Everyone but You

by Sandra Novack

  Now, while buying a cup of coffee, I catch her peering through the window, her eyes and hair wild, snow falling all around her. She places a gloved hand to the glass, taps, and gives me a most cunning smile. Then she comes in and stands next to me. I inhale, hold my breath. Cass studies me. She slides the medallion back and forth across her necklace, tucks it down into her sweater, and eyes me suspiciously. She says God sees everything, Moira. And in case God fails, she tells me, she is also gathering evidence.

  I’ve done nothing wrong, I say, but she escorts me to the library, because she says she is going that way, even though Cass has never set foot near the library and cannot use the UCLID catalog to save her life. She watches, preys on my nervousness, and when she sees I am shaken, she smiles. It’s insanity. Cass is falling off the rocking horse, cracking up.

  On campus it snows and snows and the tree limbs are coated with ice.

  Peril lies at every corner.

  THESE ARE the hard facts of my guilt: When Cass and Evan first began dating, Evan stopped by the flat one morning while Cass was attending Professor Klodhaven’s History of Drama seminar. Wagner was playing on the stereo. On the coffee table lay Beyond Good and Evil, which I might have been reading had I not decided to paint my nails and take a quiz I found in Cass’s Cosmo concerning my disposition for true romance.

  When I opened the door, Evan brushed snow out of his hair, greeted me in an informal, lazy way, and invited himself in. He sat down on the couch and propped his feet up on the table, stretched, and scratched his head. Where’s Cass? he asked. Gone, I told him. I hobbled back to the couch, wads of tissues jammed between each newly painted toe. Water trailed from his boots and onto the table. When I pushed his feet down and said Excuse me, he smiled in an amused way (straight, white teeth, very Redford), and patted the empty space next to him. Sit, he said. I’m not a dog, I told him. I don’t take orders, you know. Had I been dressed more appropriately, I might have told him I was on my way out to a class or the library. But as it happened, I wore only a T-shirt and cut-off jeans.

  He watched as I leafed through the magazine in an annoyed, distracted way. He picked up my philosophy book and studied it. Finally, Evan said: I don’t believe in either Cosmo quizzes or the master-slave morality of Nietzsche; both kinds of indulgences in thinking can lead to trouble. He cited various historical instances where both Nietzsche and Cosmo have been misapplied to horrible ends. He said if I wanted to know where the real evil lay, I should look to women. Really, Evan has such an awkward way of flirting.

  I said: That sort of thing, oppressing women and their sexuality, feels a little old. Men have been using that kind of evil-woman nonsense since the Fall, I explained. I told him I personally was sick to death of always being mistaken for the devil.

  Hmmm, he said, watching as I removed the tissues. Pleased, I admired my toes.

  Nice, he said. His voice was surprisingly soft, and doting.

  Thank you, I said.

  Has anyone ever told you you look like Jodie Foster, very studious and intense and cute?

  As a matter of fact, yes, I said.

  Can I tell you something?

  What?

  It’s flirty, he said.

  I don’t fall for flirtation, I told him, even though I was already blushing.

  It’s deviant, he told me. I can’t say it.

  Oh, please, I said, glad for such a disclosure so early in the day. Now you have to say it.

  Red toenails make me horny, he said. Now I can’t look at you without imagining you naked.

  Discourse, intercourse. They are not so totally unrelated. And in my defense, it does sometimes happen that strangers come together in a fevered, frenzied way. In such instances, the less clothes, the better.

  However, of the times Evan and I have slept together since that day, and how I’ve blatantly lied to avoid detection, I cannot speak without further recrimination.

  I DO NOT THINK she has showered in days. Cass has let her hair grow ratty-looking. She skulks around the flat with a butcher knife in one hand and a script in the other. I am fairly certain Medea used poison, but I do not belabor the point or break her already fragile mood. Perhaps, I think, this is only Method acting and not some act of bewildered aggression or a veiled threat against my life.

  Cass throws the knife down onto the floor. I can’t stand it, she says, disgustedly.

  I am taken aback by her current state of being, which is something vacillating between severe depression, anxiety, and unleashed rage. She looks at me and sighs. We are in a mostly depressive episode currently, I see.

  Evan hasn’t called, she says. Not once in two days. She laments his loss and curses what she now calls his “paramour.”

  I say: Why is it women always get the curses? What is Evan, I say? An innocent?

  That’s not the point, she tells me. I’m Medea, she says. He can’t just do this to me.

  Uh-huh, I say, because her nerves are clearly frayed. What I think, however, is that acting = schizophrenia = illogical progression of discourse = psychiatric bills.

  Take the running-down of the undergraduate, for example, an event that landed the girl in the hospital with a sprained ankle (she fell) and landed Cass on probation (the dean was present, just arriving to his office). That whole fiasco happened because before getting into her sedan, Cass had a fight with her boyfriend Gil (predecessor to Evan, also an actor), and Cass had accused Gil of flirting with the girl, an understudy. The fight put her, in Cass’s exact words, as recorded in official college documents, “on edge,” and when she pressed the gas pedal, the pedal stuck, the car flew forward, and the poor girl had to jump into a ditch to avoid being hit.

  Let’s not get crazy, I tell her now. Let’s not do anything rash.

  Cass sits next to me on the futon. Evan smells of another woman, she confesses. She stares at her script absently. Her hands tremble.

