My heart sank. Something had gone wrong, his face showed it. He hadn’t expected me to know the answer—and why should he? Still…
“That’s right,” he said. He folded his hands on his desk, frowning. I felt idiotic and about fifteen years old, as if I were waiting to hear I hadn’t made the cut for the cheerleading squad. But I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was just my homesickness, the terror that I would never make another friend in my life. That I would never wear the right clothes or say the right thing again. But somehow, it seemed that everything hung on whether he liked me or not.
There was a long moment when I could hear the soft conversation of the others at the front of the room, the sound of a pen scratching on paper. Then, abruptly, he stretched a hand toward me and grinned.
“Oliver Wilde Crawford.”
I looked into those sea blue eyes and nodded slowly. As suddenly as it had appeared, his doubt was gone. We might have grown up together, played Ringolevio in the summer twilight, been betrothed as children. For a moment I could only stare, until he nudged me.
“Sweeney,” I said. I took his outstretched hand. On his shirt cuff a watch had been drawn in blue ballpoint ink, the hands pointing to four o’clock. Always time for tea. “Sweeney Cassidy.”
“Ah hah.” Oliver slumped back into his chair. His eyes narrowed. “Sweeney. You’re from someplace very cold. Maine?”
I shook my head. “New York. Why?”
He drew an imaginary line from my velvet-clad knees down to my boots. “It was cold in my room,” I said defensively.
“Of course it was.” He nodded, tugging at the collar of his oxford cloth shirt. “I rode my bike down from Newport,” he went on. He spoke so quickly that I had to lean forward to make sure I didn’t miss a word. “A 103 Vega, I traded my twelve-string for it—1964 Gibson, with that kind of marbled bakelite detailing around the frets? That guy from the Thirteenth Floor Elevators had one just like it. Everything else’s coming in a trunk. Greyhound. I didn’t get here till yesterday night, took me three days, no change of clothes, I washed these this morning.”
He held out his arm and I touched the cuff above the ballpoint wristwatch. It was damp, but I barely had time to register that before his hand shot back, swooping the hair from his eyes, and he continued.
“So New York. Manhattan? Detour from the High School for Performing Arts? Or no, NYU film school but then you saw that Truffaut movie and—”
He cuffed my boot. “—here you are, Iphigenia in Northeast, our own Voila! And you’re taking Warnick’s class,” he added approvingly, adjusting his glasses. “Have you seen the pre-Columbians yet?”
I blinked. I was sweating so heavily I was surprised there wasn’t a pool at my feet. “Pre-Columbians?”
“At Dumbarton Oaks. We can go this afternoon. They open at two.” He glanced down at his wrist. “Can you borrow a bike? Or the 63 bus goes there.”
I felt a faint buzz at my temples, a thrumming sound that spread across my skull and down my spine. I felt stoned; at least, I couldn’t make any sense out of what Oliver was saying, although he seemed to think he was carrying on a normal conversation.
“The bus,” I said.
Oliver nodded. “Okay,” he said, pleased. “Sweeney, huh? Mockingbirds outside your window last night, near the Convent of the Sacred Heart? O sacred head surrounded?” He tilted his head sideways, gazing at me with glittering eyes.
I stared back, nodding like I had some idea what he was talking about. If he wasn’t so unabashedly beautiful, you’d think he was nuts. But this was Oliver’s peculiar gift—one of them, at least—that if you didn’t understand him, or were confused (and I usually was), or even just bored, you always felt like it was your fault.
“Tom O’Bedlam,” he said, and gave my chair a little kick by way of urging me to join the fun. “You remember. Gloomy Orion and the Dog outside your window while your parents were arguing downstairs. Spread your knees and fly away. ‘Sweeney Among the Nightingales.’”
I swallowed and riffled the pages of Finnegan’s Wake. This was worse than an oral exam. But then from outside came a faint burst of song: right on cue, a mockingbird in unwonted daytime concert. And suddenly I knew what he was talking about.
“Dumbarton Oaks,” I said. “‘Let us go and make our visit.’” It was the only line of Eliot I could remember.
