When Win finished with the last postulant, he said, “One more order of business. Brother, if you would.”
Frazier handed each postulant a small gold plaque printed with their name and graduation year.
“We will now proceed to the chapter room, our sanctum sanctorum,” said Win.
They climbed the stairs to the second floor, where Frazier unlocked a door. “Enter,” he commanded. The smallish room must once have been someone’s bedroom, Lulu thought, although now it just had some old furniture. A picture of Queen Elizabeth was on one wall, along with a small painting of what could only have been Lord Fellingham himself. Numerous gold plaques, similar to the ones they’d been given, adorned the opposite wall.
“You will now affix your plaques to the Wall of Belonging,” said Win.
Lulu noticed some double-sided tape was on the back of her plaque, so she pressed it on the next available slot. Alexander Hargrove’s plaque was the first, so they appeared to be in chronological order. She supposed the new plaques would be screwed in later, like the rest.
When all the plaques were in place, Win held the Cup of the Marquess aloft and cried, “Brothers and sisters, your names will be upon this wall forever. To Lord Fellingham!”
“To Lord Fellingham!” came the response.
“Long live the queen!”
“Long live the queen!”
Win removed his hood, which signaled to the others to do the same, and declared, “We shall now all drink to excess.”
A cheer went up as Tripp Maynard killed the Gregorian chants and flipped on his party mix. Someone produced a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, spraying it everywhere, and the evening was on in earnest.
* * *
For a few hours Lulu managed not to obsess about her upcoming appearance in On the Avenue. At last, she’d met some people she could tolerate, perhaps even like. Shelley, with whom she was growing close, even held Lulu’s hair as she vomited into a second-floor toilet later that night.
But by then, her only thoughts were how cool the porcelain felt against her cheek.
Trip Wires
LULU SAT IN her usual spot, waiting for Professor Russell to arrive. She had been watching the professor with greater interest of late. Something about him drew her in more each week. She loved the way his hair fell over his dark-framed glasses, and the way he unconsciously flipped it out of the way. His cheeks were slashes of pink as if painted with a wide brush. The overall effect was one of youthful innocence that belied his age.
The class was two-thirds female, which didn’t surprise her at all. She doubted very much the professor knew his effect on women. He struck her as perfectly naïve, which somehow made him even more alluring.
There was nothing naïve about her usual crowd, those boys and girls in New York. Most had been drinking and using recreational drugs since their early teens. A jaded ennui was the standard calling card.
And the Devon boys? Most were silly little things who’d spent their high school years studying for AP exams and practicing violin. They wouldn’t know what to do with her if they had the chance. The jocks were a bit better. They were beautiful, particularly the rowers and lacrosse players, and she’d been with a few, but they were ultimately boring, disposable. Sitting in the stands cheering on the Devon Devils was not on her college to-do list.
Older men were not a strange country for Lulu. There had been that brief affair with a friend of Sheldon’s last summer. He was a mature, patient lover, not like all these sweaty and eager boys. No one ever found out about their dalliance, but the danger of it had been like a drug.
* * *
Eph strode into the classroom. He loved this moment. Teaching wasn’t quite like being a rock star, but maybe it was, just a little. You were onstage, with a crowd, putting on a performance of something you loved. There was no better job in the world.
He looked around, taking in the silent attention for a moment. The classroom looked more crowded than usual, which meant he must be getting through to them. That was good. Positive student feedback helped when tenure loomed.
“Okay, today we’re going to dive further into Twain and the Realists, who came into prominence after the Civil War. Did anyone know Twain was something of a technologist? You might be interested to know he spent many days in the laboratory of his friend Nikola Tesla and had a relationship with Edison as well. He also managed to lose nearly his entire fortune on a bad tech investment, a typesetting machine that didn’t pan out. It all sounds very modern, doesn’t it?”
A hand went up, a boy in the front row. “It’s interesting how that contrasts with Thoreau, sitting by his pond, or Hawthorne, pondering the human condition.”
“Excellent observation. I love it. Can we imagine any of these characters in today’s world? I think Twain would be fascinated with the iPhone, while the Romanticists might recoil in horror at the idea of Twitter. You could have a paper there, by the way.”
Another hand shot up. It was Ifeellike.
Sigh. “Yes?”
“I feel like I was disrespected last class.”
Eph was taken aback by the confrontational tone, but decided to give her some latitude. “I’m very sorry to hear that. How so?”
“I told you how the lack of minority representation in this course’s syllabus really upset me, and I don’t feel like you acknowledged my feelings.”
“Right, then. Consider your feelings acknowledged.” Eph immediately regretted his flippancy.
“Okay, now I feel like you’re just mocking me.” Several others in the class appeared to grow more interested in the exchange. “You know, Professor Smallwood says you can’t prove there’s an objective reality, so the only thing you can know is real is how you feel about something. Well, I feel disrespected.”
Goddamn Toes. “Well, I’m sincerely sorry about that, and no disrespect was meant, but it’s hard to get around the fact that most of the great writing in our period of study was by white authors.”
“And who’s deciding what’s great? You?” Ifeellike was now in high dudgeon.
