``That sort of thing is always happening to me. I meet a woman and she likes me, is affectionate, and --''
``That's great,'' Carla said. I started to slide into the booth beside her but she motioned me imperiously over to the other side. It was about midnight, Wednesday, the fifth week of the Clarion writers workshop, and we'd gone out to the PanTree for something to eat.
``And then when I try to follow through, she looks at me with a hurt expression and says she only wanted to be friends.''
Carla leaned on her elbows and studied the menu through wire-rimmed glasses. Her long straight hair was tied behind with a bright yellow strip of cloth that was neither a scarf nor a ribbon. Her ragged clothes had a touch of slapdash Goodwill elegance. ``The last time I called my husband, I told him I'd decided to never tell him anything about Clarion. Nobody who wasn't here could ever understand.''
``It always tears me up,'' I said. ``Just rips me into pieces.''
Carla flipped the menu back and forth from one page to the other. ``It's always so hard to decide what to get here. They have so many good things. He's a very shy person. Almost pathologically. So he covers it up with a really macho gruffness. We pull into a gas station and he'll growl at the attendant: `Give me five dollars of unleaded.'" Carla growled to demonstrate.
``I was in the lounge this afternoon,'' I said, ``and George was there, and Eileen came in and said she'd finally finished her story.''
``I haven't really decided yet how I feel about being married. It's been three years now.''
``So George put his arms around her. Just to congratulate her, you know. And she hugged him back. All very natural. And I felt myself plunging right back down, down into the deepest, blackest, most suicidal depression. I knew it was stupid and irrational, but something stupid inside me was immediately convinced they'd been sleeping together, and --''
``I sometimes go through periods of intense jealousy,'' Carla said.
``I only get jealous over women I can't have.''
``Really?" Carla said. ``That's strange. My husband isn't jealous very often, but --''
``So on my way back to my room, I saw Camille in the hall and asked her if I could hold her hand, just for a few seconds. So she let me, rather reluctantly, and wanted to know what was wrong, and I just told her it was jealousy, without telling her any details, and then I snapped right back out of it again.''
``That's not good. It shouldn't be reluctantly. Holding someone's hand should be done willingly.''
``I thought I'd finally got over that. I thought I didn't even want her anymore. The terrible thing is, when it's so hard for me to ask anyone for help, and then this summer I've actually forced myself to ask, and then when people refuse ...''
``Stay away from Eileen.'' Carla glared across the table so fiercely that I wanted to shrink away. ``Don't say anything to her in the hall, just don't even go near her. She's been feeling a lot of guilt this summer because of you. I think that's probably why she's never formed any liaison of her own.''
I started to argue, but Carla stopped me. ``Listen, what you saw today didn't mean anything. But I'll tell you something about George. And I'll never forgive you if you tell anyone else. The first week we were here, I felt really lonely being all by myself in bed. Not sex, you know, but just missing having that other body there. So one night I knocked on George's door and talked to him for a while. Then I started to go, but when I got to the door I said, `No, look, that's not what I came for. What I want to do is lie in bed with you a while tonight. But just that.' And he said, `So where's your pillow?' "
``God, Carla, why couldn't you have come to me?''
``I just couldn't have done that, Lee. Can you understand that? I could do it with George because he's such a ... a nothing, you know.''
I understood that only too well. It was an old story with me. Being friends with women never seems to pay off.
``Did anyone tell you that guy from the cyclotron came by the dorm looking for you?'' I asked.
``Alec. He's a real shit. You met him, didn't you? The only thing Alec is interested in is Alec.''
I shrugged. I'd been in the Beggar's Banquet the night he'd come over to our table and started talking to Carla.
``That night I went out with him, I told him I had to get back early the next morning because I had a story to finish. And he insisted on making a whole bunch of phone calls that morning, and then he had to stop at the grocery store, and he stopped to talk to some people, and it was noon before I got back to the dorm.''
