David Foster Wallace is the author of the novels Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System, the story collections Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Girl with Curious Hair and Oblivion: Stories, the book of essays A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, and, most recently, Everything and More. His writings have appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, The New Yorker, the Paris Review, and other magazines. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Lannan Award for Fiction, the Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize and John Train Prize for Humour, and the O. Henry Award. David Foster Wallace died in 2008.

Also by David Foster Wallace

Girl with Curious Hair

Infinite Jest

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Everything and More

Oblivion: Stories

Consider the Lobster

McCain’s Promise

This is Water

The Pale King

with Mark Costello

Signifying Rappers:

Rap and Race in the Urban Present

ABACUS

First published in the United States of America by

Viking Penguin Inc in 1987

First published in Great Britain by Abacus in 1997

13 15 14 12

Copyright © David Foster Wallace 1987

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those

clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance

to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without

the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

and without a similar condition including this condition being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-349-14679-9

Abacus

An imprint of

Little, Brown Book Group

100 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y ODY

An Hachette UK Company

www.hachette.co.uk

www.littlebrown.co.uk

This project is dedicated to:

Mark Andrew Costello

and Susan Jane Perkins

and Amy Elizabeth Wallace

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks the following for their help:

Robert Boswell

Gerald Howard

William Kennick

Bonnie Nadell

Andrew Parker

Dale Peterson

The Trustees of Amherst College

Contents

Part One

1 1981

2 1990

3 1990

4 1972

5 1990

6 1990

7 1990

8 1990

9 1990

10 1990

11 1990

Part Two

12 1990

13 1990

14 1990

15 1990

16 1990

17 1990

18 1990

19 1990

20 1990

21 1990

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. They’re long and thin and splay-toed, with buttons of yellow callus on the little toes and a thick stair-step of it on the back of the heel, and a few long black hairs are curling out of the skin at the tops of the feet, and the red nail polish is cracking and peeling in curls and candy-striped with decay. Lenore only notices because Mindy’s bent over in the chair by the fridge picking at some of the polish on her toes; her bathrobe’s opening a little, so there’s some cleavage visible and everything, a lot more than Lenore’s got, and the thick white towel wrapped around Mindy’s wet washed shampooed head is coming undone and a wisp of dark shiny hair has slithered out of a crack in the folds and curled down all demurely past the side of Mindy’s face and under her chin. It smells like Flex shampoo in the room, and also pot, since Clarice and Sue Shaw are smoking a big thick j-bird Lenore got from Ed Creamer back at Shaker School and brought up with some other stuff for Clarice, here at school.

What’s going on is that Lenore Beadsman, who’s fifteen, has just come all the way from home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, right near Cleveland, to visit her big sister, Clarice Beadsman, who’s a freshman at this women’s college, called Mount Holyoke; and Lenore’s staying with her sleeping bag in this room on the second floor of Rumpus Hall that Clarice shares with her roommates, Mindy Metalman and Sue Shaw. Lenore’s also come to sort of check out this college, a little bit. This is because even though she’s just fifteen she’s supposedly quite intelligent and thus accelerated and already a junior at Shaker School and thus thinking about college, application-wise, for next year. So she’s visiting. Right now it’s a Friday night in March.

Sue Shaw, who’s not nearly as pretty as Mindy or Clarice, is bringing the joint over here to Mindy and Lenore, and Mindy takes it and lets her toe alone for a second and sucks the bird really hard, so it glows bright and a seed snaps loudly and bits of paper ash go flying and floating, which Clarice and Sue find super funny and start laughing at really hard, whooping and clutching at each other, and Mindy breathes it in really deep and holds it in and passes the bird to Lenore, but Lenore says no thank you.

“No thank you,” says Lenore.

“Go ahead, you brought it, why not . . . ,” croaks Mindy Metalman, talking the way people talk without breathing, holding on to the smoke.

“I know, but it’s track season at school and I’m on the team and I don’t smoke during the season, I can’t, it kills me,” Lenore says.

So Mindy shrugs and finally lets out a big breath of pale used-up smoke and coughs a deep little cough and gets up with the bird and takes it over across the room to Clarice and Sue Shaw, who are by a big wooden stereo speaker listening to this song, again, by Cat Stevens, for like the tenth time tonight. Mindy’s robe’s more or less open, now, and Lenore can see some pretty amazing stuff, but Mindy just walks across the room. Lenore can at this point divide all the girls she’s known neatly into girls who think deep down they’re pretty and girls who deep down think they’re really not. Girls who think they’re pretty don’t care much about their bathrobes being undone and are good at makeup and like to walk when people are watching, and they act different when there are boys around; and girls like Lenore, who don’t think they’re too pretty, tend not to wear makeup, and run track, and wear black Converse sneakers, and keep their bathrobes pretty well fastened at all times. Mindy sure is pretty, though, except for her feet.

The Cat Stevens song is over again, and the needle goes up by itself, and obviously none of these three feel like moving all the way to start it again, so they’re just sitting back in their hard wood desk chairs, Mindy in her faded pink terry robe with one shiny smooth leg all bare and sticking out; Clarice in her Desert boots and her dark blue jeans that Lenore calls her shoe-horn jeans, and that white western shirt she’d worn at the state fair the time she’d had her purse stolen, and her blond hair flooding all over the shirt, and her eyes very blue right now; Sue Shaw with her red hair and a green sweater and green tartan skirt and fat white legs with a bright red pimple just over one knee, legs crossed with one foot jiggling one of those boat shoes, with the sick white soles—Lenore dislikes that kind of shoe a lot.

Clarice after a quiet bit lets out a long sigh and says, in whispers, “Cat . . . is . . . God, ” giggling a little at the end. The other two giggle too.

“God? How can Cat be God? Cat exists.” Mindy’s eyes are all red.

