Beside the man now holding the pizza box — the man who looked through Marshall with complete indifference, as if he didn’t exist; no greeting, nothing — beside the man rolling his eyes comically, as if enjoying a little joke with himself as he held the box to his nose and inhaled the pizza’s aroma, stood a girl, a tall girl, about five-foot-ten, her eyes swollen from crying, her hair dishevelled, a clump gathered back in a ponytail, the rest tangling free. She was wearing sweatpants, an orange pullover sweater, and fuzzy slippers made to look like rabbits. Unlike her friend, who had turned and gone back into the apartment, she looked at him, then at Cheryl, with what he could only think was disdain, as if they were squatters camping in the hall. She stood before them, a girl looking with empty eyes at her roommate and then — too much appraisal creeping in for her look to be described as dispassionate — looking once again at the stranger who sat at Cheryl’s feet. He could see himself through her eyes: a teacher, a man who now, by definition, was to be distrusted; perhaps he was also a fool for rushing over, or at the very least ineffectual. It was the last thing he would have expected: that he would dislike Livan, feel no sympathy for her. For a while, he had intended to be judicious — hadn’t that been his plan, such as it was? — to feel her out, see if she was convincing as she talked about McCallum, and then, assuming she was convincing, to begin to persuade her that she must get help. Apparently, help had been a phone call away, all along. And he and Cheryl, neither of them in that moment feeling anything but exploited, were behaving, by their silence and with their dropped eyes, as if she had a right to judge them. His sympathy was for Cheryl — Cheryl, out on the landing — and for himself: no dinner; a tiring ruined evening, his valuable time wasted because he’d convinced himself he must go on a mercy mission.
“Get your coat and we’ll get out of here,” he said to Cheryl.
“Thanks,” she said, “but you’ve done enough.”
“Let’s go,” he said, standing. He had tried that line with Sonja so many times during Evie’s hospitalization, but all she’d agree to do was to step out of Evie’s room while they worked on her. He couldn’t do anything for Evie, but maybe he could do something for Cheryl Lanier. “Don’t blame yourself,” he said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“She’s got a student loan they’re not renewing unless she gets her grades up. Maybe that’s all she’s really upset about,” Cheryl said.
“I spoke to McCallum on the phone tonight,” he said. “Apparently he’s got something to feel guilty about.” He remembered the sound of something crashing in the background, heard McCallum’s voice asking, “Do I want to be dead?”
“I’ve got a friend I can stay with in Dover,” she said. “Would you mind giving me a ride?”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll drop you in Dover.”
She folded the chair and leaned it against the wall. Now, from inside the apartment, he could smell the marijuana Cheryl had talked about, hear muffled laughter above the rock and roll.
“I spent a lot of time sitting in stairwells when I was growing up, when my father started in on my mother. He never hit her, but he’d scream like one of those people they pay to start things shaking at rock concerts. You know, one of the foxes.” She tried again: “A plant.”
“You mean that isn’t just unbridled enthusiasm?”
“Sometimes, sure. But they pay people, too. They did when the Beatles first came to the United States. Did you know that?”
“Did the Beatles know it?” he said.
She shrugged. “What do you think: they were such upstanding lads they would have objected?”
“You assume I’m inextricable from my generation? That naturally I’d have great reverence for the Beatles?”
They were on the verge of really arguing, to his surprise. It must be that they needed to blow off steam, both of them feeling used, both feeling foolish, but left for the moment with only each other.
In the downstairs hallway she reached in among the coats and pulled her down jacket off a peg; underneath the jacket hung the scarf he’d insisted she take in the car, which surprised him for a second because he’d forgotten he’d given it to her. Instead of wearing it, though, she straightened it on the peg, then zipped her jacket, still without speaking. What did this mean? That they’d had an argument and that now she was renouncing him by renouncing his gift?
“I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” she said coolly, sitting primly in the car.
“Well, my stepmother is in the hospital. It gave me something to think about other than that,” he said. If she was going to tell him about her family, he’d tell her something about his.
“Is it serious?” she said, after a pause.
“She had a stroke. The third one. At first they thought it was a seizure, but it turns out it was another stroke.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
At the intersection, he headed toward Dover. He asked if she wanted him to stop so she could call her friends before they got there. “No. That’s something people from your generation do,” she said. It worked, too; until he whirled around to look at her and saw her sly smile, he had taken her seriously, aghast at how cryptic she’d suddenly become.
“Don’t worry. I’m not your worst fear,” she said. “I’m not mean, and I’m not down on older men. If they’re attractive.”
“Cheryl,” he said, “I admit that flirting is more interesting than arguing, but let’s drop it, okay? Think about this from my perspective: I’ve just been trying to do the right thing. I guess by now it’s clear that in some way, we’ve both been had.”
“We’re a great team,” she said.
“We’re not a team,” he said. “I have a wife.”
She looked at him. “Would you be more comfortable if I got out and walked?”
“You’re the one who’s been trying to provoke me,” he said.
“Does that make me your worst fear? A woman who’s provocative?”
“Worst fear? What are you talking about? That’s like a question on a psychological exam: ‘Often I feel that other people are …’; ‘My worst fear is that.…’ ”
“Often I feel that other people are going to succeed, and I’m not,” Cheryl said. “My worst fear is that for reasons I don’t understand, I’m trying to antagonize someone I want to be my friend.”
Think of something to say; she’s opened up to you, he kept thinking, all the way through the town, past the empty factory buildings, past used-book stores and out-of-business boutiques, up the dirt road she directed him to, thinking it still as he coasted to a stop outside a large clapboard house bordered by a second-growth pine forest. Say something, he told himself as she opened the car door, but urgency only paralyzed him further. If he hadn’t reached over and grabbed her jacket and pulled her back and pressed his forehead against hers, closing his eyes, inhaling the smell of her shampoo, his lips parting slightly against her cheek, his lips trailing down to kiss her lips, she would simply have gotten out of the car and disappeared into the house in silence.