Crossroads

by Jonathan Franzen

laughed it off, C’est l’amour. He’d been living in an inverse Eden, whose Eve had eaten the apple and shared her delicious knowledge with him. Why, oh why, did he have to destroy it? He reckoned that he could leave her room as late as 10:45 and still be back at the mailbox before a postal worker got there. For that matter, he could spend the whole morning with her and write a second letter to say he’d changed his mind and was keeping his deferment. “Are you falling asleep?” she said. “Not at all.” “Let me make you some toast.” “No, I’m okay. Champagne is like a glucose bomb.” He pressed his palm between her legs, testing the spring of the curls beneath the flannel. He moved up for a closer view while he pulled down her pajama bottoms. Oh, the beauty of what he uncovered! The inexhaustibleness of its invitation! It was true that, if he’d been as forthright in his preferences as she was in hers, he might have asked her to leave her pajama top on. He was on friendly enough terms with her breasts, but he’d gained access to them so early on that he hadn’t had time to become properly fascinated with them, as a treasure to dream of uncovering, and they’d seemed a bit irrelevant ever since. He liked them better in a bra. Best of all would be to have her top-clad and bottomless, like a collegiate female faun, Honors student above the waist, creature of his wettest dreams below. But he’d never found a way to express this preference uninsultingly, and she seemed to prefer being fully...

were younger?”

next time she saw Kitty at church, might naturally remark on and thereby learn that Frances, not Kitty, had come along with him. As if he were one with the Fury, he willed himself to keep a grip. It was vital to avoid hard braking, but the momentum of events was frightening—Perry’s giving drugs to Frances’s son, the painful conversation that Russ was now obliged to have with him, Frances’s invitation to smoke marijuana with her, and the risk that if Russ declined her invitation she would look elsewhere for company on her youth quest; the upsetting fact that she’d already been looking elsewhere, not more than an hour ago. She’d sat chatting away with Rick Ambrose, against whose hipness Russ had abundantly demonstrated he could not contend. “So, ah,” he said, when he’d safely braked for a stoplight. “You had a good talk with Rick?” “I did.” “I don’t suppose he mentioned that he and I are not on speaking terms.” “No, I already knew that. Everybody knows that.” So much for his hope that their feud wasn’t universal knowledge. “Why do you ask?” she said.

nugatory

sebum,

metempsychosis.

evinced

putative