I laughed and began to choke immediately, “Thanks, you’re very thoughtful,” I said as sincerely as I could while coughing, “Seems your brother and you have been on a roll with trouble.”
“Ollie’s been on a roll. He’s been in a right creative spurt, he has. It’s difficult to resist him when he offers such great solutions to boredom, so that’s why I’ve been on the spot a time or two lately. Blame him, he’s the bad egg,” Alexander was in one of his serious moods. His handsome face was almost devoid of expression, which was an indication that he was on edge, “Would you mind if I sat here and read for a while? The common room is crowded and our dormitory smells like a chip shop thanks to some stupid first year misusing the poppity-ping in the room below us. Stinks like hell.”
“Not at all. I’d love to have you. Are you all right? You seem tense.”
He pulled up a chair and took out a paperback novel. Alexander and I shared a love of fiction. “No,” He slouched deep in the chair and tossed one leg over the other, “I’m fine. Just looking for some quiet. These people annoy me.”
“It’s definitely quiet here.”
He opened the book and pulled out his page marker, leaning back in the chair. He didn't look at me when he spoke, “When I’m through with this, you have to read it, Sil. I think you’d like it very much.”
“Who is it?”
“Vonnegut.”
“Oh, I love him,” I picked up the book he had gotten for me and opened it to the first page, settling in to read. I noticed the cover of his book, “I think I’ve read it. Is it the one about the Armenian?”
“Yes.” He mumbled. “You have good taste in books.”
Within seconds, both of us were lost in our stories.
I enjoyed spending time with Alexander. He had a reputation for being nasty and licentious, but when you got him by himself and really took the time to get to know him, Alex was actually introspective and bright. I wouldn’t call him sensitive. If he liked you he was less likely to be beastly, but he was quiet by nature and easily flustered by having too many people around him so the environment at Bennington often set him on edge. For some reason my presence seemed to soothe him.
Oliver had even noticed and commented about it. “My brother listens to you,” He said once in amazement after I had talked Alex down from a near violent episode with another student, “It’s incredible. Alex never listens to anybody.”
Even as much as I enjoyed having Alex around, the happiest nights were when it was just Ollie who came by. Oliver and I had a way of making each other laugh over silly things. In fact, I think that summed us up right there. Silly. Oliver and I were silly together. We laughed so hard and had so much fun people thought we were mental, but neither of us cared. We thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company. I really had no idea why somebody as wonderful and as popular as Oliver Dickinson would come by every chance he got to see me and show such devotion to a complete nobody, but I wasn’t going to argue. By that time I was totally lost to him. I was in love.
There were other times Oliver was unable to come and see me during the two weeks I spent in the sanatorium. Miserable, they were. I hated being apart from him for more than a night. It was like an aching empty spot in my gut, like I was hungry, but a deeper pain. I thought at times the way I felt when he was not there was unhealthy, a sort of obsession, and that I needed to get myself in balance. No boy could be the centre of the universe, I swore, not even him. Funny, sweet, easy-going, good looking and wonderful as he was, we weren't exactly the same person. There was him and there was me. I could exist without him. I knew that. I had to be able to. But I just wasn't so sure that I could exist without us.
"Us" was becoming a very important thing to him and me both. It was getting to a point where one of us was never mentioned without the other and neither of us made any plans that didn't include the other. Not because we weren't able and not because we didn't have the freedom to do it. I'd have let him go off with his mates as quickly as he'd have let me go off with mine. It was that neither of us wanted to. No matter what we did, we wanted to do it together.
Unfortunately, that didn't always happen. Oliver had a keen mind and a restlessness that drove him to take chances. He was always up to something or other. Usually it was harmless pranks or general nonsense that he and Alexander and their mates did for entertainment and thrills, but sometimes he'd take it a little too far and pay the price for it.
Alexander popped in another afternoon with a different explanation as to why Oliver couldn’t come. This time Alex was quite animated and not at all interested in reading books or being quiet. He strode into the infirmary and past the rows of beds, taking just a second to acknowledge one girl and wish her a speedy recovery. He then hurried to the side of my bed and yanked out the chair with a scratch against the tile.
“Silvia!” He leaned forward and kissed my cheek, "Josh McGuigan got him!”
“What do you mean? Where’s Oliver?”
Alex laughed. He had the nicest laugh, something of a chuckle from inside his throat, but when something struck him as particularly funny it was a broken cackle. Not wanting to set his full blown cackle free, he sort of squeaked and covered his mouth with his fist. He dropped it as he spoke, “In Madame Pennyweather’s office and I imagine he’ll be there for quite a while! It was bloody brilliant, Sil, what Josh did! You should have seen it!”
“What happened? No one got hurt, did they?”
“Oh, no! Not at all! We were in literature, mind, with Professor Lucas, and she told Oliver it was his turn to read. So Ollie stands up in front of the entire class and opens his book and his mouth kind of falls open and just stands there staring at the page. It was odd. Then he’s flipping through the pages like mad, right? Front to back, back to front and suddenly he starts laughing. Well, Lucas is like, ‘What are you laughing about?’ and Ollie tries to stop. He says real seriously, ‘Nothing, Ma’am, but I can’t read this’ and she says, ‘You can’, and he’s like, ‘No, Ma’am, I really cannot read this’. By now he’s being ultra-serious, mind. And he sounded all stern-like, just like our Dad. His face was blood red, though. I mean, even his neck was red like a blooming cherry. He looked very strange. I was sitting there wondering what was wrong with my brother, knowing he was very uncomfortable-like, and Lucas says, ‘I said read it, Oliver, or it’s detention!’ and Ollie says, ‘Really, Ma’am, it’s detention if I do read it!’ And she got angry and she yelled, “READ IT!” Alexander was speaking rapidly, tapping his fingers together in delight as he told the story. I’d rarely seen such entertainment on his face, “So Oliver takes a deep breath and he says, ‘All right, Ma’am, but I want you to know that I’m not responsible for the content of these pages. I wish you’d have a look…’ Now she’s ticked off, so she shouts again, ‘I SAID READ IT!’ Ollie took a breath and he says…” Alexander at this point could hardly speak he was laughing so hard. I could see tears filling up in his eyes. He squeaked again as he pinched out the words, “He says…he reads…out loud, mind you, ‘The police officer plopped me down on the bonnet of my car and shoved my skirt up past my waist. He tore my knickers away like they were made of cellophane and began licking me as if he were starving’!”