“I have my own views, naturally, but I’d say it’s more of a general consensus that forms over time.”
“Whose consensus? Other people of privilege? I think we all know the answer to that, don’t we?”
“Yeah!” chimed in a few others.
“As I said last week, Miss…”
“Gaia.”
“Miss Gaia.”
“Just Gaia.”
“Gaia. Well, as I suggested last week, there weren’t actually many African-Americans or any other people of color who had had much schooling at this point in American history, and I think the body of literature simply reflects—”
Another hand shot up; a male student. Thank God. Anyone but Ifeellike.
“I would like to read a short passage from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The student, a pallid boy with vibrant red hair in dreadlocks, stood and opened his book. Eph didn’t recognize him. “‘Jim was monstrous proud—’”
“Excuse me, but are you in this class?”
The student ignored Eph and started over, now affecting an exaggerated Old South accent. “‘Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he couldn’t hardly notice the other niggers.’”
Several students audibly gasped. Eph suddenly realized where this was heading. Another student had his cell phone out and looked to be filming. How long had he been doing that? Crap.
“Now, let’s hold on a second and discuss this—”
The student cut Eph off and raised his voice. “Chapter Two. ‘Niggers come miles to hear Jim tell about it and he was more looked up to than any nigger.’”
The class grew uneasy, some leaning and murmuring to one another. Eph didn’t like the feel of it. “Okay, so let’s take a mo—’”
The red-haired student, flipping to another page, cut him off again. “‘Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open—’”
This proved too much for Ifeellike. “Professo
r, how can you allow this to happen?” she shouted. “There are people of color in this class!”
Another student, an African-American, stood up. He was seated on the other side of the room. Eph didn’t recognize him, either. What the hell is going on?
“This is a racist class!” the boy shouted, to the class as much as to Eph. “Shame on Professor Russell!”
Looking over at the boy with his cell phone out, whom Eph noted was also African-American, Eph said, “Excuse me, it’s against school policy to film in class.”
“I’m not filming, I’m documenting.”
“Shame! Shame!” shouted several others. A few stood up.
“Please!” Eph was almost shouting now himself. “Let’s calm down and discuss this. We’re all on the same side here, but sometimes great literature needs to be understood in the context of its time.”
“Down with racism! Down with white privilege!” shouted the first African-American student. “C’mon, people, how can we accept this? Don’t sit like sheep in the face of oppression!” He stood and began to walk out. At least six others immediately got up to join him, including the documentarian and the red-haired boy. At the exit, the first student turned, along with the others. “Will you sit silent for injustice?” The other boy panned his cell phone around the room. “We know who you are, sheep.” At that, many of those remaining got up to leave, filing slowly out. Shouts of “Racism!” echoed outside in the hall.
Eph looked around. Mostly Asian kids were left, looking confused and a bit terrified. Cultural respect for authority and the desire for good grades kept them in their seats. Also, there was the Harris girl. She looked slightly amused more than anything else.
“All right,” Eph said, trying to regain his composure. “Where were we?”
* * *
Outside, Red Wheeler gave Jaylen Biggs, president of the Afro-American Cultural Center, a high five. Ritchie Taylor, the documentarian, also high-fived both. Gaia was there, as were a handful of other PSA and Cultural Center members.
“Did you see that, man?” Red said. “Justice was on the menu today, my friends. Serving size, large!”
They all laughed hysterically.
“Fucker didn’t know what hit him,” Charlie Hamer said.
“Yeah, not bad. Not bad at all,” Jaylen said, not appearing as buoyant as the others for some reason.
“What do we know about this guy, anyway?” Charlie asked.
“The fuck cares what we know,” Red said.
“I know someone who took his class last spring,” said Gabe. “They liked the dude.”
“So what? I don’t care if he’s Santa Claus. In any war, there are victims.”
That satisfied Charlie. “Then mission fucking accomplished,” he crowed.
“Excuse me?” said Red.
“Just sayin’.”
“The mission is never accomplished. The Struggle is a permanent state. How many times do I need to say that? Read your Trotsky, man. Today was just a taste. Ritchie, you come with me.”
“Where?”
“To see a friend over at the Daily. Someone I trust. Bring that phone with you. But first, let’s go somewhere private and have a good look at that video.”
They walked on, a spring in their steps.
Everybody Go Deep
EPH AND D’ARCY decided to take in a Devon Devils football game against a visiting team from the Ivies. Maybe eight thousand spectators were in a stadium that held sixty. The crowd looked mostly like some local Havenport kids and some die-hard alumni.
Once, Devon had been a national power, but that time had long passed. Now the school struggled for attendance, especially since the students were largely indifferent. Sometimes they came to tailgate, but would get drunk and never make it out of the parking lot. It was debatable whether many even knew the rules. Eph overheard someone nearby say that someone had committed a “foul.”
What no one, Eph knew, living anywhere near the Acela line could ever understand was the role football played in places like Alabama. They might nod their heads like they understood, like it wasn’t news to them: they like football down there. But they don’t get it.
They don’t get it at all.
