Tangerine

“Be safe,” he called, the doors closing behind me.

Afterward, I stood in front of the closed station, holding my suitcase between my hands, hesitant to set it down on the damp, snowy ground. A single streetlight illuminated the area in which I stood, so that while my own person was aglow, only a few steps away there was nothing, only blackness. I struggled to remain calm, my breath erupting before me in great, billowy clouds, the dampness clinging to the scarf knotted around my throat.

“Hey you,” a voice called out.

I peered into the darkness, uncertain whether the deep voice had been aimed in my direction. I could see nothing except the snow on the streets sparkling, or so it seemed, under the light.

“Yeah, you,” the voice came again.

A figure stepped into my small circle of light. He was young—surely no more than a few years older than myself—his tall, athletic build tightly bundled in a military green jacket, with worn leather patches at the elbows. A single suitcase dangled from his hand.

“Do you need a lift?”

“I’m waiting for a bus,” I answered. When he looked around, as if to indicate his doubt that such a thing existed, I hastened to explain, “It’s not due for another two hours.”

He frowned. “I think the station is closed for the day.”

“But the bus driver said—” I let the words die on my lips. I looked around at my surroundings, looked at the boy in front of me.

He glanced over his shoulder. “A few of us are splitting a cab back to Williams College.”

I squinted through the darkness, but if there were any others, I couldn’t see them. “I’m trying to get to Bennington,” I replied. “I go to the college there.”

“Bennington?” he asked, a grin spreading across his features. “I’ve heard some interesting stories about the girls there.”

I frowned, wondering whether I should be offended or not.

“I’m just teasing,” he said hastily, as if he had read my thoughts. “And besides”—he grinned—“I sort of go there myself.”

“What do you mean?” I frowned. “It’s an all girls’ school.” My voice was sharp, guarded. I wondered whether he was laughing at me or something else.

“I know.” He laughed. “So as you can see, I don’t really fit in, which is why I do most of my coursework at Williams College. But I’m actually part of the theater project at the school. At Bennington, I mean.”

“Oh,” I responded, taken aback by the response. I was aware, as were most of the girls at Bennington, of the strange loophole that allowed local boys to attend the college, at least on a part-time basis. The school had made the decision back in the 1930s, after realizing the need for a male population in order to widen the scope of stage productions they were able to produce. It was a source of endless gossip for those girls who took part in the college’s theater department, a chance to fraternize with the enemy, as it were. But the world of theater was one that rarely touched upon my own, and though I was now into my third year at Bennington, this was the first boy I had met who actually took part in the program.

“You know, I think I’ve seen you before,” he said then, with that same grin.

I shook my head, embarrassed at the idea that someone might have been watching me. “I don’t think so.”

He nodded. “Yeah, you and this other girl, you’re always together.”

I paused. “Lucy.”

He smiled. “It’s nice to meet you, Lucy.”

I blushed, realizing the mistake—his mistake or mine, I wasn’t sure—and I hastened to explain. “No, sorry, that isn’t my name. What I meant was, that it must have been my roommate, Lucy, that you saw me with.”

“Oh.” He nodded, sounding disappointed by this piece of information. He shrugged. “Look, why don’t you come along with us? You can’t stay out here on your own. Not in this weather,” he said, though I suspected it was the late hour rather than the temperature that unsettled him. “I have a car, back on campus. I could give you a lift to Bennington.”

I hesitated a moment, maybe longer, before considering the hour and the darkness and that steady feeling of fear that had slowly begun to encroach upon me before he had appeared, my savior, or so it seemed. And so I followed him, out of my circle of light—of safety, I could not help but think—wondering what it was that I had traded in the process, one unknown for the other. But then, only several feet away, stood the promised group of friends, huddled around a taxi. Packing in together, our bodies pressed tightly against one another, with one of the girls forced to sit on the lap of one of the boys, I listened as they laughed and joked with one another, this group of friends that I had been so hesitant to join at first. There was Sally, an art history major at a college in New York, who was planning to spend the summer in Venice, and Andrew, who wanted to follow his father’s footsteps and become an English professor. There was another girl whose name I couldn’t remember but who was all smiles and laughter, mainly aimed in Andrew’s direction.

And then there was the boy I had met first, and whose name was Thomas, Tom for short, and who was the most reserved now, in his circle of friends, though he smiled and listened to them as they spoke. I felt a sudden ache as we pulled away from the station, watching the friendship that existed among those in the group, evident in the easy, casual way they had with one another. It was so different from my own strange little twosome that I had formed with Lucy, which all at once seemed odd and lonely in comparison.

I had found our closeness thrilling at first, but as the years had begun to pass, I had come to feel that for everything I told Lucy, she somehow managed to absorb the information without ever giving back any of her own. Initially I had put it down to shyness, convinced that she, like me, was simply unused to living so closely with another person. Confidences would come eventually, I told myself, in the beginning. I would only have to be patient. But then, it was the holidays, and we were off for home and then back again, and away once more for the summer, and still, I had learned so little about the girl who was closer to me than anyone else I had ever known, who knew all my secrets: each and every little one.

But then, no, I corrected myself: girl wasn’t the right word. Lucy was a woman—she dressed liked one, acted like one, she even walked like one. Secretly, I had always believed it was down to the loss of one’s virginity, as if the act of copulation would somehow bestow upon one a sudden sense of maturity, as if that one act had the power to dispel the insecurities and worries that plagued most girls from the start of puberty. It was nonsense, of course. I was convinced that Lucy had never so much as kissed another human being, and yet she dressed, acted like, and walked the way I wanted to—with confidence, with control, as if she were entirely certain of who she was.

Covet. It was a peculiar word. One I tended to associate with long, dull lectures on Hawthorne and other early American writers from the Puritan age. I had to look it up once, as part of an essay I had been forced to write in school. What I found was: to desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others. There were other definitions. More words, different words, although all of them meant the same thing. But it was that first part that had stayed with me: to desire wrongfully.

It struck me as strangely beautiful and yet frighteningly accurate.