The glass of the window is cool. I’m resting my head against it. I can feel the vibrations of the engine through the glass, each bump in the road. A gentle brain massage. It’s hypnotic.
I don’t tell him I’m trying not to think about the Caller. I don’t want to think about the Caller or his message at all. Not tonight. I also don’t want to tell Jake that I’m avoiding catching my reflection in the window. It’s a no-mirrors day for me. Just like the day Jake and I met. These are thoughts I keep to myself.
Trivia night at the campus pub. The night we met. The campus pub isn’t somewhere I spend a lot of time. I’m not a student. Not anymore. I feel old there. I’ve never eaten at the pub. The beer on tap tastes dusty.
I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone that night. I was sitting with my friend. We weren’t really into the trivia, though. We were sharing a pitcher, chatting.
I think the reason my friend wanted us to meet at the campus pub was because she thought I might meet a boy there. She didn’t say that, but that’s what I believe she was thinking. Jake and his friends were at the table beside us.
Trivia is not something I’m interested in. It’s not not fun. It’s just not my thing. I’d prefer to go somewhere a little less intense, or stay home. Beer at home never tastes dusty.
Jake’s trivia team was called Brezhnev’s Eyebrows. “Who’s Brezhnev?” I asked him. It was loud in there and we were almost yelling at each other over the music. We’d been talking for a couple of minutes.
“He was a Soviet engineer, worked in metallics. Era of Stagnation. Had a couple of monster caterpillars for eyebrows.”
This is what I’m talking about. Jake’s team name. It was meant to be funny, but also obscure enough to demonstrate a knowledge of the Soviet Communist Party. I don’t know why, but this is the stuff that drives me nuts.
Team names are always like this. Or if not, then they’re blatant sexual innuendos. Another team was named My Couch Pulls Out and So Do I!
I told Jake I didn’t really like trivia, not at a place like this. He said, “It can be very nitpicky. It’s a strange blend of competitiveness veiled as apathy.”
Jake isn’t striking, not really. He’s handsome mostly in his irregularity. He wasn’t the first guy I noticed that night. But he was the most interesting. I’m rarely tempted by stainless beauty. He seemed a little less part of the group, as if he’d been dragged there, as if the team depended on his answers. I was immediately attracted to him.
Jake is long and sloping and unequal, with jagged cheekbones. A little bit gaunt. I liked those skeletal cheekbones when I first saw them. His dark, full lips make up for his underfed look. Fat and meaty and collagenic, especially the bottom one. His hair was short and unkempt and maybe longer on one side, or texturally different, like he had distinct hairstyles on each side of his head. His hair was neither dirty nor recently washed.
He was clean-shaven and wore thin-framed silver glasses, the right arm of which he would absentmindedly adjust. Sometimes he would push them back up with his index finger on the bridge. I noticed that he had this tick: when he was concentrating on something, he would smell the back of one hand, or at least hold it under his nose. It’s something he often still does. He wore a plain gray T-shirt, I think, maybe blue, and jeans. The shirt looked like it had been washed hundreds of times. He blinked a lot. I could tell he was shy. We could have sat there all night, beside each other, and he wouldn’t have said a word to me. He smiled at me once, but that was it. If I’d left it up to him, we never would have met.
I could tell he wasn’t going to say anything, so I talked first.
“You guys are doing pretty well.” That was the first thing I said to Jake.
He held up his beer glass. “We’re helpfully fortified.”
And that was it. Ice broken. We talked a bit more. Then, very casually, he said, “I’m a cruciverbalist.”
I said something noncommittal, like “huh” or “yeah.” I didn’t know that word.
Jake said he wanted his team’s name to be Ipseity. I didn’t know what that word meant, either. And initially I thought about faking it. I could already tell, despite his caution and reticence, that he was exotically smart. He wasn’t aggressive in any way. He wasn’t trying to pick me up. No cheesy lines. He was just enjoying chatting. I got the feeling he didn’t date all that much.
“I don’t think I know that word,” I said. “Or the other one.” I decided that, like most men, he would probably like to tell me about it. He would like it better than if he thought I already knew the words and had an equally varied vocabulary.
“Ipseity is essentially just another way to say selfhood or individuality. It’s from the Latin ipse, which means self.”
I know this part sounds pedantic and lecture-y and off-putting, but trust me, it wasn’t. Not at all. Not from Jake. He had a gentleness, an appealing, natural meekness.
“I thought it would be a good name for our team, considering there are many of us but we aren’t like any other team. And because we play under a single team name, it creates an identity of oneness. Sorry, I don’t know if this makes any sense, and it’s definitely boring.”
We both laughed, and it felt like we were alone together in there, in that pub. I drank some beer. Jake was funny. Or he at least had a sense of humor. I still didn’t think he was as funny as me. Most men I meet aren’t.
Later in the night, he said, “People just aren’t very funny. Not really. Funny is rare.” He said it as if he’d known exactly what I’d been thinking earlier.
“I don’t know if that’s true,” I said. I liked hearing such a definitive statement about “people.” There was deep confidence bubbling just under his veneer of restraint.
When I could tell he and his teammates were getting ready to leave, I thought about asking for his number or giving him mine. I desperately wanted to but just couldn’t. I didn’t want him to feel like he had to call. I wanted him to want to call, of course. I really did. But I settled on the likelihood that I would see him around. It was a university town, not a big city. I’d bump into him. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait for chance.
He must have slipped the note into my purse when he said good night. I found it when I got home:
If I had your number, we could talk, and I’d tell you something funny.
He’d written his number at the bottom of the note.
Before going to bed I looked up cruciverbalist. I laughed and believed him.
—I still don’t understand. How could something like this happen?
—We’re all in shock.
—Nothing so horrible has ever happened around here.
—No, not like this.
—In all the years I’ve worked here.
—I would think not.
—I didn’t sleep last night. Not a wink.
—Me neither. Couldn’t get comfortable. I can barely eat. You should have seen my wife when I told her. I thought she was going to be sick.
—How could he actually do it, go through with it? You don’t do that on a whim. You couldn’t.
—It’s scary is what it is. Scary and disturbing.
—So did you know him? Were you close, or . . . ?
—No, no. Not close. I don’t think anyone was close with him. He was a loner. That was his nature. Kept to himself. Standoffish. Some knew him better. But . . . you know.
—It’s crazy. It doesn’t seem real.
—It’s one of those terrible things, but unfortunately it’s very real.