny beds. My mom was always like, 'Why do you need a bigger bed? You're only one person.'"

"Republicans."

"Mothers."

"Touche," he said. "Desk? Messy or clean?"

"Clean," I said, glancing over at it; there was a lot of stuff, but everything was neat as could be. “But only because I've been away for the last four months."

"Usually messy?"

Usually horrendous.

"Usually."

He clicked his tongue, disapprovingly.

"Sorry," I told him. "I'll make sure to slather everything in Purell if you ever visit."

"Good," he said. "Speech and debate trophies?"

"Oh, lots," I told him, glancing over at them--they sparkled triumphantly in neat rows along the top shelf of the hutch over my desk. Speech and debate tournaments gave top notch trophies--the tallest one I had was two feet. I was so proud when I won something that big; it was amazing how gold-painted plastic could really define and confirm your self-worth.

"How many?"

"Fifteen," I said. "I was very good."

"Sounds it," Kevin told me. "Starting to get the picture now."

"Yeah, I noticed you're full of questions today."

"It's my inquisitive nature," he deadpanned. "I'm trying to imagine myself someplace else. I've also been in the New Orleans airport for three hours with no end in sight, so you have no idea how bored I am.”

"Should've gotten high before you left," I told him. It felt weird even saying the word “high” in the context, back in my childhood bedroom--I glanced out the door to see if anyone was lurking, not that they would be.

"I did," he said. "But that was hours ago. And I'm not dumb enough to sneak pot through airport security, though I'm sure the libertarian in you is tempted to."

"Oh, all the time," I said. "Damn 9-11."

"This phone call is going to get both of us on a list," he told me. "All right--I need to get off. The next flight's boarding and I have to go look sad and desperate next to the counter so they take me off the standby list."

"Shouldn't be hard."

"Hardy, har, har," he said. "I'll talk to you later. Don't be a stranger."

 

Christmas. It was us and the Averys--my parents best friends from down the street and their three kids--and my Nonna, who had come down from Jersey.

Being at home for, by this point, almost two weeks had taken a toll on my psyche, left me far more pessimistic than I remembered being. I'd forgotten how much I hated being Peter Becker, but with each day of slogging through empty hours at Hamlet, Adam felt more estranged to me. Slipping back to Peter was some sort of flower for Algernon.

"No, I want to freaking kill myself too," Erik told me, over AIM, after he messaged me earlier that afternoon. "Everyone in Lake Laurel is a hick. It's like, sorry, I don't want to drink Bud Heavy in some townie's garage."

Erik had his snobby moments, but we'd always been desensitized to him because of me, Tripp, Jordan, Michaela--all of us--were so much snobbier, so much more of the time. But of course we went back to comfortable houses, to compare college notes with upwardly mobile friends; he went back to the empty waste of southern Arkansas.

"This is a lovely Christmas conversation," I told him.

"Lol," he replied. "You're the one who brought up how miserable we are. Have you talked to Tripp? He's on the beach in Florida."

I had talked to Tripp, and I did know he was on the beach in West Palm; they'd rented a house for the week.

"Yeah, I don't know," I said. "Wouldn't you want to be in your own house for Christmas?"

"Well, yeah," he told me, "maybe if I lived in a house like yours."

But I had always loved Christmas--my favorite holiday. When my mom was a housewife, ours had Christmas Vacation caliber decorations; now, more muted, just the tree, a wreath, some knickknacks here and there, a couple strands of lights around the trees in the front yard. Jesus was quietly birthed in the creche sometime before I woke up that morning.

Nonna came down for a week, from Hoboken. She wasn't as hip as that sounded: rather, she was one of the holdouts in a three-bedroom house, who had ridden the neighborhood from start to finish. She was comfortable, the result of a Depression-era, immigrant-parented mindset of heavy saving and personal asceticism. She repeatedly turned down hopping on my parents' dole--Nonna was forever unbridled--but the duplex she owned for decades was sitting on suddenly-valuable real estate two blocks from the Hoboken PATH station anyway, so the downstairs rent from a couple of investment banking hipsters kept her doing well.

She came down alone on the Amtrak--she was only 71, hadn't begun to age or slow just yet. My Uncle Pete usually accompanied her, but this year he and my cousins were having dinner at his new third wife's parents' place in Pittsburgh.

