He is the only student left in the classroom in the same place where he has been for the last two hours; in the back right of the lecture hall, legs twisted, and a stubby yellow pencil clutched in his palm. His neck hurts. The sounds of relieved students galloping down the campus green waft through the half-open window. He feels sweaty and dirty.
He is the only student left in the classroom; he is the only one, apparently, who feels that to walk out of an exam early would be to laugh in the face of whatever god conducts his fate. So, he, terrified of the karmic consequences of self-confidence, has remained curled and contorted over an exam he finished taking half an hour ago.
He looks up and notes that the hour hand of the clock has just about finished its third trip around, and it is time to do the deed whether he likes it or not. He slips his exam inside its scratchy manila folder and makes the walk of shame down to the front of the lecture hall.
“Last, but not least,” Professor Roberts booms from behind his computer, “how’d you find it?”
He shrugs, taking care to align the edges of his folder with the one below it.
“Good man,” Professor Roberts replies. “Wait, Alan, before you go.”
“Yeah?”
Roberts emerges from behind his desk and leans against the podium. He grins at Alan, all teeth.
“How’s your semester been going?”
“Fine,” Alan says.
“Monosyllabic, as usual.” Roberts grins anew. “I hear you play tennis, Alan.”
Alan nods. Roberts’ dark, slick hair and narrow face remind him of a river otter.
Professor Roberts tells him he is looking for a tennis coach for his son; three days a week, three hours a day. And not a bad commute, either, as they live right next to campus.
“What’s your going rate?” Roberts asks.
“Um… Fifty dollars,” Alan decides.
“I can work with that. That is, if you’re free. Are you free?”
Alan pauses then says, “Yes.”
“Excellent.” Professor Roberts pumps his hand up and down and pats the stack of exams next to him. “And don’t worry about this, Alan. You’ll do great.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Tell your face that.”
Alan recounts this encounter to Isabel the next day. They’re sitting outside of the coffeehouse, even though it’s in the 90’s outside. Too many people indoors and Alan’s a self-diagnosed introvert and Isabel’s a psychoanalyst-diagnosed misanthrope, so this was the only option. Isabel stirs her lavender-honey latte and purses her lips.
“So, are you going to do it?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“You don’t have an internship, or something?” She makes an obnoxious sucking sound with her straw.
How to convey this, that the option of an unpaid internship is such an impossibility for him that it’s almost laughable. He presses the plastic cup of coffee to his face to quell the beads of sweat dripping down his nose.
“Roberts is hot,” Isabel muses, “but like, creepy-hot. Like, Ted Bundy-hot.”
“That is something you should really, really never repeat to anyone else.”
“Why do you think I only told you, silly?”
Isabel and Alan make faces at each other and take more sips of caffeine. Alan feels a twinge of sadness as he observes the freckles on Isabel’s nose and the red marks on her cheeks left by her glasses–pre-nostalgia. Isabel is graduating in a week and soon she will be off to her shiny, new, adult world, reminiscing on her college years, and by extension, him, with a certain degree of fondness and detachment. As of now, Isabel is the only person whom he can call his friend and not wonder if she will take offense at the statement. He is well-accustomed to the cold breath of loneliness, but he is not quite ready to experience it yet again.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you next year.” he says.
“You’ll be fine. Make some friends. Start dating.”
“I don’t know how to do that. Any of that.” I’m not really a person yet, is what he wants to tell Isabel. I don’t know how to be a person.
“Just be authentic, and don’t overanalyze. That’s when you’ll mess it up. But you’re a pretty passive person, Alan, so I don’t think you’ll be able to fuck things up too badly.”
“Thanks.”
Graduation inexorably marches on and he holds up a sign for Isabel and spends the following weekend huddled under his blanket, scrolling through his phone in a hazy depression. Monday morning comes, an unpleasant novelty as always. He pumps air in his tires and pushes off unsteadily into the bike lane.
