As we made our entry, Jonas’s neck was clamped in the elbow of a large, red-haired man in a white dinner jacket. He had the florid complexion and thickened waist of an athlete gone to seed.
“Jo-man, Jo-Jo, the big Jo-ster.” Unaccountably, he gave Jonas a big smooch on the cheek. “And Liz, may I say you are looking especially tasty tonight.”
She rolled her eyes. “So noted.”
“Does she love me? I’m asking, does this girl just love me?” With his arm still draped around Jonas, he looked at me with an expression of startled concern: “Sweet Jesus, Jonas, tell me this isn’t the guy.”
“Tim, meet Alcott Spence. He’s our president.”
“And roaring drunk, too. So tell me, Tim, you’re not gay, are you? Because, no offense, you look a little gay in that tie.”
I was caught totally off guard. “Um—”
“Kidding!” He roared with laughter. We were being pressed on all sides now, as more partygoers ascended the stairs behind us. “Seriously, I’m just messing with you. Half the guys in here are huge fags. I myself am what you call a sexual omnivore. Isn’t that right, Jonas?”
He grinned, playing along. “It’s true.”
“Jonas here is one of my most special friends. Very special. So you just go ahead and be as gay as you feel you need to be.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m not gay.”
“Which is also totally fine! That’s what I’m saying! Listen to this guy. We’re not the Porcellian, you know. Seriously, those guys cannot stop fucking each other.”
How much did I want a drink at that moment? Very, very much.
“Well, I’ve enjoyed our little chat,” Alcott merrily continued, “but I must be off. Hot date in the sauna with a certain sophomore from the University of Loose Morals and some cocaina más excelente. You kids run along and have fun.”
He faded into the throng. I turned to Jonas. “Is everybody here like that?”
“Actually, no. A lot of them can come on pretty strong.”
I looked at Liz. “Don’t you dare leave me.”
She laughed wryly. “Are you kidding?”
We fought our way to the bar. No lukewarm keg beer here: behind a long table, a white-shirted bartender was frantically mixing drinks and passing out bottles of Heineken. As he shoveled ice into my vodka tonic—I’d learned my freshman year to stick to clear liquor when I could—I had the urge to send him some clandestine message of Marxist-inspired fellowship. “I’m actually from Ohio,” I might have told him. “I shelve books at the library. I don’t belong here any more than you do.” (“P.S. Stand ready! The Glorious Workers’ Revolution commences at the stroke of midnight!”)
Yet as he placed the drink in my hand, a new feeling came upon me. Perhaps it was the way he did it—automatically, like a high-speed robot, his attention already focused to the next partygoer in line—but the thought occurred to me that I’d done it. I’d passed. I had successfully snuck into the other world, the hidden world. This was where I had been headed, all along. I gave myself a moment to soak in the sensation. Joining the Spee: what I had believed utterly impossible just moments before suddenly seemed like a fait accompli, a thing of destiny. I would take my place among its membership, because Jonas Lear would pave the way. How else to explain the extraordinary coincidence of our second meeting? Fate had put him in my path for a reason, and here it was, in the rich atmosphere of privilege that radiated from everywhere around me. It was like some new form of oxygen, one I’d been waiting all my life to breathe, and it made me feel weirdly alive.
So caught up was I in this new line of thought that I failed to notice Liz standing right in front of me. With her was a new person, a girl.
“Tim!” she yelled over the music that had erupted in the room behind us. “This is Steph!”
“Pleased to meet you!”
“Likewise!” She was short, hazel-eyed, with a spray of freckles and glossy brown hair. Unremarkable compared to Liz, but pretty in her own way—cute would be the word—and smiling at me in a manner that told me Liz had laid the groundwork. She was holding a nearly empty glass of something clear. Mine was empty, too. Was it my first or my second?
“Liz says you go to B.U.!”
“Yeah!” Because the music was so loud, we were standing very close. She smelled like roses and gin.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s okay! You’re a biochem major, right?”
I nodded. The most banal conversation in history, but it had to be done. “What about you?”