Oliver nodded excitedly. “Right!” He removed his glasses, spun them by an earpiece. “Now, we’ll have to eat first—”
He rattled on, more unfamiliar names. Blue mirrors and Georgetown and numbers, 330 and six-oh-five, but was that a time or a bus or an address? It was my first exposure to one of Oliver’s odd monologues, composed equally of literary and private allusions and delivered at breakneck speed in his prep school voice, punctuated by dramatic tugs at his long hair and glasses. I nervously twirled a lock of my own hair and just kept nodding. I have a gift for looking and talking as though I know more than I really do.
But Oliver didn’t care. Oliver just kept on talking, smiling that loopy grin that let you know he’d spent a lifetime being loved by everyone he’d ever met.
“…so we’ll hit the Blue Mirror, hardly worth the transfer anyway, save your quarters for the Rockola at Gunchers and some Pall Malls, excellent sort of sub-Deco architecture and—”
Behind us footsteps echoed down the hall and then stopped. I glanced away from Oliver to see a figure standing in the doorway. A somewhat hesitant figure, the carnival light from our classroom’s windows broidering it with gold and red and green.
Now what? I thought.
It was a girl. Another of Dr. Warnick’s students, of course—if you could conceive of a Piero de’Franceschi madonna showing up for class in a Bloomingdale’s peasant dress and high-heeled Fiorucci sandals and Coach bag, trailing a cloud of perfume that smelled of sandalwood and oranges. She peered into the classroom doubtfully, turning until her gaze fell upon Oliver and me. Her eyebrows arched in a delicate show of disbelief.
“Is this Professor Warnick’s class?”
She had a beautiful throaty voice, with a slight vibrato. Oliver fell silent. I could hear the students in the front of the room whispering.
“Balthazar S. Warnick. That is correct.” Oliver found his voice and gestured at an empty seat next to him. The girl smiled, a rapturous smile that made you feel lucky just to have glimpsed it. I glanced at Oliver and could see that he was actually blushing, twiddling his glasses and staring at her, transfixed.
And suddenly all the cold misery that had overwhelmed me before rushed back. Because, of course, this was who was supposed to know the answer to Oliver’s ridiculous opening question. This was who he was supposed to meet—not me. Never me. Though from his expression he seemed quite unnerved. He looked away, shoving his glasses back onto his nose. “Ummm—a seat?” he asked, and tentatively patted the empty chair.
The girl stared at Oliver. Her eyes narrowed, and a curious expression crept over her face. Mingled apprehension and longing, but also a sort of restrained hauteur, as though she waited for a servant to come show her to her chair. As though she, too, had been expecting someone different. It was an unsettling expression to see in someone my own age. I wished I had taken a seat in the front of the room, wished that I’d never come here at all.
Her gaze flicked from Oliver to the chair beside him, and then to me. I found myself staring right back at her—a cat may look at a queen, right? For a long moment her eyes held mine. Luminous eyes, bottle green and almond-shaped, with long curled lashes tinted a dusky green as improbable as her irises. At the front of the room the muted conversation had stopped.
“We-ell,” the girl said softly. She shifted her bag to her other shoulder and stepped into the room. Then, to my surprise, she spun on her heel and sank into an empty chair.
The chair next to me.
“I am Angelica di Rienzi,” she said, and smiled.
“Wow.” An explosive breath from someone in the front of the room. “Daddy, buy me on
e of those.”
She was like a pre-Raphaelite Venus. Those enormous slanted eyes, cheekbones so high and sharp you’d cut your lip if you tried to kiss them. A wide curved mouth carefully shaped and colored with pale violet lip-gloss, hiding perfectly white teeth and just the slightest hint of an overbite. Her hair was a gorgon’s tangle of bronze curls, pulled back loosely with a thick purple velvet ribbon and hanging halfway down her back. Between soft tendrils glinted a pair of gold hoop earrings set with amethyst beads, and around her long neck hung a fine gold chain set with another, single tear-shaped amethyst. She wore a flowing cotton peasant dress, with short gathered sleeves and a scoop neck and little violet ribbons trailing from the bodice. Your basic trust fund hippie look, and just about anyone who affected it—me, for instance—would look infantile or perhaps, if they were fortunate, engagingly girlish.
