“I only just met the guy. Maybe he’s not interested.”
“Sure I am,” I said, though I wasn’t sure at all. What was I letting myself in for? And what did something like that cost? But if it meant spending more time in Liz’s company, I would have walked through fire. “Absolutely. I’d definitely be interested in something like that.”
“Good.” She smiled victoriously. “Saturday night. Black tie. See, Jonas? It’s settled.”
I had no doubt that it was.
The first problem: I didn’t own a tuxedo.
I had worn one once in my life, a powder-blue rental with velvet navy accents, paired with a ruffled shirt that only a pirate could have loved and a clip-on bow tie fat as a fist. Perfect for the island-themed senior prom at Mercy Regional High School (“A Night in Paradise!”) but not the rarefied chambers of the Spee Club.
I intended to rent one, but Jonas convinced me otherwise. “Your tuxedo life,” he explained, “has only just begun. What you need, my friend, is a battle tux.” The shop he took me to was called Keezer’s, which specialized in recycled formal wear cheap enough to vomit on without compunction. A vast room, unfancy as a bus station, with moth-eaten animal heads on the walls and air so choked with naphthalene it made my sinuses sting: from its voluminous racks I selected a plain black tux, a pleated shirt with yellow stains under the arms, a box of cheap studs and cuff links, and patent leather dress shoes that hurt only when I walked or stood. In the days leading up to the party, Jonas had adopted a persona that was somewhere between a wise young uncle and a guide dog for the blind. The selection of the tux was mine, but he insisted on choosing my tie and cummerbund, examining dozens before settling on pink silk with a pattern of tiny green diamonds.
“Pink?” Needless to say, it wasn’t anything that would have flown in Mercy, Ohio. A powder-blue tux, yes. A pink tie, no. “Are you sure about this?”
“Trust me,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing we do.”
The party, as I understood it, would be a sort of elaborate first date. Members would have the chance to look over fresh prospects, called “punchees.” I was worried that I didn’t have anyone to bring, but Jonas assured me that I was better off alone. That way, he explained, I would have the opportunity to impress the flotilla of unescorted women imported for the occasion from other colleges.
“Get two of them into bed, and you’re definitely in.”
I laughed at the absurdity. “Why only two?”
“I mean at the same time,” he said.
I had not seen Liz since my first day in Winthrop House. This did not seem strange to me, as she lived in Mather, far down the river, and moved in an artsier crowd. I had, however, through discreet, well-spaced questioning, managed to learn more about her connection to Jonas. They were not, in fact, a strictly Harvard couple but had known each other since childhood. Their fathers had been prep school roommates, and the two families had vacationed together for years. This made sense to me; in hindsight, their verbal jousting had sounded as much like an exchange between two precocious siblings as a romantic twosome’s. Jonas claimed that for many years, they actually couldn’t stand each other; it wasn’t until they were fifteen, and forced to endure two foggy weeks with their parents on a remote island off the coast of Maine, that their mutual antipathy had boiled over into what it really was. They’d kept this from their families—even Jonas confessed that there was something vaguely incestuous about the whole thing—confining their passions to secret, summertime trysts in barns and boathouses while their parents got drunk on the patio, not really thinking of themselves as boyfriend-girlfriend until they’d both wound up at Harvard and discovered that they actually liked each other after all.