“That’s offensive and completely blaphemous,” says Sue Shaw, eyes wide and puffed and indignant.

“Blaphemous?” Clarice dies, looks at Lenore. “Blasphemous,” she says. Her eyes aren’t all that bad, really, just unusually cheerful, as if she’s got a joke she’s not telling.

“Blissphemous,” says Mindy.

“Blossphemous.”

“Blousephemous.”

“Bluesphemous.”

“Boisterous.”

“Boisteronahalfshell.”

“Bucephalus.”

“Barney Rubble.”

“Baba Yaga.”

“Bolshevik.”

“Blaphemous!”

They’re dying, doubled over, and Lenore’s laughing that weird sympathetic laugh you laugh when everybody else is laughing so hard they make you laugh too. The noise of the big party downstairs is coming through the floor and vibrating in Lenore’s black sneakers and the arms of the chair. Now Mindy slides out of her desk chair all limp and shlomps down on Lenore’s sleeping bag on the floor next to Clarice’s pretend-Persian ruglet from Mooradian’s in Cleveland, and Mindy modestly covers her crotch with a corner of her robe, but Lenore still can’t help but see the way her breasts swell up into the worn pink towel cloth of the robe, all full and stuff, even lying down on her back, there, on the floor. Lenore unconsiously looks down a little at her own chest, under her flannel shirt.

“Hunger,” Sue Shaw says after a minute. “Massive, immense, uncontrollable, consuming, uncontrollable, hunger.”

“This is so,” says Mindy.

“We will wait”—Clarice looks at her watch on the underside of her wrist—”one, that is one hour, before eating anything whatsoentirelyever.”

“No we can’t possibly possibly do that.”

“But do it we shall. As per room discussions of not one week ago, when we explicitly agreed that we shall not gorge when utterly flapped, lest we get fat and repulsive, like Mindy, over there, you poor midge.”

“Fart-blossom,” Mindy says absently, she’s not fat and she knows it, Lenore knows it, they all know it.

“A lady at all times, that Metalman,” Clarice says. Then, after a minute, “Speaking of which, you might just maybe either fix your robe or get dressed or get up off your back in Lenore’s stuff, I’m not really all up for giving you a gynecological exam, which is sort of what you’re making us do, here, O Lesbia of Thebes.”

“Stuff and bother,” says Mindy, or rather, “Stuth and bozzer”; and she gets up swaying and reaching for solid things, goes over to the door that goes into her little single bedroom off the bathroom. She got there first in September and took it, Clarice had said in a letter, this Playboy-Playmatish JAP from Scarsdale, and she’s shedding what’s left of her bathrobe, battered into submission, leaving it all wet in Lenore’s lap in the chair by the door, and going through the door with her long legs, deliberate steps. Shuts the door.

Clarice looks after her when she’s gone and shakes her head a tiny bit and looks over at Lenore and smiles. There are sounds of laughter downstairs, and cattle-herd sounds of lots of people dancing. Lenore just loves to dance.

Sue Shaw takes a big noisy drink of water out of a big plastic Jetsons glass on her desk up by the front door. “Speaking of which, you didn’t by any chance happen to see Splittstoesser this morning?” she says.

“Nuh-uh,” says Clarice.

“She was with Proctor.”

“So?”

“At seven o’clock? Both in nighties, all sleepy and googly, coming out of her room, together? Holding hands?”

“Hmmm.”

“Now if anybody ever told me that Splittstoesser . . .”

“I thought she was engaged to some guy.”

“She is.”

They both laugh like hell.

“Awww.”

“Who’s Splittstoesser?” Lenore asks.

“Nancy Splittstoesser, at dinner? The girl in the red V-neck, with the earrings that were really little fists?”

“Oh. But what about her?”

Clarice and Sue look at each other and start to laugh again. Mindy Metalman comes back in, in gym shorts and an inside-out sweatshirt with the arms cut off. Lenore looks at her and smiles at the floor.

“What?” Mindy knows something’s up right away.

“Splittstoesser and Proctor,” Sue gets out.

“I meant to ask you.” Mindy’s eyes get all wide. “They’re in the bathroom this morning? In the same shower?”

“Ahh, no!” Sue’s going to die, Mindy starts to laugh too, that weird sympathetic laugh, looking around at them.

“They’re, uh, together now? I thought Nancy was engaged.”

“She . . . is, “ Clarice making Lenore laugh, too.

“Godfrey Jaysus.”

It settles down after a while. Sue does the “Twilight Zone” theme in a low voice. “Who . . . will be struck next . . .?”

“Not entirely sure I even understand what you guys are, uh . . .”

Lenore is asking, looking around.

So Clarice tells Lenore all this business about how Pat Proctor’s a bull and what bulls are and how quite a few of the girls get pretty friendly and all, here at this women’s college.

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“That’s just incredibly gross.” And this sets Mindy and Sue off again. Lenore looks at them. “Well doesn’t that kind of thing sort of give you guys the creeps a little bit? I mean I—”

“Well it’s just part of life and everything, what people want to do is more or less their own . . .” Clarice is putting the needle on that song again.

There’s a silence for about half the song. Mindy’s at her toes, again, over at the bunkbeds. “The thing is, I don’t know if we should say,” says Sue Shaw, looking over at Clarice, “but Nancy Splittstoesser sort of got assaulted right before Thanksgiving, on the path out by the Widget House, and I think she—”

“Assaulted?” Lenore says.

“Well, raped, I guess, really.”

“I see.” Lenore looks up behind Sue at a poster over Clarice’s desk, which is of a really muscular guy, without a shirt on, making all his muscles from the back, his back all shiny and bulging every which way. The poster’s old and ripped at the edges from tape; it had been in Clarice’s room at home and their father had not been pleased, the light from the high ceiling makes a bright reflection at the back of the man’s head and hides it in white.

