Penelope (26 page)

Penelope did not reply to this, closed her phone, and regretted the choice of “Hi” as a text. When she thought about it, it was probably not as neutral as previously supposed. Then her phone started to vibrate again. This was a text from Gustav.

“I am glad that you used the medium of text to communicate such greetings. What are you up to?”

Penelope texted her reply quickly:

“Oh, nothing. Am in the library reading about Francis Bacon. Do you think he is Shakespeare?”

To which Gustav replied immediately:

“Of course. Only a sir could produce anything of note in iambic pentameter. What are you doing later? Want to get dinner?”

This was more than Penelope could have hoped for and she dropped her phone on the ground. When she picked it up and put her battery back in, she texted:

“Oh, sure. Which dining hall?”

After this there was quite a long pause on Gustav’s end. During
this pause, Penelope went to the bathroom and put on more lipstick, in case Gustav was eventually revealed to be in the library. (This she highly doubted. She had never ever seen Gustav in the library once and everyone was always in the library. Still, it was good to be prepared.) She went back to her seat, took a highlighter, and highlighted parts of the life of Francis Bacon. Then she wondered why Gustav was taking so long. Maybe he was having a party he didn’t invite her to. As she was thinking about this party, Gustav texted her again:

“Funny thing about the dining hall. Ate there once and got terrible indigestion.”

Penelope had no idea what this meant. Did this mean that Gustav did not want to go to dinner at all? Should she respond? But what should she say? “Hi”? Then there was some more vibrating and Penelope picked up her phone.

“Why don’t we have dinner at my usual spot? The Charles Hotel, 8 o’clock. Terribly sorry to inconvenience you.”

Penelope could not believe it. She was going to go out with Gustav, on a date, to dinner. She gathered up all her belongings quickly. She had to go home and change.

Penelope did not know where the Charles Hotel was, so she was late when she finally got there. Wikipedia was so helpful in some matters and so unhelpful in others. She spotted Gustav right away because he was wearing a red silk ascot and also because there was no one else in the restaurant under the age of sixty.

“Hello, Penelope,” he said, and motioned her to his table, where he promptly stood up and tried to kiss her on both cheeks. Penelope had never had anyone do this to her before. She almost kissed Gustav on the nose because she was so confused.

“Did you have any problems getting here?” said Gustav after he sat back down. He took out his phone and put it on the table. It was an iPhone of the newest stripe.

“I was a little confused,” said Penelope.

“Did you come from the library? I myself have never been in any of the libraries here. I find murals extremely vulgar and all of them seem to have murals. Who cares about people carrying things? I’ve always been partial to paintings of Roman heads.”

“It’s not so bad, really. People have started to sleep in the library and that gives it an atmosphere of fun.”

“People sleep in the library? I am sure you are making that up,” said Gustav. He seemed genuinely incredulous. It was not a humorous exaggeration to say he had never been to the library.

“It’s true. People are sleeping in the library. They always do. Everyone brings a toothbrush.”

“A victory for oral hygiene, I’m sure. Which is, I imagine, a battle with many small victories and very few won wars.” Penelope nodded.

The waiter appeared as if out of nowhere. Gustav looked at Penelope expectantly.

“Do you know which wine you want?” he asked her.

“No,” said Penelope. “I don’t even know what wine is, really.”

“It’s grapes, dear,” said Gustav. “Do you know what food is? Do you have any preferences?”

“No,” said Penelope. “Or, actually, anything without beets.”

“Fair enough,” said Gustav. Gustav then turned to the waiter and started ordering very rapidly in French, apparently for Penelope as well. The waiter did not understand French. The waiter kept asking Gustav to point to the items he was referring to and Gustav refused to do so. After about fifteen minutes of this, the waiter wrote something down on a notepad and trudged sadly away.

“I hope he got our order. I don’t really understand waiters in America. Why don’t they speak French? How can they be waiters?” said Gustav.

“I don’t know,” said Penelope, who took a robust swig of her water. “Do waiters speak French in Argentina?”

“Of course,” said Gustav. “Anywhere the water isn’t bad. Though to be fair, I rarely go back.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said Gustav. “Parents sent me away quite early, you know. I think I was four when I first went away to school.”

“Four? Really?” said Penelope. She felt a pang. Penelope had always wished desperately for boarding school.

“No, probably not,” said Gustav. “Probably seven. That seems more normal.”

“Did you like it?” asked Penelope.

“Well, of course, it was rather fun to beat the younger boys with sticks. And, you know, there is nothing like playing some odd sport on the grounds. I suppose I did like it. Well, I didn’t like it very much when I was younger, but it is easier to say you liked it the whole time.”

“I agree,” said Penelope. “Taking a definite stance is an important thing to do. My mother always says that.”

“What a wise woman,” said Gustav.

“But why didn’t you like it when you were younger?” asked Penelope.

“Well, children are really the worst when they are young. And I didn’t have this accent or anything then, so I was always having to repeat everything. Once I got the hang of it, it was smashing though.”

“Children are the worst when they are young,” said Penelope. “That is really true.”

“But, of course, my life has really been quite standard. What is it like growing up in Connecticut? Did you go to the prom? Were you always getting into sordid intrigues with local football heroes? Did you go to the prom pregnant by a football hero?”

“Only someone cool could do something like that,” said Penelope.

