The Cohort

“If I break into your house and steal your credit cards, I’d go to jail,” Mishler said from the floor. “But a bank steals your whole house, they get a bailout!”

Priya gave a charitable snort and Imani smiled behind her cup, but otherwise the line didn’t land.

“You were going for biting social commentary but didn’t quite get there.” said Nicollete.

“Indeed,” admitted Mishler, who was accustomed by now to Nicollete’s unfiltered observations. He propped himself up on one elbow. “I thought for a second about saying ‘bank card’ instead of ‘credit card.’ Break into your house and steal your bank cards—bank steals your house. A bit more symmetry. Maybe that would have helped.”

“Wait, who says bank card?” asked Imani.

“It wouldn't have mattered,” said Nicollete. “I think the joke was doomed from the start.” She smiled warmly at her friend and sipped from her glass.

Herbie, who was sitting beside Imani on the arm of the couch, asked, “What’s better, a bad joke told well, or a good joke told badly?”

Priya responded without hesitation. “Bad joke told well for sure. There’s a perverse appeal in things that try but are doomed from birth. It’d be like some tragic Shakespearean figure. A la farce fatale. But a good joke told badly is just someone effing up.”

“I don’t think fatale means what you think it means,” Nicollete stated.

Priya laughed. “I don’t think so either.”

“To be fair to the banks though,” said Gaston, who’d apparently ignored the last minute of conversation, “they’re owed the money. So, they’re not really stealing houses. If someone stops paying the mortgage, foreclosure’s the only real option the bank has.”

Gaston wasn’t his real name of course. But he had a strong jaw, a sweep of dark hair, and he’d worn a tight red polo shirt to the first day of freshman orientation. Herbie had made the joke and that had been the first time they all laughed together. Gaston had laughed hardest, which surprised the others, who’d initially pegged him (solely on his height, hair, and build) as probably a self-absorbed dick. The name stuck, as had the group. The college split the incoming freshmen into cohorts of six for orientation week, and as far as they could tell, theirs was the only one still intact junior year.

Nicollete said to Gaston, “Did you see the story about some banks that have been repo’ing the wrong houses though? That’s stealing.”

“Okay, I’m sure mistakes have happened but those have to be the major exceptions. And there are, you know, appeals and stuff, so I doubt people are actually getting, like, kicked out of a house just totally out of the blue.”

“Priya, was there one specific day when you realized your boyfriend was a corporate shill, or was it more a dawning realization over time?” This got Mishler a hearty laugh from Herbie and Imani. Priya, who was sitting in Gaston’s lap, patted her boyfriend’s neck affectionately. Gaston, though, still had a gas bubble in his abdomen from the Irish car bombs and having Priya on his lap wasn’t helping, so he was therefore feeling irritable and defensive.

“Whatever man—anyway, that’s not what happened to Adelaide’s parents.”

The air sucked out of the room as Adelaide flinched and everybody else stared at Gaston in stunned disbelief.

“Dammit, what is wrong with me. Addi, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why… shit, I’m sorry,” was all Gaston managed as Priya pulled the back of his hair as hard but discreetly as she could.

They were in Addi and Priya’s student apartment. The cohort, as they still called themselves—Addi, Priya, Gaston, Mishler, Herbie, and Arlo—plus the adopted members, Nicollete and Imani. When they’d all arrived for what they assumed was the Friday night pregame, Adelaide had shared her news.

Her father had worked at Lehman Brothers. Less than two weeks ago, he’d been one of the men seen on the news carrying banker’s boxes of belongings out the glass doors onto Seventh Avenue. At one time he and Adelaide’s mother had also owned a half-dozen vacation rentals in New Jersey and Florida, but those were all gone too. Adelaide went home the weekend after the investment bank collapsed. She’d always been a good daughter but still her parents had anticipated a hard conversation. But Adelaide wasn’t dumb. She knew where her father had worked, and she grasped the situation and didn’t make her parents say it.

“I’ll leave school,” she’d said as soon as they sat in the living room.

“Not right away,” her mother had answered, the relief visible. “This semester is already taken care of anyway.”

“Just one semester, we hope,” her father had added. “A few months to let us right-size and get back on track.”

In that moment, Adelaide had felt a guilty pulse of pride as she watched herself handle the conversation with such grace and understanding. She had been heartbroken of course. The next week had passed in a daze. She’d sat at lunch with her cohort, telling herself to soak in every moment but unable to get out of her own thoughts and bring the people in front of her into focus.

She smiled now at Gaston, a small smile, and shook her head slightly. Then she stood and made her way to the bathroom she shared with Priya. Priya slapped Gaston in the back of the head, who accepted it with necessary meekness. Still nobody spoke. The bathroom was nearby and they all knew the door was thin.

Suddenly, Arlo, who’d been more or less silent since Adelaide had announced she wouldn’t be back for spring semester, hoisted himself up off the couch and stepped to the short bookshelf where Adelaide’s laptop sat plugged into the speakers.

