Pamela Dean (23 page)

Janet tucked the calendar under her arm, snatched one of the cat calendars as camouflage, and sneaked up to the desk. In the arithmetical flurry that followed Nick's report of the cost of the model, nobody bothered to ask her what she had bought. Divided by four, the cost of the model and the shipping was a lot of money, but not too frightening an amount. They arranged matters with the clerk, telling him to send the model to Janet's parents to avoid discovery, and went to find their seats.

Thomas had gotten the same ones for both nights. This time nobody looked over Janet's shoulder and maligned the program book, though it was chock-full of peculiar existentialist pronouncements. Janet began reading them aloud not because of their sense or lack of it but because their phrasing was so funny. She had just found one that made all three of her companions laugh when the lights went down.

The whole audience was roaring inside five minutes. Janet had not paid much attention to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the night before, but there was clearly more to them than had met the eye. She glanced sideways a few times; to her relief, Tina was laughing as much as anybody. She was also holding Thomas's hand and leaning her head exhaustedly on his shoulder whenever she could stop chortling long enough to manage it; but that was no business of Janet's.

The
Hamlet
scenes, when they got around to them, were played exactly as they had been the night before. This was jarring at first, but became progressively less so as the play sobered itself up, until by the end the scenes with Hamlet in them were funnier than those with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Janet began to feel afflicted with mental double vision.

Last night, you were made to feel, all this hilarity, spotted with philosophy and twisting itself around to despair, had been going on somewhere backstage; now you were backstage, and on the other side the tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was taking its accustomed course.

When the applause had died down and people were starting to leave, Nick and Tina went off to their respective restrooms. Janet turned and said to Thomas, "I like Hamlet's universe better."

"I don't know," said Thomas. He pinched up a fold of his red silk sleeve and said it again, more slowly. "I don't know. Would you rather be innocent or guilty?"

"I'd rather be guilty and punished than innocent and punished."

"Would you?" said Thomas, with half a smile. He offered it to the stage; he had not looked at her since the lights came up. "There are great pleasures in the latter."

Janet considered this. "It depends on the punishment," she said. "If it's death, I'd rather deserve it."

"Ah, but which sort of death?"

"Hamlet's, of course," said Janet, trying to sound light. "With the flights of angels to sing him to his rest and make sure what dreams don't come."

Thomas turned his head and did look at her; his face was expressionless, but his eyes were a little large. "I never connected those images," he said. "To die, to sleep, no more—what dreams may come—I have bad dreams—and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. I would have thought it was ironic, though. My God, you could write a good paper on that, I'd bet. I wonder if the Christian imagery takes over so that by the end of the play it's

not
ironic? There's the talk with the Gravedigger, and all that stuff about Christian burial."

"Well, are you taking Shakespeare next term?"

"No, I can't possibly, I'm twelve credits short in Latin and my Greek is lopsided, no tragedy. And it's Aeschylus next time—just my rotten luck. He's impenetrable and his grammar's like a nest of snakes."

"Major in English," said Janet, with considerable joy in doing to a Classics major what Classics majors kept doing to her.

"I can't, it'd take another three years—oh. Ha, ha, ha. Very good. Is our timing really that bad?"

"Invariably," said Janet.

Thomas and Tina spent the bus trip back kissing one another. Nick was violently amused by this, and finally persuaded Janet up to the front of the bus with him so he could laugh quietly.

"It's not a completely worthless idea," said Janet. "You could kiss me."

"Once, if you like," said Nick, "but there is nothing romantic or stirring about this bus.

A dormitory room is bad enough, God knows."

"Some people take blankets to the Arboretum."

"In the spring, maybe," said Nick.

Because they took the commercial bus rather than the college shuttle, and saw Nick to the doors of Taylor, the remaining three ended up walking along the south edge of campus and then taking the asphalt road between Forbes and Ericson. Tina said good-bye lingeringly to Thomas. Janet thought of sneaking quietly away, but she was afraid Thomas might apologize to her. She and Tina finally turned toward Ericson and went in its side entrance. The first-floor landing smelled of ironing, the second of coffee, the third of that same sweet peculiar stuff Janet had noticed once before, and the fourth, stiflingly, of the same.

