Matrimony Read Online Free Page A

to sing—“New York, New York, it’s a hell of a town”—and as he did, he thought about the Korean grocers in New York City, the one in his parents’ neighborhood next to the pizza place on Second Avenue, how everyone ended up in their own niche, the Korean grocers and the Israeli taxi drivers and the old mustachioed Italian men selling cherry and rainbow ices in Central Park, as if the whole thing had been ordained by some invisible force. He thought about the Irish girl who served him vanilla milk shakes at the diner at three in the morning, the construction men perched high above midtown, and George, the elevator man in his parents’ building, who, when he got off at midnight, took the subway back to Queens. Walking along the streets of New York, Julian liked to stare into the windows of people’s apartments and contemplate the lives that went on inside, the way he liked to contemplate Mr. Kang’s life, his life outside the produce store, his life with Mrs. Kang. “I have to go home and study,” he said.
    “It’s too late to study,” said Mr. Kang.
    “That’s the problem. I’ve only just started.” Julian shook Mr. Kang’s hand and waved at Mrs. Kang inside the store. Then he wended his way back to campus, holding a bag of Golden Delicious apples Mr. Kang had given him for free, and as he walked toward the college gates he ate an apple down to the core and then he ate another one.
             
    So Julian and Carter were becoming friends. But Julian couldn’t tell whether Carter liked him. It came down to this: Julian was a rich kid from New York City and Carter wasn’t. According to Carter, Graymont was filled with rich kids from New York City, and Carter was from California, just outside San Francisco, and he had no interest in New York City. He equated Graymont with New England and New England with wealth and wealth with New York City and New York City with bullshit, and Carter hated bullshit, he’d grown up in a place utterly devoid of bullshit, in a completely bullshit-less town.
    No bullshit in San Francisco? Julian had been to San Francisco, and there was plenty of bullshit there, even if it was different from the bullshit in New York. Carter was from the suburbs, besides. The suburbs were
all
bullshit.
    In Carter’s opinion, everything was more impressive on the West Coast. There was a great cultural divide that flowed with the waters of the Mississippi and cast its shadow across the Rocky Mountains and the Mojave Desert and accounted for the fact that in creative writing class Carter was the only one who didn’t take notes and, in general, all the other students cared and he didn’t. His first day at Graymont, Carter showed up in torn blue jeans and scuffed boots made of alligator leather and with several days’ growth of beard on his face. That first semester, he would walk across campus with his sneakers untied, his blue jeans frayed, his shirt not fully buttoned, running his hand through his hair as if he were in a permanent state of having just woken up.
    But if Carter didn’t care, why, right now, was he asking Julian to read his short stories, and why was he standing in Julian’s room watching him like a voyeur? Carter’s stories were good—they were
really
good, Julian thought—but when Julian told Carter this, Carter just shrugged.
    According to Carter, there was a sexual abandon where he had grown up that helped account for the fact that he’d lost his virginity at thirteen whereas Julian hadn’t lost his until much later. “And thirteen was late,” Carter said.
    Often, Julian felt Carter didn’t have time for him, but then Carter would show up at his dorm and they’d go play pickup basketball, and late at night they’d walk to the Store 24 or stop for cheeseburgers and onion rings at the Bison Bar and Grill and then go play poker with the guys down the hall. After Professor Chesterfield’s class they would return to the dorms and Carter would ask to see