Lost and Wanted(16)

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Neel and I met when we were freshmen in Arty’s Inflationary Cosmology lecture course. Both of us liked to work in the Cabot Science Library, at the shiny wooden communal tables, their undersides blistered with gum, but we did it at different times of day, me in the early morning and Neel in the middle of the night. Because of our oppositional schedules, we might never have gotten to know each other if Arty hadn’t suggested we work together on a problem related to Gaussian functions. We began meeting once a week in his office in Jefferson. Arty was on leave that semester and often away; Neel and I were charged with watering his plants.

I tend to be slow to notice my own feelings. It’s easier for me to identify deviations from a baseline than it is to speculate about motivations. For example, I observed that I was spending an unusual amount of time preparing for my meetings with Neel. I would think about what I was going to wear the night before; I would leave time to shower and wash my hair.

    These aren’t things Neel would have done whether or not he was interested in a woman. He always wore a dark-colored T-shirt and corduroys. If it was cold, he wore one of two sweaters: maroon with a single black stripe, or beige wool (hole in left elbow), and put a Salvation Army peacoat over that. Neel was skinny and only about five foot nine. He went to the barber as infrequently as possible, as an economy measure, and so his thick black hair varied between almost military and mad scientist. He wore rimless glasses over his best feature: beautiful, heavily lashed dark eyes.

One day I wore a sweater my sister, Amy, had given me for Christmas. It was black with a white mohair collar and cuffs, more appropriate for a holiday party than a study session in February, and on the way from my room in Thayer, I regretted choosing it. The sweater had looked nice with my hair in the spotty mirror of our cold and unpleasant bathroom, but it was too dressy for a weekday, and it called attention to itself with the soft white collar in a way I didn’t like. I’d almost gone home to change it, but I have always had an anxiety about being late, and I decided that Neel wouldn’t notice anyway.

Neel was sitting at Arty’s desk when I came in.

“You’re dressed up,” he said, barely looking up.

I thought it was presumptuous of him to sit there; I never would have done it myself, especially when there were two other vacant chairs.

“I’m going out after,” I told him coldly.

Neel looked up, surprised by my tone. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t being critical.”

“You weren’t?”

“I guess I was.”

“So, what’s wrong with my sweater?”

Neel took off his glasses, considering.

“You look like a poodle.”

“A poodle?”

    “With those furry things.” Neel touched his own neck and wrist. His wrists were thin and knobby, with black hair on them. Where did he get the idea he could say things like that?

“It was a present from my sister. I like it.”

Neel nodded. “It looks expensive.”

“Did you water?” I demanded, and when he shook his head, I took the pink plastic can into the bathroom and filled it. Then I came back and tended to Arty’s plants, acutely aware of Neel the whole time. When I finally did sit down, I launched into a detailed description of the solution to the fifth problem from Arty’s set, because I could see that Neel was only on the second. I was conscious that I was showing off—Neel was slightly less mathematically inclined than I was, though much better at designing an experiment—and once he stopped and asked me to repeat something.

“So it’s like a Hegelian synthesis,” he said, after I had explained.

We had a joke about one of our classmates, who had made a pretentious reference to that philosopher in section one day.

“Totally,” I said. “You hit it exactly.”

Neel smiled at me, and I had the uncomfortable feeling I sometimes get in conversation with another person, as if the fundamental part of myself has evaporated—not in the sense of being gone, but as if it has undergone a phase transition and is hovering over my actual body as a vapor. That’s the best I can describe it, as if my consciousness and my physical person are suddenly separated.

It’s unbearable to be with other people when I’m in this state, and so usually I get up to go to the bathroom, where I can lock myself in and recalibrate. That’s what I did then, excusing myself. I rested my forehead on the inside of the cool metal stall and counted prime numbers down from 997; for some reason this usually helps. I waited ten minutes, but my panic (or whatever it was) didn’t go away, and so I went back to the office and told Neel I had to go.

“Where are you going?”

“Out to dinner with…a friend. What are you doing?”

“I’ll be struggling with number three,” Neel said. “But have fun.”

Charlie wasn’t in her room when I got home, and so I called another friend, Elaine, and begged her to go for a drink with me. We went all the way to the South End, only because I was afraid of running into Neel. I could’ve said that I’d changed my plans, but I wanted him to think I was out on a date.

    Elaine listened patiently as I described how arrogant the guys in the physics department were.