“Oy, I like this song,” Mishler protested.

Arlo ignored him as he tapped the spacebar to wake the screen. He opened a fresh browser window and typed in the address for the college’s website, where he saw Adelaide was still logged in.

“Whatchadoin’?” Imani asked from the couch, but Arlo still didn’t answer. A few more clicks. Then he checked something on his phone and began typing. Finished, he stood tall and stepped back.

“What are you all looking at?” Adelaide asked as she returned to the living room to find everyone peering at her computer.

Mishler, who had crawled over to squint at the screen, looked up at Arlo. “Holy shit. Is this real?”

“What?” Adelaide asked. She walked over and bent towards her screen. It took her a moment to comprehend. Arlo’s heart was hammering. Adelaide turned to look at him. He didn’t know what reaction he’d expected, but it certainly hadn’t been this. Her expression was full of hurt, almost betrayal.

“Like literally, what is happening right now?” Imani asked, her arms splayed wide.

Mishler coughed. He was sitting cross-legged again in front of the coffee table. “Arlo just paid Addi’s tuition for next semester.” A pause. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

The sound of five people gasping cut through the music still decorating the air.

“Now Addi can stay,” Arlo said weakly, still off-balance by Adelaide’s reaction and struggling to understand it through his foggy buzz.

“Holy hell,” said Herbie. “Addi, I think you need to take Arlo to your room to, you know, thank him properly.”

Imani punched him in the leg, hard, causing both their drinks to slosh.

“I have tuition too, you know,” Mishler said before taking a sip from his beer. He said it light, like a joke, but there was something in it that made Arlo uneasy. He felt his neck begin to burn. The thought of paying for everyone actually had occurred to him, but it had only been an abstract, fantastical cloud of an idea. What would that have looked like in real life? He’d log onto all of his friends’ accounts, pay their tuition, they’d all hug, and then what—flip cup?

“Have you been sitting there all night, planning this grand, romantic gesture?” Nicollete asked. When Arlo looked over, she was smiling her enormous happy smile, the one she got when she spied squirrels on campus. Her willingness to say out loud the things that others kept in their heads, and her ability to somehow say them without offense, had always been what Arlo liked and admired most about Nicollete. But in this moment, as his clearly ill-conceived plan collapsed so spectacularly upon him, Arlo desperately wished Nicollete would just shut up. Why did she have to throw in the word romantic? Because of course she was right. He had been thinking about this all night. How stupid, or drunk, was he that he had let himself think that Adelaide would. . . no, that thought was too embarrassing to even let back into his consciousness. There was a pain in his stomach and in his chest now. He didn’t want to be standing here but he couldn’t feel his legs to move.

“I can’t accept this,” Adelaide finally said.

“I’m sure there’s a way to get it refunded. It’s Friday night, it probably hasn’t even been, like, processed or whatever,” said Priya.

“Hang on, can I just say something,” interjected Herbie, then when he caught Imani’s look, added, “something not offensive?” He shifted forward. “Listen. I am assuming that every person in this room, at some point in the last two years, has Googled Arlo to find out how much he sold his website for. And if I’m the only one, then I guess you’re all better people than me. But I can tell you that twenty thousand dollars,” Herbie pointed at the computer screen, “means literally nothing to Arlo. Hey, I’m sorry dude, I know this is uncomfortable, but you made this bed so you’re gonna lie in it.

“All I’m saying is, Arlo is just trying to help. Addi, I think you should let him. Arlo is sacrificing nothing, and it would mean everything to you and the rest of us for you to stay. I mean, imagine one of us was literally starving, and Arlo had this warehouse full of food. All of us would be like, yeah, Arlo should absolutely give away some of his food. But because it’s money, we have to get all weird about it? Why though?”

“But it’s not just money, is it?” said Priya. “It’s—maybe this isn’t the right word—but it’s almost like it’s, like it’s power. Like, it’s not fair for one person to just make someone else owe them something this big.”

“She doesn’t owe me anything,” responded Arlo, his voice coming level.

“But she would,” Priya countered softly.

Arlo noticed then that Nicollete was scribbling in the little black notebook she always carried with her. “What are you writing?” he asked.

Nicollete finished her sentence then closed the notebook on her pen. “I’m too drunk to trust my brain to remember what’s happening right now, but I’m sober enough to know that I want to remember. I don’t know how this is going to end. I also hope Addi will just take the gift and stay because I would miss the shit out of her and nights like this. Well, not nights exactly like this, but you know, just all of us. But maybe our little group implodes tomorrow because of this. Either way, I’m going to be telling people about this night for the rest of my life, and I don’t want to leave out any of the details.”

They were silent then. Adelaide looked around the room at the faces of each of her friends.

“Can you make me a copy of that?” Herbie asked Nicollete. Then one by one, they all began to laugh.