‘I’m going to be a dentist, not a doctor,’ Nate said, clipping off each word. Cords were beginning to stand out on his neck. So far as I know, Skip Kirk was the only person in Chamberlain Hall, maybe on the whole campus, who could get under my roomie’s thick Yankee skin. ‘I’m in pre-dent, do you know what the dent in pre-dent means? It means teeth, Skip! It means — ‘
‘Remind me to never let you fill one of my fuckin cavities.’
‘Why do you have to say that all the time?’
‘What?’ Skip asked, knowing but wanting Nate to say it. Nate eventually would, and his face always turned bright red when he finally did. This fascinated Skip. Everything about Nate fascinated Skip; the Captain once told me he was pretty sure Nate was an alien, beamed down from the planet Good Boy.
‘Fuck,’ Nate Hoppenstand said, and immediately his cheeks became rosy. In a few moments he looked like a Dickens character, some earnest young man sketched by Boz.
‘That.’
‘I had bad role models,’ Skip said. ‘I dread to think about your future, Nate. What if Paul Anka makes a fuckin comeback?’
‘You’ve never heard this record,’ Nate said, snatching up Diane Renee Sings Navy Blue from the bed and putting it back between Mitch Miller and Stella Stevens Is in Love!
‘Never fuckin want to, either,’ Skip said. ‘Come on, Pete, let’s eat. I’m fuckin starving.’
I picked up my geology text — there was a quiz coming up the following Tuesday. Skip took it out of my hand and slung it back onto the desk, knocking over the picture of my girlfriend, who wouldn’t fuck but who would give a slow, excruciatingly pleasant handjob when she was in the mood. Nobody gives a handjob like a Catholic girl. I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things in the course of my life, but never about that.
‘What did you do that for?’ I asked.
‘You don’t read at the fuckin table,’ he said. ‘Not even when you’re eating Commons slop.
What kind of barn were you born in?’
‘Actually, Skip, I was born into a family where people do read at the table. I know it’s hard for you to believe there could be any way of doing things except for the Kirk way of doing them, but there is.’
He looked unexpectedly grave. He took me by the forearms, looked into my eyes, and said,
‘At least don’t study when you eat. Okay?’
‘Okay.’ Mentally reserving the right to study whenever I fucking well pleased, or felt I needed to.
‘Get into all that ram-drive behavior and you’ll get ulcers. Ulcers are what killed my old man. He just couldn’t stop ramming and driving.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry, it was a long time ago. Now come on. Before all the fucking tuna surprise is gone. Coming, Natebo?’
‘I have to finish this leaf.’
‘Fuck the leaf
If anyone else had said this to him, Nate would have looked at him as at something uncovered beneath a rotted log, and turned silently back to his work. In this case, Nate considered for a moment, then got up and took his jacket carefully off the back of the door, where he always hung it. He put it on. He adjusted the beanie on his head. Not even Skip dared to talk about Nate’s stubborn refusal to stop wearing his freshman beanie. (When I asked Skip where his own had disappeared to — this was our third day at UM, and the day after I met him — he said, ‘Wiped my ass with it and threw the fucker up a tree.’ This was probably not the truth, but I never completely ruled it out, either.)
We clattered down the three flights of stairs and went out into the mild October dusk. From all three dorms students were headed toward Holyoke Commons, where I worked nine meals a week. I was a dishline boy, recently promoted from silverware boy; if I kept my nose clean, I’d be a stackboy before the Thanksgiving break. Chamberlain, King, and Franklin Halls were on high ground. So was the Palace on the Plains. To reach it, students took asphalt paths that dipped into a hollow like a long trough, then joined into one broad brick way and climbed again. Holyoke was the biggest of the four buildings, shining in the gloom like a cruise-ship on the ocean.