16. Kierkegaard Compared Fencing to Flirting - Lords of Serendipity

Cham finished her run a block away from the apartment she had been renting with Katrina since January, after the college had invited them not to return to residence for the winter semester. She sprinted across traffic on yellow lights and no one honked or complained, as usual. In other ways, though, Cham’s life at college had definitely changed. The March morning wind blew cold and damp around her neck as she walked, head down, checking her phone. Her sister hadn’t texted her back yet. To ensure she didn’t see anyone from Haven—it was midday on a Saturday, and people left campus for town to lunch with parents or to visit the bookstores and vintage shops—she kept her eyes on her phone as she scrolled through the latest set of messages and requests she’d received. It was more than two months since the Christmas Gaudy. The haters had more or less stopped messaging her; not, however, the fans. And then there was the situation with Katrina, which was, well, whatever.

Because the Zoom lecture had glitched during the performance just when Cham and Katrina got up to shock everyone by actually playing parts in the play, it looked like they cut the lecture on purpose. And because everyone had been filming everyone and posting right away, there was enough footage to edit into material that was quickly taken up by the very online Right, which earned Cham and Katrina invitations to podcasts and Discords hosted by bearded men with names like Garnett and Luke; requests from chase producers working for online news shows based in Hungary and Alberta; complimentary passes to seminars held under the auspices of organizations that weren’t formally associated with the Catholic Church and felt the need to say so; and offers of speaking engagements in Manhattan and Florida. They also received internship offers from independent research institutes based in Slovakia and Dallas, and branding proposals—Hot Girls for Great Books, Hot Girls for Free Speech, Hot Girls for Western Civ—from marketing experts who listed their work for various Republican campaigns and all-natural nutritional supplement products. They had been sent several messages of appreciation from older Haven alumni, including at least one offer of help with tuition, but the messages were sent from AOL accounts and blocked by the college’s secure servers. They were offered paid positions with Turning Point USA and with an unnamed organization committed to free ideas and democracy that would involve them reporting professors trying to indoctrinate their students in class. Bonus pay for recorded footage. Peter Thiel mentioned them in an essay on atavistic optimism. Bari Weiss called them the Gawain Girls in an interview with Christopher Rufo, ballsy young ladies who had stood athwart the craziness of the campuses and yelled stop.

No formal action was taken against them by the college, which instead released a statement condemning anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinian racism, and declaring that hate had no home at Haven. But they were immediately ghosted and dropped by their fellow students, leaving them with only each other.

In turn, and because it was deemed best for them, Cham and Katrina were invited by their academic advisors to take their winter semester classes remotely—for Cham, this was a seminar on philosophy and artificial intelligence; a lecture course called Big Data and Big Ideas; the college-wide climate science requirement; the college-wide Introduction to Finance course, which was Haven’s most popular option; and her elective, a course on the great-woman theory of history. And without even applying, Cham, just like Katrina, had been preapproved for the college’s highly self-directed study abroad program for sophomore year. The college was obviously trying to make sure they never returned to campus, and they had been living together in an apartment in town since January, suffering through a weird, dark, minor celebrity. Neither brought up what had happened at the Gaudy and afterward, or who was to blame. There was no need. Cham was to blame. But really, Katrina should have been thanking her for getting her out of the dorm, out of actual classes, off campus into their own apartment and, for next year, out of the country itself. All this freedom. They could do whatever they wanted. So amazing. They weren’t doing much.

Cham’s parents were being typically Sri Lankan about the whole situation. From the start, as in, from the moment the Gaudy was over, they behaved as if nothing had happened, only her father now said that Katrina could no longer spend the Christmas holidays with them because distant relations were coming to stay and there was no extra space. These unnamed distant relations never arrived and were never mentioned again. Because they didn’t exist. They had been made up to keep Katrina away. But Cham told Katrina their story, anyway, in a text. Katrina never replied. Was she offended, or whatever? If so, at least say something about it! And then Cham could have let her in on how her parents were being so ridiculous, pretending that Katrina was the corrupting influence on Cham. That was also typically Sri Lankan: to believe the opposite of the truth and dare someone to call you on it. Likewise, no one discussed her sister’s absence during Christmas, beyond praising her exemplary dedication to her studies, Cham’s sister having told her parents she needed to stay at Oxford. In fact, she was shacked up with her new Singaporean boyfriend at his family’s Marylebone flat.

