Back To U

chapter Six

Finish sweet with a kiss of chocolate.





Max felt like the teacher-voice in the Peanuts cartoon. The sleepy-eyed kid in his office wasn’t tracking anything, and he was saying, wah, wah, wahwah, wah. When had he become the boring adult? "Dalton, show me your last batch." He motioned to the beat-up back pack. The kid had something going for him. He wasn’t cruising campus with some fancy mall messenger bag.

He spotted his own messenger bag across the office. It was fancy leather, he supposed, but beat-up. And he’d bought it in Riyadh. Saudi shopping didn’t mean he was in danger of settling down. He’d tried that, hadn’t he?

The kid pulled out a handful of black and white photos, edges battered and bent from riding loose in the bag. Max let out a breath. Pick your battles. He took the mess and flicked through them. Red’s Bar and Grill. Old men playing poker was classic, but the kid was all over the place. "You need to be patient. Sometimes you’ll get into a rhythm, but mostly you’ve gotta watch and wait and then just get it."

He felt his own finger press down, a motion that caught, sometimes, a world. Watch and wait. Maybe he needed to take his own advice. He was beginning to see that avoiding Gwen wasn’t helping him, maybe it never had. He should just click, see what was going on with her, and move on.

He thumbed through a couple more photos, then, ah, there was a good one. He set the photo of a sharp-featured man, younger than the rest, on the desk. "Nice work with the shadows on his face, but anybody could have done that."

Dalton appeared to not listen at all, and Max fought a smile. Tough guy. He pointed to the subject’s eyes, waved his finger between them. "Sad."

Dalton’s head came up.

"Sharp face, sharp mind, but sad eyes. He’s wastin’ time playing cards and knows he’s living an old man’s life already."

Leaning forward, Dalton motioned to the grainy waitress behind the man. "I tried to get her in there clearer. The guy tried to get her to talk to him, but she ignored him just like she did the old dudes."

Max jabbed a finger at Dalton’s camera."You gotta lower the ISO. Really important in black and white. The lowest you can manage. You’re getting too much noise. Get the shot good and sharp. You can add grain later, but, man, it’s damn hard to take out."

"I tried, really tried on this one. I couldn’t get it. Man, ISO. Got it."

Max handed him the prints, sat back in his chair. "Get out there."

Dalton gathered the photos and started to shove them in his bag. He seemed to register Max’s sigh and instead dug around, found a Mylar envelope, and slid them in before heading to the door.

"There’s a football game this weekend."

Dalton stopped, looked confused.

"They used to do a bonfire the night before."

He shrugged, "Probably."

"Fire and dark make real nice black and white photos."

"Ah," Dalton nodded.

"Probably be some cheerleaders too."

"Ah!" Dalton smiled.

An entire semester of Daltons. It was plenty entertaining, that was for sure. But who would have guessed that’s where he’d land, back at Belmar, after knocking around the world? His folks had made him go to U the first time. He supposed his mom was responsible for the second round also, but he could have come and gone, couldn’t he? Gone when she was. He looked around the office, half moved into was half more than he’d ever done before. Maybe he was on to something. Maybe he was kidding himself.





Gwen nearly ran across campus. She hated to be late, and it looked like she might not make it to psychology on time. Damned if she hadn’t slept in. After she’d settled into dorm life, there was something about going to bed there that let her really conk out at night. Maybe her mom radar was finally turned off with Missy in another state.

She headed to the south entrance of the social sciences building and spotted Max coming down the sidewalk, hands in his jean pockets looking, well, she didn’t have time to go there. She could get into the building without even having to acknowledge his…

"Gwen." He picked up speed without any visible effort, and she’d practically sweated through her top just crossing the oval. But she could probably get away with a… she waved and darted into the building, power-walking down the empty hallway. She held her breath for the sound of the door closing behind her, but it didn’t.

"Gwen."

She turned but kept walking, waving her thumb toward the lecture hall at the end. "Late for psych."

He caught up and walked with her, but she couldn’t imagine why, so when she reached the door, she smiled a goodbye and walked in. She took the first seat she spotted at the back of the hall and couldn’t remember if she’d grabbed her glasses. They were for reading but sometimes it made the front monitors clearer. Damn, she really liked to be up closer. Served her right for being late.