“I think it kind of messed her up,” says Sue.

“How hard to understand,” Lenore says softly. “Raped. So she just doesn’t like males now, because of that, or—?”

“Well I think it’s hard to say, Lenore,” Clarice with her eyes closed, playing with a button on her shirt pocket. She’s in front of their air vent, with her chair leaning back, and her hair’s all over, a yellow breeze around her cheeks. “Probably just safe to say she’s pretty confused and messed up temporarily, ’ntcha think?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“You a virgin Lenore?” Mindy’s on the lower bunk, Sue’s bed, with her picked and flakey feet up and toes hooked into the springs on the underside of Clarice’s mattress.

“You bitch,” Clarice says to Mindy.

“I’m just asking,” says Mindy. “I doubt Lenore’s too hung up about what—”

“Yes I’m a virgin, I mean I’ve never had, you know, sexual intercourse with anybody,” Lenore says, smiling at Clarice that it’s OK, really. “Are you a virgin Mindy?”

Mindy laughs. “Oh very much so.”

Sue Shaw snorts into her water. “Mindy’s saving herself for the right marine battalion.” Clarice and Lenore laugh.

“Fuck you in the ear,” Mindy Metalman says mildly, she’s all relaxed, almost asleep. Her legs are all curved and faintly muscular and the skin’s so smooth it almost glows because she’d recently gotten “waxed” at home, she’d told Lenore, whatever that meant.

“This happen a lot?”

“What happen?”

“Rapes and assaults and stuff?”

Clarice and Sue look away, all calm. “Sometimes, probably, who knows, it’s hard to say, because it gets covered up or not reported or something a lot of the time, the College isn’t exactly nuts about—”

“Well how many times that you know of?”

“Idle know. About maybe, I guess I know of about ten women—”

“Ten?”

“ . . . . ”

“How many women do you even know total, here?”

“Lenore, I don’t know,” Clarice says. “It’s just not . . . it’s just common sense, is what it is, really. If you’re careful, you know, and stay off the paths at night . . .”

“Security’s really good here, really,” says Sue Shaw. “They’ll give you rides just about anywhere on campus at night if it’s far, and there’s a shuttle bus that goes from the library and the labs back here to the rear dorms every hour, with an armed guard, and they’ll take you right up to the—”

“Armed guard?”

“Some of them are pretty cute, too.” Clarice winks at Lenore.

“You never told me about any of this stuff at Christmas, Clarice. Armed guards and stuff. Doesn’t it bother you? I mean back at home—”

“I don’t think it’s too different anywhere else, Lenore,” says Clarice. “I don’t think it is. You get used to it. It’s really just common sense.”

“Still, though.”

“There is of course the issue of the party,” says Mindy Metalman from the bunk, pretty obviously changing the subject. The noise is still loud from underneath their room.

What’s going on is that the dorm is giving a really big party, here, tonight, downstairs, with a bitching band called Spiro Agnew and the Armpits and dancing and men and beer with ID’s. It’s all really cute and clever, and at dinner downstairs Lenore saw them putting up plastic palm trees and strings of flowers, and some of the girls had plastic grass skirts, because tonight’s was a theme party, with the theme being Hawaiian: the name of the party on a big lipstick banner on a sheet out in front of Rumpus said it was the “Comonawannaleiya” party, which Lenore thought was really funny and clever, and they were going to give out leis, ha, to all the men who came from other schools and could get in with ID’s. They had a whole room full of leis, Lenore had seen after dinner.

“There is that,” says Clarice.

“Thus.”

“So.”

“Not me,” says Sue Shaw. “Nawmeboy, never again, I said it and I meant it. Pas moi.”

Clarice laughs and reaches over for the Jetsons glass.

“The issue, however,” says Mindy from the bed, her sweatshirt slipped all down at the shoulder and about ready to fall off, it looks like, “the issue is the fact that there is . . . food, food down in the dining room, spread under the laughing fingers of the plastic palms, that we all helped buy.”

“This is true,” Clarice sighs, hitting the repeat on the stereo. Her eyes are so blue they look hot, to Lenore.

“And all we’ve got is just those far too scrumptious mashed potatoes in the fridge,” Mindy says, which is true, just a clear Tupperware dish full of salty Play-Doh Rumpus mashed potatoes, which was all they could steal at dinner, seeing as how the kitchen ran out of cookies, then the bread . . .

“But you guys said no way you’d go down,” says Lenore. “ ’Member you guys kept telling me how gross it was, these parties, mixers, and like a meat market, and how you could get sucked in, ‘as it were,’ you said, and how you just had to avoid going down at all costs, and how I shouldn’t, you know . . .” She looks around, she wants to go down, she loves to dance, she has a killer new dress she got at Tempo in East Corinth for just such a—

“She wants to go, Clarice,” Mindy says, throwing her legs over the side of the bunk and sitting up with a bounce, “and she is our guest, and there is the Dorito factor, and if we stayed for like six quick minutes . . .”

“So I see.” Clarice looks all droopy-lidded at Lenore and sees her eagerness and has to smile. Sue Shaw is at her desk with her back turned, her butt is really pretty fat and wide in the chair, pooching over the sides, Lenore sees.

Clarice sighs. “The thing is Lenore you just don’t know. These things are so unbelievably tiresome, unpleasant, we went all first semester and you just really literally get nauseated, physically ill after a while, ninety-nine point nine percent of the men who come are just lizads, reptiles, and it’s clear awfully fast that the whole thing is really just nothing more than a depressing ritual, a rite that we’re expected by God knows who to act out, over and over. You can’t even have conversations. It’s really repulsive.” And she drinks water out of the Jetsons glass. Sue Shaw is nodding her head at her desk.