Summer in Houston is as close to hell as it gets. That’s the only way Alan can describe it over the phone to his mother, and that still doesn’t quite convey the extremity of heat descending upon him in wet, oppressive waves. He feels like a soda can slowly being crushed under somebody’s foot.
“Drink water,” his mom says. An immigrant mother, she expresses her love for him in directives: Eat this, drink that, sleep now, wear this. Alan assents and hangs up then because he’s reached the street.
The houses on this street are enclosed behind great wrought-iron gates and wooden fences, with swathes of lush foliage wrapping around the barriers and obscuring the lives of those inside from view. The air here smells like money. Professor Roberts’ house is some kind of antebellum clusterfuck with imposing Roman columns and big black shutters. Alan knocks on the tall red door and is soon met with Roberts’ grinning face.
“Hey, Alan, how’s things? Come on in.”
The interior of the house is a mausoleum of gold filigree and white marble. Why do rich people all have such terrible taste?
“I’ll just take you out to the backyard now,” Professor Roberts says. But the backyard is not a backyard. It is a courtyard, or an outdoor gymnasium, or some other phrase that would properly convey its colossal span. There is a long blue pool, a large grill, and a massive, massive tennis court. Alan is only able to tear his eyes away when Professor Roberts yells and a short, floppy-haired child lopes towards them.
“Alan, this is George,” Roberts says. “George—George, stop that. Say hi to Alan.”
George gives Alan a small, toothy, fuck-you grimace that children give when they are sternly told to smile for a camera. George is holding a neon-yellow tennis racquet that Alan once saw in Dick’s Sporting Goods. He thought they only had them on display.
“I’ll let you get acquainted,” Professor Roberts says. “One more thing, Alan. I know you said fifty an hour, but is thirty alright?”
Alan takes a long breath in and out. “No worries.”
Roberts gives him an oily smile and thumps him on the back. “Good man.”
Alan’s worst-case coaching scenario was a Willy Wonka child, petulant and screeching. George is not that. He is quiet, like Alan. This makes it easier. Their first session consists mostly of Alan and George silently passing the tennis ball over the net without racquets, punctuated by Alan’s low commands over the summer breeze: Fix your posture. Turn. Bend your knees. Good. George nods and doesn’t fight. No, George is not Alan’s worst-case scenario. But he really is quite bad at this. Movement on the court is not just about complex step patterns, which anyone can learn. What’s crucial is listening. Inhabiting the other person’s body and mind in the split second it takes to outpace them. Ultimately, it’s an exercise in pure empathy, and that’s something you can’t teach.
George’s movements are late and jerky. He does not have the laser gaze of a prodigy; his eyes track either Alan or the ball but not both. He is not in the flow of the game, and there is a flow you get into, eventually, where you move like water across the court. Alan feels himself slip into it now, as his muscles thaw and loosen like cooked noodles in the midday heat.
“Good. Take five.”
They sit side-by-side in matching white lawn chairs, taking long noisy gulps of water. George asks him for the time, and Alan reports it back to the younger boy, noting, with some amusement, the blatant dejection in his eyes.
“It’s only been an hour? This is hard,” George says.
“It’s not easy to be good at things.”
“That sucks.”
“I know.”
Alan comes back on Wednesday and Friday. Each day George greets him with neither glee, nor visible dread, but with a resigned equanimity. Alan chuckles to himself watching that pale solemn face toss a tennis ball back and forth like it’s as heavy as a dumbbell and trip over his own feet as he grapevines during warm-ups. He recognizes that George has probably never genuinely tried at anything. Working, and working hard, seems very foreign. And so, every failure is crushing. Every time George lands on his ass, or dashes the ball into the net, his entire body droops on itself. When Alan notices a vein bulge out of George’s reddening forehead, he calls for them to take a break.
“I had a coach before you, but we didn’t do any of this stuff.” George pauses before continuing. “But I was pretty slow.”
