"You'll go with me?"
"I've spent enough time at this wedding by myself."
She sat on the balcony reading the local paper while he changed out of his suit and into his ordinary clothes. Then he packed up their things, throwing all the tourist brochures into the garbage. They walked across the road and across the field to Langford. They were halfway there when the rain started. It was an undramatic drizzle, filling the air with the faintest sound, but by the time they reached the edge of campus their hair was damp, their feet drenched and cold. At one point they paused to take in a view of the lake. In spite of the rain, a man swam in the dark gray water, quite far out.
They went past the small cemetery on the grounds of the school, along a path that led them to a sign taped to a stake that said BRUNCH, with an arrow. They headed in that direction, keeping their eye out for another sign. The tents under which people had dined and danced were still up, empty now, the tables folded and stacked in piles. The chairs on which they'd sat to watch the ceremony were still arranged more messily, on the lawn. There was a truck parked in front of the alumni building, where two maintenance men in overalls were clearing up.
"Is the brunch in here?" Amit asked.
"Don't know anything about a brunch," one of them said.
They walked in the direction of the chapel and the observatory. They passed the parking lot, where a few cars stood, including their own. They reached the front gates of the school, then turned back again.
"I don't see any other signs," Megan said. "Did she say which building?"
Amit shook his head, and they continued on. United in their quest, he wondered if her rage was dissipating. And yet they did not walk side by side; she was ahead of him, leading the way even though she did not know it. When doors were open they entered, wandering down musty carpeted hallways, into naked stairwells, past empty classrooms with clean blackboards and the round wooden tables at which Langford students always sat. In less than a month students would return to those tables. He was free of the school, it no longer touched his life in any way. But instead of feeling grateful, he wanted to relive those confused days, that life of discovery, to be bound to those round tables and lectures and exams. There were things he had always meant to understand better: Russian history, the succession of Roman emperors, Greek philosophy. He wanted to read what he was told each evening, to do as he was told. There were the great writers he had never read, would never read. His daughters would begin that journey soon enough, the world opening up for them in its awesome entirety. But there was no time now, not even to look at the whole paper on Sundays.
In the music complex, they found a room with an assortment of couches and practice stands. There was a baby grand piano in the corner, and in front of it, two trash bins filled with coffee cups and crushed boxes from a bakery. A long folding table held a coffee percolator, a stack of unused cups.
"We found it," Amit said, feeling triumphant. And then, just as instantly, he felt thwarted. He saw an open box on the table containing a few eclairs. The sight made his stomach churn up in hunger, and he picked one up, consumed it without pause.
"Looks like we missed brunch," Megan said. After a while she added, "You have chocolate icing around your mouth."
Lacking a napkin or the wipes he always had with him when he was with the girls, he drew the back of his hand across his lips. The bells of the chapel chimed as if for the two of them alone. He thought of Pam and Ryan on their way to the airport, to their honeymoon in Scotland. He thought of the other guests heading back, pleasantly hungover, and the Bor-dens relaxing at home, commenting on the evening, saluting themselves on a job well done.
They headed toward the parking lot to get the car. The rain was heavy now, the sound of it percussive against the leaves of the trees. Had the wedding been today instead of yesterday, Amit thought to himself, everything would have been different; they would have gathered in the chapel, everyone would have remarked what a shame it was. The rain came down harder and they both began picking up their pace, half-jogging side by side, Megan keeping a hand pressed over her head. They approached Standish Hall, the dorm in which they could have stayed. The front door was open, held by a large rock.
"Let's wait this out for a few minutes," Amit said, panting for breath. "I need to use the bathroom."
In the entryway, on a bulletin board, was a list of room assignments for the wedding guests. He left Megan standing there, reading the names on the list, while he went to the bathroom. All along the hallway the doors were open, beds stripped, sheets folded up on top of them. In the bathroom, the shower stalls, separated by slabs of gray marble, still had beads of water on them from the morning's use. When he returned, Megan was no longer in the entryway. He began walking down the remaining length of the hall and found her in one of the rooms, perched on the edge of a desk. She was looking at a xeroxed sheet of paper that someone had stepped on, leaving the dusty imprint of a shoe's sole. "The brunch ended at eleven," she said.
The arrangement of the room was familiar to him but things had been redone since his time here. There was a new fire alarm, blond wood furniture. The mattress looked firmer, without the black-and-white ticking he remembered. There was a tan carpet covering the floor. The shade half-pulled on the window was fresh, with a ring attached to the string. The effect was more sanitized, less charming, a lot like the inside of the Chad-wick Inn. He opened the closet, barely deep enough for a hanger.
"You know, we should have just stayed here," Megan said. "We would have saved two hundred dollars, and I wouldn't have spent half the night worried you'd vanished into thin air."
He closed the closet, then shut the door to the room. There was no way to lock it from the inside. "My fault for trying to have a romantic getaway."
"But this is so much more romantic." She spoke objectively, but he also detected a note of regret. When he turned to her she was preoccupied, slightly frowning. She had removed her glasses, raised her fleece pullover, and was wiping the delicate lenses on the T-shirt underneath. Her pulled-back hair was slick against her head, her cheeks flushed from running. She held out the glasses in front of her face, inspecting them before putting them back on. "Was it in a room like this that you had sex for the first time?"
It was something, after all these years, that she didn't know about him. In spite of her anger his past still preyed on her, if only because she hadn't been a part of it. "I didn't have sex at Langford. Anyway, it was a boys' school back then."
"I refuse to believe there weren't ways to sneak girls in."
"There were, but I never did. I've told you a million times I was miserable here."
"What about Pam?" Megan asked, folding her arms across her chest, glancing over at the bed. "Did you ever have sex with her?"
"No."
She took a step toward him, looking at the shirt that clung coldly to his body, then directly into his eyes. "What, then? Something passed between you two, it's obvious."
"It was nothing, Meg. We were friends and for a while I had a crush on her. But nothing happened. Is that so terrible?"
The information fell between them, valuable for the years he'd kept it from her, negligible now that he'd told. Through the window he saw the workmen in the rain, folding up the chairs and stacking them onto a cart. He went to the window and pulled down the shade completely, darkening the room. Then he turned back to Megan, close to her now. He kneeled on the floor and put his arms around her legs, pressing his face against her jeans. She did not walk away as he feared, did not detangle herself from his awkward embrace. Then he felt her hand on top of his head, her long fingers grazing the gray hairs of his skull, and instantly, powerfully, he felt an erection. He began to kiss her legs, grasping at her belt loops and pulling her down so that she was kneeling on the carpet, too. He put a hand up against the thick inseam of her jeans, knowing exactly what it was like to touch her there, the combination of skin and bone and hair. He looked at her and he saw that although her face was turned away, she had relaxed her body, adjusting herself to accommodate his hand.