Page 17 of Endless Summer: Stories
Now she would be stuck here in New Haven unless she could talk Mallory out of her nonsense or find Clark from Owl. How would she ever find Clark?
There were many scary things about new places, the scariest perhaps being all the people Dabney didn’t know. So many people. On Nantucket, Dabney knew nearly everyone; she had known most of them since she was born, and those she didn’t know knew her father or her grandparents or her great-grandparents. Even in her second year at Harvard, she knew approximately one out of every four people she saw there. But here at the Yale Bowl, she faced a mass of unrecognizable humanity.
Until she spotted Clen and Jocelyn.
They were standing together, an island in the shifting sea of crimson and blue. Dabney blinked. Jocelyn had her arms around Clen’s neck; her fingers were deep in his thick, dark hair. He looked like he was trying to pull away; his hands were on her shoulders but he seemed to be trying to keep her at bay rather than bring her closer. Dabney’s eyes saw a green cloud, like tear gas, hovering above them.
Well, she thought, they weren’t a perfect match. Green clouds like that were a very bad sign.
Clen was telling Jocelyn something. She nodded, then she said something, and Clen shook his head and said, loud enough for Dabney to hear, “I’m sorry, Joss. No.”
Jocelyn slapped him.
Slapped him. Dabney was close enough to hear the sound it made. Close enough to feel the sting, and although Dabney did not do drama, she could say without much exaggerating that it felt like Jocelyn had slapped her heart.
Clen remained still. He didn’t move anything except his eyes, which somehow found Dabney’s in the crowd. He said something to Jocelyn and moved toward Dabney.
She thought,What have you done?
She wanted to run away, but where would she go? She reached into her pocket and rubbed the silver dollar.Be a lucky charm for me,she thought.Please!
In the stadium, the crowd cheered. Something had happened. Dabney no longer cared what.
She couldn’t imagine how Clen would explain himself. She certainly didnotexpect him to smile. But that was what he did. He grinned at Dabney and reached for her hand and said, “I have good news.”
Dabney stared at him. Her hand was numb; it was like it wasn’t even attached to her body. She thought of the paper hands Clen had sent in a letter. She had done as he had instructed and placed them on her shoulders when she felt lonely. She was such an idiot.
“And what,” she said, “would that be?”
“I don’t have to work at theNewstonight,” he said. “We can go to Mory’s like we planned.”
A small part of Dabney felt cheered by this news. She thought,The lucky charm worked!Now her only regret was that she’d returned the sultry black outfit to Solange.
But who was she kidding? There would be no Mory’s—no ice-cold martinis, no colossal shrimp cocktail, no dancing to Sinatra.
“You never had to work at theNews,” Dabney said.
“I… yes, I did.”
“No, you didn’t. I heard what Henry said, Clen. The only person on deadline today is the sports editor. You were never on deadline; you made it up. You lied to me. You had plans with Jocelyn. Are you dating her?”
“Not dating her,” he said.
“She had her hands in yourhair,” Dabney said. “She lit you a cigarette. She looked at me like I had a raging case of hives, and she just slapped you.”
“She was angry.”
“About what?”
Clen blew air out his nose. This was what he normally did when he was upset or frustrated; Dabney had seen it hundreds of times. She knew him so well. For the years they were in high school, she knew every book he’d read, every record album he owned and his top three favorite tracks on each; she knew every movie he’d seen, she knew about every fight he’d had with his mother, she knew what he would order off any menu, she knew he sneezed in threes, she knew the way his face looked when he was sleeping. She would have said there was nothing she didn’t know about Clendenin Hughes, but she was wrong. It was natural, she supposed. They were in college, they were forging identities. When Dabney had gotten into Harvard (she hadn’t applied anywhere else) and Clen Yale, people said it would be healthy for them to be separated, to have some space. Space—140 miles. Space—room to lie.
“Tell me why she’s angry,” Dabney said.
“Because,” Clen said.
“Because why?”
“Because she asked me to go to this alumni event tonight, a formal thing, a dinner-dance thing. Her parents are in town, apparently, and her father is top of the masthead at theWall Street Journal,and… I told her I’d go. I thought for sure you were going to cancel on me, Cupe. You always cancel. But then you showed up and I do love you so goddamned much, but it’s hard being apart, and I get lonely and Jocelyn is persistent, she doesn’t hear the wordno.She’s used to getting what she wants.”