“I say what we do,” Mindy Metalman hits the floor and claps her hands, “is Lenore goes and puts on that fabulous violet dress I saw you hang up, and we three stay and attend to the rest of this joint, for a second, and then we all just scamper down really quick, and Lenore gets a condensed liberal arts education and one or two dances while we steal about seven tons of food, then we come right back up, David Letterman’s on in less than an hour.”

“No,” says Sue Shaw.

“Well then you can stay here, nipplehead, we’ll get over it, if one semi-bad experience is going to make you hide away like a —”

“Fine, look, let’s just do that.” Clarice looks less than thrilled. They all look at each other. Lenore gets a nod from Clarice and jumps up and goes to Mindy’s little annex bedroom to put on her dress as Clarice starts glaring in earnest at Mindy and Mindy gives little stuff-it signals to Sue Shaw, over in the corner.

Lenore brushes her teeth in a tiny bathroom redolent of Metalman and Shaw, washes her face, dries it with a towel off the floor, puts Visine in, finds some of that bright wet-looking lipstick Mindy owns in an old Tampax box on the toilet, gets the lipstick out, knocks the Tampax box over, a compact falls in the toilet and she has to fish it out, her shirt’s wet, the arm’s soaked, she takes the shirt off and goes into Mindy’s bedroom. She has to get her bra, since the dress fabric is really thin, violet cotton, pretty as hell with her brown hair, which is luckily clean, and a bit of lipstick, she looks eighteen, very nearly, and her bra’s in the bottom of her bag on Mindy’s bed. Lenore rummages in her bag. Mindy’s room is really a sty, clothes all over, an Exercycle, big James Dean poster on the inside of the door, Richard Gere too oh of course, pictures of some nonfamous guy on a sailboat, Rolling Stone magazine covers, Journey concert poster, super-high ceiling like the other rooms, here with a bright blanket tacked one side on the ceiling and one on the wall and sagging, a becalmed candy sail. There’s a plastic thing on the dresser, and Lenore knows it’s a Pill-holder, for the Pill, because Clarice has got one and so does Karen Daughenbaugh, who’s more or less Lenore’s best friend at Shaker School. There’s the bra, Lenore puts it on. The dress. Combs her hair with a long red comb that has black hair in it and smells like Flex.

A scritch. The Cat Stevens goes off all of a sudden, in the main room. There’s loud knocking on the front door, Lenore can hear. She comes back in with the others with her white dress pumps in her hand as Sue Shaw opens the door and Mindy tries to disperse smoke with an album cover. There’s two guys outside, filling the doorway, grinning, in matching blue blazers and tartan ties and chinos and those shoes. There’s nobody with them.

“Hey and howdy, ma’am,” says one of them, a big, tall, tan-in-the-spring-type guy with thick blond hair and a sculptured part and a cleft chin and bright green eyes. “Does Melinda Sue Metalman live here, by any chance at all?”

“How did you get up here,” says Sue Shaw. “No one gets upstairs here without an escort, see.”

The one guy beams. “Please to meet you. Andy ‘Wang-Dang’ Lang; my colleague, Biff Diggerence. ” And he not very subtly pushes the door open with one big hand, and Sue goes back a little on her heels, and the two just walk right in, all of a sudden, Wang-Dang and Biff. Biff’s shorter than Lang, and broader, a rectangular person. They’ve both got Comonawannaleiya cups, with beer, in their hands. They’re a bit tight, apparently. Biff especially: his jaw is slack and eyes are dull and his cheeks are all red in hot patches.

Wang-Dang Lang finally says to Sue, while he’s looking at Clarice, “Well I’m just afraid your security personnel here are pretty trusting, ’cause when I told them I was Father Mustafa Metalman, Miss Metalman’s second cousin and spiritchul advisor, and then gave them some spiritchul advice of their own, they just . . .” He stops and looks around and whistles. “Unbelievably nice room here. Biff you ever see ceilings so hah in a dorm?”

Lenore sits back down in her chair by the door to Mindy’s room, barefoot, watching. Mindy pulls up her sweatshirt. Clarice and Sue face the two men, their arms crossed.

“I’m Mindy Metalman,” says Mindy Metalman. The guys don’t even look over at her for a second, they’re still looking the room over, then the tall one looks at Mindy, and he starts nudging Biff, staring at her.

“Hi Mindy, I’m Wang-Dang Lang, Biff Diggerence on my right, here,” gesturing, looking at Mindy all wide-eyed still. Comes over and shakes her hand, Mindy sort of shakes it back, looking around at the others.

“Do I know you?”

Wang-Dang smiles. “Well now quite regrettably I must say no, but you do, if I’m not entirely mistaken, know Doug Dangler, over at Amherst College? He’s my roommate, or rather me and Biff’s roommate? And when we said how we were comin’ over here to the Comonolay party, the Dangle-man just said ‘Wanger,’ he said, he said ‘Wanger, Melinda Metalman lives in Rumpus Hall, and I’d really be just ever so much more than obliged if you’d pay your respects, to her, for me,’ and so I—”

“Doug Dangler?” Mindy’s eyes are mad eyes, Lenore sees, sort of.

“Listen I do not know any Doug Dangler at Amherst, I think you’re mixed up, so maybe you just better go back downst—”

“Sure you know Doug, Doug’s a kick-ass guy,” the aforementioned Biff is heard from, short and broad with watery denim eyes dull and beady with party, and a little blond beardish thing sprouting from his chin, making it look a little like an armpit, Lenore thinks. His voice is low and rather engagingly grunty. Lang’s is soft and smooth and nice, although he does seem to fall in and out of some sort of accent, at times. He says:

“Ma’am now I know for a fact you met Doug Dangler because he told me all about it, at length.” His bottle-green eyes fall on Lenore.

