The Basic Eight Read Free Page A

with their eyes as she cantered across the Grounds. She gave me a hug and for a second I was embraced by a body that makes me want to go home and never eat again. Natasha is one of those high school students who looks less like a high school student and more like an actress playing a high school student on TV.
    “Hi,” I said sheepishly, wishing I had worn something more glamorous. Suddenly a summer of not seeing each other seemed like a long time. She stood in front of me and looked me over. She swallowed. We both waited.
    “I’ll go get a drink,” I said.
    Natasha looked relieved. “Do that.”
    The men in their midtwenties slowly returned to their used paperbacks and alternative newspapers. What I would give to have someone in college look me over. I got my drink and went and sat down across from Natasha, who put down her book and looked at me. I looked at the spine of the book.
    “ Erotica by Anaïs Nin? Does your mother know?”
    “Mother lent it to me,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes. She al- ways calls her mom “Mother” as if she’s some society matron when in fact she teaches anthropology at City College. I thumbed through the book as Natasha took a sip of some bright green fizzy drink. I can see you biting and scratching. She learned to tease him, too. The

    moans were rhythmic, then at times like the cooing of doves . When people thumb through this book, those italics will catch their eyes and they’ll spot a pornographic sentence before the page flaps by. A writer’s got to sell herself.
    “Why no latte?” I asked, gesturing to the green potion. “I thought it was mother’s milk to you.”
    “After this summer it’s begun to taste like some other bodily fluid,” Natasha said, looking at me significantly. Her eyes were very carefully done; they always are.
    “Do tell,” I said, happy to have arrived at a topic that didn’t involve my confession of love, written in a hurried, Chianti-laced scrawl, on a postcard. Just thinking about it made me want to hide under the table, which was painted an unfortunate fiesta- ware pink.
    “All right, I’ll talk about my love life, but then we’ll talk about yours . But first, this Italian soda needs a little zip.” Natasha found a flask in some secret pocket and added a clear liquid to the soda, watching me out of the corner of her eye. She’s always taking out that flask and adding it to things. I often suspect that it’s just water but I’m afraid to call her bluff. She went on to describe some guy she met at the Harvard Summer Program in Compar- ative Religion. Natasha’s always had a fascination with what people worship. Kate says Natasha’s actually fascinated that people aren’t worshiping her instead. In any case, each summer Anthropologist Mom plunks down her hard-earned money for Natasha to fly across the country and make out with gorgeous men, all for the cause of higher learning. According to Natasha, this one was five years older than us and attended a prestigious liberal arts school, the name of which I’m not sure I can mention here lest its reputation become tainted due to its association, however brief, with the notorious Basic Eight.

    “He was said to be brilliant,” Natasha said, “but to be honest we didn’t have too many conversations. It was mostly sex. It will be a while before I order any drink with steamed milk again.” She drained the rest of her soda in an extravagant gesture and I watched her throat as she swallowed, taking mental notes.
    I sighed. (How perfect my recall of these small details. I sighed , reader; I remember it as if it were yesterday.) “You go to the puritanical city of Boston and hook up with a genius who also happens to be an excellent lover–”
    Natasha used a blood-red nail to poke a hole in my sentence. “More accurately, he was an excellent lover who also happened to be a genius.”
    “–and I go to Italy, the most romantic country in the world, and the only man who makes my heart