“You’re faster now.”
“Yeah,” George says after a moment. “Did you hate tennis when you started, too?”
“Not hate, but I didn’t love it. Not at first.”
“So, why’d you start playing?”
Alan closes his eyes. Sitting in the heat has made him drowsy, but he flips through memories in his mind’s eye.
The ebullient bounce of the ball against pavement, against Astroturf, the ball, speaking for him when other people expected him to talk.
I have things to say, but I don’t know how to say them.
The ball saying it all as he takes a long shot up the line and people in the stands cheer. No one interrogating him for the way he walks or the timbre of his voice. All of that forgotten as his teammates whip him with their towels and spray water on him, all but straddling him on the court.
“Dunno,” Alan says.
They empty out their bottles over their heads and do butterfly stretches on the grass.
“We can start with the racquet next time,” Alan says as he settles onto his bicycle seat and George nods vigorously.
“Do you know where your dad is? He needs to pay me for the week.”
“My dad’s out with some lady.”
Alan mulls over this statement.
“What lady?”
“She has a really fancy, black car. He goes for car rides with her.”
“Does he usually–is that where he usually is, in the afternoon?”
“Yeah, he leaves as soon as you get here.”
“Oh. Okay. So, is your mom here? No? Is she ever–no, not really? Got it. Uh, can you tell your dad he can just Venmo me?”
George is coming along. It’s apparent to Alan that he’ll never be a truly great player, but he could be decent. They’ve started volleying over the net, endless motion. Sometimes, it’s so hot outside, Alan thinks he’s dissolving into air. He enjoys this sensation of unbecoming, the feeling that he is erasing himself.
“Okay, this is interesting,” says a voice from behind.
The shock of intrusion elicits a full-body shudder from Alan. He whips his head around, letting the ball drop and skip away to the feet of the speaker, who kicks it up with his shoe and catches it with one hand.
“Sorry, who—”
“That’s my brother, Eliot,” George answers, “he’s a huge dick.”
“Oh.” Eliot covers his mouth. “Baby learned a new word today!”
“Go away,” George snarls, and he stalks off to the lawn chairs, the greatest display of aggression Alan has ever witnessed from him.
“He was cuter when he was younger,” Eliot says. “You know, when he couldn’t talk yet.”
Alan doesn’t laugh. Eliot turns to him and cocks his head to the side.
“What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t.”
Eliot arches his eyebrow. “Alright.”
“Alan,” he says. “It’s Alan.”
Eliot looks at Alan appraisingly, his hand shading his eyes from the sun. Alan feels like a zoo animal. He turns his own gaze on the other boy in defense. Eliot is shorter than him. Dark hair and a dangerous mouth. He looks like his father.
“Why are you even here?” George asks.
“Easy, boy. I’m working at the UH archives,” Eliot says to Alan. “My apartment has mold, which really wasn’t ideal, so, I rang Dad to drive me home.”
Alan thinks of the dubious specimen lurking behind his own bathtub.
“Your dad’s here?”
“Should be, if his special friend hasn’t already turned up,” Eliot says, a smirk plastered to his face.
Alan starts inside the house with a curious Eliot in tow. In the kitchen, Roberts is pouring himself a glass of scotch.
“Professor Roberts,” Alan says, “I—”
“Oh, just Tom is fine, Alan, please. Eliot,” Professor Roberts snaps, “close the screen door. Now. My God. We might as well be in the damn Lord of the Flies, with how you boys act around here.”
“It’s not like we have any role models,” Eliot hits back, “unless you’d like us to emulate your sad mistake of a Camus cosplay. It’s not absurdism, it’s just pathetic.”
His father’s face becomes small and tight, and Alan wonders if now is the time to quietly back away, but at the last second Roberts’ mouth broadens into a smile.
“My hair’s not white enough to roleplay Sartre, so you’re going to have to cope with the cigarette and trench coat for now.”
