Had this guy memorized the entire film? “You forgot the best part,” I countered.
He paused, making me look right at him, right into his intense, dark eyes, and making me understand how I had gotten to be eighteen years old without ever having a boyfriend before. Maybe I’d been waiting.
“—and very beautiful,” he finished.
Bingo. He did remember that part.
“Excuse me. It’s my turn to register,” I said, hating the fact that I was the first to break character.
He didn’t back down. “You don’t really want to take this class,” Henry said, nodding his head toward the anthropology sign.
“I don’t think that was in the movie.” I laughed as I stepped to the desk. “But I do want this class. I need to learn what drives baboon behavior.”
“And that’s important why?”
I was not about to tell some stranger about my love for the Bronx Zoo or my crazy theories about the human race. “So I can understand people better.”
“Then come with me,” he said, like he knew I would obey.
We weren’t in some dark alley where something bad could happen. I followed him.
“And who is going to hire you because you studied primate behavior?” he continued as we walked across the giant armory where Cornell University holds registration.
“Lots of places—the New York City DA’s office, the corporate office of IBM, or maybe some dot-com thingy.”
“You didn’t really just say ‘thingy,’ did you?”
“I did but I didn’t mean to. I was at a loss for words.” I searched the room in hopes one of my new roommates would spot me with such a cute guy.
He laughed; not that polite-response laugh, but a deep, real one, and that laugh got my heart pounding.
“Okay,” he said, “this is the class that’ll get you somewhere.” He stopped at the front of a line filled with good-looking freshmen waiting to register for Wine Tasting 101.
“Everyone,” he yelled out as if he already knew them, “this is Isabelle from the Bronx.” I had given him exactly zero personal information.
It turned out that wine tasting was offered as an elective in the School of Hotel Administration. According to Henry, knowing about wine was the most useful class the university offered. He, a first-week freshman, had handpicked the students he felt would eventually run the campus and included me, as he told me later, because my face looked so earnest. He had studied our Freshman Faces, a hardcopy book for every new student, showing their picture and listing their studies, interests, and hometown, and then deduced who should, as he said, “hang out together.” He had walked through freshman registration finding those very people and amassing them together for wine tasting. Registering for a class as directed by a stranger seemed like the wildest thing I’d ever done.
“Let me guess, you own a vineyard,” I joked.
“Not currently.”
“And you’re from L.A.?” I continued giving his clothing the once-over.
“Close. Rochester, New York, home of Eastman Kodak, generous tax credits, and more than our share of companies in bankruptcy protection.”
“So what’s with the outfit?” I asked.
“I haven’t yet gone to the place where I’ll be from but the native outfit there is this. You may wish to revisit your wardrobe too,” he said, nodding at my overalls.
Why did this guy who knew what he wanted seem so sexy? The beer-chugging pot smokers bored me, the intellectuals were too intense, the jocks too single-minded, but a funny, social, smart guy who was ambitious without being nerdy got my heart fluttering, and I was not alone. Henry was surrounded by girls who seemed perfect.
I joined the crew team and eventually found a boyfriend, a lightweight rower named Ansel who stood five eight to my five eleven. Rowing brought the intense work ethic out in me. There was something about forgoing pleasure, skipping parties, going for double workouts, and the higher grades, rocking body, and being a part of our often medaled varsity team that felt great to me. Everyone in my life had a place and Henry’s place was in the distance. We’d meet for the occasional lunch where my erratic heartbeat would sometimes betray me to myself, but as predicted, Henry switched girlfriends fast.
In the middle of our junior year I began treating Ansel like a previously loved blankie that I still thoughtlessly carried around. One evening I dragged him to a party and ran into Henry, who proceeded to introduce us to yet another girl whose name I instantly deleted. Their names always ended with the “ee” sound—Joanie, Stacy, Tracy, Francie, Annie—and when he introduced me to this one I stopped listening.
Ansel asked me to dance and Henry didn’t even wait for me to say no.
“Well, kids, it’s time to cut the charade,” he said, grinning away.
“Charade?” his girlfriend and I asked together.
The three of us stood expectantly, waiting for Henry to entertain us in the usual way that Henry did.
“Belle and I have been in love since the first week of school,” Henry announced.