She tried to ask her father and mother about the distant relations who never arrived, the night before she flew back to Haven. But they just stared at her until she left the room. Even the nanny, listening in the hallway, turned her back to her. It was the nanny who kept sending Cham care packages—duct-taped, incense-smelling, oil-patchy shoeboxes of baked goods and hand-sewn, diaphanous notions, note-free—and only to her university address. The college must have had a courier or maybe a work-study student dropping these off at the apartment. The family knew she’d moved off-campus: they were paying her rent. But no one in the family discussed it, because if they did, they would have to discuss what had happened at the Gaudy, which they’d probably limit to just the embarrassment Cham had caused the family, the latest embarrassment. But if they went there, Cham would have an opening, and then what would they end up talking about?

During her mandatory Sunday night phone call home, she mentioned she was having some difficulties at school and waited for them to ask her what was wrong or how they could help, or at least put the servant on the phone to listen and say nothing, also. But only one question was ever asked.

Did you see your sister’s latest results from Oxford?

Standing at the back of the couch in the living room, Cham kicked her shoes off and checked the time and wondered why Katrina hadn’t returned from her run. Their show was starting soon. It was a lush documentary starring a beautiful Italian-American actress who was touring Italy one meal at a time with her mother and grandmother. The show was on cable television, which was kind of wild, and it was inspiring Cham and Katrina to think about Italy for study abroad. They were considering this separately, while watching together. Just as they were living together, but kind of separately. In one episode, the actress and her family had eaten dinner on the observation deck of a vintage Vatican telescope, hosted by a group of jokey Jesuit scientists. Cham thought it might be interesting to study religion and science and the lies each side told about the other. And also to go back to Rome, where her own lying life had begun. In another episode, the actress and her family volunteered at a church in Rome that offered meals and educational programming to illegal migrants. For as long as she could remember, Katrina had been volunteering with her father on Thanksgiving at a church that did that. She was thinking of doing a research project on religious outreach to marginalized people in Italy. They’d each emailed their academic advisor their ideas and been approved, almost automatically.

Cham texted Katrina to find out where she was. Katrina never texted back. Instead, she stopped sharing her location! She returned to the apartment fifteen minutes after the show finished, missing it for the first time. She said something about streaming it later and went to her room, humming. Only at that weird noise did Cham turn her head from the television and notice that another care package from home had been placed on the side table beside the front door. Katrina must have brought it in from their front door after her run. Something stopped her from asking Katrina if she’d seen who dropped it off. It was the humming.

The next Saturday, and the Saturday after that, Katrina missed their show again and went right to her room, humming. Only happy people stopped sharing their location and started humming, didn’t they? Why was Katrina suddenly happy on Saturday afternoons and pretending nothing was wrong? How was someone like Katrina being so typically Sri Lankan? Scarier still: why? How could Cham be living with someone and be all alone, again?

Katrina missed their TV show three Saturdays in a row because she was spending time with a boy from Haven. His name was Mather Choate Rhodes. They had yet to kiss but were holding hands, post-run. He was incredibly supportive. He told her he hadn’t seen the Gaudy performance, which was a lie, and so he couldn’t comment on it beyond saying he thought people were really being unfair, and that he believed in fairness for all, not just some. Also, his father worked with a lot of Jewish people. And his boarding-school roommate had been Muslim but drank. She told him about her mother dying when she was a little girl. He told her about how the Indian boys at his private school called him Maderchod. Pretending she was texting Cham, Katrina AI’d it and the term was even worse than she’d thought. She’d had to use AI because currently Katrina wasn’t texting Cham unless absolutely necessary. She told him Cham had invited her to visit her family that Christmas but then disinvited her with no real explanation, which had embarrassed and then offended Katrina. And Mather agreed with Katrina’s current decision to wait, as long as it took, for the explanation she deserved. And that there would be no runs or fun together, in the meantime (watching the television show was okay; it had become connected to study abroad plans, so that was for school). And actually Katrina wasn’t just waiting for an explanation. She deserved an apology, too. She deserved this. No, not an apology, Mather told her, and seeing Katrina’s eyes become glassy, he smiled. You deserve apologies, several. Katrina blinked and smiled, almost giggled from the butterflies taking flight in her stomach. He just might have been the perfect guy.