Someone took a seat beside her, and she slowly turned her head. Max. She held her hands, palm up, and whispered, "What are you doing?"

"Sneakin’ in." He sat back, legs under the row in front of them, hands linked on his very trim middle.

He’d always had amazing… she shook her head. "You’re not in this class."

"Faculty."

"Stalker faculty." She said it under her breath and decided to ignore him so he wouldn’t confuse her anymore. Pulling out her notebook, she concentrated on the lecturer, almost ant-like from where she sat. At least the technology he used made the visuals almost big enough on the screens.

"Do you want me to stalk you, Gwen?"

She turned, eyebrows drawn. "I didn’t say that."

He waited. "You didn’t say you didn’t."

"Didn’t what?" She pointed her pen at him. It was so like him, bomb right into things and mess them up. "Knock it off. You’re distracting me." She faced the front. She would not be derailed by him or anybody else. Hell, if the prince from Cinderella sashayed in and really put himself out there singing to her from the front podium, she’d say no, thank you, I’m focused.

"I’m a distraction?" Max said it like it was a good thing, his voice all buttery beside her. "Well, I’m flattered. But we’re practically strangers. What with you being middle-aged and all."

Her eyebrows drew together so tightly she felt the start of a headache. She was middle-aged? Well, men died so much earlier than women, that even at the same age he was probably a decade closer to death. He could just, "Shut up and listen."

"Oh, you want me to stay. That’s very nice." He looked at his watch. "I wasn’t planning on this, but all right."

She hit his arm and was instantly horrified that she had resorted to some eighteen-year-old version of herself. She ignored his laughter and concentrated on the professor.

"Female mammals carry most of the reproductive burden of their species." The dot of a professor went on with his psychology of human pair bonding lecture she wished she could hear alone in the dark and not with Max practically breathing on her elbow. His head tilted so close to her writing arm, she could lift her elbow and cold-cock him.

Another few minutes and she just might, especially after seeing a disturbing pie chart that explained her entire existence thus far. It showed the lifecycle of a mother, whole years lost to bringing people into the world who would go on to ignore you.

"Females invest far more time and energy in the process. Pregnancy, birth, nursing, raising." Even as she wrote it down, she knew Max was reading her notes. He’d cribbed off her before, but she’d show him. Next to females and time she wrote male investment= fifteen minutes.

Max, all slouched in his chair, leaned his cheek practically against her shoulder. "Darlin’, he’s not doin’ it right."

She felt an electric jolt that she hoped to god he’d missed. He’d said not doin’ it right with the total and utter confidence of a man who could rectify that, not immediately, but over the course of, what, hours?

He sighed, like he pitied human males. "Even at eighteen it should take the better part of an afternoon."

Better part of an afternoon. She would just ignore him and any possible memories of anybody naked ever in the history of afternoons.

"A female’s reproductive success depends on the quality of her choice of mate."

She kept writing, glad that her marrying a tool was justified at last and in front of Max. Well, other people thought Steve was a tool. Not that she didn’t after he’d gone, but still, a woman needed to choose a responsible mate, didn’t she?

"A woman needs a tool," he whispered so close to her ear, she could feel his breath, "to make up for that fifteen minutes."

Her mouth opened but nothing came out.

"For the male there is a psychological obsession with paternity, so they can be assured that it is their genetic contribution."

Max took her pen and wrote, children?

She pulled the pen out of his hand. He did not just ask her about children after a discussion of paternity. To think that he had even for one moment considered that after…

He took the pen back, smiled his forgive me charming smile and circled her handwriting obsession with paternity. He drew a line through it.

Well, still, he could have picked a better moment in the lecture to ask her about children. She sighed, wrote daughter, 18 and hoped their scrawled conversation would end there because nothing good could come of it, ever. She didn’t even need to ask him if he had children. Somehow she knew, without knowing anything else, that he didn’t. There was something not parent-like about him. She wished that made her sad, but a part of her, the selfish part, was glad. It didn’t even make sense.

"The sexual double standard discourages female sexuality, and as we’ve discussed earlier, women have a far greater sexual capacity than men."

