She didn’t need dates, she didn’t need friends, so long as she had Philip, no matter how far away he was. That was what she had thought. And now that she longed for a friend, anyone with a sympathetic ear, she had nowhere to turn.
She thought of the people from her classes who had spoken to her, and how she had always turned aside whatever gestures they had made towards friendship. She thought of the boy in the cemetery. He was as alone as she was now. Remembering how she had deliberately cut him, she felt deeply ashamed.
Abruptly she stood up. She had to get out. She had done nothing but sit and brood and cry alone all day, until the walls and furniture were so saturated with her grief that she could scarcely bear to look at them any longer.
She decided to go to the cemetery. It was a good place for walking, for brooding, for being alone. It was nearly dark, but that didn’t bother her. She suspected a cemetery would be safer after dark than the campus.
Corey’s apartment was one of four in an old house on the west side of the university. As she crept cautiously down the dark, narrow stairs, she hoped she wouldn’t encounter any of her neighbours. Although she had heard them coming and going, she had never actually met any of the other occupants of the house; she wasn’t even certain how many of them there were. They were only heavy footsteps on the stairs to her, and voices muffled by walls.
She walked quickly through the empty evening streets. The air was grey-blue with dusk and very still; she felt as if she were walking along the bottom of a deep, quiet pond. When she reached the cemetery she made her way towards the familiar bench and statue.
‘You came.’
He didn’t startle her this time. It was as if she had known he would be there, sitting on the stone bench and waiting for her as the day faded.
He stood when she approached. ‘I knew you would come,’ he said quietly. ‘I knew that if I waited long enough, and thought about you hard enough, that you would understand and come to me.’
‘How could you know?’ Her voice was gentle.
‘Because I needed you. I’ve come here every day, and hoped to see you. Today – I didn’t know how much longer I could go on. Today I concentrated on you. I thought about you. I really needed you . . . and so you came. If you hadn’t, then I would have known that it was all over, that what I needed didn’t matter. But you came.’
‘I came,’ she agreed. It was an odd conversation, but it seemed almost appropriate under the circumstances. What else did one say to a strange boy at twilight in a cemetery? ‘But I didn’t know you would be here,’ she said. ‘How could I? I’m not sure why I came here. I guess I needed you, too.’
She heard him suck in his breath.
Feeling very tired, she sat down on the bench. After a moment he joined her.
‘I didn’t go to class today,’ he said. ‘I was up all night, thinking, and then I came here. I spent all day here, hoping I would see you. When it started to get dark I almost gave up. I’m glad I didn’t.’
‘You don’t even know me,’ she said. She turned her head to look at him. In the darkness she couldn’t even tell what colour his eyes were. ‘You don’t even know my name.’
‘But that doesn’t matter. What matters is the kinship between us. I felt it long before I spoke to you. You feel it too, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know.’ She clutched her shoulders, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I just didn’t want to be alone any more. I don’t have any friends here, I don’t know anyone I can talk to.’
‘You can talk to me,’ he said. ‘If I could help you – you don’t know how happy that would make me. I’d do anything, anything to help you. Anything you need from me.’
His tone was disconcertingly intense, and Corey felt briefly the oddness of the situation. But anything was better than being alone right now.
‘I’d like to talk to you,’ she said. ‘I need to talk – if you’d be willing to listen. Maybe we could go somewhere and have dinner together. I haven’t eaten anything all day.’
‘I’d like that very much,’ he said quietly.
They went to an Italian restaurant near campus, and there, over plates of spaghetti and glasses of wine, she began to talk. The flood of her pent-up emotion rushed out and flowed over the young man who sat across the table from her, gazing at her as if she were a miracle. But she was past minding his disconcerting gaze or his odd speeches. He existed for her only as someone who kept her from being alone, a listening presence who served her need to talk in the same way that a glass of water relieved her mouth of dryness.
After their meal he walked her home and, noticing the darkness of the hall, suggested firmly that it would be better if he saw her safely to her own door. She felt a pang – it was the sort of thing Philip would do – but smiled and thanked him. The front door, she discovered, was unlocked – a good, hard push would serve to open it. This was a common occurrence. It was an old door, slightly warped, and needed to be firmly shut, and most of the people who hurried in and out of the house did not bother to pause to make certain the latch had caught. She was slightly nervous as they walked up the dark stairs together, but he did not try to touch her or kiss her, and said good night politely when she had unlocked her door and turned on a light.
‘We’ll see each other again?’ he asked in a low, hopeful voice.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. Exhausted from pouring out her troubles to him, she felt eager to get away from him.
‘In the cemetery – tomorrow afternoon?’
‘I’m not sure. I . . .’
‘Then the next day. Or Saturday? Saturday afternoon, for sure?’
She nodded. ‘Saturday.’
‘I’m not trying to push you, or chase you, you understand. But I want to help you. And I think we need each other. It is mutual.’
‘Thank you for listening to me tonight,’ she said. ‘It really helped. I hope it wasn’t too boring for you.’ She was uncomfortable again, aware of him as an individual, as an odd stranger who was now knowledgeable about her problems.
‘You don’t have to thank me. I’ll be here for you whenever you need me, I promise. All you have to do is ask me, and I’ll come. But I’ll see you Saturday, for sure, in the cemetery. Our place.’
She nodded uneasily. When he had gone, she locked the door and went to the telephone. Philip might have been trying to reach her while she was out.
But nothing could be learned or settled or changed by telephone, Corey found. Words went humming off into space and lost all connection with reality, with truth. Philip’s voice, detached from Philip, was distant and unfamiliar. Was that impatience in his voice, or regret? Pain or indifference? Corey didn’t like the sound of her own voice, which echoed in her ears, obscuring what Philip said and what she wanted to say.
She had to see him face to face and learn if he still loved her.
The money in her bank account, the money she was expected to live on for the next month, would more than cover the cost of a round-trip ticket. She didn’t think about what she would do when she returned – her parents would provide.
She left Thursday evening, on the first flight she could get. It involved a change in Philadelphia as well as one in Charlotte, but Philip had agreed to meet her post-midnight flight. Despite her nervousness, she felt a greedy exhilaration. No matter what happened, she would have this weekend with Philip.
It was wretched.
At the end of it, Corey felt as if she and Philip were complete strangers. She was eager to leave, even to go back to a place she despised.
She returned on Sunday night, thinking about the boy from the cemetery, and remembered her broken promise – she had not met him on Saturday, after all. But surely he would understand when she explained, she thought. He knew, as no one else in this town did, something of her feelings. She would have to go and look for him the next day. She realised that she didn’t know his name or where, besides the cemetery, she might expect to find him.