"Is that marijuana?" said Janet to Tina, as they gained their own landing.

"Is what marijuana?"

"That smell like somebody burning a rope covered with brown sugar."

"I don't know," said Tina.

They pushed open the double doors at the end of their corridor, and the smell hit them like warm water. Of course. It was at this end of the corridor that the freshmen lived who were causing Nora such worry. They must have joined forces with the more sensible pot-smokers on Third. Janet's eyes were beginning to water, and she wanted to get a look at Anne Beauvais's little sister.

"Let's ask them to open their windows," she said, and knocked on the left-hand door.

"I'm going to bed," said Tina, mildly, and went off down the hall.

Nobody answered that door. Janet turned across the hall and tried the other one, loudly. Somebody opened the door at once. They had put a couple of green towels—which they had certainly not gotten from the college laundry service—over their desk lamps and turned out the overhead. The resulting light was pleasant over the upper part of the room, but clashed viciously with the red carpet.

The student who opened the door was very like Anne. Her yellow hair was short and curly, and she seemed if anything even taller—her head brushed the top of the doorway—but those were the only differences. She was barefoot and barelegged, wearing a large muslin shirt with an embroidered hem. "Hello?" she said.

Janet introduced herself and suggested that a little ventilation was in order.

"Well, I don't know," said Odile, in the mellow voice she also shared with Anne. "It's not my smoke." She turned back into the room and called, "Jen, Barbara, come here a moment."

She stood aside as she spoke. Janet stared into the smoky green light of the room. It was like a dusty forest clearing at sunset. The shrouded lamps cast meaningless shadows and warped all the familiar college furniture. There were two other tall slender figures, one in green draperies and the other in nothing whatever, standing talking against the dark windows; and a third one, in white gauze, lying on the floor with a candle in a Food Service saucer balanced on her chest. The Food Service saucer was the only thing in the room that looked like itself. Janet's head hurt. She did not, really, want to speak to any of these people, and started to say so.

Then two more figures rose from the floor behind one of the beds, stepped over the person on the floor, and came up behind Odile. They were both brown-haired and ordinary-looking; much shorter and solider than Odile, and wearing jeans and sweaters. One of them had wire-rimmed glasses, the other horn-rimmed ones. Both of them looked as if they were suffering from sleep deprivation and pink-eye simultaneously; Janet could have hugged them anyway.

Odile said to them, "Janet here thinks we must open some windows."

"We paid a lot for that smoke," said the girl with glasses, as if she had had to think hard to figure this out, "and we're not done with it yet."

"You're losing it just the same," said Janet, "it's going down the stairway and all along the hall. I live in four-oh-four," she added, with perfect truth but lying intent. She wanted very much to ask why they didn't just drink themselves into whatever state they were all in and stop polluting their immediate environment, but it would be impolitic. And rather silly—they probably weren't old enough to drink, so it would be just as illegal, and just as bad for their college work, and they might even deck the room out like this to do it in, too.

But unless they got sick in the hall, she would at least be able to walk past their door in blissful ignorance.

"You can come in too," said the other brown-haired girl. "The night is young. Odile has stuff she hasn't distributed yet."

"Thank you," said Janet, "I've been to a Stoppard play, and that's enough for one night."

Odile smiled distantly.

The two with glasses looked wide-eyed at each other.

"Are you a butterfly dreaming it's a Chinese philosopher?" said the girl with the wire-rimmed glasses, looked again at her companion as if for corroboration, and giggled contentedly.

"No," said Janet, wearily. She felt a hundred years old. The shadows in the room wavered like water. The light in the corridor was beginning to hurt her eyes. The sickly smoke rasped in her throat like the taste of Tabasco sauce. She thought of Nora, shouldering her senior year as an Economics major and having to listen to nonsense from these creatures, people most other RA's would either have let go to hell or reported long ago. "I'm a Puritan masquerading as a college student. And I advise you to open those windows, because I'm going to talk to Melinda Wolfe."

