Page 41 of Twice
“So the whole date,” LaPorta said, “the zoo, all that stuff about you two connecting, it never happened?”
“It happened, but I’m the only one who knows it.” Alfie paused. “Well. Nowyoudo, too. And my boss, when she reads this.”
LaPorta ran a hand across the table. “Man, oh, man,” he sighed. “Your freaking existence.”
“Yeah.”
“Ifany of it is true.”
“You still don’t believe me?”
LaPorta shrugged. Deep down, he doubted Alfie was making up thisentirething. Too many details. Too many specifics. The story often made LaPorta think back on thingshewould have undone in his life. The football game his senior year where he destroyed his knee. That night with an attractive blackjack dealer that cost him his job at a New Orleans casino. How simple, if you knew the consequences, to avoid the dumb mistakes you make in life.
“It doesn’t matter if I believe you,” he said. “What matters is if you stole millions of dollars from a casino.”
“So now it’s ‘if,’” Alfie said, grinning. “Good. We’re making progress.”
LaPorta glared at him.
“Shut up. Read.”
The Composition Book
Back at school, Gianna and I barely saw each other. She was pretty busy with classes and activities, and I didn’t want to force things. I had to keep reminding myself that the affection we’d shared at the zoo was a nonevent to her. If anything, she was still angry at me for standing her up. That day felt like a secret only I was keeping. It sometimes got me in trouble.
“Can I ask you something?” I said once when we were sitting in the cafeteria.
“OK.”
“Do you ever feel alone?”
She held a spoonful of yogurt halfway between the cup and her mouth.
“Why would you ask me that?”
“I don’t know. Just wondering.”
The truth was, I was using a confession that she made in another life to try and get closer to her in this one. It wasn’t one of my finer moments.
“Why would I feel alone?” she snapped. “I have tons of friends. Doyouever feel alone, Alfie?”
“No,” I lied.
She shook her head and swallowed her yogurt.
“You’re pretty weird sometimes, you know that?” she said.
?
We went on this way for much of the year. I would help her study, or join her on a morning run, or carry boxes of flyers for the various causes she was involved in. But there was an invisible barrier that I could never cross, from the guy who carried her boxes to the guy who held her hand. Sometimes, sitting at a table with her friends, they would talk about potential boyfriends for her, and she’d say “Really? You think?” and they’d say “Oh, yeah, you should talk to him,” taking no notice of the pained look on my face.
Elliot, my roommate from the theater program, kept encouraging me to broaden my social life. “Stop brooding over this Gianna,” he’d say. “It’s a huge school. Look at all the other women here!”
I wasn’t really interested. But one night, after I’d spotted Gianna at a pizza place, laughing it up with a group of soccer players, I went to see Elliot perform in a show and afterward followed him to a cast party at a fraternity house. I got pretty drunk, still upset at the idea of Gianna with those guys. I was frustrated that our best memory wasn’t a memory at all for her, and the special way she’d treated me that day at the zoo was something I might never experience again. Meanwhile, Elliot, who was wasted, had his arm around me and kept pushing me in front of his fellow cast members, yelling, “This is Alfie! He needs sex badly!”
One of those cast members was an exchange student from Ireland, a pretty girl with reddish hair, narrow shoulders,and a low-cut tank top under a flannel shirt that revealed a lot of cleavage. She said her name was Maisie, and when Elliot claimed I needed sex, she plucked at one of my shirt buttons and said, “Join the club, boyo.”
I don’t remember a lot of what happened next, except that there was a good deal more drinking and flirtatious pushing and grabbing and some grinding to music that had no beat. Then we were in somebody’s room with a single desk light illuminating a Che Guevara poster above one bed and a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders poster over the other, and then Maisie and I were on a mattress and our clothes were coming off quickly, my shirt, her shirt, her tank top, my pants, and I felt the heat of her bare skin and her collarbone against mine, both of us grunting and fumbling down below and then a push and a softness and a groan from her and an exhale from me. I remember in the middle of it lifting my head to see Che Guevara, looking over us, and everything was spinning and
