Page 42 of College Town

“Nope,” he says, stands, and walks back to the counter, and then into the kitchen.

He emerges twenty minutes later, face and front of his shirt damp from sticking his head under the cold tap, soggy and miserable, but no less confused by what’s just happened.

Natalia’s gone, thankfully.

Dana sits in front of her laptop, a small business card held carefully between her fingertips as if it’s a bomb about to detonate.

“Hey,” she says, absently, when he slides back into his chair, then does a double-take when she sees his dripping hair and chin. “Shit, did you fall in?”

He nods at the card. “What’s that?”

She considers it a moment, bites her lip, and then offers it to him.

He takes it, reads it, and then drops it on the table, fingertips stinging as though burned.

It’s a business card, alright, a nice one, on thick card stock, with engraved golden letters.

TOM CATTANEO

PRESIDENT

CATTANEO INC.,

The sort of minimalist card that lets people know straight away the company is legit, because it doesn’t work too hard listing off services or guarantees. A card that saystrust me, I know what I’m doingwithout effort.

There’s a number printed on it in gold, and then, underneath, another written in black pen.

“She wrote down his cell number,” Dana says, sounding dazed. “So you could call him.”

Lawson looks from the card to her face, not reassured by her expression in the slightest. “Why the fuck would I call him?”

She shakes her head. “I dunno. I told her you probably wouldn’t – that you didn’t want to bother any of them, but she was insistent. She said, ‘Tom wants to be a part of his life, but he’s too stubborn to say so.’”

“What – what the fuck does thatmean?”

“I don’t know!” She throws her hands up, heedless of the open stares of the soccer moms. “Nothing about that interaction was normal in the slightest!”

He mirrors her, hands in the air. “I know!”

They lower their arms at the same time.

Dana drops her voice to a whisper. “So. Are you gonna call him?”

“Fuck no.” But before they make a shaky attempt of getting back to reunion business, he palms the card…and then shoves it in his jeans pocket.

Dana notices, her lashes flickering as she clocks the movement, but doesn’t comment.

18

If asked, Lawson’s friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances could have listed off his faults. Mom and Dad would do it gently, and with regret. Dana with honesty, but lots of affection. His fellow writers in the social media sphere would nitpick his typos and his narrative tangents. In high school, Tommy would have said that he was too self-deprecating, and didn’t believe in his skill enough.

But, privately, Lawson thinks his greatest asset and greatest flaw has always been his imagination. It’s an imagination that’s kept him up into the wee small hours of countless mornings, hammering away in Microsoft Word, though nothing meaningful has ever come of his literary adventures. And it’s an imagination that has fueled nightmares, doomsday scenarios, and many, many instances of self-flagellation. It’s gotten him in trouble more than it’s helped him, but it’s not something he can excise.

He tried for a little bit, in college, with drinks and drugs. But when he sobered up – which he had to, for a variety of reasons – his imagination returned, full-force, demanding, and, at times, crippling.

Usually, he puts it to use in front of the computer. Fiction is the safest, sanest, if not most lucrative, outlet for all his mental wanderings.

Tonight, though, his imagination wanders down paths less fruitful.

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