Part 7 (1/2)

”Don't be a sn.o.b, Sushok.”

”Oh, all right. I really like Canadians, actually. They're very polite.”

”Polite is good. Polite is a start.”

”Mufka, will you visit me?”

”Of course I'll visit you.”

”It's not far. And the border's not like the Belarusian border at all, they let you right through.”

”I know, Sushok.”

”Oh, Mufka,” she said, and suddenly burst into tears. ”Why did we do this?”

”We had to, Sushok,” said Mark. ”We were sad.”

”We're sad now.”

”That's true.”

She cried some more. Mark listened. There was a time when her tears received, automatically, his tears in return. Now, standing in their old living room, he respectfully hoped that Celeste didn't call while he was on the line with Sushok. She stopped crying.

”Listen, Mufka.” She turned on a dime, his Sasha. ”Don't cry, OK? Don't you cry too. It'll be all right. Everything will work out. We're not even that old. I have a friend here, her name is Susan, she's even older than we are. So don't be sad, Mufka. I'll talk to you later.”

And that was it. This phone, this aging, cordless Syracuse phone-such amazing things came over the line through it.

Oh, they had split up because they had to, they had to, he knew in his bones that they had to; and now, awkwardly and ridiculously, he was making a new life. Disoriented after her call, as he always was, he was beginning with a kind of resignation to put the phone back into his pants when it rang again. It was Sasha, he thought, forgetting to tell him something.

”Mark?”

But it was Leslie.

”Oh, hey.” Mark gathered himself. He heard some noise in the background. ”Are you already there?”

”Yeah. I got bored sitting at home. So, listen, I don't know if you're coming, but if you do come, you should bring some beer. There's a beer deficit.”

Mark agreed to bring some beer.

It was night now, in dilapidated Syracuse, the cars crawling ominously down Genessee, with occasionally a s.n.a.t.c.h of hip-hop cras.h.i.+ng through Mark's window. He would give Celeste ten more minutes, and then he would go. But he did not return the phone to his underwear this time-what if his father called? P. Grossman was a reasonable man, to be sure, a man who enjoyed the pleasures of life, and although he was chagrined at the loss of Sasha he quietly encouraged Mark's pursuit of further women. He would not think it blasphemous to care for Celeste, or to have chased after girls, even on the Internet. Wasn't it the case that fathers of his generation mostly feared that their sons would turn out a little funny, a little . . . gay? So P. Grossman would have been pleased, in general, with the new Mark. Which is not to say he wanted to hear about the phone receiver down Mark's pants.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and then fifteen, and then half an hour pa.s.sed, and finally there was nothing to do. He had pushed Celeste too far; he had tried to mask his desperation, but she had felt it. So it went-he was Liebknecht, after all. He put on a clean pair of jeans and went out, looking both ways before crossing the parking lot. He drove the near-empty streets of Syracuse to Peter's, where Brooklyn beer was sold for $5.99 a six-pack, and bought two packs. Then on to the house on Fellows, where they had these things always, where there was enough room for people to get drunk and fall over and no one to bother them.

Oh, what a sad place was Syracuse, what a sad place was graduate school! And on Friday nights these attempts at human togetherness. And yet, with the collapse of the discipline of history into Antiques Roadshow, Antiques Roadshow, history of social trends, history of the spoon, these department potlucks were pretty much all they had. history of social trends, history of the spoon, these department potlucks were pretty much all they had.

”Hey!” He was greeted in the front room by Troy, short and goateed, student of the cultural history of the coffee mug. ”Mark, man, just the man we wanted! Mark, what do you think of B-2-phen?”

”What?”

”B-2-phen.o.betymide.”

”Oh. I don't think I've ever-what, injected it?”

”No, it's a pill.”

”Sorry. Swallowed it.”

”You snort them,” Troy said, contemptuously, and turned back to the conversation as Mark headed for the kitchen. The apartment occupied the first floor of an old, handsome Victorian triple-decker, the kind of apartment that didn't exist in New York but would cost $2,500 a month if it did. In Syracuse it cost $600. Mark had noticed that when things cost this little, people tended to get depressed, though as a historian he knew that this might not be a direct causal relation; there might be an intermediate or prior step.