But not Angelica di Rienzi. Angelica looked regal. How can I describe what it was like, seeing her in a university classroom? A classroom at the Divine, to be sure, but still just a classroom, smelling of chalk and cigarettes, floor wax and earnest fear. It was like glimpsing a peacock on a lawn in New Rochelle; like hearing someone sing the Magnificat in Grand Central Station. No one could look at her and not believe that the world would give her whatever she wanted. Not even Oliver. Not even me.
She tilted her head. “And you must be—?”
“Sweeney,” I said, my voice cracking. “Sweeney Cassidy.”
“Angelica.” Oliver repeated her name slowly, unconsciously aping Angelica’s theatrical diction. He moved his desk and chair closer to hers and extended his hand. “Oliver Wilde Crawford.”
Angelica nodded graciously. She pulled a notebook from her bag and let the purse slide to the floor, then, with another dazzling smile, took his hand.
In the front of the room someone giggled. I twisted around to see a heavyset young man in mirrored sunglasses staring at Angelica, his face expressionless, a cigarette dangling from one hand. I had a glimpse of dark eyes and a handsome, broad face with Asian features. Then with deliberate slowness he turned away.
“Are you related to the Wilde?” Angelica was asking Oliver. Her innocent emerald gaze made me kiss the pre-Columbians good-bye.
“Ah, yes. ‘The old somdomite,’” he said, giving her one of his vulpine smiles. “As a matter of fact Vyvyan—his son, Vyvyan—”
But at that moment Professor Warnick cleared his throat.
“Good morning, gentlemen and ladies. Welcome to the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine.”
One of the other students called back, “Good morning!” and another laughed. Professor Warnick gave a small tight smile, more like a stoat baring its teeth, and glanced at the papers in his hand. He was a diminutive man, his longish black hair touched with grey, but with a young, rosy face and blue eyes that blazed almost angrily beneath thick black eyebrows. He looked comfortable at his podium, despite clothes as ill suited to the weather as my own: a stylish and expensively tailored suit of charcoal black worsted, cream-colored shirt, and an expansive paisley tie of purple and poison green. The podium he leaned against had been specially designed for him. Its brass fittings were set into richly gleaming wood—rowan, I was to learn, and ancient oak imported from Aylesbury—the whole thing set upon polished casters that squeaked malevolently when it was wheeled from classroom to classroom. It might have been all of four feet tall, and Professor Warnick himself perhaps a foot taller.
“Ahem.” He inclined his head toward the back of the room. “Perhaps the Ghostly Trio would like to join the rest of us—?”
A titter from the other students. I gathered my things, abashed. Oliver stumbled noisily from his chair and took my elbow, looking past me at Angelica. She stared at Professor Warnick before giving him a small smile. His own cool gaze remained fixed as Oliver led me through the maze of empty chairs to the front of the room, Angelica behind us.
“Will this be sufficient, sir?” Oliver asked. He paused beside three seats and cocked his head. Professor Warnick smiled slightly.
“That will be fine,” he murmured, and began handing out sheaves of Xeroxes.
We settled into our chairs. Oliver looked at Angelica. He whispered, “Have you a writing implement? And some paper?”
She rumbled in her bag and came up with a gold Cross pen, tried to tear a sheet of paper silently from one of her pristine notebooks. Professor Warnick looked up as she hurriedly passed the contraband to Oliver. Immediately he began sketching cartoonish figures in the margins. I glanced back at Angelica. She had opened a notebook with marbled cover and endpapers, and was writing carefully at the top of the first page with a Rapidograph pen, drawing elegant cursives in peacock blue ink. I looked at my own battered notebook and my pen: leaky Bic ballpoint, black ink, cap missing. I decided not to take notes.
Professor Warnick’s class was strange. He began by dismissing other methods of teaching the subject at hand—
“Anthropology is very good as far as it goes, which is not very, since the discipline itself is only as old as The Golden Bough. And archaeology you will find is more, rather than less, problematical. Ah! you think, but how can that be so, since with archaeology we have, at least, the physical evidence in hand, it is only up to us to apprehend the culprit! But, I ask you, how many of you, looking upon a truly ancient artifact from a truly unknown culture, would have the slightest idea of what it was?”
