Part 1
When William met me I was asleep. Literally: in fetal position on the cafeteria's couch, with a magazine curled on my lap. I don't remember what I was dreaming about, but it wasn't at all related to the shouting cafeteria staff. It was Jane who found me and like a good friend, poked me to death until I woke up, looking dazedly around at that bunch of people having their usual after-lunch coffee. I realized then that I had spent nearly two hours asleep in a public place and was probably sporting a huge red mark on my forehead, where it had been pressing against my knees. My lemon tea had gone cold, abandoned by half. Jane looked at me with disapproval all over her face, knowing that I had eaten nothing besides having intended to drink that cup of tea and that all those cigarette stubs in the ashtray on the coffee table were mine. Almost like an obedient little girl, I followed my best friend to a table, where I sat down to have, a few minutes later, a huge plate of fumigating ravioli put before me. I ate it stating that it was oh, so good.
I didn't notice the guy reading the paper next to me on the couch, while calmly sipping a cup of black coffee. Until now I didn't think that it was possible for a person to be so self-absorbed in her life that she could shut out the outside world completely. I used to blindly follow Jane around and now that I think of it, I guess I only did so because she was difficult not to see. She was one those tall, slim blondes; only I was the one, who behaved like a tall, slim blonde, even if I was the short brunette. While Jane had the Nordic looks, I behaved like the cool Swedish model type, arching a thin eyebrow at everything that presented itself before be. Jane would nudge me, telling me to stop looking like I'd just sucked a lemon. I would ignore her.
I'd been in a bad mood that week and on the weeks before that one. I was going through a phase that I didn't feel like thinking, even though I managed the exact opposite. My pajamas had become a uniform and my couch had acquired the form of my sprawled body, ever since I had decided that instead of living among mortals, my only worry would be Paul and Jamie Buchman's marriage crisis. In my conception, living through others was much easier because I didn't get screwed and sometimes even laughed some. But, of course, I had to go to class, pretending that everything was all right because I was too darn proud to admit that it wasn't. So I'd get up every morning, get dressed like a nervous schoolgirl, pack my bag with what seemed organic to a college student and off I was, into buses that I'd come out dizzy of from thinking too much. I'd arrive at campus and would promptly find myself a corner in the library to sleep at, until Jane would come and shake me out of my stupor, calling me an idiot and telling me to get up and face life because it was full of wonderful things such as bonbons, coffee, reading in the library sitting on the floor between the shelves, and having a boy kiss you instead of chatting your ears off about Foucault or Bahktin (I guess she put in a personal rant there). And, according to my good friend, those were things you not only found in campus, but also Downtown, in the Public Library, and in grocery stores.
But I was currently scared of coffee, because it made me sick to my stomach, and of bonbons, because they were too pretty.
Only three things in the world didn't scare me: beer, cigarettes, and the remote. That was because they were very nice esthetically speaking. My mom always said that she thought the sight of a girl drinking beer or smoking was horrendous. Now picture one doing that in front of a tv... Not that I actually did it, but I certainly felt like it sometimes. I was scared of simpler things because they fascinated me too much and lasted too little. That was why I was horrified of those pretty bonbons wrapped in cellophane they sold at the cafe in campus.
I'd been acting like I was such a mess, thinking that by dragging myself around I'd get attention or feel like I was actually someone who deserved attention (in my very twisted opinion), that I only noticed William in the bus, a thousand weeks later, as I'd actually stopped thinking for a bit and had begun to fuss in my bag, trying to find my discman's earphones, which seemed to be tangled to every item around it. I started sneezing, for some reason, and the more I frantically tried to disentangle the darn thing, the more it got caught.
The only reason I did notice William wasn't because he was gorgeous or anything, but because he was laughing at me at a moment that I wasn't aiming to be laughed at. And that irritated me to no end.