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“I seriously can’t believe you’re screwing him.”
“Crude, Foreman.”
“Sorry. Sleeping with him. Engaging in blessed coitus. What do you want me to say?”
Allison Cameron wiped the underside of her chin with a napkin, intercepting a dribble of mushy tomato from her thawed-from-frozen cafeteria sandwich. Foreman was working on his own ham-and-cheese crossiant, inexplicably warm yet somehow still rock-solid. The ladies behind the bain-marie had to be nuclear physicists in disguise, Foreman reckoned, because he held in his hands a twenty-first century miracle- the first solid object to be simultaneously drenched and withered, to be hard as carbon and limp as gutted roadkill. Fascinating stuff. Not quite as fascinating as Allison Cameron’s recent sexual escapades- now, he couldn’t get his head around all that.
“How is he? Like, really.”
“What do you mean?”
Cameron was playing coy, and smiled at him over her sourdough.
“You know what I mean. Chase’s got to be amazing in bed, right?”
“Oh, you know.” Cameron swirled the ice around in her coke. “He’s decent.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure. ‘Cause you’re sure as hell not screwing him for his personality.”
Foreman might have taken it too far- for a second Cameron looked offended (and so she should, he reprimanded himself, internally, don’t go feeling sorry for her) but when her lips came away from the coke-straw she was all smiles, all sly laughter- and she kicked him under the table with the pointed toe of a sensible, dress-standard black shoe and said “he’s not all bad, Foreman. He’s not dumb.”
“Never said he was dumb.”
“You like him. I know you like him.”
“He’s a good guy. I just don’t get it.”
“It’s just sex, Foreman. We’ve been over this- it’s not serious.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. But like, c’mon, just sex?”
“It’s funny that you should care so much.”
She was still playing. She didn’t mean anything by the remark. She had one half of her brain- her brilliant brain- here, conversing with him over a lunch table, and she had the other half of her brain somewhere else. Maybe perched on a waist-heigh shelf in a dank janitorial closet under a flickering cord-light while Robert Chase’s fingertips counted down her rib-bones. Something like that. She couldn’t know- shouldn’t know- that there were a million different reasons that he cared.
For one, Cameron, Foreman thought, forgive the cliche, but you’re too just damn good for him. Chase’s no blockhead, but you’ve got to understand he’s got nothing on you.
Foreman didn’t regret that whole business with the article- in the same way he didn’t necessarily regret being born. Hardship had followed the act of it, hardships sometimes unimaginable, but it had been necessary. He had spent nights and days poring over the notes she had given him- and some he had stolen from her locker-room- and, drawing a straight timeline from then to now, he figured that was when it had started- the sinking feeling in his chest, as he read her words, traced the pen-marks she had handwritten in the margins, and realised she was better than any of them. Her article, even in a rough and unfinished form, sung with hard science and snug explanations and ethical quandaries and a clear-headed mastery of language that drew him not only to the next page but closer to the heart of its writer-
It was maybe then, he figured, that he fell in love.
It was so good it made him think of car alarms and his shimmering reflection in a puddle of gasoline outside a Super-Fuel. It was so good it made him think of flecks of police-offer spit and fingers on the barrel of a standard-issue firearm.
It was so good- he needed it.
He cut out the bits about ethics. He figured maybe, in the end, their articles would be so different she wouldn’t notice- and he wanted her to keep some of that stuff, anyway. Those words about people- he couldn’t use them. Even if they were good. Even if they were the best.
It didn’t work out like that.
Foreman had his due punishment. God had made certain to smite him, that was for sure. The article had poisoned him suddenly and awfully like a virus flexing inside of his bloodstream; he was afflicted, now, with these encumbering feelings for its author, as if she’d spiked her pen-ink with a creeping aphrodisiac- as if she knew she’d be betrayed- and now he had to bite and rave and lie that he wasn’t her friend, that he didn’t care, and all to save face, and God, did it hurt.
You’re smart, Cameron, Foreman thought, the way your mind works is too damn beautiful for Chase. And I don’t know if Chase stands for much- and I know you do, and I’d hate to see you ever step down.
Turning the idea over in his mind, around and around, Foreman- dying in that quarantine room, as Cameron faced him in a hazmat suit- thought it would surely give him some measure of satisfaction to inject her with the dirty needle. The image of hurting the person who had caused him such grief with her presence- with the new element to her presence- seemed cathartic. In actuality it was in no measure cathartic. Foreman knew the chance of infecting her was very low- almost negligible- but he felt haunted by a spectre as he awaited her return, shuddering at the idea he might have doomed her to the same fate. He felt as if he’d stepped on a monarch butterfly or bent the golden iron bars of Heaven’s gate.
But he held strong to the belief that Cameron would pull through. She’d go to the apartment. She’d help him- even if she figured the risk of infection was truly minimal-even if she had to go behind House’s back to get it done.
In the end he had found he could not trust his father. When a man can no longer trust his own father, he will turn to the prettiest girl in the room, and he’ll pray to God she comes through- and Cameron did. House hadn’t been wrong, but she’d given him the biopsy. He’d had trouble pouring coffee for a while- and House had thought him a simpleton- but Foreman had been so damn happy to live.
He thought, often, of how- in the throes of pain, before he was put under- how he’d told Cameron he was sorry about the article. To this day, he couldn’t remember the state of his brain. The afterimages of agony blurred his memory and Foreman could not have said wether he was lying to earn Cameron’s trust or whether, in that moment, he had been truly sorry.
He remembered her dismissal, though. If you still want to apologise, I’ll be around. It made him love her just a little more. The feeling mixed badly with the pain- he remembered that.
And after he’d spoken to his dad- right at the end- she’d caved, I accept your apology- and inexplicably that had warmed him, too.
It had been hard to go on after that. He felt as if he owed so much to Cameron- owed her the depth of his feelings, surely- but who would that help?
No, he’d betrayed her. He’d slashed her shot at moving past Princeton-Plainsboro by stealing her paper. He’d stabbed her in the leg with a dirty needle.
And, anyway- whenever Foreman looked out the window he did not see Cameron’s reflection beside him. He still saw- damningly, after all these years!- he still saw the hazy, dirty face of a young boy in a gasoline puddle and he still heard, behind him, the clamour of New York City.
And the thing was- he looked at all that- and he knew he’d infect her again. He’d infect Chase or House or his father. He’d stab Jesus through his hazmat suit.
I suppose I’m jealous of Chase, Foreman thought, because he can love you out loud, and he’ll never get scared that one day he’ll have to bite your throat out.
“Foreman?”
Foreman watched the way little stipplings of sunlight slanted off the biro pens lined up in her coat pocket. Foreman watched the slipshod brunette curls that had escaped her headband bob and dance in the AC breeze.
I guess I wish we were different people, he almost said. Cameron, you know I could recite your article by heart?
“Hey,” he said, laughing. “just making conversation. You and Chase, man- I don’t see it. But if he’s as good as you say he is…”
Cameron laughed. She made out like she was going to throw a slice of tomato at his face.
And Foreman pretended to duck; and Foreman pretended he was telling the truth.