Chapter 1 #2
“Not really,” I go on. “Some of us have higher Paul quotients than others. If we all had high Paul quotients, we’d be a pretty caustic bunch.
Luckily, there’s a force that works opposite the Paul factor.
Let’s call it the Mister Rogers effect. You, for example, have a higher Mister Rogers effect than a Paul quotient. ”
“And me?” Pam asks.
“Situational. You’re Mister Rogers as long as things are going the way you want them to go. If they don’t, your Paul spikes.”
“What about me?” Noah smiles.
I reply with a punctuational “What?”
“What about me? What kind of split do I have?”
I look at him and blurt, “I don’t know. I haven’t spent all that much time with you, have I?”
He doesn’t look as startled as I feel. I haven’t said it maliciously, only as a matter of fact. We’re only-in-a-group friends. Cafeteria-table friends. He has nothing to say in response, and I have nothing I want to add.
My interest in knowing him kindled the day we moved in.
I’d said goodbye to my parents and was carrying boxes to the trash area when I heard R.E.M.
pouring out of a room down the hall. When I peeked in the doorway, I saw Noah standing on his bed, thumbtacking a poster of Sinéad O’Connor into place.
He was struggling with whether it was even or not, so I called out, “A little higher on the left.” He adjusted it, smoothed it down, then turned and saw me standing there.
“Thanks,” he said, introducing me to his smile. “I’m Noah.”
He held out his hand, and as I shook it, I told him my name.
He clocked my 10,000 Maniacs T-shirt, and I felt that between my 10,000 Maniacs and his R.E.M.
, we were at least opening-act adjacent.
But I didn’t say this out loud. Instead, I said something like, “I really like R.E.M. too. And Sinéad O’Connor. ”
A gleam in his eye. “I think it’s safe to say we’re going to get along.”
Then there was a cough, and his roommate, Sid, who’d been hidden to me behind the door, leaned into sight and introduced himself. He told Noah to get his shoes on, there were other Dalton friends to go see. (I would later learn Dalton was a prep school, not a town.)
I told them I’d see them around, and that didn’t end up being untrue. I saw them around a lot. But the only time I saw Noah solo was when I played good music with my door open and he heard it and stopped by for a moment.
I had thought that everyone in college would listen to R.E.M.
and 10,000 Maniacs and The Cure and The Smiths, but apparently “college radio” was something most people learned in college, not beforehand.
Noah and I were early adopters. Within a few weeks, he’d begun working at our college radio station, and every now and then he’d tell me when he was going to be on the air—usually an inconvenient afternoon hour because freshmen get the worst shifts.
I’d tune in and learn about new bands, so when I saw him next in a group gathering, I’d be able to say, “Thanks for the intro to Lloyd Cole and the Commotions” or “I think Everything But the Girl is such a great band name, especially because the singer’s female.
” One time I told him, “I couldn’t find that band Ecstasy when I went to look for the tape at Tom’s Tracks,” and he told me, “That’s because it’s XTC.
Start with Skylarking. Or come over and borrow mine. ”
I didn’t go over and borrow his tapes, because while my interest in XTC was understandable, I was utterly self-conscious about my interest in Noah.
It felt like such a stupid word to apply to a friendship—if I’d told anyone “I’m interested in Noah,” they would’ve gone, “Wait, you want to date him?” And that wasn’t/isn’t it.
It’s just that somewhere in my head, I’m aware that I’m lonely, and something in my brain is constantly telling me that he might be a person who’d make me feel less lonely.
“Look,” Pam says, pointing to a marquee a block away. “There’s the theater.”
“Thank God,” Andie replies. “If I had known we were going to do this much walking, I would have worn different shoes.”
I thought I’d read in the Weekend section of the Times that there was a 2:45 showing, but I was wrong.
The next one is at 3:15. Pam bemoans the seven-dollar ticket cost, and Margaret, ever sensible, says to compare it to the price of a Broadway ticket (at least twenty dollars!) so it won’t seem like so much.
“Do we really have to do this?” Andie asks.
“Just consider it a stop on the way to Chinatown,” Noah tells her.