They looked at her blankly.

"Never mind," said Odile. She put a hand on each of their backs and pushed. "You go down to bed now; we'll manage."

They walked at Janet as if she weren't there; she dodged hastily, and they went past her, through the stairway doors and, from the sounds, down the steps without any mishap.

"Now," said Odile. "Do you know Melinda Wolfe?"

"She's my advisor," said Janet.

Odile opened her eyes in an expression just slightly exaggerated—theater types, thought Janet—and ducking her head she stepped outside into the hall and shut the door behind her. "What is your major?"

"English," said Janet, taking a step backwards so she coul d hold Odile's eye without

hurting her own neck. Odile smelled of violets, and the embroidery of her shirt was columbines. Her skin was like honey.

"Ah," said Odile. "You had not thought of Classics?"

Janet stared at her, and stopped an impatient answer just in time. She had heard the question too often. It made no sense, but it meant something. "I haven't decided for certain," she said. "I'm only a freshman."

"Ah," said Odile again. "Well, attend for a moment, then. You see that the more foolish children are asleep across the hall and that I have sent the less foolish children downstairs to bed also. With what remains you have nothing to do."

"I have to breathe it," said Janet, so as to have said something. "And you're fretting Nora terribly."

"We do not fret Nora," said Odile. "The children we may leave out of account from this day forward."

That was what Nora had called them, children. Odile was a freshman herself. Janet suppressed, again, the urge to argue; this was not what was important. She wished she knew what she was bargaining with. She said, "If Nora thinks things are under control, I do too."

"So," said Odile. She smiled suddenly, and Janet smiled back completely without meaning to. Odile said, "This is not your atmosphere, I think? But Classics has room for Puritans also. We need you; we are the leaven, but you are the loaf. Do you remember that, when you think on which major you will choose."

Her tone was kind and friendly, and Janet's skin prickled all over. "I'll remember," she said. While memory holds a seat in this distracted globe; you bet. "But the smoke?"

"I think one puts a towel along the crack under the door, that keeps the smoke from leaving. We will do so. Good night." She slipped back into her room and shut the door.

I wish I knew what just happened, thought Janet. She went quickly down the hall and into her own room as if she were heading for home in a game of hide-and-seek. It smelled comfortingly of the Russian tea Tina made. Janet opened all the windows anyway, and made Molly and Tina wrap themselves up in their bedspreads while they drank the tea. It took the burned-rope-and-sugar taste out of her throat, but eventually she was obliged to go take a shower to get the smell out of her hair. It was almost as bad as the lake water.

September ran out in a late and freakish thunderstorm, and October breezed in, golden and smiling. Daily life, which had been full of starts and uncertainties, settled into a routine. Tina and Thomas became a model couple, making sheep's eyes at one another and explaining one another's views whenever one of them was absent. Molly and Robin pursued an erratic and puzzling course. You could not make any assumptions about whether Robin would be present, whether for dinner or lunch or an afternoon walk or the Wednesday night foreign films or the Friday and Saturday night popular ones. He always sat by Molly, or on her bed if she wasn't there when he dropped by, which was fairly often, since he never seemed to take the trouble to learn her schedule. But he never touched her. It was true that Molly was so scornful of people who snuggled in public that you would not expect her to do it herself. She and Tina did take the bus up to Planned Parenthood early one Saturday while Janet was struggling in Professor Evans's class with his comparison of

Volpone
with
Peter Rabbit.
But Janet was half convinced that Molly had gone only to get better help for her cramps.

They both came back looking a little white and subdued. It was like an assembly line at a factory, Molly said; she supposed they couldn't help it, but it made you want to go find a nice nunnery in Spain and spend your time writing steamy poetry in cipher. Janet looked at her anxiously; Tina, for once, sat down on her bed and whooped with laughter. It was uncertain which reaction Molly wanted. She and Tina showed Janet their birth-control pills, in clear plastic boxes, thick round things the size of a hamburger bun, with the days of the week written around the edge; they looked like some aberrant perpetual calendar.