The food came. Penelope carefully picked the beets out of her salad as Gustav explained to her why some wines are different from other wines.

“Fascinating,” said Penelope when Gustav finished.

“That was a very depressing utterance, Penelope. It was so hollow. No woman has ever so roundly rejected my wine talk.”

“No,” said Penelope, “it was very interesting. Now I really know something about the role nunneries played in all this.”

“You can’t speak French either! What is this country?”

“A country that does not speak French,” said Penelope.

“Shocking. Well, I am duly ashamed and turn the conversation to you. What would you rather talk about?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Penelope. “Have you ever solved any crimes?”

“Crimes? Hmm. That is an excellent question. Let me think. Well, once all of Mummy’s jewels were stolen off this yacht we chartered in the Aegean. Of course, there were several people who could have taken them, including a very nefarious-looking butler who we hired for just the occasion. None of the regular staff got on with him; he sort of lurked around and all that.”

“Yes,” said Penelope.

“Then, of course, the thief was revealed to be poor Uncle Albert, who had stowed away in some sort of unoccupied steamer cabin and was living entirely off of empty potato chip bags. He just stole them because they were shiny. He’s touched, you see. His mother is also his sister or something, before they knew that was bad.”

“I thought they always knew that was bad,” said Penelope.

“Maybe they were cousins. But I am pretty sure they were sisters.”

“So were you instrumental to solving this purported crime?” said Penelope.

“Well, no,” said Gustav. “I was working on turning entirely orange, as was the style at the time.”

“To me that sounds as if you were actually doing research,” said Penelope. “Sometimes in detective novels, the detective just lies around all the time, but inwardly he is thinking, and thinking very hard.”

“Perhaps you are right, you know. This has always been my cross. Although it seems I do not have a thought in my head, I am, in reality, thinking constantly about crimes and how to solve them.”

“I thought as much,” said Penelope. “Because I too have that burden.”

Gustav motioned for the check and paid it.

“Let’s go, shall we?” said Gustav.

“OK,” said Penelope. They left the restaurant. Penelope realized that she had never met a more like-minded individual in her entire life. She hated ordering her own food. Even the wine portion of the date she could forgive.

“Oh, look where we are,” said Gustav.

“This is not my dorm,” said Penelope.

“No,” said Gustav. “It is my dorm.” They were outside of Adams House, by far the most elaborate dorm on the Harvard campus. The housing at Harvard did not become random until 1994. Before that, all the upper-class houses at Harvard were privately funded and sorted by type. For example, the athletes lived in one dorm, the WASPs in another, and the rattailed Caligulas of the world in quite another. When alumni gave back to Harvard in those olden days, they would often give to their particular house. As a result, some houses with historically rich associations greatly outstripped other houses in amenities. Gustav lived in a house with an entryway guarded by a marble balustrade and a stone lion. At one point his dorm had had a swimming pool in the basement.

“I guess I just forgot to pay attention,” said Penelope.

“I’m terribly sorry,” said Gustav. He put his hand lightly on Penelope’s neck. “I should be more aware of these things.”

“Oh, that’s OK,” said Penelope.

“Do you want to go up to my room and watch a movie?” said Gustav, tapping his finger on the top of her spine.

“Oh, uh, sure,” said Penelope in a faint kind of voice. “Do you have any?”

“Movies? Well, I remembered how you said I should get more DVDs, which was, I might add, a very reasonable suggestion.
So, over Christmas break, I purchased many different DVDs. At this point, I believe I have assembled a full library of every movie every person could ever want to see. At least come up and look. I got a new bookshelf for them.”

“Well, OK,” said Penelope. She tried to breathe normally. Were they going to have sex? Was that what people did at this juncture? Were they actually going to watch a movie? That was a possibility too.

Penelope went inside Gustav’s entryway, which was lined entirely in mahogany and featured many cavernous fireplaces set into the walls. Gustav’s rooms were in a wing of their own. They walked down a long hall to get to them.

“Do you have all this to yourself?” said Penelope once she was actually inside Gustav’s suite. The main room was an imposing Beaux-Arts parlor with twelve-foot ceilings and elaborate crown molding. Gustav had furnished it with a gigantic leather couch and a large Napoleonic-seeming desk. Yet, despite the hulking pieces of furniture, the room was very spare. The only wall decoration consisted of old maps. Penelope sat down on the couch.

“Yes,” said Gustav. “My mother called the school and told them that I had never been vaccinated for anything and was probably carrying loads of tropical diseases. I have never had to share a room in my entire life for this very reason. Lovely woman. I’m about as primed for disease as an Indian, but it has its perks.”

“Wow,” said Penelope. She tried to look at a map on the wall to steady herself. In it, the Netherlands owned quite a bit of the world. “Well, uh, what movies can we watch.”

“I’m so glad you asked,” said Gustav. He walked over to a short bookcase next to the couch Penelope was sitting on.

“Well, let me see here,” he said, and got on his knees to read the titles. “We have
Marathon Man, Notorious, The Boys from Brazil
, of course,
Face/Off
 …”

“Let’s go with
Face/Off
,” said Penelope quickly.

“I don’t know what this indicates about your tastes,” said Gustav, who was getting
Face/Off
out of its case and putting it
in the DVD player. His TV was very large and mounted on the wall like a picture.