“It was at a party at Femur Hall, right after Christmas break and Winterterm and all? You were standing talking to this guy, and y’all were more than a little taken with each other, when the guy very unfortunately got taken slightly under the weather and vomited a tiny bit in your purse? That was Doug Dangler.” Lang smiles triumphantly. Biff Diggerence laughs ogg-ogg, his shoulders go up and down together. Lang continues, “And he said how he was real sorry and could he pay to have your purse cleaned? And but you said no and were all . . . mind-bogglingly nice about it, and when you were rescuing items from your purse you on purpose dropped that piece of paper that had your name and box number and phone and all on it, that phone bill? Doug picked that sucker up, and that’s how you met him,” smiling, nodding.

“That was that guy?” Mindy says. “He said I gave him my name on purpose? That’s just a lie. That was utterly disgusting. I had to throw that purse away. He, I remember he came up to me” (to Clarice and Sue) “and put his hand on the hem of my sweater, and said how he had this hangnail that had got caught on my sweater, and how he couldn’t get away, it was stuck, ha ha, but he did it for like two hours, until finally he threw up on me.” To Wang-Dang Lang she says, “He was bombed out of his mind. He was so drunk he was actually drooling. I remember drool was coming out of his mouth.”

“Well now Melinda surely you know how we can all tend to get that way at certain times.” Lang nudges Biff Diggerence, who almost falls on Sue Shaw, who squeals and backs toward the door with her arms crossed.

“Look, I think you better leave,” Clarice says from now over by Lenore. “We’re all really tired and you’re really not supposed to be up here without—”

“But, now, we just got here, really,” Wang-Dang Lang smiles. He looks around again. “I couldn’t impose on you ladies for a small can of beer, could I, by any chance, if you maht possibly . . .?” gesturing over at Sue’s little fridgelette by the bunks. And then he sits down in Sue’s wooden desk chair by the door, by a speaker. Biff still stands by Sue, facing Clarice and Lenore. Sue looks at Clarice, Mindy at Biff, who grins yellowly, Wang-Dang Lang over at Lenore in her chair at the back by Mindy’s door, sitting watching. Lenore feels like a clot in her pretty violet dress and bit of lipstick and bare feet, wondering what to do with her shoes, if she should throw a shoe at Lang, it’s got a sharp heel, are the police on their way?

“Look, we don’t have any beer, and if we did it’s just rude for you guys to come in here uninvited and ask us for beer, and I don’t know Doug Dangler, and I think we’d really just appreciate it if you’d leave.”

“I’m sure there’s all the beer you could possibly want downstairs,” Clarice says.

Biff Diggerence now belches a huge belch, one of almost unbelievable duration, clearly a specialty, then he has another swallow out of his Comonawannaleiya cup. Lenore involuntarily mutters something about how disgusting this burp was; all eyes go to her. Lang smiles broadly:

“Well hi there. What’s your name?”

“Lenore Beadsman,” says Lenore.

“Whey you from, Lenore?”

“Lenore’s my sister,” Clarice says, moving toward the door and looking at Biff Diggerence. “She’s fifteen and she’s visiting and she’s invited, which I’m afraid you’re really not, so if you’ll just let me out for a quick second, here . . .”

Biff Diggerence steps over like a dancer, with a flourish, to block the door with his body.

“Hmmm,” says Clarice. She looks at Mindy Metalman. Mindy goes over to Lenore, gets her damp robe off the back of the chair, puts it on over her armless sweatshirt. Lang smiles warmly. Biff watches Mindy for a second, then turns around abruptly at the door, starts banging his head on the door, over and over, really hard. Wang-Dang Lang laughs. The banging isn’t all that loud compared with the noise of the party and all, though, suddenly, because the music’s now a lot louder, they must have opened the dining room doors at eleven.

“Thing about Biff,” Wang-Dang Lang shouts over the pounding to Clarice and Mindy Metalman, “beer does not entirely agree with him because he is, we’ve found, for some reason physically incapable of . . . um . . . emptying his stomach in crisis. As they say. Just can’t do it, ’matter how much he drinks, which is often more than can be explained by known physical laws. It’s dangerous, right Digger?” Wang-Dang shouts over to the pounding Biff. “So instead of booting, the big fella here finds himself having recourse to . . .”

“ . . . Pounding his head against the wall,” Clarice finishes for him with a little mouth-smile, she obviously remembers Creamer and Geralamo and company, Lenore can tell. Lang nods at Clarice with an engaging grin. Biff finally stops and turns back around, resting his back against the door, beaming, with a red forehead, a little cross-eyed. The muscles in his big neck are corded. He closes his eyes and leans back and breathes heavily.

“Well if we could just stay and rest up and catch our breaths for just a couple of seconds for the second half of the big luau, down there, we’ll be more than obliged to you,” says Lang. “And I’ll be giving old Doug the bad and from what I can see most unfortchinit news about your not remembering him, Melinda-Sue. He’ll be hurt, I’ll just tell you right now, in advance. He is a shy and sinsitive person.”

“Seems like a common problem over there at Amherst,” says Clarice. Lenore smiles at her.

Meanwhile Mindy has gone over to the ashtray to see about the corpse of the joint. Lenore can tell Mindy’s decided not to be intimidated, all of a sudden. Mindy’s shiny legs through the robe are now right by Wang-Dang Lang’s face, he’s still sitting in the chair, his nose about even with her waist. Lang looks down at his shoes, with the white soles, he’s shy, almost, Mindy makes even him shy, Lenore sees. Mindy resuscitates the joint with a big plastic lighter that says “When God Made Man She Was Only Joking.” She pauses, watches it. It glows, she takes it back with her to the edge of Sue Shaw’s bed, sits down, faces Lang off the end of the bunk. The room’s all quiet, except for party noise, underneath. Mindy concentrates on the j-bird, then pauses again, then looks at Lang and holds the joint out to him.

