Page 26 of What Boys Learn

“He doesn’t know.”

But she’d just said she made Manny jealous on purpose. But not jealous about this person?

On the legal pad, I’d written:Concurrent relationship. Age? Not student?

“Older man” could mean anything. It could mean eighteen. It could mean thirty.

An older man.

I’d written no full sentences, only single words or phrases to nudge my memory. Below the questions about the older man’s identity, I’d skipped several lines and writtenShrimp. A third person. She hadn’t told me his age, only that he went to Summit.

“So,” I recalled saying to Izzy, “you like to make your boyfriend jealous, it’s a game you both play. But he doesn’t know about this older man. You say that he ‘can’t know.’ Then . . . ?”

“He knows about the Shrimp. That’s what Manny calls him.”

“But you like ‘the Shrimp’?”

“Notthat way. He’s disgusting! That’s the whole point or it wouldn’t work.”

“By ‘work,’ you mean make Manny jealous. Because this other boy is beneath you?”

“It can’t be someone Manny is threatened by. That would be serious. This isn’t like that.”

Izzy didn’t want her boyfriend to know she was fooling around with the older man, or planning to. But Manny could know she was fooling around with the Shrimp. In fact, it was because of the Shrimp that Manny didn’t think to suspect the real threat to her affection.

When I worded the situation back to her, she objected.

“I wouldn’t call it affection,” she corrected me. “Didn’t you ‘play the field’ when you were my age?”

I could tell by the way she said it that no one called it “playing the field” anymore.

“My mom likes to pretend that people her age were so careful about sex, but you guys didn’t even talk about consent. I did a paper on it. How there was a college in the nineties that drafted a consent policy and they were ridiculed for it, even onSaturday Night Live. Was it weird back then, everyone thinking a guy could fuck a girl even if she didn’t say yes?”

I was trying to decide the best way to answer when she added, “Oh my god. Wait a minute.Wereyou dating in the nineties?”

“No,” I said, smiling. “I was in grade school. But for you, I’m sure my dating years would still seem a long time ago. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were still together. Beyoncé was still part of Destiny’s Child . . .”

None of that computed. Then she tilted her head, interest returning as she examined me.

“You were pretty, I bet. It doesn’t last long, does it? That’s what I hear.” She made a sweeping gesture down the length of her body, like a television game show hostess drawing attention to a prize. “Evidently, I’m in myprime. I’m supposed to enjoy it while I can.”

She’d said it wearily. Maybe ironically. But I think she believed some part of it, too. Izzy was involved in a three-ring circus of suitors. Or something more complicated. A secret infidelity, an unhealthy game. The Shrimp was a decoy.

I could remember, even now, the way Izzy had leaned back and looked up at the oak trees over our heads, their gnarled branches forming a thick yellowing canopy, and how she had blown a long, slow blue-gray stream of smoke that we both watched rise and dissipate, while I tried to find the words to say,You think you’ve got this all under control, but trust me, you don’t.

“My life is fucking boring,” she said. “And Manny is the worst of all.”

“So maybe you should break up with him.”

“My new friend isn’t boring.”

“The Shrimp?”

She laughed, which I took to mean no, the other one. The older man.

“Well, this was a mistake,” she said.

“Can we talk again?” I asked. “Make an appointment. Please? I want to hear how you’re doing.”