He followed the girl underneath a placard reading Dance. She had a long striding walk, elegant for such a short and shapely girl. And she moved slow too, slow enough that he walked up too close behind her and ticked her foot, which caused her to lose her footing and tremble in her heels.
“Hey there, what’s your name?” he asked opportunistically. He came shoulder-to-shoulder with her.
She cut her eyes his way. “Erycha Evans.”
Erycha gave him her hand.
He was already looking at her, appraising her. She judged him and his appraising eyes right back, a full-on stare. Like so many boys, he had eyelashes that she would kill for; even once-a-week trips to Miss Simms’s beauty parlor couldn’t lengthen her lashes that long. Ironic, she thought, how pretty a boy could be. She thought about the beauty parlor back home, the sweet smells, the sour talk, the divas coming and going and prettying her up. She didn’t have money enough to go there and get fine right now. She knew she was half as pretty as she could be, wondered why he was even interested.
“Where you from?” she asked.
He blinked at her like the question was unusual somehow even though it was the first question everyone asked where she was from. “Highland,” he said after a second.
“You are?”
He nodded.
“Me too,” she stuttered, “I’m from there, too.”
She had never seen him before. He had never seen her.
“You are?”
“Yeah.”
“Highland isn’t big enough to hide people.” He laughed. “I live over by where the Buddhist temple used to be.”
She laughed. “I’m a lot closer to Central City Mission than that Buddhism place.”
The mystery was solved. “Oh,” they said in unison.
“You’re from the Westside.” He laughed.
“You from East Highland.” She smiled, letting her teeth show this time. “But it’s all good: we still from the same city.”
“The same suburb.” He corrected her.
“Nah, where I’m at, it’s city.”
Like the city that had birthed and nurtured it, the university was vast but uncrowded and serene, a hot and windless plain of scattered trees and infrequent buildings and wandering students who came and went in ones and twos. The campus’s long deserted pathways seemed to reach out into the sky or over the edge of the world they ran so long and so deserted. The pathways ran into and out of the school and because of the lack of trees and buildings the new students had a view onto the city that would soon be their home, a nondescript industrial sprawl of shopping centers and apartment houses and motels and tire and brake shops and supermercados. This wasn’t San Diego or San Francisco, Santa Cruz or Santa Barbara; there was nothing picturesque or even vivid in these polluted skies. “When the smog recedes in the evening, we have the loveliest sunsets,” their tour guide told them.
“On your left,” he continued, “is the Science Library: it’s newly renovated with beautiful new carpeting, couches for study groups and individual desks for individual students. We’ve installed a temperature control panel. And to your right, you’ll notice two towering smokestacks in the sky. Those constitute the mathematics hall . . .
“Now here’s our English Library. Constructed in 1964, it is the oldest building on the campus, and what it lacks technologically it makes up for in charm and dignity. Though the air conditioning is only a feature of the first and third floors, the second and fourth floors have been equipped with large electric fans . . . ”
The tour lived and died like this, a long string of introductions to various inanimate objects.
The sun shone overhead, a cruel brilliance of heat and light.
“We the only two,” Erycha said, peering up at him to catch his expression. She still didn’t know his name. “Did you notice that, we the only two?”
“The only two from Highland?”
“Yeah. And the only two black people from there or from anywhere else. At least we the only two with this major that I’m seein. You seen somethin different? Nahright. You see what I see. What you think about that?”
“I think it’s not true.” He pointed at one black boy here, one mixed girl there. “There’s, like, several.”
But in fact the black boy and mixed girl weren’t even freshmen. The boy, Erycha remembered from the student speaker’s opening address, was an editor for the school newspaper. And the girl was the chief coordinator for the ASU, Asian Student Union, and MSU, Minority Student Union (the BSU having been dissolved into this more embracing exclusivity).
Erycha explained these facts and watched him think it over for a second before nodding, conceding. “A’ight, now you know to trust me.” She smiled. “So, what you think about that?”
“About us being the only two?” Touissant weighed his options, his fabrications: he didn’t want to tell her that his choice of major was passing, false and solely contingent on her presence, but on the other hand telling the truth would require less thought. “I think you make up for the scarceness,” he finally said.
Erycha narrowed her eyes into slits and shook her head: “You still gotta mack, huh?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well I’m just askin. Seriously.”
The newspaper editor visited them where they sat on the stone bench along the spacious walkway beneath the sunlight and heat. He informed them that it was 2001 the Year of the Lord and yet in the state of California, at one of its premiere universities, he was still the only field Negro on the staff of the college’s supposedly representative newspaper. His voice echoed down the empty walkway like down a funnel. And as he preached on, his red, black and green beads clinked like dice against his neck.
Touissant listened and thought what it would be like to write for or edit the school newspaper. His goals hovered vaguely round the possibilities of writing books, speeches, closing arguments. Writing for the paper would be a great way to find his literary voice. But for now he was a dance major. He shook his head, no.
The editor looked to Erycha, his beads rattling like a gambler’s last chance. “What’s your black gift, sister?”
“Ballet.”
The mixed girl had hazel eyes and mocha-colored skin. Erycha looked at her and saw the earth rotating, fucking and birthing. The girl smiled and waved and approached. She was wearing a clingy, tie-dyed dress that sort of lilted right over her breasts in the attractive way that only a garment made with individual care could. Intricate lace-stitching, clearly hand-done, ran along its sides, fringing each moment of her form.
Erycha could tell that the girl wasn’t going to leave her alone until she said whatever it was she had to say.
“Heyyy,” Erycha drawled, not sure what to make of the girl but figuring it was probably best to speak first.
“Hi! Hi there!” The girl’s voice was a chime struck by a champagne glass. Defiant of the slow summer day, she broke quickly into an introduction. “My name’s Kai Jefferson. I coordinate the MSU, Minority Student Union. The Union motto, Teach, Educate, Organiiiize.” Her voice