“Well now aren’t you kind,” Lang says softly. He takes a bit of a polite puff, smiles at Mindy.

“Who are you guys, anyway?” Mindy asks. Clarice and Sue are glaring at her.

Lang stops and smiles broadly, taken aback. Holds out his hand. “I personally am Andrew Sealander ‘Wang-Dang’ Lang, class of ’83, from Nugget Bluff, Texas, residing now at 666 Psi Phi fraternity, Amherst College, Massachusetts, U.S.A.”

“A sophomore.”

“Affirmative. As is Bernard Werner ‘Biff’ Diggerence, of Shillington, Pennsylvania.” A pause, all pregnant. Lang looks up at Biff, who seems still to be sleeping at the door.

“We’ve actually, I’ll tell you ladies in confidence, been sent out,” Wang-Dang leans all conspiratorially toward Mindy and Lenore. “We’ve actually been sent out for what could be termed our ’nitiation.”

“Oh, shit,” Clarice says, her arms crossed, leaning against the wall. Biff Diggerence is now showing signs of life; he’s to be seen stroking Sue Shaw’s hair with a hot-dog finger, and winking down at her, making clicking noises with the corner of his mouth, as Sue whimpers and gets set to cry.

“Initiation?” Mindy says.

“Affirmative. The High Demiurge and Poobah of the Psi Phi fraternal order of brothers himself has sent us out on a . . . ,” a burp, here, “ . . . a sort of quest, you might say. We find ourselves in search of personal decoration.”

“Decoration.”

“Auto . . . graphs,” Biff laughs ogg and gives a little pound on the wall with the back of his head, for emphasis.

“Autographs?”

“We need you girls to sign our asses,” says Biff, coming to the point, smiling down at Sue Shaw.

“Sign your asses?” says Mindy Metalman.

“That is unfortunately affirmative,” Lang says, flashing a smile full of bright teeth over at Lenore. “We are required . . . ,” fishing for a piece of paper in the pocket of his blazer, perusing, “ . . . we are requahred to secure the signatures of no fewer than fahv of Mount Holyoke’s loveliest before sunrise tomorrow. We figger of course we can sign each other, being friends and all, but that’s just one each.” He looks around significantly at each of the girls, gives Lenore a bit of a wink. “Means we need, according to my figures, four more.”

Lenore notices Sue Shaw sitting there all quiet, looking at her leather shoes with the white soles. Biff’s hands are in Sue’s bright red hair.

“So wait,” says Clarice. “You mean you want us to sign your bottoms?”

“Please.”

“Bare?”

“Well, clearly yes, that’s the whole—”

“Sweet shrieking mother of Christ what nerve.” Clarice says in amazement, staring at Lang. “And it just never occurred to you geniuses that we might say no? I’m saying no.”

“Your prerogative entirely,” says Wang-Dang Lang. “ ’Course we very regrettably will find ourselves unable to leave until you do.” He now has his hand lightly on Mindy’s bare leg, Lenore notices. Lenore shivers a bit. Clarice makes a sudden move for the door, Biff moves in front of the knob, Clarice stops, Biff pounds the door with the back of his head again, a few times, emphasizing the general state of affairs.

Clarice stops, clearly now for a second just so mad she can’t really say or do anything at all. “You shiny bastards,” she finally gets out. “You Amherst guys, U-Mass too, all of you. Just because you’re bigger, physically just take up more space, you think—do you think?— think you can rule everything, make women do whatever stupid rotten disgusting stuff you say you want just because you’re drunk? Well up yours, sideways.” She looks from Lang to Biff. “You come over to our parties, grinning like apes on the bus no doubt, you get smeared in about two minutes, trash us, act like we’re meat, or furniture, think you can just . . . ,” looking around, “invade us, our room, for no other reason than that you’re just stronger, that you can block the door and pound your big greasy stupid heads on it? Screw you. Screw you.”

Lang laughs. “Regrettably an invitation extended in anger, I’m afraid.” He laughs again. Mindy smiles a bit, too. Lang’s hand is still on her leg.

But Biff is miffed, here, suddenly. “Well screw you right back Miss Rodeo Shirt,” he says to Clarice, obviously now in one of those alcoholically articulate periods. “Just come off it. This place is just the biggest . . . ,” looking around, “the biggest giant joke!” He looks to Lang for support; Lang is whispering something to Mindy Metalman.

But Biff is pissed. “You have these parties that you advertise out our ears, all this cute teasing bullshit, ‘Come to the Comonawannaleiya party, get lei’d at the door,’ ha. ‘Win a trip to the hot tubs for two,’ blah-blah-blah. You’re just teases of the cockular sort, is what you are. So we come, like you ask and advertise for, and we put on ties, and we come over, and then we find you got security guards at the doors, with freaking guns, and we gotta have our hands stamped like fifth-graders for beer, and all the girls look at us like we’re rapists, and plus, besides, all the girls down there look like Richard Nixon, while all the real babes lock themselves up up here—”

“Like you lovely ladies, you must admit,” Wang-Dang Lang says with a smile.

Biff Diggerence whirls and whomps the door with his forehead a few times, really hard. He stays facing the door, his sails apparently windless, for a moment.

“I’m afraid he’s quite inebriated,” says Lang.

Lenore stands up, in her dress. “Please let me out.”

Lang and Mindy stand. Sue stands. Everyone’s standing with Lenore. Lang smiles and nods his head. “So if you’d just be kind enough to put your . . . Jocelyn Hancock on . . . my . . . ,” struggling with the belt of his chinos. Mindy looks away. Biff, still breathing at the door, does his belt too. He even brought a pen; Lenore can see it sticking out of his pocket.

“No, I’m not going to touch you, much less sign you,” says Lenore.