Max leaned his head against the back of the chair and nodded in solidarity with the professor. "You’re preachin’ to the choir, mister."

She tried to shush him but a little laugh colored it.

"The double standard, and from the previous chapter we’ve seen this played out in language, images, and social structures… this standard helps increase the odds that the male will be reassured of paternity. It also puts the female in a better negotiating position."

Max tapped his finger on her notebook. "Write that one down. I’ve never even heard of the negotiating position."

She flicked the side of his hand like it was a bug that had landed on her paper.

"In negotiation, do you remember this? The party that is least attached to the outcome has the most power. And since women have been culturally perceived as wanting sex less than men, and, in fact, pay more for sex in terms of the time and energy devoted to subsequent offspring, they appear to be even less attached to the outcome."

Max shook his head. "Again, he’s not doing it right."

"Sexual power is delivered into the hands of women."

Max yawned. "All this tool talk is making me feel redundant."

Gwen tilted her head to look at him. "Redundant? Is it making you feel gay as well?"

He put his hands on his chest as if he’d taken a hit. "You’ve used your sexual power for evil not good."

"I haven’t used my sexual…" she stopped herself. Nothing after sexual could possibly be something she’d care to say to him.

"Now that is a shame, but I’m gonna help you out. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at seven." Max got up from his seat. He moved quickly when he wasn’t sprawling.

He made it to the aisle, but she put her hand on his arm. "I’m not having sex with you tomorrow night!" She glanced ahead to make sure she hadn’t said it as loudly as she imagined. The three closest students swiveled around to stare.

Max waved at them then pointed at Gwen, "Powerful negotiator."

"This coupled with the female’s learned response to say no, due, really, to her larger investment in reproduction, gives her sexual power over the male."

Max leaned down to her other ear this time. "Seven. And you can say no to everything else." He headed to the door.

"I will!"

The students stared again.

"Not have sex. I will say no."

They turned back around.

She whispered to herself. "I will. I’m good at it."





Friday afternoon she thought about leaving the dorm altogether. There’d be no chance he could find her then. She didn’t think he even knew where she was staying, although Ellen, her traitorous mother, might have blabbed it. But fleeing would communicate fear, hers, and power, his, despite what the professor had said. Staying in her room reading, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, completely underdressed for dinner and overdressed for sex, would tell the sad tale. She was turning him down.

The knock on the door made her drop her book. She knew that knock. It wasn’t the surprise rapping her mother had given the weekend before. This was Max’s dorm door knock. She hadn’t even known she'd remembered it. Well, shit. She took in a deep cleansing breath and journeyed the five steps to the door. She repeated no, thank you in her head as she opened it.

"Good, you’re ready." He turned back toward the elevator, his camera bag swinging on his shoulder.

"I’m not."

She kept her hand on the doorknob, while he glanced down her body, and she tried not to flinch. No one who knew you at your prime should ever scan even your clothed body after a baby, even if the baby was a legal adult. He seemed to stop at her socks. "Oh, get some sneakers on. Might want a sweater." He raised an eyebrow. "I like pink."

She rolled her eyes. She was in Psych. II. She knew all about pink. "I’m not going with you."

"Oh, well, if I’d known you wanted to stay in…"

"No." She put her palm out to stop him and realized he was just messing with her. No one messed with her. She was a grown woman, a mom, a homeowner, a former P.T.A. secretary. Steve was mature and serious and nicely literal. Max took casual to a level of irreverence, and she hadn’t experienced that since, well, she’d last sparred with him.

She didn’t know what to say. If she said something logical and true and reasonable, he’d say something funny or charming or he’d deliberately twist her words and then they would go around again because she was rusty. Her stomach growled. Rusty and hungry. She lowered her head, took a breath in, and stalked over to her closet. She pulled out her tennis shoes, and reached for a cardigan.

Max lounged in the doorway, watching. "I like pink."

She passed the cardigans in petunia and coral and hoped he didn’t get a glimpse of the deep pink bathrobe. She yanked out a navy sweater, and its hanger swung from the force.

"Blue’s nice."

She pointed at him with the cardigan. "Don’t push it."





