Enthusiasm (25 page)

I awoke the next day, however, to a gray, spitting drizzle and the realization that, although everything had changed, nothing had changed. True, I was free to love Parr. But I wasn’t free to see him.

Also, I remembered, I had promised in a weak moment to hang out at the Java Jail with Seth that afternoon after school. When I made the promise, it had seemed like ages in the future, too far away to matter; but now the time had arrived. I saw myself sinking slowly into the swamp of Seth’s expectations, while the golden sail of my love twinkled out of sight over the horizon.

rescue me ash,
I text-messaged my friend.
meeting seth @java j this aftnn. be there pls. pls pls pls. need you. jl

you shd dump him already. quit messing around. its too imptnt. dont worry tho ill be there. ash,
she TM’ed back.

And she was. “Jules! Seth! Come sit over here,” she shrieked from the back, patting two seats at her table. I headed stubbornly in her direction, with Seth dragging behind and trying to draw me off to other tables.

Once we had sat down, Ashleigh pounced on Seth. “As a literary person, what qualities would you say it’s important to look for in poetry if you want to set it to music?” she asked him.

It was the perfect question, at once flattering and absorbing, and even useful (at least to Ashleigh). After a few increasingly feeble attempts to get away, Seth warmed to the subject. He almost seemed to forget his irritation at Ashleigh and his resentful yearning for me. He turned his face and shoulders toward her, leaving me behind at his elbow. I was never more grateful to Ash.

Their conversation left my mind free to wander. It headed off in the usual direction—toward Parr.

And then, as if I had summoned him, there he was. He was weaving his way through the crowded coffee bar in front of Zach Liu.

“Here you go, Stringbean, a late birthday present,” said Zach with a smirk, pushing Parr forward.

“Zach! Parr! Hey, have a seat,” cried Ashleigh, pushing out a chair. Zach sat down next to her. “Seth, you know Zach Liu, don’t you?” said Ashleigh. She gave Parr a wink and a kick as she continued with the shocking words, “And have you met Grandison Parr, Julie’s boyfriend?”

“Your boyfriend!” exclaimed Seth.

I felt the blood drain to my feet. I looked at Parr with terrified inquiry. He smiled back, a sweet, wicked smile, full of mischief and hope. I took a breath and decided to go with it. “Yes,” I said, “my boyfriend, Grandison. I think you guys met before, right?”

“Hello,
sweetie
,” said Parr, coming over to sit next to me.

“I didn’t realize you were going out,” said Seth stiffly.

“Oh, we weren’t—then, I mean,” I said. “That is, we . . .”

Zach looked as if he might burst out laughing at any moment.

“We were just talking about what makes a poem a true lyric,” said Ashleigh quickly, drawing the attention to a safer corner of the table. “Seth says it’s the meter and the quality of the assonance and alliteration, but what do you think, Parr? Parr wrote all the lyrics for
Insomnia
. He’s amazing. That’s what brought him and Julie together. She’s really sensitive to poetry,” she babbled.

I felt the old sensation, familiar from years of Ashleigh: mortal embarrassment. I turned my face away. Parr put his arm around my shoulder. “Are you all right,
sweetie
?” he said.

“She’ll be fine, now that you’re here,” said Ashleigh. I straightened back up and kicked her under the table.

Seth cleared his throat. He looked pale. I felt bad for him. “Well, I’d better be going,” he said, standing up. “Lots of homework this weekend.”

“Oh, must you? Well, nice to meet you,” said Zach.

“Bye, Seth, see you Monday,” I said.

“Tuesday,” said Ashleigh. “Long weekend.”

“Right. Tuesday.”

Seth made a pained little bowlike gesture and left.

“Ashleigh!” I said. “That was so embarrassing. And kind of mean.”

“Why? You’ve been complaining for weeks about how you need help getting rid of him.”

“Have you?” said Parr.

“Yes, she has,” said Ashleigh. “You know it’s meaner to let him keep hanging around when you don’t actually like him. Now I won’t have to chaperone you all the time.”

