Chapter 59: Why So Serious?
The Next Morning
Ted shuffled out of the dorm room toward the bathroom, still mostly asleep, and nearly walked into Adam coming the other direction in yesterday's clothes.
"Oh." Ted's eyes sharpened with interest. "Nice. Good night?"
"You could say that," Adam said, opening the room door.
Ted followed him in, fully awake now, performing the mental arithmetic that college freshmen perform when a roommate comes home in the morning wearing yesterday's clothes.
"The woman you brought to the party," Ted said. "That was — I mean — seriously, how?"
"We got dinner," Adam said. "That's the whole story."
"You expect me to believe—"
"I don't particularly care what you believe." Adam set his bag down. "How was your night? Do you actually remember it?"
Ted's confidence shifted slightly. "Yeah. Mostly. There was a girl. Sharp, kind of argumentative. We talked for a while and then..." He trailed off. Scratched his head.
"Mostly," Adam repeated.
"I remember the important parts."
"Sure." Adam sat on the edge of his bed. "The sandwiches at this school are something else, huh."
Ted went very still.
At Columbia, as at most American universities in 1992, certain herbal products circulated at parties without particular fanfare. "Sandwich" had emerged as the working metaphor in their dorm hallway sometime around midnight the previous evening.
"I was fine," Ted said carefully.
"You were enthusiastic," Adam said. "There's a difference."
"I was completely in control."
"Of course." Adam nodded seriously. "That's what everyone says. Right up until they're not. As a wise man once said — if you walk near the water long enough, eventually your shoes get wet."
Ted stared at him.
"What exactly are you implying?"
"Nothing specific. Just that memory under those circumstances can be creative. Fills in gaps with whatever's available. Sometimes the gaps get filled with things you wouldn't have predicted."
He let that sit for a moment.
Ted reached back reflexively, performed a quick personal inventory, found nothing alarming, and exhaled with genuine relief.
"You're messing with me," he said.
"Completely," Adam agreed.
"You left early. There's no way you know what happened."
"True," Adam said. "But you don't either. That's the point."
Ted sat with this for a moment, then laughed despite himself. "You're kind of evil, you know that?"
"I've heard."
"No, but—" Ted turned more serious, which was a quality Adam was beginning to understand he had underneath the performance. "Thanks. Actually. I hear what you're saying."
He left for the bathroom. Adam lay back on his bed.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a book he'd picked up at a corner store on the way home. The cover was deliberately provocative — the kind of cover designed to be noticed. He looked at the author's name.
Nora Bing.
He looked at the surname for a moment.
Bing.
He sat up.
In Friends — which he'd watched the first half of before a particular storyline had made him stop and never quite go back — Chandler's last name was Bing. He remembered it because it was the kind of surname that people commented on. Chandler Bing. And Chandler, if he remembered correctly, had a mother who was a famous author. A very specific kind of author.
Adam looked at the book in his hand.
He looked at the author's name again.
He thought about the woman who had walked into Random House yesterday, spent an hour reading his manuscript, dismantled Cerf's negotiating position in about ninety seconds, and then invited herself to a college welcome party because she apparently found it more interesting than her hotel room.
He thought about Chandler — awkward, funny, loyal, the one who eventually figured himself out — and tried to reconstruct what he knew about Chandler's mother from the handful of episodes he'd actually watched.
Interesting, certainly. Self-possessed. Someone who had built a large life on her own terms.
That tracked.
Adam put the book back in his bag, thought about the situation for approximately two minutes, got up, and left the dorm.
Nora's hotel was twelve blocks away. He'd walked her there the previous night and knew the address.
He went to the front desk, explained that he'd left something in his friend's room, and was directed up. The door wasn't fully latched. He knocked softly, got no response, and stepped in far enough to see the nightstand.
Several receipts from last night's cab. He picked them up, scanned the addresses, found the one that would tell him what he wanted to know, memorized it, and put them back exactly as he'd found them.
He took a moment to look at Nora — genuinely asleep, completely at ease, the same composure she carried awake apparently present even unconscious.
He left without making a sound, pulling the door closed behind him.
Twelve blocks back toward campus, he thought: I walked right past that building on my way in from New Jersey.
Of course he had.
He pulled his jacket tighter against the morning air and started planning his next visit.
End of Chapter 59
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