The hotdog made her feel better. The pep rally, populated by hundreds of college kids, made her feel a little silly. But washing the hotdog down with the imported beer Max smuggled in his bag felt mature, despite the immaturity of breaking the rules.

The stage, set up in an immense field on the edge of campus, held a couple of guys in suits. One, she assumed, was the president. It was unpleasant to realize the president, whose name she’d known twenty years ago, could have retired even if that had been his first year. How had so much time gone by? She realized she hadn’t even asked Max about his parents. Back then his dad would have been at a school function like a pep rally. She hadn’t thought of Dean James in years or the first dinner at the Holter house when Max had used her as a human shield to avoid his parents. It had gotten her that first date, hadn’t it? And changed the trajectory of her whole life most likely. It’s not like you ever knew even looking back. Hindsight might be twenty-twenty for some people, but she was pretty sure that even examining the past, she required reading glasses.

She glanced up at Max, watching the crowd as if framing photos in the quickly fading light. She could see his mind working, and it disturbed her that she thought she knew him that well. Twenty years would have changed him as much as it changed her, sent his own trajectory in a different direction. But once they had been in the same place, and there had been fun and lightness mixed in with the other. She’d been fun. She’d even gone a little wild, hadn’t she?

Growing up with Ellen, who'd been a questionable role model, the only way to rebel was to be really, really good. But she’d gotten away from the town that watched to see if she’d be like her mother. At Belmar she could be wild and in love, in crazy all-consuming love. She’d been the Road Runner for a while there, zipping joyfully down the highway, and when the anvil fell, she’d turned into Wiley Coyote and been knocked out cold.

"You okay?"

She took a swig of beer and raised it in answer while she swallowed.

Max pointed toward the impending bonfire torching where the boys, along with what looked like an entire fraternity, guarded a mountain of stacked pallets that had a paper maché B perched on top. When they spotted her, they waved, and she raised her beer to them and got the outraged expression she wanted.

Max clinked his bottle to hers. "There are privileges to adulthood, kids."

She considered that. Maybe she'd been focusing too much on what she’d lost. There had to be some advantage to being nearly forty. None were coming to her, but she’d keep her eyes peeled. Yep, that’s what she felt like at thirty-nine, someone whose eyes were peeled.

She heard the crackle of a microphone and the football coach, the only one not wearing a tie, stepped up, his image captured on the giant projection screens on either side. Unless he’d indulged in toxic amounts of Botox, he not only wasn’t the coach from twenty years before, he couldn’t be a great deal over twenty himself.

He looked over the front of the stage where his players fanned out in blue and silver largeness. "Belmar’s gonna go all the way!"

The crowd cheered, and the cheerleaders, teeny in comparison, jumped around in front of the team. Mranda was, naturally, among them.

Max pointed his bottle toward the stage. "Betcha ten bucks he says let’s win this thing."

She considered how much a good cliché added to an American moment. "Betcha twenty bucks he’s too young to know it’s been said before."

Max laughed, "And also, let’s stay focused."

The coach lowered his voice. "Right now, men, this is the biggest game of the season."

She liked the men part since the team was her daughter’s age.

Max made a sweeping gesture with his second hotdog. "Leave it all on the field."

That was a good one. Did she know any more? Think Olympics. "This is what we’ve been working for. Oh, I’ve got another. Go earn some respect." Maybe that’s the pep talk she’d missed in college.

"We’re gonna put the hurt on them. Not in our house." Max said our house in falsetto and sounded like the lady next door who took your ball.

She gave him her earnest face. "Hey, you can do anything."

Max nodded at a student with a camera around his neck and turned back to her. "I bet my home on this game, guys, don’t let me down."

Looking past Max, she could see the shape of the campus behind him. A long time ago, they’d let each other down, and this time she really had left her home for the game. The odds felt pretty high she’d let even more people down before she was through.

"Let’s take care of bidness." Max tapped his chest and gave her a peace out sign.

"Winning is your bidness."

He smiled. "Nice. I like you gansta." He narrowed his eyes and came closer to her face. "Don’t offer any mercy because you won’t get any."

She felt her eyes fill with tears, and before she could think, she whispered, "I didn’t offer any, did I?"

