Chapter 3 #4
“A doctor pulled me aside. He asked if my mother was around, or if I had any sisters or brothers. When I told him no, he said, ‘In that case, you’ll have to be his caregiver.’ Once my father recovered, he said, he was going to need a lot of help, not just physically, but mentally.
Getting used to missing a leg would be a big deal.
He might feel depressed for a while. Even suicidal.
“When he said that, I felt sick. My father had been through many things in his life, but he was always ready to soldier on. I couldn’t imagine him in despair.
I stood over him as he lay in that hospital bed and kept thinking about the times he’d stared at my mother’s photo.
He’d already lost so much, you know? To be honest, I didn’t think I could be much help if he were handicapped.
I often felt more like a burden to him than a comfort. ”
LaPorta shook his head slowly. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“What?” Alfie asked.
“If you really have the power you say, why didn’t you go back and redo the day?”
Alfie looked surprised.
“I did.”
“You did?”
“Of course. I took one last look at him, then time jumped back to Saturday morning.
We were having breakfast. Corn flakes and bananas.
I remember being so happy to see him shoveling cereal into his mouth that he caught me staring and said ‘What?’ And I said ‘Nothing, Dad.’ And he said ‘Stop gawking.’ And I said ‘OK, Dad.’ But I was still smiling.
“Then he said, ‘What time are you taking the car?’ I thought about Gianna and the zoo and the day I was never going to have. And I said, ‘I’m not going, Dad.’
“And I didn’t.”
LaPorta rubbed his chin.
“So that’s why Gianna didn’t remember anything.”
“Exactly. And only after I jumped back in time did I realize I didn’t have the phone number where she was staying. Just the address. There was no way to call to tell her I wasn’t coming.
“Later that afternoon, after my dad had taken the car to buy his aspirin, Gianna called my house, kind of upset. ‘Where are you?’ she said. I told her I had car issues and didn’t have her number.
I was sorry. Could we do it on Sunday? But she said she was heading back to California.
She hung up kind of quickly. And that was that. ”
“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. Now you do, too. And my boss, when she reads this.”
LaPorta ran a hand across the table. “Man, oh, man,” he sighed. “Your freaking existence.”
“Yeah.”
“If any of it is true.”
“You still don’t believe me?”
LaPorta shrugged. Deep down, he doubted Alfie was making up this entire thing.
Too many details. Too many specifics. The story often made LaPorta think back on things he would 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. Do you ever 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
—-I know it sounds strange—-but I saw the image of Gianna, her mouth agape, as if she couldn’t believe what I was doing.
As if to hide from her, I buried my head alongside Maisie’s, her hair catching in my mouth.
I heard the wooden bed frame squeaking beneath us and then it was over.
I was panting like I’d been running up a mountain, and Maisie giggled between breaths and said, “Well, that was fast,” and then she patted my naked back and added, “But fun.” And again I lowered my head next to hers and she pressed her cheek against me and said, “Aww,” as if touched by my tenderness.
But it wasn’t tenderness. I just didn’t want her to see me crying.
?
So, if I haven’t been clear about things, Boss, that was my first time.
With a girl I’d just met, under the gaze of a Cuban revolutionary.
I still don’t know whose room it was. But the next afternoon, when I woke up in my dorm with a monster hangover, Elliot was reading at his desk, wearing big earmuff headphones.
He grinned and yelled “He lives!” and then he said “How was Maisie?” and I mumbled “Yeah” and he yelled “What?” and I said “Fine” and he yelled “WHAT?” and I yelled “Take the stupid headphones off!” but he just nodded and said “Cool!” and went back to bopping his head and reading.
I felt like crap. Not just physically, but because that landmark moment had been with a near stranger, and not with the girl I’d truly desired. A better person might have gone to Gianna and told her that. Confessed his love. But that’s not what happened.
Instead, over the next three weekends, I went to parties with Elliot and asked him to introduce me to any girls he thought might sleep with me.
And he did. And they did. I don’t have an excuse, any more than an alcoholic who falls off the wagon with one drink has an excuse for chugging down three more.
Once I’d felt what sex was like, I wanted to do it again and, to be blunt, get better at it.
And if we’re measuring things by endurance, I suppose I did.
By the fourth experience, I wasn’t so astonished over everything I was touching and was able to stay with it longer.
After my most recent encounter, with a sophomore medical student named Danielle, I was walking back to my dorm room on Sunday morning, badly in need of a shower, when I suddenly heard Gianna’s voice.
“Where are you coming from?”
I turned to see her lying on a bench, her head supported by a book bag, her camera pointed toward some trees. I shuddered like a caught criminal.
“Nowhere. Getting some breakfast.”
She squinted. “Cafeteria’s the other way.”
“I know that,” I said quickly. “What are you shooting?”
“Birds. They gather in this tree overnight. When the church bells ring at eight o’clock, they all fly away. I want to capture the moment they take off.”
“Cool, yeah. What kind of birds?” I was stammering conversation. What kind of birds? Really?