Wang-Dang Lang looks at her, vaguely puzzled. “Well then we’re real unfortunately not going to be able to leave.”

“That’s fortunately of very little concern to me because I’m not going to be here because I’m leaving,” Lenore says.

“I’ll sign,” Sue Shaw says quietly.

Clarice stares at Sue. “What?”

“I want them out. I’ll sign.” She doesn’t look up. She looks at her shoes. Biff’s pants drop with a heavy sound, he’s still facing the door. His bottom is big, broad, white, largely hairless. A vulnerable bottom, really. Lenore evaluates it calmly.

“Whuboutchoo, Melinda-Sue?” Lang asks Mindy. Lang’s in his underpants.

Mindy really looks at Lang, looks him in the eye. There’s no expression on her. After a moment she says, “Sure, why not.”

“You can sign the front if you want,” laughs Wang-Dang.

“This is disgusting. I’m leaving, let me leave, please,” says Lenore. She turns. “You’re a coward,” she says to Sue Shaw. “You have ugly feet,” she says to Mindy Metalman. “Look at her feet, Andy, before you do anything rash.” She turns to the door. “Get out of the way, Boof, or whatever your name is.”

Biff turns, the first time Lenore’s ever seen a man naked. “No.”

Lenore throws one of her spiky white high-heeled dress shoes, the kind with the metal straps, at Biff Diggerence’s head. It misses his head and hits the door above him and makes a loud sound and the heel sticks in the wood of the door. The white shoe hangs there. As if the noise of the shoe’s hitting the door were just the last straw, Sue Shaw gives a yelp and begins to cry a little, although she’s still a bit dry from being recently stoned. She has Biff’s pen in her hand.

“Let me leave or I’ll put out your eye with my shoe,” Lenore says to Biff, hefting her other shoe. Wang-Dang Lang is holding Mindy Metalman’s hand.

“Let her out, she doesn’t even go here,” says Clarice. “I’ll sign too, you drips.”

“Let me out,” says Lenore.

Biff finally gets away from the door, still holding his empty Comonawannaleiya cup. He has to go over anyway, obviously, to present his bottom to Sue Shaw, there in the corner. He takes little comic steps because his pants are down around his ankles, and Lenore sees his genitals bob and waggle as he takes his tiny shuffles over to Sue. Lenore runs past in bare feet, gets her shoe out of the door. Pulls it out, the heel, looks back. Lang is kissing Mindy’s creamy cheek, with a faraway, laughing expression, in his underwear. Sue is kneeling, signing Biff. Clarice has her arms crossed. Tapping her fingers on her arms.

Lenore runs out into the tiled hall, away. Outside there will be air, Lenore wants out of Rumpus Hall very much, and gets out, finally she does, but only after negotiating a hall door, a stair door, a hall door, and a front door, all locked tight from the inside. Out in the crusty March lawn, by the wash of the well-lit street, amid crowds of boys in blue blazers going up the walk, putting Certs in their mouths, she enjoys a brief nosebleed.

“Is this cuddling? Is what we’re doing cuddling?”

“I think this satisfies standard cuddling criteria, yes.”

“I thought so.”

“ . . . . ”

“You have a really bony pelvis, you know. See how it protrudes?”

“I do have a bony pelvis. My wife used to comment on my pelvis, sometimes.”

“I have a pretty bony pelvis, too, don’t you think? Feel.”

“It is bony. I think women are supposed to have bony pelvises.”

“I think it’s also in my case like a family thing. Both my brothers have bony pelvises. My younger brother has a really mammoth pelvis.”

“ . . . . ”

“Mmmm.”

“ . . . . ”

“A story, please.”

“You want a story.”

“Please.”

“Did get a rather interesting one today.”

“Go for it.”

“Depressing, though.”

“I want to hear it.”

“Concerned a man who suffered from second-order vanity.”

“Second-order vanity?”

“Yes.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t know what second-order vanity is?”

“No.”

“How interesting.”

“So what is it?”

“Well, a second-order vain person is first of all a vain person. He’s vain about his intelligence, and wants people to think he’s smart. Or his appearance, and wants people to think he’s attractive. Or, say, his sense of humor, and wants people to think he’s amusing and witty. Or his talent, and wants people to think he’s talented. Et cetera. You know what a vain person is.”

“Right.”

“A vain person is concerned that people not perceive him as stupid, or dull, or ugly, et cetera et cetera.”

“Gotcha.”

“Now a second-order vain person is a vain person who’s also vain about appearing to have an utter lack of vanity. Who’s enormously afraid that other people will perceive him as vain. A second-order vain person will sit up late learning jokes in order to appear funny and charming, but will deny that he sits up late learning jokes. Or he’ll perhaps even try to give the impression that he doesn’t regard himself as funny at all.”

“ . . . . ”

“A second-order vain person will be washing his hands in a public restroom, and will be unable to resist the temptation to admire himself in the mirror, to scrutinize himself, but he’ll pretend he’s fixing a contact lens or getting something out of his eye while he does so, so that people won’t perceive him as the sort of person who admires himself in mirrors, but rather as the sort of person who uses mirrors only to attend to reasonable, un-vain business.”

“Oh.”

“This story that came today concerned a man who was second-order vain about his appearance. Vain as hell about his appearance, obsessed with his body, but also obsessed with the desire that no one know of his obsession. He goes to simply enormous lengths to hide his vanity from his girlfriend. Did I mention he lives with a girl, an apparently ravingly beautiful and also very nice girl?”

“No.”

“Well he does, who loves him like mad, and he loves her. And they’re getting along fine, although the man is of course under quite a bit of strain, obsessed and also obsessed with hiding his obsession.”

“Gee.”

“Indeed. And one day in the bathtub the man notices something strange on his leg, a kind of a raised gray spot, and he goes to a doctor and is diagnosed as being in the first stages of a certain nonfatal but quite disfiguring disease, that will eventually leave this apparently very handsome man not a little disfigured.”

