The Ghost Apple by Aaron Thier Read Free Book Online Page B

again, I’d spring for something better!), and listen to the loud music Lehman was playing on his stereo. As I did so, I began to feel a sense of ease and comfort that I hadn’t expected. Maybe readers will tell me that it was only the alcohol, but I think it was something more: It was a sudden realization of what was important, and what was not important, at that particular moment.
    I looked around at my dorm room. Here was the old fireplace, its brick darkened by years of smoke (the flue was now blocked). Here was the bay window, with its blue curtains that moved in the cool night breeze. Here was the scuffed hardwood floor and dirty rug, and here was the desk lamp that shed a dim yellow light and left most of the room in shadow. Here were the old desks, the old chairs, the old black molding and door frames and window frames. And here we were: three college freshmen, content in one another’s company and excited about the possibilities of this September night. I remember thinking, What does it matter, what could it matter, that one of us is fifty years older than the other two?
    Soon we were sitting on the window seat, laughing and drinking our beers and talking about all kinds of interesting things. They asked me about the Vietnam War, and I told them a little about it. I hadn’t seen much fighting, but I’d been stationed in Saigon in the late sixties. It was nice to speak freely with people who were amazed by stories that someone my own age would have heard thousands of times.
    “Hey, man, listen, hold on,” said Burke, suddenly growing very serious. “It’s really cool that you made the decision to come to school and finally get your degree.”
    Lehman nodded, and continued nodding, and took a sip from his beer. I knew that sometimes he simply ignored most of what we said, but I didn’t mind. I understood that this was “just his thing.”
    “I don’t care if I get my identity stolen,” he said. “What I say is take it.”
    Lehman wanted to go to a party his friend was throwing over at Farrier Hall. At this, the dean in me shook himself awake: Here was an opportunity to see more of the real Tripoli. I was feeling so comfortable at that point that I didn’t even worry about running into someone who might recognize me. We put some beers into our coat pockets and headed down into the courtyard, where there were lots of students laughing and talking and rushing off in large groups.
    Although Farrier Hall was just across the street, it seemed to take an enormously long time to get there. We had to stop every few feet to talk to some people Lehman knew, and then we ran into Akash, who had a beautiful young woman on his arm. He said a quick hello as the two of them hurried away.
    “He gets all the girls,” Burke said as we watched them go. “I’ve got to ask him what’s his trick.”
    “Step one,” Lehman said. “Be about a million times more handsome than you are.”
    “Well, he’s also pretty unscrupulous. He’ll say anything. He’s like, ‘Oh, okay, I’m Akash, I was born in a flapjack restaurant at the top of a runaway-truck ramp. I failed the drug test at the National Spelling Bee.’ ”
    “Step two,” Lehman continued. “Be another maybe fifty thousand times more handsome.”
    Then we were at the convenience store, where Lehman bought some cigarettes and I bought a few cigars. For some reason, I chose the cheapest I could find. Don’t ask me why! They tasted like coal dust and stove polish, and later Burke remembered me saying that I enjoyed the “heightened reality” of their flavor.
    “Am I really so much less handsome than Akash?” he asked me when Lehman was distracted.
    I told him that his features were just a little small for his head. They weren’t so bad on their own.
    Everything seemed to be happening at once. One moment, someone was saying very earnestly that he preferred Mickey Mouse to T. S. Eliot, and when I turned to ask him what he meant, I discovered that I was