Talking about deeper life while running, they’d realized they agreed about tattoos: of course they would get one but were waiting for the right moment, the right idea, the right image. Beyond having a good sense of each other’s palms from all the post-run hand-holding, they had shared a water bottle. At her invitation, he had also touched and tested her biceps when he learned she had fenced in high school, and she had brushed the back of her hand against his upper thigh, just to see if the muscles in his legs were as hard as the stone slabs of the old brown-brick bank buildings in town, just like Katrina had imagined the first time she’d seen Mather running, back in October when Cham and Katrina had chased him through campus.

Katrina was standing in her bedroom, the door closed, on a Saturday morning in late March, waiting to hear Cham slam the front door and pound down the steps for her solo run. Katrina had checked her phone to confirm where she was going to meet Mather for their duo run. That was when she noticed a new message from her father, asking if she minded if her bedroom at home wasn’t available until the summer and promising she could sleep in his bed, and that he’d take the couch whenever she visited, which, he hoped, would be soon.

Oh God. First Cham and now this? Was Jack really going to start Airbnb-ing her room? Had his perpetual money problems really become that bad?

She had enough problems of her own, beyond the ongoing troll invasion of her inbox and socials. Most immediately, she needed to decide on a running bra for her fourth consecutive Saturday run with Mather, but now she was also thinking about Jack’s problems. She knew these had something to do with a student killing himself at Arcadia, which, fair, was obviously awful and a much bigger deal than her situation. But also a bigger deal than her dad’s problems, which always seemed to be about money.

After learning she was taking all of her courses virtually for the semester, Jack had even suggested Katrina live at home. For a moment, she had considered this. But the idea of being back there, with Jack doing everything he could to make things nice for her while dealing with a student suicide and money issues, felt like agreeing to sleep under an octopus blanket compared to the weird, pandemicky freedom of living just with Cham and set apart from everyone else.

Which she wasn’t, as of four Saturdays ago.

How glad she was, when she was given no choice but to rent a place with Cham after the college told them to go off-campus because of the Gaudy whatever, versus moving home! Not because of Cham, definitely not, and not because of Cham’s family, who didn’t want her to visit for Christmas after saying they did, but kind of, to be fair, she had to admit, because she met Mather thanks to Cham and her family.

Katrina first found Mather standing just outside the apartment, midday on a Saturday in March. She’d been returning from her run and was about to go upstairs to watch the Italy show for school. He seemed to be in the middle of a run. From the black backpack he wore across his black running hoodie, he gave her the latest care package Cham’s family had sent to the residence.

So, she said.

So, he said.

So you’re the delivery boy.

He shrugged. She asked him why he was delivering packages for the college. He shrugged. She worried he was a work-study student and she had just embarrassed him, so she said she thought people who worked their way through college were really authentic. He made a funny face, nearly offended, but then agreed and said he didn’t treat his financial aid friends different from his regular friends. Figuring out he definitely wasn’t a work-study student, Katrina asked him if he was delivering the packages so he could meet Cham. He shook his head no. She nodded. There was a moment. Definitely, a moment. They went back out for 5K more and did turmeric ginger shots afterward. They ran 10K the following two Saturdays, and did more shots. Today, they’d planned on a half marathon, which Mather told her he was planning to run on Mother’s Day in support of breast cancer research. If he’d proposed just then, she would have said yes. Katrina had decided that at the end of today’s practice half marathon, she would either kiss him or be kissed. Way too Lifetime Channel to do it at the end of the actual half marathon. This had yet to really happen for her.

Kissing, that is.

There had been practice kissing, and maybe a little more than practice kissing, with the other girls on her fencing team in high school, and a Zoom thing that happened at the end of an Ed Sheeran song during her virtual prom, a mutual self-kiss with a boy she knew had loved her since middle school, but otherwise, at eighteen, not really. And if it didn’t happen soon with Mather, if she’d been misreading the vibes, probably she would stop running with him and go back to watching the show with Cham again, because at least that pointed ahead to something better, a study abroad semester in Italy. Katrina had yet to mention her plan to study in Italy to Jack. She had mentioned it to Mather. He was going on study abroad too, he just hadn’t decided where yet. But then—vibes—he did recently tell Katrina that his dad had a friend who ran an ESG investment firm with an office in Rome. Why would he tell her that, if he wasn’t into her? The next time Mather made a joke about how he was scared of Katrina because she had been a varsity fencer, she was going to ask him if he knew that Kierkegaard compared flirting to fencing and see what that did to him.

Katrina left her room and the apartment and bounced down the stairs and onto the road, checking for Cham before running to meet Mather. Her heart swelled. Kierkegaard. Matching tattoos. Future Roman ruins.