"Better he sponge off them than us," my dad had been caught wryly muttering earlier that afternoon, to my mom's resigned annoyance, as he sadly looked over the appetizers we hadn’t yet been allowed to eat.

To stress: Uncle Pete was not my namesake, which was a good thing because he was awful; we were both named after my grandpa, who was dying of liver failure when I was born--scotch was his poison. I was named after both grandfathers, actually; Gramps was the first Adam Becker. Dying gave Nonno the edge in first-naming rights.

That summed up the Italian side. Everyone adored Nonna, everyone hated everyone else: me and my siblings against my cousins, my mom and my dad against Uncle Pete and whoever he was married to that particular Christmas. The South African side was more stately, but Gramps was dead and Ouma was an anxious flier and my dad's brothers were all back in California, so we didn’t see them as often. They had a Kennedyesque annoyance to them: loving, hyper-competitive with each other. My dad cashing out of the winery and using it to make a fortune in casino junk bonds was a sticking point.

“So,” my dad said to me and Philip, as my mom and a smiling Justine, who seemed keen to help play hostess, brought in the appetizers. “Come here often?”

“Just for the wine,” Philip replied, and he took a long sip. “Is this one of ours?”

One of ours, of course, meant Prairie Chapel, which wasn’t ours. But the wine, yes.

“Reserve 1998,” my dad said, raising it to his lips, as if he’d played any role in the winemaking process ever. “Sixty-percent pinotage, forty-percent syrah--what do you think?”

I’d seen enough Facebook photos of Philip to know he was a dedicated box wine drinker--like me, he was never offered wine despite our Heritage, never thought to ask, even as he was guzzling cans of beer at Harrington lacrosse parties.

As a newly-minted adult, I’d been allowed a glass. Wine was an acquired taste, which I had not yet acquired. I didn’t think I’d want to test my luck for a second glass, but I figured it would taste better enough by the south pole of the glass that I’d find a way to sneak another.

“Oakey,” Philip said, trying to keep a straight face, but his lips kept curling up. “Notes of peach blossoms and dovetails.”

Dad rolled his eyes, grinned. “I’m going to make you drink Franzia next Christmas, and then we’ll see who’s laughing.”

Philip smiled, too. Part of this game they had. They had the same sense of humor. It was a gentle humor, they found each other hysterical. It was an inside joke I was constantly on the outside of.

“Sorry, I’m not so hip to the horticulture like you are,” Philip said, taking a sip.

“Viticulture,” my dad corrected. “‘You can lead a viticulture, but you can’t make her…’” He gave a look of mock frustration. “No, I always get that one wrong.”

They both cackled. They had the same laugh.

“But in seriousness,” he said, “I have tickets to the Redskins-Saints game. Box at FedEx. We’re going to find out where Peter’s loyalties lie now that he’s defected to the dark side.”

“Who dat,” I replied, casually.

“Yeah, you always were the black sheep,” he told me, with a smile. “You’re out of the will.”

“Twenty minutes in and he’s already cutting people out of the will,” Philip told me. “Yikes. No more wine.”

“Barely done with half a glass of wine,” my dad replied. “Sheesh. You’re out of the will too. Giving it all to Justine. The only child who loves me.”

“I think she’s just supposed to get a dowry,” Philip said. “Like olden times?”

“Oh, I can’t wait for that,” my dad said. “I’m going to send a goat to the future in-laws. You know, just have a goat delivered to their front lawn with a big note attached to its collar: ‘Thank you for taking Justine off our hands. Here’s your dowry. Sincerely, David Becker.’”

My dad had the politician’s gift of gab; he wasn’t a writer. But he had a team of people to do that for him, so. But there was part of me that didn’t doubt he actually would send a goat to his future in-laws’ house. The craziest thing about my dad was how far he was willing to take an absolutely lunatic idea and run with it. But since he was some kind of good luck wizard, it seemed to work out: a delivery goat would be a lavish joke people would talk about for years; junk bonds in the Mirage would make him a millionaire many times over; a chance meeting on the links with the head of the Nevada Republican Party would set him on a breakneck political trajectory. He traveled life with a halo around his head, which was incredibly maddening to watch, even if--as his son--I got to collect the residual benefits. I knew I’d never be that lucky. Philip would be that lucky, maybe Justine.

“I think that’s the only reason you had a daughter,” Philip suspected, but he was smiling--he was every bit in love with my dad’s zany ideas. “So you could get a goat delivered to her in-laws’ house and call it a dowry.”

