That night, Tony and Maggie ordered a pizza and watched a movie in his apartment. His roommate, a guitar player in another band, was out. They had the place to themselves. After the movie, in the near darkness of his room, on his futon, they made love. Maggie tried not to look. She tried to keep her eyes closed, but she couldn’t. She didn’t like it that way. She opened her eyes and saw his pale skin glowing in the dark. His black hair blending into the night, but separate all the same. He entered her and she gasped. His eyes were like a night beast’s, black and shining at her. She didn’t stop looking into them until she came, and then she couldn’t see at all.
Caroline listened at first, but as the weeks wore on, she mostly wanted to talk. Maggie felt rushed — she read quickly. Often, Caroline interrupted her. Maggie worried that she wasn’t doing her job properly — she worried what Anya would think. But Caroline was very aggressive. Very needy. She hated her roommates and wanted to talk about them all the time.
“They think I don’t know because I can’t see. So they fuck in front of me. I can hear it. The rustling of their clothes. The moist sound of their bodies against each other. I can smell it. I hate them.”
“Have you tried talking to them? Telling them it’s not okay to do that?”
Caroline’s unseeing eyes seemed to try and focus on Maggie. Funny, thought Maggie, this girl has been blind her whole life, but her face, her eyes, still appear to try to see. Caroline looked down from her perch on her bed, and it was her nose that really pointed toward Maggie. Her white oxford shirt was buttoned incorrectly and wasn’t very white at all; it was a grayish yellow. Maggie wondered if she should say something to her. She would say that to a friend, she would tell a friend, your shirt’s buttoned incorrectly. But with Caroline, she hesitated. She felt the rules were different. And besides, she didn’t feel like Caroline was a friend.
“Of course I talk to them about it! I start yelling at them to stop! I’m not one to keep things bottled up inside, surely you’ve figured that out by now. You know what they do? They laugh. They laugh and keep doing it.”
“Maybe you should try and get a new room.”
“I don’t think so. That’s the last thing I need, to try to reorient myself. They are the ones who should go. They should go straight to hell. Fucking cunts, both of them. Michael’s nothing special is he? I mean, I can tell from the way he talks. Once, he let me feel his face, too. I’m right, don’t you think? Nothing special, either of them. And Shelley’s fat! That I know!”
Maggie decided she hated Caroline’s roommates, too. One week, upon arriving to Caroline’s room, the two of them were there. Caroline wasn’t.
“Oh, Caroline’s friend,” said Shelley sarcastically, lounging back on the bed with Michael. It was the middle of the day, but clearly they’d been fucking. Maggie was like that with Tony. She wanted to fuck him no matter what time of day, no matter where, no matter anything. She was like them, she thought, her face growing warm.
“You know, Caroline’s really upset with your behavior.”
“Caroline’s really upset about everything,” shot back Shelley.
“Stop fucking when she’s in the room. She knows. She doesn’t like it. It’s cruel.”
“We don’t fuck when she’s in the room, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Somehow, I don’t believe you,” Maggie said, although her resolve was faltering. Maybe they didn’t fuck in front of Caroline. After all, Caroline couldn’t see, she couldn’t really know.
“Well, believe it. Caroline’s an angry bitch. I can’t wait until this year’s over. I can’t wait to live with someone who knows how to properly wash their own damn laundry.” Shelley’s face was red. She was standing now. “You try living with her. She’s impossible. She’s dirty, she’s mean. She doesn’t know how to properly wipe her ass and everything smells like shit in here. She’s always fucking angry. You try it. Oh, and she’s not here today. She went home. Her mother came to get her. She won’t be back until next week.”
The semester was coming to an end. Tony broke up with Maggie, this time it seemed for good, although it wasn’t and it wouldn’t be for another year or so, not until many more breakups happened would it be for good. Maggie’s grades dropped. Most of her professors didn’t notice, but Anya did. At the year-end conference, Anya asked Maggie, “What’s going on, Maggie? You haven’t handed in your last paper. And the last in-class exam of yours was a bit of a disappointment. As you know, I gave you an A because there was nothing wrong with your exam, but it lacked that special brilliance you always deliver. You have such a gift, Maggie, do you know that? I hate to think you would squander it.” She looked at Maggie quizzically, but with some disappointment, some sternness. “A gift like yours is only something if you use it, otherwise you may as well not have it, and sadly, you can’t just give it to someone else, can you? Is reading to Caroline interfering with your work in any way? I wanted to ask how that was going. I think it’s so wonderful that you’re doing it.” Anya sat behind her desk, her elbows jutting out neatly, her slim, beautiful hands laying delicately on top of each other, the frizzy strands of her hair sparkling around her head. Suddenly, the late spring’s sun flowed in through a window behind the desk and flooded the room with warmth. Maggie flushed. Anya was looking straight at her, with concern. With a detached, professional concern, but with genuine concern.
“My boyfriend broke up with me,” Maggie sobbed, much to her shame. She put her head in her hands and cried noisily and wetly. How could it be? How could he not love her like she loved him? He told her, you’ll still be beautiful in your thirties. In your forties. You’ll be my beautiful wife. He had told her, his dick inside of her, still warm, we’ll have children together. Laying on top of her, his thin, small body barely covering her own, his head hanging down next to her ear, we’ll have six children. And grandchildren. He pulled out of her and it hurt. Not physically, but it hurt, left her empty. She wanted him inside her always. He stood, naked and so white before her, his black, Italian eyes staring straight into her. And she’d believed him. And she’d never, ever felt so loved, not even as a child. He loved her, in that moment. In that moment, he loved her for the rest of her life. And the next day, he wouldn’t return her phone call. Or the next. Or the next.
What more could he want, if she gave him everything? She let him fuck her in the ass. She let him have everything she had. She had ripped open her chest and delivered him her red, bleeding, pumping heart. And now, there was nothing left of her.
“Sorry about last week,” Caroline said the following week, upon Maggie’s arrival. “I should have called you. My mom had some time off and surprised me by coming down.”
“That’s alright.”
“I’m miserable to be back. I have to get rid of Shelley. She’s the goddamn devil. But the year is ending soon. I guess I should just wait it out. Do you have any roommates?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you like them?
“No, not really. But we all pay the rent on time. And we have a nice apartment for very little money so I can’t imagine any of us ever giving that up. But no, I don’t like them. They’re very spoiled.”
Caroline smiled, looking off into the center of the room. “I’m spoiled. My mother spoils me. She always did everything she could for me. She gave me everything I needed. She’d go to the end of the earth for me.”
“Yeah, but …”
“But I’m blind?”
Maggie was quiet for a moment. She hated when Caroline finished her sentences, like she had some kind of sixth sense. She’d hate living with Caroline, too, if that’s what Caroline was looking for. Suddenly, Maggie was scared. What if Caroline wanted to live with her? Never, thought Maggie, to her shame.