Camp zero a novel, p.8
Camp Zero: a Novel, page 8
“More than I thought I would,” Wolfe admits. The tenderness in Wolfe’s voice takes Grant by surprise. “It may be a shithole, but it’s my shithole.”
The Diggers roar in response, and the sound of collective laughter makes Grant genuinely smile. Once the laughter subsides, Wolfe’s manner turns serious again. “I can’t wait to get back home.”
“Everyone in Swift Falls wanted me to get them a job up here,” Swifty adds. “But I don’t trust this place.”
“And why is that?” Grant asks.
“It’s too easy to hide a body out here,” Swifty says, and raps his knuckles against the side of his chair. The sound resonates and expands in the concrete room.
Wolfe looks around at the other Diggers in their gray coveralls, each absorbed by a cigarette or a sandwich. “No one here is worth murdering,” he seems to suddenly decide.
Swifty laughs loudly and spits a fleck of crust across the room. “You make murder sound like a compliment.”
Wolfe shrugs. “At least you know you’re wanted for something.”
A buzzer inside the warehouse sounds, announcing that the Diggers’ shift is about to begin.
“We’ll end class there today,” Grant says. “You can hand back your responses on your way out.”
The Diggers drop the papers on his chair and leave. When he is alone, Grant quickly sifts through their writing responses. Only a few have written an actual response, describing an argument they had with the Foreman, or a few sludgy curses flung at the Cook. Most of the pages are painfully empty, the white sheets as untouched as a remote slab of ice.
He looks over to see GRIMLEY scrawled on the whiteboard. What will it take for him to finally sever his name and cut ties from his family? He stands and erases his name from the whiteboard. It’s a start, he thinks. But he’ll have to do more.
* * *
Grant’s parents had met at Walden, as had his grandparents, and his great-grandparents. A Walden marriage had occurred in every generation in the Grimley family, stretching back to the period when the university was still separated by gender, and women occupied their own quad across the Square. When Grant learned he would be housed in the dormitories in the historic Yard, his father nodded with solemn approval. “A fine place to make a name for yourself. And,” his father added, “to find a girl worthy of the Grimley line.”
The irony, of course, was that his name had already been established. He learned when he arrived on campus that he’d received a special kind of dispensation. Brunch with the university president in the Arboretum; cocktail hour in the garden of the Divinity School; dinner in the Fireside Room in the Faculty Club. He often found himself cornered in a mahogany-paneled room wearing a too-hot wool blazer while balancing a liver-based canapé on a napkin, the oil paintings of former patrons looming like the ghosts of dead relatives above him. In fact, he would probably discover they were Grimleys if he had the ability to escape whatever conversation he had been pulled into. The line of questioning was always the same. Was he enjoying Walden? Had he declared his major? Surely, he wasn’t considering literature as a concentration? And would he be kind enough to let his parents know that so-and-so wished them their very best? He assumed the conversations were a ruse to get closer to a connection to the Grimleys. And so he replied in a clipped tone, suppressing a rising fear that the trajectory of his life was already set.
His father was the one who encouraged him to accept the invitation from the Wild Boars, which arrived handwritten in ink and sealed with a red wax stamp of a boar. The Wild Boars were the most prominent Finals Club at Walden and held their notorious parties in a colonial-revival mansion at the edge of campus. The invitation meant the Wild Boars were considering him as a member, and the party was a trial run to see how he might fit into the club.
“Three former presidents have been Wild Boars, Grant,” his father impressed upon him. “Dozens and dozens of high-impact CEOs. Endless senators and congressmen and diplomats. Grandad would be rolling in his grave if he knew you were planning to decline. This isn’t an invitation. It’s a summons.”
As much as he wanted to, Grant could never say no to his father. So, he put on the suit he wore to Grandad’s funeral and shaved the coarse mustache he’d grown after viewing a French New Wave cinema series. He wore a pair of tennis shoes and threw that week’s readings into a tote bag (at least he could read in the corner if he felt awkward) and set off to the party.
When he arrived at the mansion, he found boys in pressed tuxedos pounding bottles of beer in the living room, the Victorian-era settees pushed against the wall, while their inebriated dates collapsed on the Persian rugs, high heels and miniskirts askew. Pop music blasted into the night. Someone handed him a bottle of bourbon, which he drank so quickly that his eyes watered and his throat burned. Now Grant understood. College wasn’t about books and ideas and new directions. It was slow annihilation.
The bourbon settled in at precisely the same moment that someone mercifully put on an ancient goth playlist in the drawing room, and suddenly he was dancing in a way that made his limbs feel as if they were levitating. He didn’t care that everyone was looking at him. Feeling drunk and elated, he danced vigorously for three and a half songs until the room started to constrict and he thought, for a terrifying moment, that he might vomit on the meze platter. After locating the fire escape, he hauled himself out the window, sucking in a lungful of air as he steadied himself on the metal railing. He could hear the Wild Boars and their dates laughing inside.