We stand out on the sidewalk, waiting for the earlier showing to get out. Andie refuses to stand with the rest of us because we’re on top of a subway grate.
“I’m scared of those things,” she explains from a few feet away.
“I always think I’m going to fall right through.
It happened in New Haven, you know—my sister told me about it.
I thanked her a lot for that one. Now I get so aware—not just about falling through but also that something could drop out of my bag, or my contact lens could pop out.
I mean, I get that the subways need ventilation.
But do we really have to stand on top of it?
” She sighs and glares at the theater. “When do you think they’ll let us in? ”
“Soon,” Pam answers. “And, yeah, the city is full of things to be afraid of. You’d better not stand too close to that building . . . a safe might come falling down.”
“Don’t make fun of me. You’re the one who’s afraid of heights.”
“That’s a valid fear.”
“Yeah, right.” Andie turns to Noah and Margaret. “One night I took her to the roof of our dorm, our silly three-story-high roof—”
“It’s four stories high.”
“Whatever. So anyway . . . she refuses to look over the edge. She won’t even go near it. So I push her a little, joking, and she starts screaming like it’s a Friday the 13th movie and Jason’s just shown up.”
“I think I remember hearing that,” Margaret says.
Andie loves getting a chime-in. “Of course you heard it—everyone heard it!”
“She almost pushed me over the edge!” Pam says. “She’s making it sound less scary than it was.”
“It wasn’t even close to scary.”
Pam turns to Noah, as if he’s presiding over this trial. “You would have been scared too.”
And I appreciate that he says, “Probably.”
This only revs up Andie more, so before she can say something else, I jump in to change the subject.
“What are you afraid of, Noah?” I ask.
He looks at me, then says, “I don’t know.”
Andie snorts. “You have to do better than that.”
He is still looking at me. I can see an answer fall into place. I might not know Noah, but I can at least read him a little.
“It’s so funny,” he says. “I used to be scared of windows. I just couldn’t figure it out—how could you trust something that broke so easily?
God—this goes back to when my parents were together—we had this seventh-story apartment, with these really big windows.
This is at least ten years ago. I wouldn’t go near them.
Not to water the plants, not to see what was going on when there was honking and yelling on the street.
My mom used to coax me, telling me it was alright, pointing out that she—who was an adult, who was much bigger than me—could touch the glass and even lean on it without anything bad happening.
My dad had less patience, especially as I got older.
He was the one who put bug repellent on my thumb so I’d stop sucking it.
He told me it was babyish to avoid the window.
One day—it’s so strange that I can remember this.
One day I was rolling my Matchbox cars—we didn’t have a rug, so the floor was perfect for racing.
One of the cars went right against the window—it must have flown off the coffee table or something.
And I was so amazed when the window didn’t shatter.
It set things straight for me, although I will confess that I still avoid glass elevators.
And where my mom and I live now, there are bars on the bottoms of the windows.
Very New York City. But you have to love it . . .”
As he talks, Noah starts to grin, a grin to accompany his gestures, which include the Matchbox car’s trajectory and a grabbing of the window bars. All these gestures, including the grin . . . I think I am more aware of them than he is.
“Look,” Andie says. “Time to go in.”
She waits until after we’re off the grate to join us. I turn to Noah and say, “You were a thumbsucker? I was a thumbsucker too.”
“We need a secret handshake then. Wait—I know!” Then he sticks his thumb in his mouth, pulls it out, and offers it to me for a shake.
I accept the challenge, stick my thumb in my mouth, take it out, and our thumbs curve into each other.
It’s strangely satisfying to share something so bizarre.
We both laugh, and Andie and Pam say at the same time, “Boys are gross!”
We get in the line and file forward, as if the ticket taker is a military inspector. Pam has the tickets, so she goes first. Noah turns from me to head in, and Margaret comes to my side, nudging me forward when I stop to dry off my thumb on my pants.
Once we’re inside, Pam says, “Let’s sit in the balcony.” Nobody expresses another point of view. The Paris could pass as a legitimate theater-theater in my town, with lush red carpets and a screen on an actual stage. It’s so fancy that they refuse to sell popcorn or soda.