by Michael Chin<\/p>\n
A Friday night in July, I came back for Alumni Weekend. Thirty bucks bought a name tag, admission to a cash-bar mixer, and the right to wander academic buildings Saturday afternoon. I didn\u2019t see a soul I recognized at the cocktail hour but got drunk on Old Fashioneds and left the bartender a fifty-dollar tip for his trouble. I thought I\u2019d go for a nightcap at O\u2019Reilly\u2019s on my walk back to the hotel, but the big shamrock sign was gone. When I checked my phone to see if I hadn\u2019t mistaken the spot\u2014a poor sense of direction and two decades to forget\u2014Google Maps confirmed O\u2019Reilly\u2019s was permanently closed<\/em>. College kids are different now. They\u2019d rather hide out playing video games than try their luck with a pretty girl on a Friday night.<\/p>\n A memory: junior year, I trudged through a foot of snow, trying to make it from the library to O\u2019Reilly\u2019s before last call, O-Chem textbook tucked under my arm. Vicky\u2019s Corolla materialized. She rolled down the window and said, \u201cHop in, idiot,\u201d the first time I remembered her calling me \u201cidiot,\u201d a term of endearment. She ferried us to the bar in time for two rounds of Labatt, a couple tunes on the jukebox\u2014it still took quarters then\u2014Bob Seger for me, Janet Jackson for her.<\/p>\n On a whim, I took hold of Kelly\u2019s hand under the table, and she held on tight, paying off weeks of flirtation. As long as the suds were flowing and her fingers stayed woven between mine, that\u2019s about all I ever needed.<\/p>\n But here I was, no snow, but a humidity I\u2019d never felt in Tree Town, because I\u2019d never been there over the summer months. No beer. No Vicky.<\/p>\n The memory afforded me a second wind, though. I cut toward campus proper.<\/p>\n Here: the new sciences building. The guys and I had drunk-peed on its construction site, through the mesh fencing, on the eyesore that wouldn\u2019t open until years after we\u2019d left.<\/p>\n There: the spruce Vicky and I napped under one spring day, when it was so nice out, we couldn\u2019t imagine being cooped up in a classroom.<\/p>\n Here: the library. There: the \u201cspirit wall\u201d the fraternities painted semesterly. Here: the arts building with the black-box theater where Vicky had dragged me to her gal pal\u2019s one-act. There: the gazebo with the prettiest view of sunset. I\u2019d have to remember to get back for it the next day.<\/p>\n Here: the building I\u2019d been in when I heard about 9\/11. I checked the door. Unlocked. Wander the corridor and most of the rooms were open too. I found the right one. Not a big lecture hall, but one of those seminar classrooms that couldn\u2019t seat more than thirty people. The same hard plastic chairs I remembered. I sat. The room even smelled like the same industrial cleaning fluid. The professor, a squirrely Jane Austen scholar with close-cut hair and thick glasses, had canceled class outright. She told us to take care of ourselves. Now, I tried to remember what it felt like to be young, the world in front of me, the world ending. It\u2019s embarrassing to say it this way, but I remembered the same sensation when Vicky told me she was applying to grad school in Europe. She wanted to study art history. I felt a chasm\u2014the earth splitting between us. It\u2019s silly to compare a worldly apocalypse with such a personal one, but that\u2019s how it felt.<\/p>\n I kept walking, past my freshman dorm and the suite building where I\u2019d lived sophomore and junior years. I moved off-campus, into a cruddy three-bedroom with an ant problem senior year. I spent as much time as I could at Vicky\u2019s place. A refuge from the shithole and the lousy roommates, sure. But I loved breathing the same air as her too.<\/p>\n My head throbbed, coming down from the whiskey.<\/p>\n But I wanted to see Vicky\u2019s place.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t hit it. I found my way to the right street, but the complex wasn\u2019t where I remembered it, so I wandered north and hit the tire shop I remembered being nearby.<\/p>\n Twenty years. I married and divorced\u2014no kids to show for it, just a foreclosure, a thinning hairline, and a middle-aged paunch. And Vicky? No social media. No Facebook or even Google results. I had to assume she\u2019d married and taken her husband\u2019s name at just the right time to disappear from a fledgling Internet.<\/p>\n When I had enough signal, I asked Google the name of the apartment complex. A Jewish name, I remembered. Edelman or Eisenberg or Ehrenstein. Google asked me if I meant Einstein Bros. Bagels<\/em>. I damn near threw the phone.<\/p>\n The pavement looked cool. I thought it\u2019d feel nicer than the summer air against my cheek.<\/p>\n Then: a bright, blinding light. My mind, a blur.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s this way.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, \u201cHop in, idiot.\u201d<\/p>\n The car smelled like hot chocolate and kettle corn. Like the night we drove forty minutes to ice skate at a rink with a big Christmas tree, trying it\u2019s damnedest to rip off Rockefeller Center.<\/p>\n Now, July, it started snowing outside the car. Driving through sopping white flakes in the dark, it was easy to imagine we cannon-balled through space, through a field of stars\u2014the night impossibly large, and us so small.<\/p>\n My breath fogged my window and I thought of the old schoolboy gesture\u2014her initials and mine in a heart\u2014but I\u2019d barely fingered the V when we arrived. The same tan paneling outside the apartment building I remembered.<\/p>\n I stumbled outside.<\/p>\n No Vicky. No car. No snow. It all evaporated like ice in a whiskey tumbler, like so much condensation once the defroster clicks into gear, like twenty years can if you\u2019re not careful.<\/p>\n I was alone.<\/p>\n But I\u2019d made it home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and currently lives in Las Vegas with his wife and son. He\u2019s the author of seven full-length books, including his novel, My Grandfather\u2019s an Immigrant, and So is Yours<\/em> (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021) and his latest short story collection This Year\u2019s Ghost<\/em> (JackLeg Press, 2025). His short work has previously appeared in journals including Bat City Review, Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, Passages North, <\/em>and The Normal School<\/em>. Find him online at miketchin.com.<\/p>\n
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