T he cafeteria was steamy, a runny fog of it on the windows that looked out onto the Godwin Hall courtyard, a wavering cloud of it hovering above the stainless-steel bins of pasta and Mystery Meat and soggy broccoli.
As always, Perry went straight to the salad bar with a little brown plastic bowl on his tray.
(“How do I know how much dinner I want until I have my salad?” he’d say when Craig asked him why he didn’t just get everything at once.)
Craig got a pile of manicotti with a couple of slices of garlic bread tossed on top, a big cup of the broccoli, and a plastic glass of Coke without ice, and took it to the table he and Perry always occupied when they ate together.
“Sorry, again,” Craig said when Perry sat down across from him with his pale lettuce and a little stack of baby carrots drizzled with something one shade of orange darker than the carrots. “I hope you didn’t sustain any emotional damage, witnessing me kissing Nicole’s sweet little feet.”
Perry sighed and picked up his fork. He seemed to be purposely avoiding Craig’s eyes. Even though they’d been getting along so much better since the start of the semester, it still seemed to piss Perry off royally when he found some article of Nicole’s lying around the room. One time he’d whipped a pair of her pantyhose (admittedly, they’d been lying under his desk chair) at Craig so hard that, if they’d been made of anything other than that airy pantyhose stuff, Craig might have gotten hurt. He wouldn’t have liked it any better, Craig knew, stumbling in on the half-naked foot-kissing scene.
“But you’ll get over it, right? Okay, man?” Craig asked, stabbing his fork into the manicotti, which gave way like clay, some of it spilling off the plate and onto the table. “You hear me, Perry? I’m genuinely sorry about—”
“Drop it,” Perry said.
Craig shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. “But, you know, if you had a girlfriend, I think I’d—”
“Drop it,” Perry said again.
Craig nodded, but he was trying to think of something else to say, something to change Perry’s mind about being all pissy. He had a hard time dropping things, he knew. He used to overhear conversations like this between his mom and dad, and it was always his dad who was saying, “For God’s sake, can you just let it go?” and Craig would be thinking to himself, Yeah, why the hell doesn’t she just shut up?, as his mom went on and on and on with her grievance or apology or explanation. Now Craig realized how hard it was to just drop something when you had something left to explain.
He said, after a few moments of silence, “I wish you’d loosen up about Nicole, man. She’s my life. I’m your roommate, so it’s sort of like—”
Perry put his fork down loudly on the table. It startled Craig, but he couldn’t stop.
“I’m going to marry her, man,” Craig said, looking up from the fork to Perry’s stony expression. “This isn’t just any college fucking-around kind of thing. This is love, and I—”
Perry pushed his salad bowl away, and it slid toward Craig. It might have landed in his lap if Craig hadn’t put a hand up to stop it.
“What the hell’s the matter with you, Perry?”
Perry leaned across the table then. Maybe it was just the humidity in the cafeteria, but his cheeks looked strangely flushed, and there seemed to be a light film of sweat at his temples and on his forehead—and then, as if he’d been thinking about it for a long, long time, Perry said, “Look, Craig, if you’re not going to drop it you’re going to have to hear something you don’t want to hear, okay? I’ve been keeping my mouth shut, but if every time we have dinner you’re going to start in on me about how uptight I am, and how Nicole’s this innocent virgin, and how you two are so madly in love, I’m warning you, man, I’m going to tell you something you do not want to hear.”