“Fast,” he said, because he’d already purchased and consumed a few Ritalin, washed down with the Big Gulp, and he wouldn’t want to waste the effects.
Any denizen of the SciLi can tell you there’s often no one on the top floor. Especially right after dinner. That night it was the two of them and the twinkling lights of Providence. To preserve the books, the stacks are kept dark, the lights only come on when you press the timer in the one specific row. They sneaked down to the last one, which was “oversized.” No one looked for books in the oversized row, it was all thousand-year-old maps and things. It was also dusty. She sneezed. He laughed. Sri was tall, she wasn’t so tall. Awkward and fast, but done. Even in the dimmest light, his hair gleamed. She was in love with him. She would have to move out of Environmental House. She was okay with this.
“You go,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m going to stay and write.” There was a trace of bitterness in his kiss, from the Ritalin.
*
“So, Sussannah,” said Brent, “you lied and said you saw Sri last at dinner, but in reality you were fucking him in the SciLi stacks.”
Sussannah was so shocked, she just looked back at him. His face fell in disappointment. His bluff had worked too well.
“Ah, you were, weren’t you?” said Marla, but she seemed a little more amused than Brent. She often said that she thought Sri was “delicious.” Sussannah would tepidly agree, carefully concealing her truest heart.
“You can’t fuck someone who’s in EH,” said April, stepping from behind some curtain like Polonius, as usual. “It’s against the rules.
“Shut up, April,” Sussannah shot back. “Why don’t you tell us where you fucking buried Sri’s body?”
“Why would I want to kill Sri?” replied April, and then she sniffled. “He was the only one of you who was nice to me.”
“God, I can’t believe you did it with Sri, you sly little girl,” said Marla. There was an edge to her voice. It occurred to Sussannah that maybe Marla liked him too. But had just restrained herself better. Or did so in the name of their friendship, to keep them all together. Or had been too scared and timid. Who knew?
And what kind of friends were they all, Sussannah wondered, if they couldn’t show their true selves to each other?
She thought back to that summerlike Saturday in September—they’d gone on a road trip to Newport, spent a day at the beaches, ate seafood, and headed back to Providence in the early evening.
“That was fun, but I think I might be sunburned for the first time in my life—take me home!” Sri had howled. Marla had busted out laughing.
“What?” said Sri. “Is my pain that funny to you?”
“You said home. When I say home, I mean Clayhatchee.”
“I dunno. I guess I now think of Brown as home.”
“Environmental House is where the heart is . . .” said Brent.
And then they’d started singing “Country road, take me hoooooome . . .” in their cheesiest voices. Sussannah could swear she felt the car lifting with their energy. And they’d had that feeling, the one that overcame them sometimes, like they were in the movie of their own lives. A brightly lit comedy. Happiness, the future, all on that road in front of them.
*
“Holy shit,” said Brent. “Holy fucking shit.”
“Look what the cat dragged in,” said Al, grinning from ear to ear, like he’d just caught the biggest fish at a fishing derby.
“Sri—” said Brent. “Sri?”
It was Sri, but he looked like a middle-aged janitor; Sansabelt slacks, plastic sandals, a Stuffies Quahog Chowdah T-shirt. His beautiful hair was cut short, shorter than the Boston detective’s, his face, as if in compensation, a cactus mess of stubble.
“Sri,” said Marla.
Sussannah was stunned into silence.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m Sri. And you are . . . ?”
*
“I thought amnesia only happened on soap operas,” said Brent. “As a convenient plot point.”
“Apparently not,” said Sussannah. A little accusingly, she added, “And you never noticed him all that time you were at that homeless shelter?”
“I wasn’t there for the shelter, I was there for the obesity clinic,” he replied tetchily.
“But it was in the same building, Einstein.”
Apparently that fateful night, for whatever reason, Sri left the SciLi in a rush, loped down College Hill to the tiny park that overlooked the city. In the dark he tripped, fell into a puddle. Ritalin and alcohol and sugar, not a good combination. A few minutes later, he tripped again, and this time hit his head.
When he was brought in, the ER docs saw a drunk with no ID and, as was typical, booted the inebriated man to the homeless shelter, where he remained, affable but memoryless, looking like any of the dozens of brown-skinned men who inhabited the place. Until the day he saw Al in his Brown University medical student coat, which reconnected a neuron or two, and he said, “Hey, I go to Brown.”