“Let me know when you get to the car accident,” Eliot responds, his grin mirroring his father’s. “That’ll be a good day.”
Alan decides he’ll ask for the paycheck next week.
He spends the whole weekend thinking about Eliot and his father until he finally realizes what it is about them. They talk like the people in the books he reads. Highbrow jokes and rapid-fire ripostes. Cultural and literary references that both parties miraculously understand. Words like “visage” and “vestige” and “vociferous” are tossed around casually. Alan still remembers the humiliation of sitting in his British literature seminar and mispronouncing the word “accoutrement,” the memory like a slap across his face. At the time, he wanted to yell to his classmates, No, you don’t understand, I know what this word means, I’ve seen it a hundred times. I’ve just never heard it spoken out loud! How could I? Who in my life would use a word like that with me?
But he is Alan, so he didn’t say any of this then. Instead he had just sat silently, stewing in the sweat of his shame.
“You probably already know this, Alan, but I find you very attractive,” Eliot says. “Like, I’m attracted to you.”
Alan blinks and wants to hide forever in the dark space behind his eyelids.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Eliot says calmly, “I just wanted you to know. Here.” Eliot hands him a glass of water. The glass feels stuck to Alan’s palm.
“Thanks.”
Alan lifts the glass to his mouth and watches Eliot watch him. He has suddenly forgotten how to swallow.
Is Eliot hot? Alan meditates as he adjusts George’s arm and shows him the arc of the ball for a putaway shot. Yes, Eliot is very attractive, in a Byronic, tuberculosis-patient way. What to do about this?
Don’t overanalyze, hums Isabel’s voice.
Eliot comes outside and flips George off, as is their custom. Alan feels Eliot’s gaze like how prey can sense a predator. When practice ends, Alan waits until George disappears into the recesses of the house and then walks over to Eliot.
“He’s actually getting better,” Eliot says. “You’ve achieved the impossible.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
They stand over the pool. Alan watches the heat form a gauzy shimmer over the water and inhales.
“You could kiss me, if you want,” Alan says.
“Sorry?” Eliot’s sharp gaze swivels and locks onto him.
“You know,” Alan says, his eyes trained on the water, “you could kiss me, or whatever you want, and it wouldn’t. Like, necessarily be an issue. With me.”
Eliot is silent.
Alan presses his lips together. “Yeah. Sorry.”
Eliot moves away from him and slides open the screen door. Before he steps inside, he cranes his neck to the side and squints at Alan.
“Coming?”
It’s shocking how quickly it all happens. They collapse into bed. Alan tastes the salt of his own sweat on Eliot’s skin. When they are done, Alan feels light and airy, like he is made of bubbles. They both laugh without Alan really knowing why. They do the same thing the next time Alan comes around, and the next. Alan does not allow himself to feel anything but positive about this experience. Maybe this is his new self, open and carefree.
This is what people do, right? I’m becoming a real person, he thinks. Yes, I’m becoming whole.
Eliot is a political science major. He is also a socialist, which is very interesting to Alan, because Eliot also happens to be the recipient of a trust fund courtesy of his mother’s inherited fortune. Speaking of, Eliot’s father is cheating on his mother, and he thinks the cheating has to do with the complex his father has about marrying into wealth.
“That’s the thing about the nouveau riche,” Eliot says, “they’re very insecure about it.”
Alan pushes aside any coherent thoughts he has about this and focuses on the feeling of Eliot’s arms around him instead.
“And then there’s this candidate trying to flip the second congressional district,” Eliot is saying, “but he’s still essentially a Republican. A Texas Democrat, you know?”
“Better than the alternative,” Alan says.
“So, you like Democrats? The party of centrists and lobbyists and super PACs and mediocrity?”
“Um. No? I mean… I’m not really, um, personally invested in the political system, as a whole, anyway,” Alan says, puzzling the rest of the sentence out. “Because it’s all about, uh, money. Everything in the world is about money, you know? It’s all corrupt, I think.”
