The Memory Book(15)

He tilted his head to the side. “God, what a question. I mean, there’s the stuff everyone loves, like the history, the nightlife, whatever. But I have a feeling you want to know about what I, specifically, love about it, and I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want to know,” I said, and took a swig. He was matching the intensity. Maybe he didn’t like small talk, either.

He looked at the ceiling, thinking. He had a long, smooth neck. Finally, he held up his hand, as if he were cradling his answer in his palm. “I love everything and everyone pressed together. I love being on the elevated part of the Q or the N. The windows of the upper stories of buildings are right there, just feet from you, and you’re right there, so close to someone else’s life. Or, like, when people fight or kiss on the subway right next to you. I think I just like being close to other people’s lives.”

“Without having to mess with them,” I offered.

He laughed. “Exactly.” Making Stuart laugh was like making something burst open, that satisfying feeling when you pop bubble wrap or bubble gum.

Right then, Dale jumped up and clapped his hands. “All right, last shots, you winos. I’m ready to head to Nervig’s.”

In Maddie’s tiny two-door Toyota, as if in a dream, Stuart and I ended up in the back, next to each other. The music blared so we couldn’t talk. Our legs didn’t touch except on turns, when he put his arm around the back part of my seat, saying, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said back, and looked out the window, savoring his solidness next to me.

I would enjoy this while I could. His eyes had wandered. But he had remembered me. I hadn’t asked him the right questions, the flirting questions. But he remembered me. What Stuart said about New York kept bouncing around in my head: the train, sandwiched between lights and buildings and a huge world full of stories.

At the last stoplight out of Hanover, on the way to Norwich, Dale turned down the music to get directions from Maddie.

Stuart scooted forward to look out the window and asked, “So, where do you live?”

I snapped to attention, like a bunny in a garden, hearing a noise. Danger. But this was a good kind of danger.

“Strafford,” I said, and noticed I couldn’t turn my head without getting unbearably close to his head.

“And?” he asked as the car eased forward.

“And?” I repeated, hoping he couldn’t see the huge grin on my face in the dark.

“What part of Strafford do you love?”

“Ha!” I let out immediately. “Not much.”

“Not one thing?”

I suppose I hadn’t been asked a question like this in a long time, either. I thought about it, feeling my adrenaline spike, and rolled down the window to catch the air coming off the mountains. It smelled like pine and clouds and like someone nearby was having a fire in their backyard. I loved the scent, but it was more than that, like what the scent was saying—the idea it had smelled like this since the mountains were formed and could still be so fresh. The sensation was hard to communicate, not just to Stuart, but to anyone. I took a deep breath. “This,” I said, and gestured toward the night.

“Mm,” Stuart answered, closing his eyes as the wind moved through the backseat. The look on his face said he knew exactly what I meant, and the pleasure of being recognized was like fingers tracing my back. “Yes. This is nice,” he said.

As we wound our way up Ross Nervig’s driveway, we could already hear the bass thumping from the house, past the trees. We parked behind a line of cars and slogged the rest of the way, Dale lighting up a cigarette, Stacia and Maddie linking arms. The house became visible, people perched on the porch railing, in clumps on the lawn, streaming in and out of the giant Colonial on the side of a green slope just like mine. Except ten times bigger. And full of people I didn’t know.

I started to get nervous again, and tried to make my breathing steady. “Here we go,” I muttered.

Beside me, Stuart heard. “Parties, right?”

“Parties,” I echoed, shaking my head, as if I had been to a million parties to the point of shaking my head bemusedly about them.

He put his hand on my back, just for a moment, and I twitched with surprise. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fun.”

Was he flirting? Was this flirting? Or was this just regular human interaction? I was dying to ask Maddie, but she was already jogging up the yard, followed by Stacia, leaping onto the back of a friend of hers, laughing as he twirled her around.

“Stu-ey, Stu-ey, Stu-ey,” the legendary Ross Nervig greeted us from the center of the porch, a mountain man with a full orange beard, holding a Solo cup. “How’s the city, f*cker?”

Stuart joined him. I found a corner and listened, vaguely shaking people’s hands as Dale introduced me.

From what I could gather as they talked, Ross was in Stuart’s class at Hanover, where he had played rugby until he injured himself senior year. Now he worked for his dad’s contracting business, steadily growing a fan base for his drone music popular among Dartmouth hipsters. An Upper Valley resident for life.

Stuart, I found out, was here to finish a collection of short stories, and to occupy his parents’ house in Hanover for the summer while they visited family in India.