Under the Rose

by Diana Peterfreund

  “This,” George had whispered to me from our position on one of the leather couches in the Inner Temple, “is why I don’t get into relationships. No heartache if you were never trying to be faithful in the first place.”

  But Josh remained hopeful. “I like having a girlfriend,” he’d insisted. “It’s nice to know there’s someone who will be there for me.”

  “Even if you’re not there for them?” Demetria had asked. Nikolos snorted, which, I was learning, was his standard reaction whenever he thought discourse in the tomb was growing too girly. This occurred with annoying frequency (cf. his firebrand e-mails). Unfortunately, no serious discussion ever took place on the topic because Nikolos didn’t see any cure to what he perceived as the problem, except to get rid of the Diggirls, full stop. This had been his argument for the past six weeks, ever since we’d lost Howard.

  Clarissa’s C.B. was every bit as dishy as one would expect. Of course, she discussed her misspent youth, including the thirty-year-old boyfriend she’d hidden from her parents while in high school. Odile had nodded in silent empathy, having no doubt played the ingenue to plenty of would-be movie moguls in her time. (No one could wait to hear her C.B. and find out if the rumors about her and the various movie stars and hip-hop artists were true.) A sample of the type of anecdote to which our club was subjected:

  Clarissa: I mean, who amongst us hasn’t tried anal?

  Most of the Rest of Us (I bet you can guess who wasn’t included in that number!): (raises hand) Um, me?

  Clarissa: And after a few weeks, he asked me if I’d get a Sphinx Brazilian.

  Jenny: A what?

  Odile: Bikini wax. All of it.

  George: (grins) Cool.

  Jenny: (looks horrified)

  Clarissa: (not even pausing ) But after I did it, I felt prepubescent. I haven’t seen that part of me since I was eleven. I wasn’t in the mood for sex until it had grown back.

  Nikolos: (snorts)

  See how that might be a tough act for me to follow? I didn’t know how I’d deal with another night of Nikolos’s snorts. And what if they snickered at my more embarrassing anecdotes? At least I’d already fallen in the middle of the statistics in the “virginity lost” and “partners had” categories.

  Still, I doubted my tale of prom after-party sex in the bedroom of the host’s kid sister was going to impress anyone. I’m pretty run-of-the-mill for a Digger. Especially since there was only one orgasm involved, and it wasn’t mine. I bet Odile had done it on the top of the Eiffel Tower at midnight, or maybe on the Concorde. George had probably done it on the space shuttle. Would not surprise me a bit. As for Jenny, I was beginning to get the impression she was still a virgin. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Quick C.B. and then we can all go home and study. I was all for it, especially now that it was October and classes were in full swing.

  Not to give you the impression we only talked about sex! Before the C.B.s began, we’d tested the waters of knightly bonding with reports that amounted to recaps of summer vacation. I told everyone about my summer spent transcribing and editing narratives by exploited women, an experience I still hadn’t wrapped my mind around. I’d always figured I’d move to New York after graduation and work in publishing. All of a sudden I was gathering Peace Corps brochures from the Eli Career Center and looking into graduate school programs. All of a sudden I couldn’t picture myself in a cubicle, a realization I sheepishly shared with the other knights. But they were surprisingly supportive. I’d have thought with the Diggerly emphasis on ambition, the other knights would scoff at a career path that wasn’t fast track. I was wrong. Demetria had told me all about an upcoming project she was running for Habitat for Humanity, and Jenny—in one of her increasingly infrequent talkative phases—explained that she’d gone through a similar enlightenment after being involved in an Indonesian clean water project her church had sponsored two summers ago.