``It's so damned unfair.'' I stared at the table and tried to keep my voice under control. ``Gary can pour a slug of Kahlua in his coffee every morning to help him get started, and that's cool. Camille can come down to breakfast and say, `I'm going to die if I don't get some dope.' And that's cool. But when I let people know I need somebody to hold onto for a minute, everybody ...'' I made a gesture of pushing someone away in fright.
``And Richard needs somebody to stab,'' Carla said off-handedly.
I looked up in irritation, but she wasn't paying attention.
``I hate those mirrors by the elevator,'' I said. ``I look at myself and --''
`It's your own fault you look like you do. You could take care of your body, work out, get a tan.''
I looked at Carla's spindly arms but didn't say anything.
``It's like writing. You have to find your natural audience. Somewhere in the world that's a woman who won't care how you look.'' She didn't make this sound very convincing.
``The funny thing is,'' I said, ``at home I'm the one who has the headache.''
``I find that hard to believe.''
``Trying to write makes me so hyped up, I've been running on pure nervous energy here. All my hormonal systems are in hyperdrive. It's like being an adolescent again, and I can't cope with it any better now then I could when I was sixteen.''
Carla lit one of her little cigars. ``I don't like hearing people talk about their vital centers.''
``I could manage the rest except the weekends. That's when I really feel like killing myself. The last day Rachel was here, that Sunday, I went by her room to return the blue bandanna she'd lent me. Remember, she lent it to me when we got dressed up to welcome Damon and Kate?''
``I liked that bandanna.''
``She was sitting on the bed with a pile of stories, because she still had a few conferences scheduled. And I wanted to ask her -- like with Camille today -- if I could just hold her hand for a minute or two. But when I started to ask, I just started crying. She was very nice about it, pulled my head down into her lap. I stayed about ten minutes and then I was okay for the rest of the day.''
``I'll tell you something about Rachel,'' Carla said. ``And I'll call you a liar if you ever tell anyone else. I was the aggressor in that relationship. The first night she was here, we were sitting outside talking and she said, `Look, we'd better stop this before it gets serious.' And I looked at her and I said, `I know how I feel. I want to make love to you.'"
``The thing was,'' I said, ``I'd had that bandanna spread out over my dresser all morning, and at first it was a very nice, slightly erotic thing, as if a woman had been in my room and left it there. Then later it started getting more intense, and that was not so nice. I thought of asking her for it as a gift -- ''
``I thought of doing that too.''
``But I realized it wouldn't be a good move. Besides, I knew that when I got back home, although Diane wouldn't object to what she'd assume it represented, she would object to my wanting to keep a souvenir.''
``I was so sad the last night she was here. Glenn Wright gave a party for her after her reading, with some professors and other friends of his invited. And I asked him if I could come too, and he said no. I really hated going back to the dorm alone.''
She started methodically finishing the rest of her sundae. I watched her silently but she didn't look up. At last I said, ``To me, it's always seemed like such a natural thing. I've always been secretly a little frightened that one day women would all suddenly realize that they don't need us at all, when they'd be so much better off just with each other.''
Carla waved a hand in a slow gesture that dissolved into insignificance. ``I've heard other men say that. It was certainly a strange thing for me, that's for sure. And the attitude of the other women in the dorm... You certainly couldn't call it supportive. I still haven't decided what to think about the whole thing.'' She picked up her purse.
I said, ``Look, do you mind if I pay your check? It's not because I'm a man and you're a woman, but because I still have quite a bit of money left this summer and you don't.''
``In that case, could you lend me a ten as well?''
On the way out to the parking lot, Carla said, ``I'm going to write to you when this is over. I'm a very steadfast friend, even though sometimes it takes me a long time to answer letters.''
``I've been thinking of writing a story about a sex criminal,'' I said.
``Yes, you should do that,'' Carla said. ``You really should, Lee. You'd be very well qualified.''
1982