Something in that sentence made Zach look at his watch. “Ope! Gotta go. Come on, Ashcan, I’ll give you a ride home,” he said.

“Thanks, Zach, that’s okay, you don’t have to,” began Ashleigh.

“Don’t be an idiot—come on—there’s something my sister needs you to do,” said Zach, taking her firmly by the shoulder.

“What? Oh. Oh! Right, that thing for Sam,” said Ashleigh, grabbing her coat with one hand as Zach propelled her to the door. “Later, guys.”

Then I was all by myself in the crowded coffee bar with Charles Grandison Parr. He grinned at me, took my hand, and said, “
Sweetie!
Alone at last!”

Maybe it was all a big joke, but I noticed his hand was as cold as ice.

Did it tremble a little? Mine certainly did.

“Ashleigh can be so embarrassing,” I said. “Sorry! Or, I guess, I mean, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. I’m honored that I could be of use to you. Especially to get rid of guys who pester you. Anytime you find a guy troublesome, please feel free to tell him I’m your boyfriend.”

“You mean it?” I said.

“You know I do. If you think it’ll help, I’ll even come by and threaten him with my epee—my dueling sword. Speaking of getting rid of guys,” he added, “are you done with your coffee? Would you like to walk down to the river? I see some of the guys from the fencing team heading this way, and I don’t particularly want to hang out with them. I get to see them all the time. I never get to see
you
.”

“Sure,” I said.

Parr left a tip on the table and helped me into my coat. Nobody had done that since I was a little girl; I fumbled around for the sleeves a bit before he found my arms and lifted the coat around my shoulders.

It was a warm afternoon for February, the earliest edge of spring. The rain had stopped, leaving a breath of moisture in the air. We walked the six blocks to the train tracks in silence, smelling the river just beyond, and crossed the tracks by the underpass, with its buzzing lights and loud echoes. The other side seemed quiet by contrast, hushed with the soft, deep slipping of the river.

“Let’s see if anyone’s in the band shell,” said Parr.

No one was. Everyone else, apparently, remembered it was February.

We sat down on one of the wooden benches overlooking the river; the band shell kept the worst of the wind off.

“What are you doing out of school, anyway?” I asked.

“Ski break, remember? I’m staying with my folks in Steeplecliff. Actually, I was looking for you. I wanted to give you something.” He took a little box out of his pocket and handed it to me.

“What is it?” I said. I had to take my gloves off to open the box. My hands trembled. I held it carefully, trying not to drop it. Inside was a ring: one side solid silver, the other side silver encasing something black.

“Does it still fit?” asked Parr. “Try it on. I was worried I might have made it too small—I had to add a strip of silver underneath the onyx. If it doesn’t fit, give it back. I can make it bigger.”

“You
made
this?”

He nodded.

The ring was too big for my fingers, but it fit my left thumb perfectly. I looked at it more closely. “Wait,” I said. “Don’t tell me it’s my onyx ring! The one that got broken?”

“I felt terrible about breaking it,” he said. “I thought I should do something.”

“You didn’t have to . . . You
made
this? But it’s so beautiful. Is there
anything
you can’t do?”

He laughed. “Well, yes. Tons. Most of the important things. One thing I thought I probably couldn’t—but I don’t know, I’m starting to think maybe I can. Let’s see.”

And he kissed me.

How cold his lips were—and then how warm. My sixth kiss—but my first. The blue sky, the blue river, his blue drowned look, our breath steaming together into one cloud. My cold fingers—his cold neck, warm under his scarf. I touched his dimple. We kissed again.

“I take it back,” he said, his voice rough. “You’re right. There’s nothing I can’t do.” He took off my hat and kissed my forehead, my cheekbones, the edges of my face next to my eyes. “I wanted to do that so badly,” he said. “Especially that night.”

“Why didn’t you?” I said.

“Why didn’t I? What do you take me for—barge into a girl’s room in the middle of the night and start kissing her? And I wasn’t sure you even liked me.”

“But I was being so obvious—joining the play and hanging around you all the time helping you rehearse.”

I was trembling. He hugged me to him and put his chin on top of my head. I heard his voice through my bones. My heart pounded and pounded.

