To give credit where credit is due: that winter was the best athletic season of her life. She had no health issues, and Coach Treadwell, after giving her a tough lecture about being less unselfish and more of a leader, started her at guard in every single game. Patty herself was amazed at how slow-motion the bigger opposing players suddenly were, how easy it was to just reach out and steal the ball from them, and how many of her jump shots went in, game after game. Even when she was being double-teamed, which happened more and more often, she felt a special private connection with the basket, always knowing exactly where it was and always trusting that she was its favorite player on the floor, the best at feeding its circular mouth. Even off the court she existed in the zone, which felt like a kind of preoccupied pressure behind her eyebrows, an alert drowsiness or focused dumbness that persisted no matter what she was doing. She slept wonderfully that whole winter and never quite woke up. Even when she was elbowed in the head, or mobbed at the buzzer by happy teammates, she hardly felt it.
And her thing with Carter was part of this. Carter was perfectly uninterested in sports and appeared not to mind that, during peak weeks, she had no more than a few hours total for him, sometimes just enough to have sex in his apartment and run back to campus. In certain respects, even now, this seems to the autobiographer an ideal relationship, though admittedly less ideal when she allows herself a realistic guess about how many other girls Carter was having sex with during the six months Patty thought of him as her boyfriend. Those six months were the first of the two indisputably happy periods in Patty’s life, when everything just clicked. She loved Carter’s uncorrected teeth, his genuine humility, his skillful petting, his patience with her. He had many sterling qualities, Carter did! Whether he was giving her some excruciatingly gentle technical pointer about sex or confessing to his utter lack of career plans (“I’m probably best qualified to be some kind of quiet blackmailer”), his voice was always soft and swallowed and self-deprecating—poor corrupt Carter did not think well of himself as a member of the human race.
Patty herself continued to think well of him, hazardously well, until the Saturday night in April when she came back early from Chicago, where she and Coach Treadwell had flown for the all-American luncheon and award ceremony (Patty had been named second-team at guard), to surprise Carter at the party he was having for his birthday. From the street, she could see lights on in his apartment, but she had to ring his bell four times, and the voice that finally answered on the intercom was Eliza’s.
“Patty? Aren’t you in Chicago?”
“I’m home early. Buzz me up.”
There was a crackling on the intercom, followed by a silence so long that Patty rang the doorbell two more times. Finally Eliza, in Keds and shearling coat, came running down the stairs and out the door. “Hi, hi, hi, hi!” she said. “I can’t believe you’re here!”
“Why didn’t you buzz me up?” Patty said.
“I don’t know, I thought I’d come down and see you, things are crazy up there, I thought I’d come down so we can talk.” Eliza was bright-eyed and her hands were fidgeting wildly. “There’s a lot of drugs up there, why don’t we just go somewhere else, it’s so great to see you, I mean, hey, hi! How are you? How was Chicago? How was the luncheon?”
Patty was frowning. “You’re saying I can’t go up and see my boyfriend?”
“Well, no, but, no, but—boyfriend? That’s kind of a strong word, don’t you think? I thought he was just Carter. I mean, I know you like him, but—”
“Who else is up there?”
“Oh, you know, other people.”
“Who?”
“Not somebody you know. Hey, let’s go somewhere else, OK?”
“Like who, though?”
“He didn’t think you were coming back till tomorrow. You guys are having dinner tomorrow, right?”
“I flew back early to see him.”
“Oh my God, you’re not in love with him, are you? We really need to talk about protecting yourself better, I thought you guys were just having fun, I mean, you literally never used the word ‘boyfriend,’ which I ought to have known about, right? And if you don’t tell me everything, I can’t protect you. You sort of broke a rule, don’t you think?”
“You haven’t followed my rules, either,” Patty said.
“Because, I swear to God, this is not what you think it is. I am your friend. But there’s somebody else here who’s definitely not your friend.”
“A girl?”
“Look, I’ll make her go away. We’ll get rid of her and then the three of us can party.” Eliza giggled. “He got really, really, really excellent coke for his birthday.”
“Wait a minute. It’s just the three of you? That’s the party?”
“It’s so great, it’s so great, you’ve got to try it. Your season’s over, right? We’ll get rid of her and you can come up and party. Or we can go to my place instead, just you and me, if you’ll wait one second I’ll get some drugs and we can go to my place. You’ve got to try it. You won’t understand if you don’t try it.”
“Leave Carter with somebody else and go do hard drugs with you. That sounds like a real plan.”
“Oh God, Patty, I’m so sorry. It’s not what you think. He said he was having a party, but then he got the coke and he changed his plan a little bit, and then it turned out he only wanted me here because the other person wouldn’t come over if it was just the two of them.”
“You could have left,” Patty said.
“We were already partying, which if you’d try it you’d understand why I didn’t leave. I swear to you that’s the only reason I’m here.”
The night did not end, as it should have, with a cooling or cessation of Patty’s friendship with Eliza but instead with Patty swearing off Carter and apologizing for not having told Eliza more about her feelings for him, and with Eliza apologizing for not having paid closer attention to her and promising to follow her own rules better and not do any more hard drugs. It’s now clear to the autobiographer that an available twosome and a white anthill of powder on the nightstand would have been exactly Carter’s notion of an outstanding birthday treat for himself. But Eliza was so frantic with remorse and worry that she told her lies with great conviction, and the very next morning, before Patty had had a waking hour to think things over and conclude that her supposed best friend had done something twisted with her supposed boyfriend, Eliza showed up all a-panting at the door of Patty’s quad, wearing her idea of running clothes (a Lena Lovich T-shirt, knee-length boxing shorts, black socks, Keds), to report that she’d just jogged three lengths around the quarter-mile track and to insist that Patty teach her some calisthenics. She was afire with a plan for them to study together every evening, afire with affection for Patty and fear of losing her; and Patty, having opened her eyes painfully to Carter’s nature, went ahead and closed them to Eliza’s.
Eliza’s full-court press continued until Patty agreed to live in Minneapolis for the summer with her, at which point Eliza became scarcer again and lost interest in fitness. Patty spent much of that hot summer alone in a roachy sublet in Dinkytown, feeling sorry for herself and experiencing low self-esteem. She couldn’t understand why Eliza had been so hell-bent on living with her if she was going to come home most nights at 2 a.m. or not come home at all. Eliza did, it was true, keep suggesting