Regina, but Not
They served paté at the party—a food I’d never tasted before that night—and it didn’t agree with me.
I must have looked pretty bad, because even Regina noticed and suggested I go home to lie down.
Under normal circumstances—how things had been up until recently, anyway—this would have been a moment Forrest would have volunteered to drive me, but as it was, Regina corralled Jonathan, who’d been standing alongside the punch bowl, looking almost as out of place as I was, to bring me home.
I couldn’t say much on the ride back to the house, but he made a point of telling me, again, how impressed he was with the progress I was making with tennis.
Back at the house, I threw up. That left me feeling better. With the house empty, I took the opportunity to scope things out again. This time, instead of checking out Regina’s room, I stepped into the one occupied by Forrest.
Not much to uncover there: a collection of Red Sox caps, a running treadmill, a plastic bin containing a few dozen identical pairs of neatly balled-up white tube socks, and beside those a stack of identical white T-shirts.
There was a framed picture of the Buddha on one wall, next to some kind of certificate, also framed.
On closer examination, this turned out to be Forrest’s high school diploma.
I opened the top bureau drawer. More tube socks, plus underwear, a jockstrap, bike shorts, and a pair of bicycle gloves.
The next drawer held a pile of some kind of item I couldn’t identify at first, though after studying the writing on the packets, I understood.
This was the first time I’d ever actually seen what a condom looked like.
At the very bottom of the drawer—with a dollar bill folded around it, held by a paper clip—there was a photograph.
The girl in the picture looked a lot like Regina.
This must be Regina, of course, but in a certain way she didn’t resemble Regina at all.
She was smiling broadly, for one thing. She was tossing her head as if she’d just finished laughing.
I studied this picture for a long time, wondering what could have happened to Regina to make her change so much.
Next to the photograph—less well hidden, in fact—was a card, the kind a person would purchase at a Hallmark store, with a rose on the front.
The printed message read simply, Thinking of you and our special moments together.
Below that, someone wearing bright orange lipstick had evidently pressed her mouth against the card, leaving a lip-shaped impression, and below this, a single letter, with a heart around it: B.
I felt like throwing up again, though this time it had nothing to do with the paté.