“I’m just trying to be helpful,” he said.
Prashant noticed, around the lip of the table, the flask jutting out of Oleg’s pocket. Given that the dinner was mainly composed of underage students, there was no wine or liquor offered, but Oleg had clearly seen this as a surmountable obstacle. Oddly, Prashant found himself sympathetic. After all, he himself had been the fraught center of attention at a party mere weeks ago.
“I think they’re both right,” Prashant interjected. “I admire Clara for pursuing literature, since it’s probably her passion.” He tilted his gaze toward Clara, who met the gesture with a guarded acknowledgment, as if she thought he was joking. “But—and I don’t say this just because I’m studying chemistry—I do worry that, as Professor Dominick says, if I don’t acknowledge a real world that will want actual ‘marketable’ skills from me”—he found himself about to make the air quotes before he did so—“my time here, however enjoyable, will be for nothing.”
“Well said, young man,” Professor Dominick responded. “Now, it’s time for some jazz.”
They were all escorted from the dining room to a parlor that lay beyond two large oak doors. From one corner, an old record player scratched out 1920s music. A glittering assortment of tchotchkes covered every surface, a collection of fake jewels and mirrored boxes and pewter figurines. Half a dozen large-faced clocks stared from various corners. No two couches in the room matched. Professor Dominick started doing a loose-limbed dance, his arms swooping, Gina following with their rocket-baby. Professor Dominick switched out the record, and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme bounced off the walls.
Prashant was dancing stupidly, but he felt more relaxed than he had in quite some time. Even the girls seemed to warm to Oleg when they saw his embarrassing attempts at playing an air saxophone. Soon, they were all bouncing around, leaving the cliché of the too-cool-for-school college student behind. It wasn’t until Gina made a swift exit to deposit the baby into her upstairs crib that things came to an end, and they were all soon filing out of the massive front door laden with foiled leftovers that caught the glint of the moonlight.
Prashant didn’t notice until they were halfway back to campus, wending their way past more looming mansions, that he and Clara had separated slightly from the others. Her double-breasted blazer and roomy skirt caught the wind, as did her asymmetrical, curly hair, and he felt a small shock run through his crotch.
“Thanks for sticking up for me back there,” she said, dipping her head into the wind and avoiding his gaze as if she were wearing a lorgnette.
“No problem,” he said, flatly. He felt his outspokenness from earlier dissipate like their breath in the cold. Clenching his fists, he tried not to let the moment slip. “To be honest, I’ve been thinking of switching to English myself. It’s just that, well, I’m Indian, and I’d be killed by firing squad if I don’t study science.”
“You shouldn’t subscribe to such horrible cultural stereotypes,” she said, a smile still peeling her lips back.
“In that case, wanna make out?”
It popped right out of him, completely unbidden, and he felt himself grow hot in the middle again, this time with embarrassment. Within seconds, she was teasing his tongue into hers with the alacrity of a seasoned professional.
Clara’s last name was Windsor, and she was one of a long line of extraordinarily wealthy patrons of the university who had funded the construction of several buildings on campus—including one of the buildings that housed Prashant’s statistics class. He didn’t have to hunt for this information; she told him outright once he saw her dorm room, a laughably large haven high atop one of the oldest Gothic buildings on campus. They kicked off their shoes as they stumbled through the doorway, something he’d seen in romantic comedies but that he didn’t think actually happened in real life. Another thing he didn’t think happened in real life was the ease with which he kissed her. He wasn’t 100 percent sure, but he was pretty sure that he was doing well.
He started to slide his fingers under her bra, hoping to see if her nipples were hard, then realized that this was a total porn star move and pulled back. He knew many guys who had botched their chances with girls on campus simply because their porn education had been received with utter disgust. Clara felt his hesitation and brought his hand back to her chest. Soon, they were on her bed in nothing but their socks (her comforter oddly smelled like Lucky Charms). Hers were white and frilly, a hipster’s delicates. Whatever her privileged background, she had the lighting favored by students on college campuses everywhere—white Christmas lights—and their bodies glowed under dozens of pixie-like pinpoints tacked around her bay window.
Clara seemed perfectly in her element, and she showed absolutely no shame about being naked in front of him. Prashant reproached himself for having thought her plain before. Underneath her affected schoolmarm chic, she was beautiful. He had always convinced himself that he liked slender girls with full chests—porn caricatures—but now that he saw the soft roundness of Clara’s curves, the slightly gangly but appealing spill of her chest, the fullness in her tummy above her pubic hair, he realized that he had avoided an entire realm of sexual fantasy simply because he had deemed it too ordinary. In reality, it was extraordinary. And it was extraordinary that this—being here, with her—was reality at all.
III