“Well, it wasn’t for the placid teenage years and minimal clothing expenditures,” my dad replied, taking a sip of wine. He eyed the coffee table, ladened with appetizers now. “Did your mom make pigs-in-the-blanket this year?”

“No,” I said. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news.”

He sighed, shook his head. “Every year, I tell her: make the pigs-in-the-blanket. People will eat them.”

The pigs-in-the-blanket were made exclusively for the use of children, when we were all younger; they wound up being demolished by whatever adults were present, regardless of the circumstances. People liked their miniature hot dogs.

“She’s too fancy,” he continued. “Beef crudo. Watercress. Canapes. I’m not even sure what half of these things are. I think one of them’s a cow.”

Philip looked at me; we exchanged eye rolls. Confirmation that we both doubted my dad, who had a Stanford degree and family money and two seconds earlier had been espousing the finely-aged meritage-syrah blend he was drinking, wouldn’t know what watercress was. He got a kick out of his everyman act, like it was a goat tethered to some poor unsuspecting in-laws’ porch. Like when he requested mariachi songs like “Ai-Yi-Yi-Yi” and “One Ton Tomato” despite being conversational in Spanish and winning 43% of the Latino vote last month, more than any Republican.

The conversation switched, somehow, to Yale lacrosse, which I had no interest in, so I let myself fade away, back towards the wall near the piano. Ten people, and everyone seemed to be stuck together, in rigid little posses of conversation: a be-tinseled Noah’s Ark, everyone sipping Prairie Chapel pinotage-syrah blend. It was incredible how possible it felt to be alienated in a room with so few people, people I knew so well, my family. I thought about how much I would’ve appreciated Chris Becker standing next to me, making pithily depressive comments.

“Hi,” Justine said, popping up next to me. “Enjoying yourself?”

“No,” I told her.

She didn’t seem to listen or care all that much.

“I put too much salt on the crudo,” she said. “Can you taste it?”

I hadn’t noticed. “Maybe a little,” I said. “I don’t think anyone will notice.”

“But you noticed.”

“I have a refined pallet,” I told her. I saw she was holding a glass of Martinelli’s. “Mom wouldn’t let you drink?”

Justine let out a plaintive sigh. “You know, it’s not like I haven’t drank before.”

“I know.”

“I drank last Saturday,” she said. “At Melanie’s party.”

Melanie’s party was, awkwardly, one of those parties that Justine was invited to but Peter Becker was not, even though it was roughly made up of people from both of our classes. Justine had invited me, one of those last-minute as-she-was-heading-out invitations no one expected you to take, but I’d already made plans by that point. Seeing The Queen with Sarah Bernard and Grant Prendergast at the Landmark movie theater in Bethesda instead, and then we went to TGI Friday’s until it closed at midnight. A perfectly normal night, one that seemed altogether depressing considering things.

“I figured,” I told her. “I could smell it down the hallway. But Mom couldn’t. Don’t worry.”

“I wish you would’ve come,” she said. “It was a blast. So many people from your class--Britton Jarvis, Kim Revis.”

Britton Jarvis was insanely hot, barely knew who I was. Kim Revis was the Webster’s definition of bimbo.

“Mom says you’re out all the time in New Orleans,” she continued. “Bourbon Street.”

I’d gone down to Bourbon Street maybe three times over the course of the semester. “Mom takes things out of proportion. We’re hardly ever on Bourbon Street. Tulane has our own bars.”

“I am going to come to visit you,” she said. “In the fall. I’m still waiting to hear back, but my counselor said I have a great shot.”

I had no idea what I’d do if Justine wound up at Tulane, ready to puncture Adam Becker like a pin in a balloon. Justine worked harder than I did, so she’d always been academically more decorated, even if I was long considered the brains. She and Philip inherited our parents’ drive and boundless perfectionist energy, which had somehow skipped over me.

“There’s not much you can do when you’re there,” I told her, slowly. “You’re seventeen. You can’t get into any bars. So we’d just be, like, sitting in a dorm room all weekend.”

“I’ll just come in April, then,” she said, mouth creeping back into a smile. “I’ll be eighteen by then.”

“But then it’s spring break,” I protested, “and finals. And everyone will be studying all the time.”