  I’d spent my whole life getting my resume in order. Maybe it was time to turn it into confetti.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed and padded out to our common room, bypassing my computer for the time being. If I was going to deal with “Graverobber’s” griping, I needed sustenance. I reached to the top shelf, where we hid our contraband hot pot behind a large hardback of Art Through the Ages, and filled it with water from our purifying pitcher. (I will never understand who the fire marshal thinks he’s kidding with his surprise inspections every semester. He knows we have coffeepots and stuff in here, and we know he knows. It’s all such a game. Demetria tells this story about sophomore year when he came into her suite while she and her roommates were huddled about the hot pot, smoking—another no-no—and waiting for their soup to warm. He just shook his head and wrote them a ticket. Demetria claims she used it for rolling papers.)

  What was I going to say at this thing? I plugged in the pot and plopped down on the couch, drawing my knees up inside my oversized sleep shirt and pondering the issue at hand. How embarrassing would it be to let everyone know that a week in my arms caused number two on my Hit List, a faux-beatnik named Galen Twilo, to pack up his dog-eared copy of Howl and burn for a different “ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo of…” whatever-it-was.

  Or would I open up the wound from number three, the supposed love of my short life, Alan Albertson, who’d abruptly left me for someone named Fulbright? Or Brandon, number five, who I couldn’t manage to hold on to for longer than a few days. How about that one-night stand I’d had in between the two of them, that Spring Break mistake I don’t remember well enough to report his full name?

  I could imagine why these C.B.s were so popular with male-only clubs. The double standard was in full force, once again. A man having anonymous sex was a Penthouse letter. A woman doing it was something different altogether. And there was probably nothing I could say that would impress George enough to keep him from sorta making plans with me and then sorta standing me up. I leaned my head back and began massaging my temples. Five minutes in, and the day already sucked.

  The door to Lydia’s bedroom opened and out walked a very rumpled-looking Josh Silver.

  He stopped dead in his tracks when our eyes met, and for a second we just stared at each other—me a bumpy T-shirt lump on the sofa, him in a wrinkled button-down he’d obviously unwadded from a corner of Lydia’s boudoir.

  “What are you doing here?” he hissed.

  “I live here,” I replied. “Did you not notice the pictures of me in her room? No, wait, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know what you were busy noticing instead.”

  Lydia came to the door in her silk bathrobe. Silk! “Oh, Amy, you’re up. This is Josh.”

  “Hi, Josh,” I said, extending my hand from inside my tee. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, taking my hand in his.

  “Oh, wait!” Lydia said. “What am I saying? You guys totally know each other.”

  We froze, mid-shake.

  “Remember, Ames?” Lydia said. “At that political reception last January?”

  I looked to Josh. Go with it? “Yeah, I think you look vaguely familiar.”

  “Funny, I was just about to say the same.”

  “I’m going to go hop in the shower,” Lydia said, then began to coyly toy with the felt-tipped marker attached to her whiteboard by a thin piece of yarn. Lydia, coy! “You, um, want to stick around for breakfast, Josh?”

  “Sure.”

  Lydia left. The second the door closed behind her, Josh looked at me.

  “Amy—”

  “No.”

  “Amy—”

  “No.”

  “Amy—” He stopped. “Wait, ‘no’ what?”

  “No, I’m not getting involved. This is barbarian matters, Josh.”

  “Oh.” He plopped down beside me. “I thought you meant ‘No, you can’t see her.’”

  “I like that one, too.” I crossed my arms. “This is weird.”

  “That’s my assessment.”
>
  “How did you…meet?”

  He brightened. “It’s a funny story, actually. It was at the inductee ceremony for Phi Beta Kappa last month.”

  My legs shot out of the bottom of my oversized T-shirt. “Phi Beta Kappa? But—”

  “I know, that’s what I thought, too.” Josh nodded, getting into his narrative. “My dean called me in to her office to give me the news and I was all ‘Thank you so much for the honor, ma’am, but I’m afraid I must decline, as I am already in a secret society.’”

  I blinked at him. “Isn’t Phi Beta Kappa just an honor society now? I think it doesn’t conflict with our oaths.”

  “Yeah, I know that now,” Josh said, rolling his eyes. “After they all had a nice good laugh at my expense.”

