Cassandra's Plan Ch. 02

"Who is it?" I finally manage.

It's like he wasn't expecting the question. He waves his hand a little spasmodically. "It doesn't matter. You don't know her. She's in my class. I mean, I'm taking a class with her, but she's also a junior, like me." He's babbling again.

I look up at him. "You're telling me this and I'm not supposed to care who she is?"

He seems to lose patience. "Lauren, her name's Cassandra Connolly. Is that what you want to know?"

I say very quietly: "I want to know why you're doing this."

He looks frantically all around the room—at everything but me. He's not used to this kind of situation. He's used to being in charge of his life. He always has been.

"Lauren, I just . . . I just fell for her, that's all. I love her. I love you too," he adds hastily, "I still love you, sweetie."

"Please don't call me that." I'm starting to shiver all over; can't seem to stop. The ringing in my ears is getting worse.

"I'm sorry, Lauren. I'm sorry."

I look up at him again. "That's all you can say? After seven years of knowing me, and five years of sleeping with me, that's all you can say?"

He sits down heavily on the bed, but looks out the window. "What else am I supposed to say? What can anyone say at a time like this? You've been wonderful."

"So it's over. It's all over. Just like that?"

He still doesn't look at me. "I guess so," he says in a small voice.

I just sit there. I seem to have stopped shaking, but now I feel tears running down my cheeks. I don't even know how they got there—it's like they just started without my having anything to do with it.

"You remember the first time we slept together?" I don't know why I'm saying this, it'll just make it hurt more, but I can't stop. "You snuck out of your parents' house, and we met in my back yard, and we tiptoed up to my bedroom in the attic—God, I never had another room like that, the whole attic just for me—and we lay there all night in each other's arms. It was so cold, unusually cold for October, and the heat was somehow not getting up to the attic, but we kept each other warm, all night. My parents didn't even know you were there. God, if they did, they'd have killed us both—or at least felt we were instruments of the Devil." I'm just babbling now. "You remember how much I cried when you left for college. And I vowed I'd do my best and get good grades and follow you. And you said yes, you wanted that, and you wrote me every week, almost, and we called a lot, and you came home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and Spring Break. The big city hadn't changed you a bit."

I was out of breath. He still wasn't looking at me.

"That summer before I came out here was the best, wasn't it? I miss Indiana, don't you? We rode all around on our bicycles, and sometimes we'd get lost on purpose just so we could have the fun of finding our way back again, sometimes it took hours and hours, and we'd stop at some little gas station out in the middle of nowhere and get something to drink and cuddle, and it was so hot and we were sweaty, but it didn't seem to matter, it was just nice to be close . . ." I can't go on. It's like I've swallowed a meatball and it's lodged in my throat. My cheeks are all wet, as if I've held my face up to a shower, and drops are falling on my blouse.

"Please stop," he says in a small, choked voice. He turns to look at me. Tears are on his cheeks too. I'm a little stunned. I've never seen him cry before. Not when that bully Frank McCurdy knocked him down on the sidewalk and kicked him; not when he failed to win a short story contest at Purdue University; not when his mother almost died being hit by a car.

"So what do you want to do?" I manage to whisper.

"I don't know." He's looking at his feet again.

An idea occurs to me. "Maybe we can talk it over this summer? I'm not going to try to win you back, David, but maybe we could just spend some time together and see—"

"Lauren, I'm not going back home this summer."

Again it's like I can't understand what he's saying. "Not going back? But where will you go after the semester?" I have wild visions of him being a derelict in the gutter somewhere around Times Square.

"I'm staying with Cassandra and her parents. They have a place on the Upper East Side."

"Oh." I don't know what else to say.

"But listen"—he throws out his arm at me suddenly, almost as if he's going to attack me, and grabs my wrist—"let's . . ."

I pull my wrist away violently. "Please don't touch me."

"Oh, Lauren . . ." He comes closer.

"Please don't touch me!" It comes out as a scream. I stand up. I'm shaking again.

He gets up too. "Can't we stay friends? We've known each other so long . . ."

I can't believe what I'm hearing. "You want to be . . ." I can't even go on.

"Please . . ." He holds out his arms pleadingly.

"Fuck you!"

The words seem to echo in the room. He stands stock still. So do I. It's like we're in suspended animation.

"Fuck you," I say more quietly.

I turn around and walk out.