“Oh, whatever,” she replied, but she didn’t push the topic any more. “Philip said I’d visit him in Yale. I don’t think I’ll get in.”

“It’s a tough school,” I said. “Think you’ll go to Tulane if you get in?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Philip is really pulling for Yale, but I don’t know. Dad’s pushing for Stanford. Mom’s pushing for Georgetown--she wants me close by. But they keep saying wherever I want to go.”

My parents had extremely strong opinions on where we went to college--I knew that, having recently been grilled by their collegiate Torquemada sessions less than a year ago. But that was mostly built on the ridiculous fiction that Justine was even going to get into Stanford or Yale or Georgetown--I hadn’t bothered to apply to any of the three, but even I probably wouldn’t have gotten in. Philip had set my parents--who both still told stories like, “I got Stanford, and I only had this GPA,” as if 1978 was at all applicable to 2006, and as if my mom’s childhood poverty and my dad’s baseball scholarship played absolutely no role whatsoever in Stanford’s admissions decisions--up for certain disappointment, by getting into Yale. Philip was smart, but I was smarter; I worked hard at school, but not nearly as hard as he did, as hard as would be necessary to get into Yale.

“Where else did you apply?”

“Yale, Stanford,” she said, knocking off first the familial alma maters and the least likely ones for her to get into. “Tulane, Georgetown, GW, NYU, Boston College, Swarthmore, University of Michigan, and UMD.”

“UMD. Townie.”

“Safety school,” she clarified, warningly.

“Go Terps!” I mocked, falsetto, and she hit me on the shoulder.

 

Luke Avery cornered me as I was leaving the bathroom. “Want to drink?”

I held up wine glass so he could see the residue pooled at the bottom. “What I’m doing.”

“No, like drink,” he said. “I’ve got vodka in my car.”

I always liked that Luke Avery. He was the older brother--he was a year younger than Philip. Ryan was the Avery brother in my year, and Philip knew him better: lacrosse. Ryan was a freshman at Duke, sent in his confirmation about a week before everything happened, and he was gently mocked for the rest of senior year. “Don’t hire any strippers down there.” He did not have a tremendous sense of humor.

But Luke was a good guy. He was kind of on the outskirts of things, which I appreciated. We were never friends in the technical sense--we only ever hung out when our families were together and Ryan and Philip, and Justine and Claire, would be pinned together: we were the dregs, like the wine at the bottom of my glass.

We didn’t grab coats; too conspicuous; we snuck out the back door off the kitchen.

“It’s so cold here,” he said, crossing his arms, even though he was a junior at Northwestern; should’ve been used to it. But at any rate, the Averys only lived four doors down, and his car was on the street halfway between our houses, so it didn’t take long.

“Vodka doesn’t freeze,” he told me, as if I didn’t know that, as he popped open the trunk. “Do you have anything to mix it with?”

“Seltzer,” I said. “Vodka-soda? Kind of my drink.”

He pulled out a Deer Spring sports bottle. “Can’t be too careful.” He slammed the trunk again, and we walked back to the house--I followed him back around the side gate, back to the backyard. I didn’t ask where we were going; he sat down at the patio table, which looked so gloomy in the middle of winter.

Which I suppose meant I was going in to get some seltzer, which seemed fair--he brought the vodka--so I did, and brought out two glasses, filled with ice, and then we were off.

He poured--he was making them strong; I’d only need one, and I could go back inside to pretend enjoying Christmas Eve.

“So,” he said. “Tulane. Bet that’s a hell of a show.”

Hell of a show. Of course it was. Where would I even begin. Michaela. That’s where I’d probably begin, just because she was such a glittering ornament on top of the rest of the story.

“Yeah,” I just said instead. “It’s been awesome. Lots of bars, going out. I might pledge a fraternity.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Zeta? Like Philip?”

I shook my head. “They’re shady as fuck.”

“Yeah,” he said. “They’re shady at Northwestern too.”

He took a sip of the vodka-soda; I took one too; he made a face, I conspicuously didn’t. They were pretty awful, but not as bad as the ones they made during Boot Happy Hour, when they put three or four shots in.

“Thanks for the vodka,” I said. “This is the best part of the night so far.”

“Merry Christmas,” he said, clinking my glass. And when he leaned over, our knees touched, and I of course never saw Luke Avery in that way, but.