The thing is, there isn’t much to do in small-town Alabama. There are no art exhibits, no visiting lecturers. There’s no High Line and the Dave Matthews Band is definitely not playing at the American Legion Hall on Saturday night. There are no women’s marches, peace marches, antiglobalization marches, or any other marches (unless you count that time parents had a demonstration about that sex ed class, but that was a while ago). The New York Times is not available for delivery, and no one would do the crossword or read the Sunday Review even if it were.
But there’s football, and in Alabama that means two things: Auburn and Bama, otherwise known as the Crimson Tide. As a good citizen of the Yellowhammer State, one is obliged to pick one of these teams as one’s own.
Pick? No, that’s not right. You inherit them, depending on family ties and geography. Then you bleed for them, the way you’d bleed for God or country. Ashley was Auburn country as the university lay just a piece up Route 29. The easiest way to start a fight in Ashley was to walk into a bar with a ROLL TIDE shirt.
One of Devon’s linebackers laid on a tremendous hit, prompting the crowd to cheer (and D’Arcy to wince). Despite Devon’s retreat from football excellence, the players were bigger than ever. Eph wondered why that was.
As an adult, Eph stayed in decent shape. He could run a mile in maybe seven minutes and put forty miles on his bike some Sundays. But as a kid, football was one on a long list of sports in which he’d been found wanting, although to be fair, his last data point was at the age of ten.
He developed late. A shade over six feet as an adult, he wouldn’t reach that height until almost twenty. As a kid, he was scrawny and short. There are many reasons a boy doesn’t want to be scrawny and short, but in Alabama, athletics would top the list. Not that Eph had anything against sports, even then. Many a night he’d lain in his bed longing for the golden arm of a quarterback or the graceful power of a wrestler. God, or random fate, wasn’t on the same page.
Pop Warner was the only year of football he ever played. He shuddered at the memory.
Ashley’s youth were automatically sized up for a position. Big and fat? Offensive line. A little less big? Defensive line. Really fast with a low center of gravity? Running back. Really fast with large hands? Wide receiver. Tall with a good arm? Quarterback. And so on until you got to kids like Eph: undersize, slow, and scared. They tended to get splinters in their asses, as the saying went, from riding the bench. At the Pop Warner level, though, the coaches were obliged to play everyone. This always enraged the dads of the better players, who thought that any second their boys weren’t on the field undercut their chances at a Division I scholarship. That anger radiated off the sidelines like heat from a furnace. Eph, a sensitive kid, picked up on these things, and it only added to his sense of dread at being called into a game.
Usually, they stuck him in the defensive backfield and hoped to avoid disaster. A defensive back didn’t get hit much, but Eph found every moment on the field terrifying regardless. He still remembered this one black kid named Jesse Greer. Jesse played running back for a rival team and must have outweighed Eph by forty pounds. To Eph, André the Giant had nothing on Jesse Greer, and the last place you wanted to be was standing between a guy like Jesse and the end zone. Not just because he was huge, either, but because he played with a sense of urgency, like he knew football was his only ticket out.
Even at age ten, on some inchoate level Eph could relate to Jesse that way, although football was never going to be Eph’s particular ticket. One time he got hit so hard the rim of the helmet cut into the edge of his forehead and he needed stitches. It left a small scar.
Eph’s mom, Millie, was always supportive and said the right things after games. But Big Mike, he never said much at all, except after Eph got the scar. He said it wa
s something to wear with pride. Red Badge of Courage, or something like that. Generally, though, Big Mike’s strategy for dealing with a wimpy, book-loving son was not to say anything at all, as if Eph could interpret silence in any way other than a crushing blow.
Whatever Eph was, he wasn’t Jack. That much was clear. Jack was his older brother. He was good at football. He was good at a lot of things.
Sometimes, the rare times Eph dwelled on it, he thought that one interception—just one—might have changed the entire trajectory of his life.
He was eternally thankful it never happened.
Lulu Ubers to Manhattan
LULU WAS BACK among her people, here for the big On the Avenue shoot. Because she had no Tuesday classes, she’d taken an Uber (Sheldon’s account) the day before for the two-hour drive to Manhattan and spent the night at home. She hadn’t bothered to call and wasn’t surprised to find Sheldon away. Charlie, the doorman at her building since she was a child, greeted her warmly. “Hello, Miss Lulu. So good to have you home.” She liked to think she had a great relationship with all the doormen.
She arrived in time to meet up with some city friends at Debajo, the club of the moment. They all had fake IDs, even if for a certain crowd, at certain places, it really didn’t matter. Bottle service (Grey Goose) had been five hundred dollars a bottle, and at the moment she couldn’t recall if she’d paid or someone else had paid. Or perhaps she’d just left. Details were a bit hazy, but no matter. Someone paid, she was sure. Pretty sure.
She and her group called themselves the Snap Pack, owing to their habit of documenting their fabulousness on social media. They’d been featured last summer on a blog called the Rich Kids of Instagram. While she knew the site was meant to be mocking, she also knew that people were secretly jealous. One of her friends, Thea von Klaussen, had already launched a clothing line. Being back in the city reminded her that people were moving on while she sat in classes. She was here to play a little catch-up.
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