A TwinStar Side Story: Roomies (Connie)

Connie’s side story. She and Allison Tobias met in college, became roommates and close friends. Connie always orbited Allison, even if the path was a bit elliptical.

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Callie saw it first.

She was at the kitchen counter making tea when Allison came through the front door with him, and Callie's exact thought, later reconstructed, was *oh no.* Not because he wasn't attractive — he was, in the uncomplicated way of a man who played a sport in high school and still moved like it — but because Connie was on the couch with her legs tucked under her and her reading glasses on, which meant Connie was bored, which meant Connie was available in the way that had nothing to do with her schedule.

Allison said his name was Derek. She said it the way you say a name when you're hoping a name will be enough.

Connie looked up from her book and took him in the way she took most things in — without hurry, without performance, an incisive inventory. Callie watched her do it and returned her attention to the kettle.

"Derek," Connie said. "You want a beer?"

*****

He stayed for dinner. This had not been the plan, as far as Callie could tell, but Connie had started making pasta and the garlic hit the oil and the apartment smelled the way apartments are supposed to smell and Derek sat down at the kitchen table and that was that. Allison set plates. Callie grated cheese and watched Connie move around the kitchen in the old Colorado t-shirt she'd cut the neck out of and slit, the one that did what it did, and thought: *Allison, honey. Clock out.*

The conversation at dinner was easy. Derek was in engineering, which he mentioned twice. He'd grown up in Fort Collins, which he mentioned once. He asked Connie what she was studying and she said psychology and he said *oh wow, so you're analyzing us right now* and Connie smiled and said *always* and let it land and moved on, and Callie saw him recalibrate without knowing he was recalibrating. She also watched Allison's eyes remain fixed on Derek, who was the only object in the room.

After dinner Allison said she needed to shower before they went out, which was news to Callie and apparently also news to Derek, who nodded and said sure and watched Allison disappear down the hall. The bathroom door closed. The pipes knocked once in the wall.

Callie refilled her wine.

Derek was doing the thing men do in unfamiliar kitchens, the remembering how to help mom helpfulness, stacking plates, looking for where things went. Connie was at the counter with her back to him, putting away the olive oil, the pepper, reaching up to the cabinet above the stove in a way that was probably necessary and also wasn't not a choice.

Callie became very interested in her wine.

"So Fort Collins," Connie said, not turning around. "You a skier?"

He was a skier. He had opinions about the mountains. Connie turned and leaned back against the counter and listened to his opinions about the mountains with the full attention of a woman who is deciding something, and Callie thought: *there it is.* Not aggressive. Not even obvious. Just Connie orienting toward a thing she'd decided she wanted, the way a plant turns toward a window. The interest itself was the move. The plant stayed still, but the sun changed its orbit.

By the time Allison came back down the hall in her jacket, smelling of her good shampoo, Derek had told Connie about the summer he spent in Telluride and Connie had told him almost nothing about herself, which was its own kind of telling. Allison took his arm and they left and Connie went back to the couch and her book and her reading glasses and Callie stood in the kitchen with her wine.

"Don't," Callie said.

Connie turned a page. "Don't what."

***** 

His name in Connie's phone after that night was *Derek Engineering*, which Callie discovered because Connie left her phone on the bathroom counter and Callie was not proud of looking but also was not surprised by what she found.

She didn't ask. Connie didn't offer. This was the arrangement.

What Callie knew, assembled from the evidence available: Derek had texted first, which meant he'd found a reason, which meant the Telluride conversation had done what Connie intended it to do. They met twice in the following week, not at the apartment. The second time, Derek came back to the apartment.

Allison was at the library. This was also not an accident.

Callie was in her room with the door open, a choice she would later question, and what she heard from down the hall was not what she expected, which was to say she'd expected Connie to be the kind of quiet that was its own announcement. She was not quiet. She was — the word Callie landed on, lying on her bed staring at the ceiling — *committed.*

They were in Allison’s room, and there was an intensity to it that came through the wall at both low and high frequencies, with something Callie understood she was not supposed to hear, could not stop hearing, and would not forget. Derek’s “Fuck, NO!” was either in protest or surrender, and she couldn’t tell which.

Later, she heard the shower. Then the front door.

Connie came into the kitchen in her robe, poured a glass of water, and drank half of it standing at the sink.

"Well," Callie said.

"He won't be back," Connie said.

"To see you?"

"To see Allison."

Callie put her book down. "That was the point?"

Connie considered this with what seemed genuine interest, the way she sometimes considered questions in her psychology seminars, turning them over to see what was underneath. "I don't know," she said, which was probably the most honest thing she'd said all week. "He was wrong for her."

"And you could tell that how?”

"I could tell," Connie said, and refilled her glass, "because he came, because we used her room.”

She went back to her own room. Callie sat with that for a while.

***** 

Derek texted Allison twice more and then stopped. Allison mentioned it once, briefly, in the kitchen — *I guess he wasn't that interested* — with the flat acceptance of a woman who has learned not to build too much on two dinners and a night out. Connie, at the table with her coffee, said *his loss* without looking up from her laptop, and meant it, Callie was nearly certain, in at least one of the ways it could be meant.

Allison moved on. There were other boys that year, and then she graduated and went to graduate school at MIT, and the house scattered the way senior houses do, everyone suddenly living their actual lives in other cities.

Callie got a Christmas card from Allison for four years running and then didn't, which was how those things went. She got no Christmas card from Connie, which was also how those things went.

What she kept, without meaning to, was the image of Connie at the kitchen sink in her robe at nine o'clock on a Tuesday, drinking her water with the unhurried confidence of a woman who had done exactly what she meant to do and felt exactly as much about it as she felt, which was: fine. Not satisfied, particularly. Not guilty at all. Just fine.

Callie had spent a long time thinking about what it would be like to be built that way.

She never quite decided whether it would be a gift or a problem.

And that’s what she liked about her. Connie had never needed to ask the question.