In the kitchen, Mark met Leslie. She looked glum, in the kitchen, all by herself, with too much makeup on. The boys hadn't put a cover over the fluorescent ceiling light.

”Hi,” said Mark. ”You're in here all by yourself.”

”Troy was going on about the pills,” she explained, sighing. ”I got annoyed.”

”Yes, I understand that,” said Mark. ”All those pills and herbs. What's wrong with beer?”

”Yeah,” said Leslie, a little warily.

”Beer and the Russian Revolution!” Mark cheered.

”Uh, right.”

Leslie wasn't as nice as she could have been. Mark decided to take the high road. ”I'm sorry about today in the gym,” he said. ”I was rude.”

”It's OK,” she said. ”I was probably weird in there. I get self-conscious. The undergrads walk around practically naked. It's disgusting.”

”Well,” said Mark. He took umbrage at this insult to the naked undergraduates, but he kept his mouth shut. Instead he said, ”Bottoms up,” and he chugged one of the beers he'd brought. Then he scanned the counter behind Leslie and located a bottle of rum. He did not love rum, but he didn't mind it, and then, standing in the kitchen, under the bare fluorescent light, after a very bad week, a week during which his hopes of Celeste evaporated, during which his dissertation, while not stalling exactly, certainly did not progress, and in fact began to seem slightly ridiculous-during which the entire project, the sometimes utopian project, of Mark's life began to look like it was going simply to fail-well, Mark made a kind of decision. He said to Leslie: ”Shot?”

”OK,” she answered, still a little glumly.

But Mark was undeterred. He poured two shots into plastic cups and then, as Leslie put her hand out, quickly drank them both. ”Ha-ha!” said Mark. ”Psych.”

”Hey!” she said.

”Sorry.” He poured the shots again and now handed one to Leslie. He chased this third shot with some more beer. They were still alone in that kitchen; you could already tell, if you'd had any doubt about it, that this wasn't going to be much of a party.

In the months to come Mark would have occasion-he would have many occasions-to wonder just how drunk he was, and just how culpable he was, just how conscious he was, when he kissed Leslie briefly in the kitchen and then walked out with her to her car-she insisted they take her car, and Mark agreed to this so long as he was the one who drove. There was only one person Mark trusted to drive a car this drunk, and that person was Mark.

Leslie occupied the top floor of a two-story house just down the street from him on East Genessee. That was another thing about Syracuse, in addition to the fact that everyone was drunk: everyone had a nice apartment in which to sit wretched and alone. Some apartments were nicer than others. Leslie's had a little kitchen table with some plastic flowers on it, and posters from popular films, ironically posted; a little green rug in the center of the main room in front of the television; and on the coffee table a gigantic volume of Fernand Braudel's The Structures of Everyday Life. The Structures of Everyday Life. One thing you could say about grad students-”Excuse me a moment,” said Leslie, and ducked into the bathroom-they might be philistines-in fact Mark now scanned the two bookshelves and they were exclusively populated by books from Leslie's field of study-but you'd never get bored by their libraries, unless you had something against the new trend in microhistories, in which case eventually you would. One thing you could say about grad students-”Excuse me a moment,” said Leslie, and ducked into the bathroom-they might be philistines-in fact Mark now scanned the two bookshelves and they were exclusively populated by books from Leslie's field of study-but you'd never get bored by their libraries, unless you had something against the new trend in microhistories, in which case eventually you would.

There was still time to run. He didn't really want to be here; even in his current state he knew this. He could walk down the street and be home. And-but here was Leslie. She'd put on some lipstick, for some reason; she'd done something to her hair. Immediately she was next to him, and they were locked in an embrace. She wore perfume. He was a little dizzy. So this was it, then-this was going to be his new life in Syracuse. There were hands involved now, and some tugging. Mark supposed it could be worse. And soon- they were grown-ups, after all-they were on her full-size bed, big enough it seemed at the time-and tugging off their clothes. Mark didn't know if this is what he wanted to do, but events had a clear and simple logic, at this point, and he followed the logic. Then, suddenly, Leslie pulled up.

”I can't do this,” she said.

”Why not?”

”Because I can't. I'm not going to do any more one-night stands. I told you that.”