The fire escape was high enough to afford a clear view of Walden’s campus. He could make out the pink sandstone of the English building, and the concrete monolith of the School of Design. He could see the Beaux-Arts library named after the alumni who drowned on the Titanic, and the Yard where the founding fathers of the college once grazed their cattle. There was the museum with his favorite artwork by a German Weimar painter encased behind bulletproof glass, and the faux Gothic dining hall where he ate under the black-taloned chandeliers. Even at this late hour, students scurried along the diagonal footpaths lit by yellow lamps. As Grant gazed at the campus, he felt an enveloping emptiness.
Nothing. He felt nothing at all. It didn’t matter what he studied or who he hung out with, whether he became a Wild Boar or remained a peripheral weirdo. His destiny had been sealed the moment he was born. After graduation, he would join his father in the Floating City and work in the Grimley Tower, plotting the next resource their company would plunder.
“Don’t kill yourself!” someone yelled through the open window. “Your dancing isn’t that bad.”
More hysterical laughter.
There was no way he would commit suicide over the Wild Boars. The club wasn’t worth it. He started scaling the stairs until he reached the edge of the flattop roof.
A voice called out, “You’re almost there.”
He pulled himself onto the roof, and then stood, dusting the dirt off his pants. “Are you escaping the party too?”
A young woman sat on an overturned milk crate, trying to light a cigarette with a match. The wind blew, extinguishing the flame before the tobacco caught fire. She cursed, and then held out a black bow tie. “I’m actually working down there. Catering. Refiller of nacho bowl. Refresher of shitty beer.” She tried to light the cigarette again. This time the fire took, and a small red cherry glowed in the dark. “But I’m on my break now. Needed to escape the date rapists. Man, it’s dank down there. You Wild Boars should learn a thing or two about consent.”
He tried to make her out in the murky light. Her voice carried a fierceness that belied her small stature. She had somewhat elfin features: pale skin, large blue eyes with dark hair tucked into the collar of an oversized white button-up shirt. She seemed to be wearing tiny shorts or no pants at all, and a pair of scuffed army boots without laces.
“I’m not a member,” he said quickly. “I actually don’t even know why I’m here. I hate this place.” There, he said it. The word hate sounded delicious in the muggy air.
She raised an eyebrow. “You know how lucky you are to be here, right?”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me. Are you a student?” he asked, desperate to change the subject.
“No,” she said bluntly. “I can’t afford college.” Her voice faltered for a moment, and he could tell this fact bothered her. She turned away from him and asked, “If you hate this place, why are you here?”
He realized he still had the bottle of bourbon in his jacket pocket and reached down to take a swig, trying to appear indifferent. “I guess I was just curious.”
“About the Wild Boars?”
“No, not them.” He felt embarrassed saying it aloud. “What a college party is like.”
“Is it what you hoped?”
“Everyone is so…”
“Wasted?” she offered.
“Glib.” He took another drink from the bottle and wiped his mouth. “They already know what they’ll achieve.”
She looked at him, her eyes suddenly growing intense. “What’s it like knowing everything will be okay?”
“I don’t know that.” He passed her the bottle. “I don’t fucking know anything.”
“What are you studying at Walden, then?”
“Twentieth-century Anglophone Literature.” He hoped he didn’t sound like an elitist asshole.
She nodded. “Okay, so you’re spending four years at the most exclusive university in the world literally studying something that barely exists. Physical books. Don’t tell me that’s a personal risk for you.”
“It is! My father will be furious when he finds out.”
“But he’ll pay your tuition, won’t he?”
He said nothing. She was right, of course. His educational expenses had been earmarked in his trust fund the moment he was born.
He passed her the bottle of bourbon. “Where are you from?”
She took a hearty slug. “A town you’ve never heard of.”
“Try me.”
She told him the name of the town in the West, population 327. “You know it?”
“No,” he admitted, and then added, “It sounds quaint.”
“Oh, it’s great if you’re into Jesus and your second cousin.” She ground the cigarette under her boot and quickly said, “I’m actually not inbred.”
He laughed. The moment of tension seemed to dissipate, so he found a milk crate and sat next to her. “I’m Grant,” he said, intentionally leaving out his last name.
“Jane.” She leaned toward him and placed a cool hand against his flushed face. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You’re done with work?”
“I am now.”
* * *
Jane snuck a bottle of red wine from the bar and met him on the street outside the party. They tipsily passed the wine back and forth as they walked by the Federal Revival houses and red-brick buildings. They passed a dormitory with bright white trim and a crimson flag that fluttered on the golden roof. Soft light glowed from each window. The building was modeled after the State House and looked fit for passing bills and resolutions, not housing college kids who decorated the windowsills with empty beer bottles and cans of aerosol deodorant.
“It’s a beautiful campus,” Jane said.
The sadness in her voice took Grant by surprise. “I thought you disliked it here.”
“I do. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s really nice. It’s actually why I took the catering job in the first place. The only way I can enter Walden is by working here.”
He’d only visited Walden on his Flick once and was surprised it was such a pathetic facsimile of the real campus. The red brick appeared wooden. The buildings slanted at odd angles, as if a child had drawn each structure. The students often repeated, so that he saw the same blond girl in a W sweatshirt sitting cross-legged beneath a leafless maple a dozen times. Nothing on the Flick captured the experience of walking the paths in the Yard, or up the granite stairs to the library. The simulation approximated reality, but it was lifeless and without feeling. After he logged off, he took pleasure in the crunch of maple leaves under his feet as he walked along the cobblestones and listened to the Russian bells chiming in the church’s white tower. This is real, he tried to convince himself. Everything on-feed is a facsimile.
