I had finished carting the last of my belongings up the stairs when a figure appeared in the doorway, his face obscured by the stack of cardboard boxes in his arms. He advanced into the room, groaning with effort, and lowered them to the floor.
“You,” I said.
It was the man I’d met at the Burger Cottage. He was wearing frayed khaki pants and a gray T-shirt that said HARVARD SQUASH, with crescents of sweat under the arms.
“Wait,” he said, peering at me. “I know you. How do I know you?”
I explained our meeting. At first he professed no recollection; then a look of recognition dawned.
“Of course. The guy with the suitcase. I’m guessing this means you found Wigglesworth.” A thought occurred to him. “No offense, but wouldn’t that make you a sophomore?”
It was a fair question, with a complicated answer. Though I’d been admitted as a freshman, I had enough AP credits to graduate in three years. I’d given this matter little thought, always expecting to hang around for the full four. But in the weeks since receiving my father’s letter, the option to bang out my education at a quickstep and skedaddle had grown more appealing. Evidently the Harvard higher-ups had thought so, too, since they’d housed me with an upperclassman.
“I guess that makes you a real smarty-pants, doesn’t it?” he said. “So, let’s have it.”
He had a way of speaking that was both elusively sarcastic and somehow complimentary at the same time. “Have what?”
“You know. Name, rank, serial number. Your major, place of origin, that sort of thing. The history of yourself, in other words. Keep it simple—my memory is for shit in this heat.”
“Tim Fanning. Biochemistry. Ohio.”
“Nicely done. Though if you ask me tomorrow I probably won’t remember, so don’t be offended.” He stepped forward, hand extended. “Jonas Lear, by the way.”
I did my best to respond with a manly grip. “Lear,” I repeated. “Like the jet?”
“Alas, no. More like Shakespeare’s mad king.” He glanced around. “So, which of these luxury compartments have you selected as your own?”
“I thought it would be fair to wait.”
“Lesson number one: Never wait. Law of the jungle and so forth. But since you’re determined to be a nice guy, we can flip for it.” He pulled a coin from his pocket. “Call it.”
Up the coin went before I could respond. He snatched it from the air and slapped it to his wrist
“I guess…heads?”
“Why does everybody call heads? Someone should do a study.” He lifted his hand. “Well, what do you know, it’s heads.”
“I guess I was thinking of the smaller one.”
He smiled. “See? How hard was that. I would have gone the same way.”
“You never told me what you were studying.”
“Right you are. That was rude of me.” He tossed a pair of finger quotes into the air. “Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.”
I’d never heard of it. “That’s an actual major?”
He’d bent to open one of the boxes. “So my transcript tells me. Plus, it’s fun to say. It sounds a little dirty.” He glanced up and smiled. “What? Not what you expected?”
“I would have said—I don’t know—something more lively. History, maybe. Or English.”
He removed an armload of textbooks and began loading them onto the shelves. “Let me ask you something. Of all the possible subjects in the world, why did you choose biochemistry?”
“I suppose because I’m good at it.”
He turned, hands on his hips. “Well, there you have it. The truth is, I’m just crazy about amino acids. I put them in my martini.”
“What’s a martini?”
His face drew back. “James Bond? Shaken, not stirred? They don’t have these movies in Ohio?”
“I know who James Bond is. I mean, I don’t know what’s in one.”
His mouth curved into a mischievous grin. “Ah,” he said.
—
We were on our third drink when we heard a girl’s voice calling his name and the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
“In here!” Lear yelled.
The two of us were seated on the floor with the tools of Lear’s enterprise spread before us. I have never met anyone else who traveled with not only a fifth of gin and a bottle of vermouth but the sort of bartending gizmos—jiggers, shakers, tiny, delicate knives—one sees only in old movies. A bag of ice swooned in a puddle of meltwater beside an open jar of olives from the market up the street. Ten-thirty in the morning, and I was completely hammered.