“You call that obvious?” he said. “You never talked to me unless I said something first. And then there was that Seth person; everyone kept saying he was your boyfriend. I almost gave up.”

“Oh, God, Seth—he was so awful, I wanted to die. But I thought you had a girlfriend too. Some friend of Samantha Liu’s saw you dancing with a tall blonde at the Columbus dance. She said it was your girlfriend.”

He drew back and looked at me. “What? You’re kidding, right?”

“No, that’s what Sam said.”

He laughed. “Well, she was almost right. I
was
dancing with an enchanting blonde, but she wasn’t my girlfriend—not then, anyway. Do you really not know who it was?”

I felt as if I were standing inches from a sheer cliff, balanced over sharp rocks of jealousy. I hid my face against him again. “Sam’s friend thought it was Kayla somebody?” I mumbled into his coat.

“No, silly! It was
you
! You really didn’t know? There I was making a gigantic fool of myself, mooning around your house and writing you poetry, and I couldn’t even tell if you had read it. That was the first thing that made me hope: seeing you had my sonnet up on your bulletin board. But you never said anything about it.”

“But I wasn’t sure you wrote the sonnet for
me
. I thought it was for Ashleigh.”

“For Ashleigh!” He drew back again and looked at me. “But it had your name in it!”

“You mean
July
? ‘Zero degrees down here, July above?’ That’s what Ashleigh said, but I didn’t believe her.”

“No, I mean your name! Well, July too—I put it in for the echo—but I’m talking about your actual name, Julia Lefkowitz. Going down the side, the first letters of the lines. It’s an acrostic—fourteen letters, fourteen lines. You mean you didn’t even notice? Wow, I feel silly.”

Not as silly as I felt. My own name! Right there in the sonnet that the Person of My Heart wrote for me—and I didn’t even see it.

“Okay, I’m a marshmallow brain,” I said. “Do you hate me now?”

The answer took a while and was more absorbing than I could have thought possible. Afterward, I no longer knew how many times I’d been kissed.

Chapter 23

Bliss
~
Farewell.

T
hen followed ten days of unprecedented bliss. Parr found a way to come to Byzantium almost every day, and although the weather retreated into winter again, we barely noticed the cold. We held hands through the thriller and the romantic comedy at the Cinepalace, without noticing a single explosion or kiss (on-screen, at least). We spent hours talking about books in Andrezo’s Diner, the Java Jail’s unfashionable rival, where the coffee was hot, the patrons were scruffy, and the booths had high backs.

Ashleigh and Ned, who was staying at Forefield over the vacation, sometimes joined us. When they did, the noise level in the diner tripled.

After Mom’s success with the Gerards, Dean Hanson persuaded the headmaster to offer her a contract for the following year. She informed my father immediately by registered mail. Flush with her settled new income, she turned the thermostat up to 68 degrees, and in her happiness she even converted the Treasures storeroom back into a painting studio, as it had been during the early years of my parents’ marriage. Parr and I spent an afternoon helping her.

Parr brought me to lunch at his parents’ on the second Saturday of the break. Their house in Steeplecliff had stone walls, low ceilings, and slanted floors; I could tell it was very old.

“So this is what was fascinating Snip in Byzantium all week! I was starting to wonder,” said Ms. Parr—or Susan, as she told me to call her—with a familiar flashing smile.

To my great relief, I found that my table manners were not noticeably different from the Parrs’; Charles Grandison Sr.—Chip—even punctuated his points by gesturing with his chicken leg. And to my surprise, he took to me at once, insisting on giving me a tour of the barn out back where he was building a sail-boat. “See if you can get Snip to take an interest,” he told me. “Half his ancestors were sea captains.”

I found Parr’s room upstairs delightfully revealing. Although he had clearly cleaned up in my honor, he was just as clearly a natural slob. Books, abandoned bird nests, and bits of fencing equipment lay in loosely squared stacks in the corners. He turned out to be an avid bird-watcher. It was the wrong season for the more exotic migrants, but he regaled me with stories of the loves and rivalries of the local crows.