“Did you ever notice how there are no shadows on the Flick?” he asked Jane.
“Yeah,” she said. “And no heat. I heard that the Walden on the Flick is purposely buggy, so that only real Walden students can experience the campus.”
By then, they’d reached the footbridge that crossed the river to Boston. The lamppost cast a dim yellow light, engineered to evoke the Puritan-era nostalgia Walden was famous for.
Grant tipped the wine bottle over. Two red drops splattered to the ground. “We seem to be out of supplies.”
“I’ve got some vodka in my freezer,” Jane said. “I think it’s cherry flavored. It was on a deep discount at the Russian grocer near my place.”
There was nothing he wanted more than to drink sweet Russian liquor with her. “I love cherries.”
“Me too,” she said.
They were now standing in the center of the footbridge, right where the rowing team started its yearly regatta, and where Grant had met his father, months earlier, while the crowd cheered the eights racing by. He’d never understood the fierce devotion people had for sports, as if a sense of belonging could only be felt through shared victory. Standing there with Jane made all of Walden’s rituals seem artificial—the team sports, the exclusive clubs, even the discussions in his literary seminars. None of it existed in the world Jane lived in. Maybe Walden is the simulation, he thought.
Jane leaned toward him and loosened his striped tie before clipping her bow tie to his collar. “It looks better on you.”
“Thanks, I guess?” He threaded his fingers through hers like he’d wanted to on the roof. “Can I kiss you?”
She tilted her face to his. “Took you long enough.”
The kiss was wetter and less controlled than Grant would have liked, but she didn’t seem to mind. Jane tasted like wine and beeswax lip gloss, and when she slid her hand beneath his shirt, he could feel the ragged edge of her uneven fingernails.
* * *
Jane’s studio was across the river in an industrial building that once housed the workers of a long-shuttered textile factory. It faced the turnpike and consisted of one narrow room with a hot plate, and a small bathroom where she did all her dishes in the tub. A futon mattress, without a frame, was pushed into the corner of the room, and a folding card table with a stool and a chair was positioned against the front window. He’d never been in such a humble room before and tried to hide his surprise by examining the row of flowering cacti along the window ledge.
“Survival plants,” she said, and set a mug of cherry vodka next to him. “I can neglect them and not feel guilty.”
The cacti were small, prickly things, capped with neon-pink and orange flowers, vibrant and alive despite their defensive postures. Grant reached out to touch one of the cactus’s spikes and felt a momentary prick.
“Careful,” she said, and sat down next to him. “They hurt more than they look.” She took his hand in hers.
A feeling hummed, sweet and low, in his chest, as he looked at her. The room glowed as the first hazy rays of sunlight crested over the turnpike. She pressed her thumb against the inside of his palm. The sun was now spilling its golden light across the studio’s walls. The sounds of traffic filled the room and their shadows on the wall shifted as they kissed and undressed each other. When they fell onto the futon, it felt like falling into a warm cloud.
Finally. He kissed the space behind Jane’s ear. Her Flick momentarily blinked on and off, as if to say: I’m here.
* * *
The Barber is spinning a gold coin on the table when Grant steps into the cafeteria for lunch. He’s trying not to feel too disappointed by how terribly his first class went, and slumps down next to the Barber where two trays of sandwiches are left out on a table. NOT-TUNA is written on one of the trays, TUNA on the other. “Which kind is better?” he asks.
“Why not let the coin decide?” the Barber says. “Heads for not-tuna, and tails for tuna.” The Barber flips the coin in the air and slaps a hand down on it after it lands. “Ah, it’s heads. See?” He shows Grant the coin imprinted with the head of a dead queen.
“Not-tuna it is.” Grant grabs a sandwich from the first tray. “I hope it’s not lynx leftovers.” He takes a bite and chews thoughtfully. “Are you sure this isn’t tuna?” He opens the sandwich and looks at the pinkish filling. It tastes and smells exactly like the tinned tuna he and Jane would mix up with mayonnaise and chives and eat on crackers.
“Of course it’s tuna,” the Barber says. “It’s always tuna. Flin saves the game for our evening meal.”
Grant takes a suspicious whiff of the sandwich. “Then why offer a choice?”
“Because the sandwich always tastes better if you think you’ve chosen it.” The Barber gestures toward the Diggers’ bunks. “Every day I watch the Diggers come in for lunch and choose from one of those trays. They never complain that the sandwiches taste the same. They’re satisfied with the illusion of a choice.”
Grant puts the sandwich down on the table. “That is truly messed up. Does Meyer know about this?”
“I’m sure he does. It was probably his idea. Everything here is. What has Meyer told you about camp?”
“That construction is delayed, but he expects the campus will open soon.”
“Does he now?” The Barber sounds amused. He taps the coin on the table. “You need to open your eyes, Grant, and look around you. There are no choices here. Meyer would never have flipped that coin.”