“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked him, because you’d never know: what if I could strike the chord of being shy? I felt back in my element, vodka-soda in hand, talking about fraternities. I felt the first vestiges of Adam Becker rising back to the surface, like a child caught under a frozen lake, and apparently he was awfully horny these days.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sophia.”

Well, that settled that.

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s this girl. Michaela. Smoking hot. I don’t know. We’re just friends for now, but you know, there’s something there. We hooked up. Last night before break.”

There was something cathartic about telling someone that. Something terrifying about letting the world of Adam Becker and the world of Peter and Hamlet intersect, but still, something cathartic. Luke was a nice guy, a relative stranger. There was something comforting about these kind of strangers, how they didn’t really know you, how they only knew what you showed them of you. You could be as free as you wanted around them, because it didn’t really matter. Even if I did lie on the name and pronouns.

“Yeah?” he said. “Have you talked to her since then?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But who can read signals?”

Luke hung his head back in camaraderie. “Look, you have to just go to the girl and say, ‘I like you. You’re hot. Let’s grab a drink.’ You know, girls appreciate boldness.”

I wasn’t sure if I was the type of guy to be bold. I wasn’t sure if Kevin Malley was the type of guy to appreciate boldness, in that sense. I couldn’t imagine sidling up to Kevin: “I like you. You’re hot. Let’s grab a drink.” Ludicrous to even think about.

So Luke Avery’s advice was relatively useless for me and Kevin. I slunk back in my chair, took another, irritated sip of the vodka.

“I guess,” I said. “I just don’t want to make an ass out of myself. We have so many mutual friends. It could get awkward. And I know we’re keeping it under wraps.”

“Then just play it by ear,” he said. “Hook up with her when you get drunk, and if something more happens, let it happen. If not, just be happy you banged someone hot.”

It was incredibly simple advice. Somehow, it worked. Kevin Malley. Banged someone hot. Even if it didn’t happen.

There was a knock on the glass. Nonna, waving us inside. We stood up, instinctively; I didn’t know what to do with my half-full glass, but we just both went back inside anyway.

Luke bee-lined for the bathroom; I got trapped by the dragon at the gate. Nonna looked down at the glass in my hand, smirked. “Whatever you’re doing out there,” she said, wrapping one arm around me, hugging her warm, old body against my arm, then confiscating my glass with the other hand. “Just be smart about it.”

 

Philip came into my room around 11, hair wet from the shower, in a faded Harrington Lacrosse pinnie and basketball shorts, and sat down on the foot of the bed.

 

I was sitting in bed, with my laptop; I discreetly closed my browser as nonchalantly as possible.

 

"What's up?" I said.

 

"Nothing." He was staring off at my desk, which had already become a mess, and all of my trophies dotting the hutch shelves like glistening beacons to past glory.

 

I knew Philip well enough to know that, when he came into my room, and sat, and said next to nothing, he was expecting me to chisel him open. He liked to share, he confided in me reasonably often, considering how superior he saw himself to me, but you had to pry it out of him at first.

 

So I begun at the top: "How's Lindsay?"

 

"Home," he said, succinctly.

 

“I said how,” I told him. “Not where.”

 

“Oh,” he said. “She’s fine. She wanted to come. I don’t know. "Do you think Mom and Dad will like her?"

He wasn't ever very hard to crack. Of course it was Lindsay that was bothering him: I noticed through the evening, him checking his phone, flipping it open and flipping it shut, waiting for someone.

 

“How should I know?" I asked him. “You’re the one dating her.”

 

“But you’ve met her,” he said, “and you have a good read on people.”

 

He must’ve been that far up shit creek, if he was seeking my advice.

 

“She’s great,” I said. “They’ll like her.”

 

"I mean," he continued. "I know she's great. Obviously. She's just, like, so much more than anyone else I've dated. But different." He was clearly spelling this out in his head as he went. "But, I mean, that’s not a bad thing, because they hated every girl I dated anyway."

 

Which was true, and he was right--it was not a bad thing that he was dating against type. Michelle Revis came immediately to mind.

 

"Like Michelle," he said, predictable as ever.

 

Her father was the head of the American Firearm Association. Her mother was a former Miss Georgia USA. She had a younger sister, Kim, in my year, and they both inherited their mother, inside and out, which was all there was to say on that conversation. She tried to put on some sort of Eddie Haskell minstrel show for my parents but they weren’t the kind of people that could get fooled by some vapid high schooler with blonde hair and her tits hanging out pretending to be a convent girl. My mom thought she was a bitch, my dad thought she was vapid, and they were both right.

