Chapter 2 Griffin
TWO
GRIFFIN
The coffee line at Beans is six people deep, which is normal for a Tuesday.
I count them out of habit. Three ahead of me, two behind by the time I get to the register.
The barista is new. She has a small constellation of acne on her chin and a name tag that says HI I’M LIANA in handwriting that slants hard to the right.
“Medium drip, room for milk,” I say.
“For?”
“Griffin.”
It comes out the way it always comes out. Easy. A name on a cup. I have been doing this for two years and the trick is to say it like it isn’t his.
She writes it on the cup. She gets the F wrong, makes it look like a P.
I don’t correct her. I never do. The wrong letter is the part I keep — it makes it not quite his name.
Makes it a coffee name. I pay. I move down the bar.
I wait. The coffee shop is in the basement of the humanities building, which means it smells like coffee and damp carpet and whatever someone microwaved at eleven this morning.
There are two leather couches by the window where the same three people are always sitting.
Today they’re talking about a professor I don’t have.
The girl on the left keeps saying honestly before every sentence.
Honestly, I think he just doesn’t like women.
Honestly, the syllabus is a mess. I get my coffee. I leave.
The walk from Beans to Hartwell takes nine minutes if I cut across the lawn and twelve if I take the path.
The path is wet. I cut across. My seminar is on the third floor in a room that used to be something else — you can tell from the molding, from the way the radiator hisses every six or seven minutes like it has something to say.
I’m early. I’m always early. I sit in the same seat I sat in last week, third from the door, against the wall.
People come in. I know about half of them by name; the other half I know by the thing they do — the one who clicks his pen, the one who always has a different tote bag, the one who corrects the professor and then apologizes for it.
We’re a cohort of fourteen. By the end of the year I’ll know all of them and none of them, which is fine.
That’s how I want it. Dr. Mendel comes in, sets her bag on the table, and says, “Okay. Where were we.”
We were on chapter four. Someone says so.
We move on. I take notes. I have a system.
Main points on the left, questions on the right, a small dot in the margin when something’s worth coming back to.
There are two dots on this page already and we’re sixteen minutes in.
I write neatly. My handwriting is the one thing about me that hasn’t changed in ten years.
“We’ll pick this up Wednesday,” Mendel says, twenty minutes in, about a thread she wants to come back to.
The pen stops. It is a small thing. The pen stops moving and then it moves again. Nobody notices. There is no reason for anyone to notice. Wednesday is a day. It’s one of seven. I write down what she said next and I underline it once and the line is straight. The line is straight. I’m fine.
Around the hour mark Mendel starts talking about a piece by an author I don’t know. She says his name. Then she says, “He died last spring. I don’t know if you knew that.”
A few people make small sounds. The pen-clicker stops clicking.
“He’d been sick for a while,” she says. “But still.”
But still. I do not look up. I write it down without meaning to.
Then I cross it out. I put my pen down. Carefully, so it doesn’t roll.
Mendel has moved on. She’s reading something out loud.
I can hear her voice but the words aren’t landing.
I look at the radiator. I look at the window.
I look at the back of the head of the girl two rows up who has her hair in a clip shaped like a butterfly.
I think that’s a stupid clip. That’s enough.
That’s the thing that pulls me back in. I pick up my pen.
I write down what Mendel is saying. I underline it once. I’m fine.
The seminar ends at three. I pack my bag the way I always do — laptop first, notebook on top, pen in the side pocket — and walk out.
Someone says my name in the hall; I turn, and it’s Priya from the cohort, asking if I’m going to the thing tonight, the welcome thing.
I say I don’t think so. She says come on.
I say maybe. We both know I won’t. Outside it’s gone gray.
I walk back across the lawn. The grass is wetter now and my shoes will be a problem, but I keep going anyway because the path is longer and I want to be home.
Home is a one-bedroom on the second floor of a house that’s been cut into four apartments.
The stairs creak in the same two places every time.
I unlock the door. I put my bag on the chair.
I put the coffee cup, empty, in the sink.
I stand in the kitchen for a second with my hand on the counter and I don’t think about anything.
Then I make dinner. Pasta. I always make pasta on Tuesdays.
I don’t know why I do that. I don’t think about it.
I read for tomorrow. I go to bed at eleven, like I do.
The pillow on the other side of the bed is in the middle of the bed. I do not move it.