  I shook my head. We were getting way off track here. “Wait, let me get this straight. Lydia is in Phi Beta Kappa?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t she tell you? The induction was the day of Angel’s champagne party.”

  “Two dollars,” I said evenly. And no, she hadn’t. But she had been ebullient that day, and this explained it. Why would Lydia keep such great news a secret from me, her best friend?

  Josh was apparently wondering the same thing, considering the raised eyebrows he was currently pointing in my direction. And then, it clicked. She was keeping it from me because I was keeping Rose & Grave from her. So not fair. She got two secret societies to my one? (Lydia’s secret society freaked me out, quite frankly. They almost destroyed our suite during their initiation last year. Of course, she’d never stand for me grilling her about it.)

  “So anyway, that’s where we met. I mean, we’d known each other from class and stuff, but for some reason, after the ceremony we just clicked. Bonded.”

  Knowing Lydia, seeing him in Phi Beta Kappa probably convinced her he was good enough for her.

  “And now what?”

  He looked at me quizzically.

  “Is she your girlfriend?”

  He looked down at his lap. “Yeah. I guess she is.”

  I shot to my feet.

  “Amy—” He grabbed at my arm, but I whisked it away and made a beeline toward my bedroom.

  “I’m getting dressed.”

  “Amy, your oath!”

  “I’m getting dressed!” I yelled, and slammed the door.

  What was I going to do? Lydia needed to know what she was getting herself into before she started to regret all of this coyness and Sunday morning sexy bathrobe wearing and cutesy little brunch invites. But what was I supposed to say? Yes, this Josh fellow seems like a lovely guy, but I have it on good authority he’s never been faithful to any of his girlfriends. If I knew Lydia, she’d try to bludgeon my sources out of me.

  Why I Don’t Like Sundays (Especially This One): reason number five…

  Brunch with Josh and Lydia got stickier than the dining hall’s sweet buns when Lydia left the table for a second helping on her Eli breakfast sandwich. The Eli breakfast sandwich is the best thing our dining halls offer: greasy fried egg, greasier fried bacon, and a greasy, half-melted slice of cheddar on a greasy English muffin. It’s to die for. Josh—who had, apparently, hopped in our shower while I’d been getting dressed—stared intently into his cornflakes. I concentrated on the opinion column in the Eli Daily News and munched a bagel. Neither of us saw it coming.

  “This seat taken?” A loaded tray slammed down beside me. I looked up to see George frowning at our little tableau.

  “At the risk of reaching critical mass,” Josh said, “go ahead.”

  George sat down hard and began to pound the bottom of the ketchup bottle until the contents spurted out over his sandwich. But he wasn’t watching the delectable he was currently drowning in condiment. Instead, he was staring daggers at Josh, whose wet hair was leaving little rivulets on the collar of his day-old shirt.

  Oh. I smiled and returned to the newspaper, perfectly willing to let whatever dreadful and delicious conclusion George might have jumped to stand for the time being. That would teach him to stand me up! “Josh,” I said, in the sweetest tone I could muster, “be a darling and pass me a napkin.”

  He gave me a curious glance, but did.

  “So, Josh,” George said, after a bite of ketchup-drenched sandwich, “you never did get back to us about that trip we wanted to take over Thanksgiving Break. You know, the one where we all go up to Canada for the cheap lap dances?”

  “Oh, really?” I bit my lip to keep from grinning and turned the page to the comics section. Ooh, Doonesbury. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Josh give a non-committal shrug, but I wasn’t sure it was for my benefit. After all, we weren’t under the seal of Rose & Grave right now. If I thought Josh, not Soze, and George, not Puck, were going on a strip-club lost weekend, I could tell Lydia just fine.

  Of course, George played right into my hands. “Look, if I’m interrupting the two of you—”

  And then Lydia came back and ruined everything. “George, scoot over,” she said, bumping his tray and setting hers back down. “They were out of the kind with bacon.” She pouted. “They always make too many lacto-ovo veggie ones.” Josh sighed and switched his bacon-laden sandwich for hers, and she beamed at him. They were so cute I could just vomit.