“You know, at the end of the day, it all comes back to late-stage capitalism,” Eliot says. It’s unclear to Alan if Eliot has been listening to him. “Honestly, it’s the bane of our existence. It’s time to eat the rich already. I, for one, welcome the revolution.”
Alan smiles. “You know, if we were actually going to go ahead and eat the rich, you would probably be on the menu.”
Eliot is silent. He abruptly withdraws his arms from around Alan’s torso and sits up on the edge of the bed, his back turned to Alan.
“It’s late,” Eliot says thinly. “You should probably leave.”
Alan comes back two days later to work on George’s serve. A good serve is difficult, even for seasoned players. It requires speed, precision, and discipline. So, naturally, every serve of George’s goes straight down. Alan squints through his sweat at the tiny pouting figure on the other side of the net, dimly wondering why Eliot hasn’t joined them today to torment his brother.
“Why am I so bad at this?” George yells. In his frustration, he whacks his tennis racquet on the ground. Alan watches this happen in slow motion and sprints over toward George. Alan’s face feels very hot and, before he knows it, his voice has grown very loud.
“George! What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t ever–don’t ever do that again!” Alan cradles the battered racquet in his arms. “This has value, George. It costs something. Do you even know what that means? This racquet cost more than my rent. God, you think everything is so disposable because you can just get another one! But that’s not how it works for everyone else, you can’t just do whatever you want with things!”
George’s face puckers.
“Shit,” Alan says, “I’m sorry. Don’t cry. George, I’m sorry. Here, you can use my racquet. I’ll go see if there’s another one in the house somewhere. Don’t cry. Do you need tissues?”
Alan goes inside and realizes that he has no idea where anything is kept in this vast sinkhole of a home. Eliot will know. He runs upstairs to Eliot’s room and throws open the door to the incredible sight of Eliot in bed with another guy.
“Sorry,” Alan blurts, and is immediately irate with himself for apologizing.
Eliot looks straight at Alan. His eyes are cold and placid. “Hi, Alan. Do you think you could close the door?”
Alan, stunned, turns away and stumbles downstairs. Like a sleepwalker, he floats out of the house.
He gets the voicemail from Professor Roberts over the weekend:
Hey, Alan, hope you’re well.
Listen, it’s nothing personal, but I’ve just talked to George and I think maybe you might not be the right…uh, well, we’ll just say it’s not the right fit for him. So, no hard feelings, but I think, you know what I mean, right? Anyway, take care, and I’ll see you in the fall.
Yes, Alan thinks, he will take care. And even though none of it was one-sided, Alan knows he will be the only one filled with shame. It only occurs to him then that after all of this, he’s never even received his check.
Dead Houston heat rolls over Alan and makes it impossible to sleep. He decides to call his mother. She picks up on the first ring, like always. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I feel really sick.”
“Did you use Vicks Vapor Rub? Drink tea before bed?”
“Yes.”
“It’s good to be in nature. Take a walk when you can.”
Alan walks outside in his boxers and a pair of flip flops, stopping by his door to pick up his spare racquet and a matted tennis ball. Outside, the air is studded with the scents of gasoline and olive blossoms. He walks down to the other end of the street, stands in the middle of the road, makes sure there’s nothing in his way, takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, tosses the ball up, arches his back, and sends it careening through the air like a shooting star, spinning on its own axis. A perfect shot. You can buy a lot of things, but you can’t buy that.
Neha Tallapragada is an undergraduate student at Rice University in Houston, TX, studying Biochemistry. Her work has been published in Rice’s literary magazine, R2, for which she also received a second-place award in fiction. She was also the recipient of the Larry McMurtry Prize in Fiction as part of Rice University’s Fondren Library Undergraduate Creative Writing Awards. Her current influences include Susan Choi, Elif Batuman, and Brandon Taylor.