“ . . . . ”

“Unless, that is, he consents to undergo a tremendously complicated and expensive treatment procedure, for which he has to fly all the way to Switzerland, and spend just about his whole life savings, which savings are in a joint bank account and require his lovely girlfriend’s cosignature to withdraw.”

“Wow.”

“ . . . . ”

“Still, though, if he’s all that vain and anxious not to be disfigured.”

“Well, but you forget he’s also extremely anxious not to be perceived as the sort of man who’s anxious not to be disfigured. The thought of his girlfriend knowing that he is the sort of man who would spend his life savings and fly all the way to Switzerland just to keep from being disfigured horrifies him.”

“What is this disease? Is this supposed to be leprosy?”

“Something like leprosy, was my impression. Maybe not as bad. I think leprosy can kill you. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that the idea of his girlfriend finding out he is vain so horrifies the man that he delays and delays making the decision to fly to Switzerland for the treatment, and in the meantime the spot is growing and the skin on his leg is getting grayer, and flaking off in sheets, and the bones are swelling and getting gnarled, which condition he tries to hide by buying a novelty cast and putting it on his leg and telling his girlfriend his leg’s mysteriously broken, but the condition is meanwhile spreading to his other leg, and up his stomach and back, and also by implication I think we’re to assume his genitals; and so he takes to his bed and keeps himself covered with blankets and tells his girlfriend he’s mysteriously sick, and he also by the way starts making an effort to be really cold and aloof to the girlfriend, to keep her at a distance, even though he really loves her to distraction. And he only gets out of bed when she’s off at work, she sells women’s clothes, and only when she’s gone will he get out of bed and stand in front of the full-length mirror in their bathroom, for hours, gazing at himself in horror, and gently sponging the gray flakes off his increasingly twisted body.”

“Lordy.”

“Yes and days go by and the disease continues to progress, spreading to the man’s upper body and arms and hands, which he tries to hide by claiming he’s mysteriously horribly cold, and wearing heavy sweaters and ski mittens, and he’s also being increasingly cruel and nasty and bitter toward his lovely roommate, and won’t let her come near him, and gives her to understand that she’s done something terrible, and made him angry, but won’t tell her what it is, and the girlfriend begins to sit up at night in the bathroom crying, and the man can hear her, and his heart is breaking because he loves her so, but he’s got this obsession about not being ugly, and of course now if he tells her the truth and shows her everything, not only will she see that he’s all of a sudden ugly, but it will also become clear to her that he has the original obsession about not being ugly, see for instance the cast, sweaters and mittens, and of course he’s doubly obsessed about not revealing that original obsession. So he gets meaner and meaner to this sweet beautiful girl who loves him, and eventually, even though she’s a wonderful girl and deeply in love with him, she’s also only human and eventually becomes pissed off, little by little, simply in self-defense, and starts being cold and distant back, and relations between the two get strained, which is breaking the man’s heart, deep down. And meanwhile of course the disease is still spreading, it’s on his neck, and almost to the height of his highest turtleneck sweater, and also one or two gray flaky gnarls are appearing on the man’s nose, previews of coming attractions, the man sees. And so one morning, on about the last day the man figures he can keep it all hidden from the girlfriend, and also the morning after a really major and disastrous fight that clearly almost broke the girl’s heart, the girl is sitting in the bathroom, crying, and the man quietly gets out of bed and bundles up and goes and takes a cab to see his doctor.”

“ . . . . ”

“Well, and the doctor’s quite upset, understandably, at the man’s not having called him in so long, what was he to think? And the doctor’s also of course more than a little concerned about the spread of the disease, and he looks the man over and clucks his tongue and says that this is just about the latest the expensive Switzerland-treatment can start and still be effective, and that if they delay any longer the disease will swallow the man completely and become irreversible and he’ll be alive but gray and flaky and gnarled all over for all time. The doctor looks at the man and says he’s going to go out of the office and let him think it over. The doctor clearly thinks the guy’s out of his mind for not being in Switzerland already. And so the man sits in the office, alone, all bundled up, with his mittens on, and has a real crisis, and his heart is breaking, and he’s incredibly horrified, because of the obsession-obsession, but finally he has a breakthrough, which is not too subtly symbolized by a ray of sunlight breaking through the heavy clouds that are in the sky that day and coming through the window of the doctor’s office and hitting the man, but and anyway he sees in this breakthrough that the most important thing is really his wonderful, lovely girlfriend and their love, and that that’s what really matters, and so he decides to call her and tell her everything and get her to come down and co-sign the withdrawal slip for his life savings so he can hop a flight to Switzerland that very day, and to hell with the horror of telling her, even though it will be unbelievably horrifying.”

“Wow.”

“And the way the story ends is with the man sitting at the doctor’s desk, with the phone in his mitten, listening to the phone ring in the apartment, and it’s ringing quite a few times, though not yet a ridiculous number of times, but enough so it’s just becoming by implication unclear whether the girlfriend is even still there or not, whether she’s taken off, maybe for good. And that’s how it ends, with the man there and the phone ringing in his mitten and the patch of sun on him through the doctor’s window.”

“Good Lord. Are you going to use it?”

“No. Too long. It’s a long story, over forty pages. Also poorly typed.”

“ . . . . ”

“Stop that.”

“ . . . . ”

“Lenore, stop it. Not even remotely funny.”

“ . . . . ”

“ . . . . ”

“Except how did you know so much about it?”

“Know about what?”

“Second-order vanity. You were like really surprised I didn’t know about second-order vanity.”

“What shall I say? Shall I simply say I’m a man of the world?”

“ . . . . ”

“ . . . . ”

“Ginger ale?”

“Not right now, thank you though.”