Chapter 29: The Bench

He picked me up at noon in Pasquale's old Buick, not the black car.

No driver. No cousins.

"Where's everybody?" I said.

"I gave them the day off. They went to a Cubs game. They were very confused."

We drove down to campus with the windows open.

The trees on the quad had that first green on them, so thin you could see through it.

We walked across the quad without talking.

Halfway across, I stopped.

This was the place. Between the library steps and the third oak.

I'd walked away from him here with my back straight, and never once turned around.

"You drew me turning around," I said. "In the last sketchbook."

"I know."

"I never did."

"I know. I wanted to see what it would look like."

I turned around.

I looked back at the library steps, where a twenty-two-year-old boy in a black gown had stood with his cap in his hand.

There was nobody there now but a girl with a backpack, eating an apple.

"It looks like that," I said.

He laughed, and then he had to look at the sky for a minute.

The arts building hadn't changed at all.

The same smell inside, of turpentine and burnt coffee and spray starch.

Somebody's radio was playing on the third floor.

We went to the back stairwell, the one nobody used.

The bench was still on the landing, under the window.

There was a girl sitting on it.

She was maybe nineteen, round and pretty, with a sketchbook on her knees and a sandwich in wax paper.

She was wearing a skirt she had very obviously made herself, out of an old floral curtain.

"Sorry," she said. "Do you need the stairs?"

"No," I said. "We're just looking. I used to eat lunch here."

"Really? Nobody comes here."

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