Professor Warnick’s clear tenor rang through the room’s musty air. Dead silence from his students. Only from Oliver’s desk came faint scratchings and squeakings as he continued to sketch. Professor Warnick swept us all with a dismissive gaze. Then from somewhere (but where? it seemed too bulky to have fit in his pocket) he swept forth an object consisting of a straight upright metal rod with crossbars and several dangling narrow strips of metal. Although cleaned and burnished to a warm bronze color, it still looked stained and worn and undeniably ancient.
“What is this?” he asked. When no one answered he pointed to the heavyset Asian boy in the front row. “Mister”—craning his neck to read a computerized class list—”José Malabar?”
Mr. José Malabar removed his sunglasses and squinted, stretched a hand to touch one of the dangling bits.
“Uh uh uh,” scolded Professor Warnick. “No touching. Quick!—”
“A cattle prod?”
Laughter. The girl beside José Malabar suggested a hair curler. Professor Warnick stalked with quick small steps around the room, holding the rod aloft like a torch. Finally he stopped, turning all the way around once, like a dancer. I was terrified he would call on me. But no, his mouth was opening to say something, obviously he was about to reveal the true purpose of his toy, when…
“It’s a sistrum,” said Oliver. He didn’t raise his head. His glasses balanced precariously on the very tip of his nose as he scribbled away. Angelica drew her breath in sharply and glanced at me. I slid lower in my seat and watched Professor Warnick.
At Oliver’s words our teacher had frozen. Now he pivoted neatly, turning until he faced Oliver.
“That’s right,” Professor Warnick said in a soft voice. “And what is a sistrum, Mister Crawford—?”
“An Egyptian instrument used in the worship of Isis.” Oliver narrowed his eyes pensively. “Fourth Dynasty, I believe.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Professor Warnick. “Third!”
He raised the instrument and shook it. It made a harsh jangling, the sound of nails slowly being dropped onto glass. My scalp prickled. The sound died away, but for an instant I thought I heard something else. Another sound, like the distant sawing of cicadas in long grass, hot and tremulous and anxious.
Then it was gone. I lifted my head, chagrined to find myself yawning, and Professor Warnick staring at me with an odd smile.
“I will see you all on Wednesday,” he said, and minced back to the front of the room. “Please have read The Golden Ass by then—don’t complain, you’ll find it goes very quickly! The Adlington translatio
n, I believe the bookstore should have it in by now. Oh—”
He looked up from piling papers and sistrum and the end of his tie into a cracked leather briefcase. “I am supposed to mention that there is a reception tonight for Molyneux scholars, at Garvey House. At—”
He peered at a stack of papers rustling between his fingers. “Oh, I don’t know. Seven, I think. Are there any Molyneux scholars here?”
Students paused in their flight to the door. I stood uncertainly between Oliver stumbling to his feet and Angelica carefully inscribing Golden Ass, Adlington Trans. into her notebook.
“None?” Professor Warnick said. His gaze flicked across the room. “Mister Crawford? Your friends?”
Angelica looked up, then slowly raised her hand. In the front of the room José Malabar did the same.
And so did Oliver.
“Ah,” said Professor Warnick, and returned to gathering his things.
In the hallway I tried to get a better look at José Malabar, but he hurried off, fingers twitching around a cigarette.
“What’s a Molyneux scholar?” I wondered aloud, but Oliver had already swept past. Angelica halted in the middle of the corridor, poring over a burgundy leather datebook.
“Damn,” she muttered. “Can you tell me what that says? Is it 102 or 202 Reardon?”
I read the fine italicized print as 102. Angelica nodded absently, digging in her bag until she came up with a pair of eyeglasses. “It’s my contacts,” she explained, holding the glasses to her face and staring at her miniscule handwriting. “I’ve got those new tinted lenses and I really can’t see out of them. Okay 102. You were right.”
Tinted lenses! Well, that would account for the eyes, at least. Angelica flashed me a smile and closed her bag. “Thanks, Sweeney. He’s a little strange, isn’t he?”
I thought she was talking about Professor Warnick, but then I saw her gaze dart to where Oliver leaned against the wall. “Java?” he called, snapping his fingers.
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