 

She'd dated Philip for all of their senior year--they went to prom together--and they he decamped for Yale and never looked back.

 

"Yeah," I agreed. "Michelle."

 

He smirked. "She was hot. I was young."

 

Two sentences that summed up Philip, ages 14 through 19. He had always taken the bait, always gone crazy over the hottest girl in the room. Because, often, he was the hottest guy in the room, seeking the hottest girl in the room--Ken looking for his Barbie, except Philip was so much more than that.

 

Lindsay was different, though. She wasn’t the girl your eyes couldn’t help but lock onto, pretty as she was. But she had some sort of substance, even if she was punching above her weight class when it came to someone like Philip.

 

So I understood what he meant with our parents: Lindsay was not the kind of girl they would see him with. Cute and smart and fun, obviously--all traits--but not a tomboyish girl from New Hampshire who was overly opinionated and, worse, had opinions they wouldn’t appreciate, like ones from across the aisle. That wasn’t to say they demanded Philip marry a Republican--Philip was by far the most politically liberal member of our family, even if that wasn’t an especially high bar; I’m sure his vote for Kerry-Edwards was his only blemish in our parents’ eyes--but someone who would be more willing to fade into the background, maybe, a political wife. But that was also because my parents had, in their minds, anointed Philip was their heir, the one who carry on the torch of the dynasty as Justine and I wallowed as a footnote on history.

“I think you’ll be okay,” I told him. “She’s a nice girl. What’s the worst that happens if you date someone they weren’t expecting? They’re too nice to say anything.”

 

“They’ll just talk about her in code,” Philip grinned. “Use words like ‘spunky’ when they really mean ‘she needs to shut the fuck up about the Clean Air Act.’”

 

I wondered what words they would use to describe Kevin Malley, who had the distinction of being not just a liberal but a socialist and a man and a drug dealer. Not exactly the kind of significant other I’d been expected to trot back from Tulane either.

“They’ll be too nice to say anything to her face.”

“Yeah,” he said. He stood up, paced around a bit. “Maybe Easter. I don’t know. She wanted to come this time, but I think I freaked her out. Like--” He huffed, searched for words. “I’m glad she met you first.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Right place, right time.”

“Well, you visited me,” he replied. He went over to my desk, thumbed through the growing pile of books I had on there, the clipping from last week’s newspaper with showtimes for The Queen.

“You never tell me anything,” he told me, finally. “I tell you everything and you never say anything.”

For the record, Philip did not tell me everything and I didn’t say nothing--he could rattle off names, like Erik and Tripp and Jordan and Michaela. He knew about Iota Chi, embellished as the story might have been; he had the view from the top.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Not much to talk about. Freshman year--you remember how it is. Class, drinking, lots of sitting around. Our room’s kind of the social hub. Because of Tripp, I mean--he has a PlayStation.”

He grinned. “Nice.” He lifted the movie times clipping, squinted at it, set it back down. The clutter was already accumulating, in just two weeks. He took one of the books off the top of the stack, flipped it open.

“Have you looked at Zeta?” he said, aimlessly flipping pages. “I know you’re pretty much decided on that place knocking down your doors, but you know, legacy. Could help your chances.”

“I’ve looked,” I said. “They’re sketchy. Date-rape kind of guys.”

Philip’s chapter of Zeta at Yale was extremely preppy and WASPy, the kind of fraternity that would really go out of their way to have a Senator’s son pledging. Not at all like Zeta at Tulane. I wasn’t even sure if Iota Chi cared about my family’s political pedigree, but I certainly wasn’t going to push the issue. I wasn’t going to lean on my dad to get into Iota Chi, and I certainly wasn’t going to lean on Philip to get me into Zeta.

Philip snapped the book shut. “We can’t be awesome everywhere,” he said, with a smirk. “What was your place again?”

“Iota Chi.”

“Right,” he said. “We don’t have them at Yale.”

“I’m sure you don’t have a lot of things at Yale.”

He rolled his eyes at that. “Well, I think it’s good you’re trying something new. You should pledge somewhere. It’d be good for you.”