He stepped back, and she searched for any distraction she could get. The boys stood with torches, ringing the pile of flammables. "Hey, they’re lighting it. I bet you ten dollars somebody’s going to lose their eyebrows tonight."

Max didn’t say anything, and they stood and watched the wood quickly blaze. A fire was such a dynamic thing. It almost seemed living, like a mess of red and orange snakes leaping into the sky. And the smell of smoky wood made her think of mesquite grilling and hot chocolate, neither of which should be a chaser for a hot dog and too many memories.

The band started playing the fight march, and though the words had always escaped her, she recalled singing up with Belmar and down with hum, hum, hum to get her through.

Max motioned that he was going to go for a minute, and she tried to relax in his absence. They were like any two people who ran into each other at, say, an alumni event. Of course, she wasn’t an alumnus, having not graduated, but she and Max were just two people who had once dated. That was all, really. They’d been a match at eighteen when anything female would do for anything male, but they weren’t in any way compatible.

She watched him make his way through the crowd toward a row of vendors. Damned if he wasn’t going to get hot chocolates.





The Sousa marches were rousing. They had the old-timey quality of town picnics and men in bowler hats and held a sweet comfort. She sipped her hot chocolate, a perfect chaser to a hotdog after all, especially since Max had managed to get a shot of peppermint schnapps into it. She tried to picture him, international man of mystery, swaggering into a liquor store and asking for a bottle popular with under-aged drinkers and hot cocoa fans. "How did you retain your dignity buying this?"

He shook his head. "I didn’t. My cart was overflowing with cases of wine coolers and cinnamon tequila."

"Oh, god, they make that?"

"I have no idea." He laughed, and it was a sound she hadn’t forgotten in years.

She studied him, a half smile still on his face. How had he gotten better looking? What kind of unjust aging process made his laugh lines, the fine ones around his eyes, probably from squinting in some exotic location and not from having a hard time reading the crossword puzzle in the Phillipsburg Daily Bugle, so appealing? Oh, it was just too unfair for words.

She turned her attention to the band just in time for the piccolo solo, her favorite part of any march. It was great, and she felt herself relax as she watched the boy in his wool uniform whip through the piece. How could anyone play that fast? It ended with the cymbal crash, and she felt disappointed that the rally was breaking up.

She sensed Max looking at her and turned. "What?"

"You’re a sucker for a piccolo player."

"Well, who isn’t?" She laughed at herself. "I’m a dork now."

Putting his hand lightly on her lower back, he led her through the crowd. "It’s okay. You were always a dork."

"And still you’re seen out with me."

"I guess I am."





Max's Life - October 3rd, 1989 Saturday



His friends were out, out where he should be.

He saw the bridge ahead in the dark and felt Gwen beside him, matching his pace comfortably all the way from the movie theater. Half-way across the span of it, the reflection of the moon on the river made her smile. He saw it, that feeling that ran right through her and showed up in her expression. It was happy, but he guessed she’d show sadness and pain just as easily. He’d like to make her smile.

He stopped and put his hands on the rail, waited for her to lean on her arms and take in the silvery motion of the water with him. He wanted to kiss her, but more, he wanted her to take in the river and turn to him when she was ready. He heard her sigh and knew she didn’t even get she’d done it. He’d not met many girls like that, girls who didn’t hide, couldn’t maybe. He’d known girls who could smile like it was part of some uniform. They were cute girls with the right clothes and the voice and the shoes, he guessed, since they talked about shoes. But what should have been a killer smile was only there like she thought that’s what you wanted to see. Gwen meant it. He liked that best about her. So far she seemed to do and say what she meant, guy-like without anything else guy-like about her.

She turned to him and closed most of the gap between them until he could feel her warmth even in the October night. Her smile was different now, kind of sexy but with more fun, like the face she’d had when he’d handed her real ice cream after the fake kind at his parent’s house.

He smiled back. "Seen enough of the river?"

She stepped a little closer. "Yep."

He was definitely going to get this girl back to his dorm some night, no matter what it took. He’d…

"Wanna go to your room?"

He felt his heart stop, speed up like he was about ready to run into the gym for a big game. Who couldn’t love this girl? His friends may be going out, but he was stayin’ in.





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