She cocked her head, trying to coax whispers from the silence. A young black man ambled out one of the complex doors; clearly neither Sylvie nor a school scandal weighed heavily on his mind. The man’s pants hung nearly to his knees, and he had one hand in his pocket, the other hand sort of at his hip, clenched. He walked right past Sylvie’s car with that same kind of aggressive yet apathetic swagger that Scott had. Sylvie shrank into the seat and stared down at her lap, not wanting to make eye contact. The man walked right by.
The aura of Feverview reminded her of the first time she’d been to Philadelphia—really went to Philadelphia, not one of those chaperoned trips with her grandfather to art retrospectives or symphony performances. She and James had gone when they were still dating, walking around Old City and wandering down Independence Mall. Even in the nicest parts of town, homeless people staggered up to them. A bicycle messenger nearly knocked Sylvie over; a lanky, unattractive man wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase muttered as he passed; and a bunch of tall black men with soft hair laughed aggressively at a joke Sylvie was certain was about her.
Sylvie had grasped James’s hand tightly, but he’d just laughed. “You’re acting like you’ve never been here before.”
“I never came by myself,” she explained.
James poked her side. “You’re so sheltered. We need to get you out in the world a little more.”
He had felt this way about her from the day they’d met. She’d first seen him on the grounds of Swarthmore when Sylvie was a college freshman. It had been a crisp fall day, and James, ten years older than she was, had been walking around and admiring the campus, killing time before meeting with an old family friend in Haverford. Sylvie had been sitting on a bench, trying to come to grips with college life, which was unsettlingly alien. So many of the boys there had long, scruffy hair and didn’t bathe. So many of the girls didn’t wear bras or makeup and had so many ideas about America and capitalism and God, things Sylvie had always thought of as fixed, revered institutions. Even the girls who’d grown up privileged like Sylvie were standoffish. Many of them were already engaged to be married; others were always gone on weekend jaunts with boyfriends or families; and others were far too worldly for her, into experimental poetry and women’s rights protests and experimenting with drugs. Where had they heard of such things?
Sylvie had chosen to dorm at Swarthmore instead of commuting from home, feeling too much like a ghost in her parents’ gloomy, impassive house, but every night after class, when the other girls in the dorm were gathering in the dining halls or smoking joints in someone’s room, Sylvie shut herself in one of the dorm’s shower stalls and sobbed. She was so alone. Everything scared her, and what was she supposed to do now that her grandfather was gone? He had died unexpectedly of a heart attack two weeks before she’d started college. She’d almost considered not coming, but she kept hearing her grandfather’s raspy voice, telling her to stop being so foolish. And then there was the gift her grandfather had given her. During the reading of the will, the lawyer announced that her grandfather had passed his home on to her, not her parents. Why had he shouldered her with such an immense responsibility? It was something that finally made her parents sit up and notice her, but not in the right way.
James had stopped at Sylvie’s bench. He was in town from Boston, he said. He didn’t know this area at all. Did she know of somewhere around here he could get lunch? Sylvie looked him over. He had thick, dark hair, pale skin, thin lips. His wing-tip shoes reminded her of the ones her grandfather had worn. He looked like more of a professor than a student. As she fumbled for a pen to write down the names of some nearby restaurants and close approximations of their addresses, James asked if she’d like to join him. Sylvie paled, blurting out that she hadn’t meant to imply herself in his plans. “I know,” James said, smiling sweetly at her. “But it’s what I’m asking.”
And then, much to her embarrassment, Sylvie began to cry. It felt like he was the first person besides her grandfather who’d shown her kindness. “Hey,” James said nervously, tentatively touching her shoulder. “Come on now.” He didn’t shrink away, he didn’t flee, which only made Sylvie cry harder. This was the most attention anyone had given her since her grandfather’s death.