  George snorted. Great, another snorter in the club. I looked at him and he shook his head, then winked at me. “Nice try, Boo.”

  When Lydia, Josh, and I left the dining hall, I found George waiting for me in the Prescott College Common Room, legs slung over the armrest of a leather love seat. He waved, and I latched on to any excuse to depart from the company of the lovebirds.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Is that any way to greet your brother?” He feigned hurt.

  “No doubt the way you would prefer I greet you isn’t very sisterly, either.”

  He nodded and moved over on the seat. “That’s true. Sit down and talk to me.”

  “Where were you last night?” I sat down, but at the farthest edge. There was a recommended minimum safety distance when it came to tête-à-têtes with George Harrison Prescott. Also, I preferred an immovable barrier between us, like a table, or a mountain. Otherwise, I could muster little resistance to getting horizontal, even in a place as public as the Prescott College Common Room at brunch time.

  “Would you believe me if I said studying?” He watched me shake my head. “But I was. I was studying. All the time spent in the tomb has been taking a real toll on my working hours. I had a paper due last week and I got an extension until Monday because of our Thursday meeting. But we have another meeting tonight. Last night was the only time I had to work on it.”

  “What was the name of your paper?” I asked. “Sarah? Mandy? Amber?”

  He clutched his fist to his heart. “I find your lack of faith disturbing. It was called ‘The East German Uprising of 1953, and Its Effects on the USSR and Other Nations of Eastern Europe.’ And you, dear Boo,” he added, leaning forward, “should not be acting jealous.”

  “Oh?” I crossed my arms. “You get the exclusive on that?”

  He waved his hand back at the dining hall. “Tiny lapse in judgment.” Apparently, hundreds of thousands of years of male evolution are tough for even George to overcome. “But my point is, I have always been…available to you, for whatever. You’re the one who’s not interested in what I have to offer.” He leaned back. “You’re the one who left me standing outside your door last May.”

  Silence spread between us in the wake of that remark, and I studied George carefully. Had Prescott College’s most popular player actually been hurt when I turned down the chance to stare at his much-observed ceiling? He’d acted with equanimity at the time, but maybe, like so much of the devil-may-care attitude George presented to the world, it was a show. After all, I was one of the few (I supposed) privy to his tale of woe about his parents and their traumatic ongoing affair. When he’d told me shortly after initiation, he’d intimated it was only our Digger connection that made him feel comfortable sharing the s
ordid details of his upbringing. But maybe I had broken down the barriers of the most gorgeous and eligible bachelor at Eli, and maybe I’d broken a little more than that when I’d rejected his offer.

  “You shot me down,” he added, “to get, of all things, a boyfriend.” He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I figured it out. Your whole short, doomed relationship with that guy from Calvin College.” So George had been paying attention to my awkward exchange with Brandon and his new girl after all.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Clarissa told me.” Now he shook his head and laughed, swinging an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t you see, Boo? You’re not the girlfriend type. This is not a bad thing. You’re like me!”

  “And that’s a good thing?” I snapped back. George and I might have been equally unable to deal with commitment, but there the similarity ended. Gorgeous, rich, charming George Harrison Prescott could have the women (and gay men) of the world at his feet with a crook of his finger. My face hadn’t exactly launched any ships recently.

  “Would you really prefer that whole deal Josh has with your roommate?” he asked. “Lie to her for a few weeks or months, then cheat on her? Tell me you think it’s not headed in that direction.”

  He had me there. “But there are good relationships, too.”

  “I’m sure there are,” he said. “But I know I’m already one strike against a relationship. How does it have any chance with me involved? It’s doomed from the start. You’re the same way.”

  “You think I doom relationships?”

  “Ask me again after I hear your whole C.B.” He put a finger to my chin. “You know I’m dying to learn all about you.”