Joe College: A Novel by Tom Perrotta Read Free Book Online

Peter,” she told me, straining to make herself heard over the din of surrounding conversations. Naples at that time on a Tuesday night seemed like the hub of the universe, and one of the few scenes at Yale that actually approximated stereotypical
images of “college life”—crowds of more or less rowdy students gathered around dark tables littered with beer glasses and pizza crusts, laughing, arguing, and occasionally bursting into song, though the general aura of medieval revelry was softened by the presence of numerous violin cases stowed under the tables, as well as the healthy population of loners scattered throughout the restaurant, holding folded pizza slices in one hand and open books in the other.
    “What did he do now?” I asked, trying to strike a tone that balanced interest and fatigue. I wasn’t thrilled width my role as sounding board for her boyfriend troubles, but I didn’t want to jeopardize it, either. If her relationship with Peter—I couldn’t help thinking of him as Professor Preston—really did go south, I figured the hours I’d put in as sympathetic listener would give me a leg up in the competition to replace him.
    “He’s got some woman staying in his apartment for the next two weeks, this professor from Vassar doing research at Beinecke Library. He claims she’s just ‘a friend and colleague,’ but maybe it would be better if we didn’t see each other while she’s around. I bet he’s in bed with her right now.”
    “Not necessarily,” I said, secretly rooting for this possibility. “Maybe they really are just friends.”
    “He’s such a hypocrite,” she said, shaking her head like a dog to get that beautiful hair out of her pale, almost ashen face. Her eyelids looked pink and irritated. “When we first started going out, he said he didn’t care who knew. We used to go to the moves at York Square and hold hands. He’d pick me up in front of Silliman in his car. Now it’s all hush-hush, like he’s married or something.”
    Peter Preston was a rising star in the English Department, a thirty-two-year-old assistant professor who’d arrived from Berkeley the year before and made an immediate name for himself with his lecture class on Shakespeare’s problem plays, which drew close to three hundred students, myself included. He was boyishly handsome, with a shock of blond hair that kept falling over his left eye no matter how many times he pushed it back on top of his head.
We loved him—most of us, anyway—for his dry wit, his skinny neckties, and his familiarity with our pop culture universe. For the past several months, his relationship with Polly had been an open secret, at least in certain circles. Sexual harassment hadn’t quite come into its own as a concept at the time, and most of us were at best mildly scandalized by the idea of a young professor sleeping with an undergraduate who wasn’t currently enrolled in one of his classes, though I must say that on a purely personal level, I had found it confusing and painful to make the transition from worshipping him as a teacher to resenting him as a rival.
    “What’s taking so long with the slices?” Polly cast an impatient glance at the pizza counter, where a crowd had begun to gather. “I’m starving. I haven’t eaten all day.”
    “All day? You’re kidding, right?”
    She shrugged. “Sometimes I forget.”
    “That’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve forgotten a meal my entire life. It doesn’t even seem possible.”
    “Maybe I should sleep with someone else,” she said, unwilling to be sidetracked into a discussion of my fanatically regular eating habits. “Maybe that would wake him up.”
    “Hmmm,” I said, making an effort to look like my interest in the subject were purely theoretical. “That’s a pretty drastic step.”
    “But who?” She exhaled so forcefully I felt the breeze all the way across the table. “Can you think of anyone?”
    “Don’t ask me,” I said, wondering if it would