Good for me. Philip liked to recommend things that were “good for me.” He’d always been that way. His little suggestions on how to make me more popular. When we were all at the Harrington School, Philip was popular and I was not. In Philip’s mind, I was not. I always thought I had plenty of friends and just because none of them could approach an attractive girl, and all of them did speech and debate instead of lacrosse, I didn’t understand how that made me somehow unpopular. I was just differently popular.

Philip long considered me a project, which was as patronizing as it was irritating. He wanted to do me over in his own image. I knew he wanted to do me over in his own image, and he couldn’t understand for the life of him why I wouldn’t go so willingly.

He picked up another book, turned it over, skimmed the back cover, then put it back down.

“They’re not the lame fraternity, are they?” he asked.

“Thanks for the vote of support.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he protested. “Come on. I just want to make sure you’re in a cool fraternity. You’re a cool guy, if you just let people see you’re not lame.”

I didn’t exactly know how to take that bit of advice. Like anything out of Philip’s mouth, it was a bit of truth, a bit of insult, a bit of encouragement, and you never quite knew which exactly it was intended to primarily be.

“They’re cool,” I said. “Good group of guys, great parties.”

He nodded approvingly, and I’d somehow managed to pass the test. Or at least Iota Chi had which, admittedly, was not exactly breaking down my door--I might’ve oversold that to Philip during our phone conversations.

But Philip seemed to have moved on anyway; he was staring up at my trophies, on the hutch above the desk, their plastic curves glittering in the dimness of night.

“They always seemed so much bigger when you win them,” he said, looking up. “George Mason, though. I’ll give you that. That one’s huge.”

The one from the George Mason Invitational was my highest ranking trophy--semifinals. Incidentally, the only time I’d made it that far was also my very first tournament, novice year, freshman year.

“Remember,” I said, “you almost didn’t even let me go to that one when you were Lincoln-Douglas captain.”

He looked around, crinkled his face in confused curiosity. “What?”

“Yeah,” I said. I forced a smile on my face. “Remember? I sent you my first draft and you just sent it back: ‘Be Better.’” I paused. It stung. I kept smiling, trying to make it seem like this was all a big joke, one of those stupid things we all did in high school. “Wow, I don’t even know why I remembered this right now.” I paused again--I felt each nanosecond of emptiness count of between us. “Yeah, remember, though? But you were right--I did have to be better, and I rewrote it, and there you go. Semi-finals.”

Philip smirked. “I don’t remember that, but I’ll take the credit if that’s what you’re offering.” His grin expanded a bit. “Imagine if you took my advice on the negative case too. Unstoppable force.” He looked up at the next one. “Loyola. I don’t remember that one.”

“That was the year after you left,” I told him. “I told you about it.”

He didn’t look especially concerned. “I forgot how good you were. Worked out. I really didn’t want you there when we started.”

Which wasn’t a surprise: I distinctly remembered him telling me as much, in fewer words, once, in a heated argument back in high school, when we were both hormonal teenagers and everything seemed to be a heated argument. He called me a faggot, later apologized profusely and said he didn’t mean it--which he didn't; he punched Kyle Ferris-Parker for calling me that when I was in sixth grade, one week of detention. He got a week of grounding for calling me that in high school; I remembered him pointing out that he got a week no matter who said that word, which I figured was his way of reminding me of happier times.

“Well, you did something that wasn’t sports,” I told him. “It was only a matter of time before I got you for crowding on my turf.”

Philip grunted in jovial agreement. “I had it coming, didn’t I. You were good though. Glad you ignored me.”

“I wasn’t that good,” I told him. “I wasn’t L-D captain.”

“Well, it was elected,” he replied. “Not on merit. I got the Dad genes.”

“Work a room,” I agreed. “Yeah, you always made me be better. II has happy for that.”

“Well, I couldn’t let you embarrass us out there,” he said, fingering through something else. “I knew you could do it--when were you in a spelling bee?”

I giggled at that. “Did we have the same childhood?”

“Shit, I don’t remember anything,” he said, with a grin. “You always had the good memory. I don’t even remember what I ate yesterday for lunch.”

“Panera,” I said. “You had the You-Pick-Two--”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “High school feels like forever ago.”

“It was,” I said. “For you, anyway.”

“Yeah," he said, fingering another one of the ribbons--geography bee, third grade. “You get far enough away from it and suddenly you come and home and it's like, damn, why do I have all these worthless pieces of plastic sitting on my bookshelf?”