  How many women can he have? I say. I have not slept with Evan in almost a week and have never before considered the possibility of another woman (besides Cass) in his bed, car, on his sofa, et cetera. I am not a jealous person, but I feel miffed just the same.

  Evan has gotten the upper hand, clearly. Cass and I look at each other. She shrugs. We sit in silence. It is this moment, as Medea suggests, when a woman takes a man for her master, that she is exiled from her home and dispossessed.

  LATE THAT SAME NIGHT, Cass haunts our apartment. She sobs, speaks to herself, quotes lines from the play. Until they are on stage, actors live in a kind of darkness, a limbo. For all actors, I decide, life is only a performance, and events on the stage are the truth. There is no way to argue it otherwise.

  Other news: I found two of my Wagner CDs mysteriously cut in half. My Nietzsche book is missing. Cass is working up to something. There is evidence of this all around.

  AT EIGHT O’CLOCK the next night Evan arrives, script in hand. He drags in the cold, along with a trail of slushy snow. He says, Hello, Moira, and shakes my hand with great formality, as if there weren’t other things besides his extended arm that I have seen protracted and stiff.

  I am finding you a little unbearable of late, I say.

  He says, I have absolutely no idea what you mean by that.

  Cass says nothing. She watches us from the futon, where she’s been firmly planted all day. She twirls her hair and stares in a morbid way.

  Jesus, Evan says, addressing her next. What’s gotten into you?

  Cass ignores this inquiry. The awkwardness between Evan and me seems to please her, and she smiles in a vindicated way. Evidence, evidence. Cass slides the small medallion back and forth. There are signs of deterioration. I go to the kitchen and down another cup of coffee. I watch as Evan sits down next to Cass and places his hand on her knee, but she brushes it away. Cheater, she accuses.

  Evan is an ennobled Jason, an actor to the end. He says, Even if you hate me, I cannot think badly of you. He kisses her hand.

  She says, I could kill you right now, if I wanted.
She nods knowingly, makes a slicing motion across her throat, and then kisses him full on the lips.

  Thespians!

  I down the last of my coffee and decide I will have no part in the evening. I collect miscellaneous books from the table (along with a few Cosmos) and gather my coat. I tell them I will be at the library, but Evan, not wanting to be alone with Cass, says: Moira, you can watch. He tells me, We need an audience, don’t we?

  As if this is a good option. Look, the whole thing is getting sticky, I say. I am no fan of acting, I tell him. Or the classics.

  He says: Have you seen Medea? There’s no telling what she might do. He laughs nervously. I sit, and even though I feign disinterest with a copy of Cosmo, I am forced to see Jason and his Medea embracing, her body limp, her wild eyes gazing at me. Evan, I decide, gets some kind of sick pleasure from all this. Having two women (possibly more) has made him bold. Cass begins to cry.

  It’s true, I am beginning to feel amoral.

  Later that night I wake to hear Evan through the walls, his groans in synchronicity with the rhythmic banging of the futon against the wall. They have made up. He has taken advantage of Cass’s affections, possibly gotten her to shower. I get up from bed and peer around the corner of my doorway. Cass is sprawled out under Evan. She pulls him closer, strokes his hair. It is a sad and fearful sight, to see them, the contours of their bodies, the pliability and frailty of their flesh, the frenzied way in which they come together again and again, and how, when finished, they disconnect, spent, exhausted, still only themselves.

  Medea opens in two days and will run for one week only. After the play ends, I can only hope that things around the flat will return to normal.

  MR. TANNEN CALLS the next day and says he has received complaints of lewd activity, sexual trysts, loud noises. I tell him he’s got the wrong flat, even though the air smells thick with sex and there are two used rubbers in the bathroom trash. I am on a bit of a caffeine kick. I am missing my Nietzsche book, and my music has been destroyed, not to mention other things—pride, morality, the start of any affection that might have moved me to love Evan. Mr. Tannen cares little about any of this, of course. He’s a short man with thinning hair and it’s widely rumored that he sleeps with students in exchange for rental discounts. I say: Look, Mr. Tannen, I am in no mood for harassing phone calls, but he tells me he’s heard rumors about both Cass and me, that he’s on to us and has our number. He says, The walls are thin, miss. He clears his throat after every sentence. After he clears his throat for the fourth time, I say: Are you touching yourself, Mr. Tannen? Are you?

  He tells me I’m insane.

  I CAN NO LONGER hold any eye contact with Cass. She wears the same clothes from yesterday—an old flannel shirt, yoga pants, and sneakers. She stands at the kitchen counter and butters a slice of burnt, crunchy toast. In the middle of breakfast, and for what reason I don’t know—love, abandonment, fear—Cass sobs uncontrollably. After she eats, she lies on the futon, watching The Price Is Right, and when I tell her it’s almost time for classes, she yawns in a sedate way, shifts, and turns under her blanket. I sort through mail: coupons (there is one for Irish Spring, which I discard); a credit card offer; a letter to Cass from her old high school sweetheart, who still, after all this time, writes; and a letter from Mr. Tannen to all his tenants saying that unpaid rent is subject to prosecution.

  Tannen is out to get us, I say. I toss his letter on the coffee table.

  Tannen is a pervert, Cass moans. And Evan is no better. She rouses herself, drapes the blanket over her shoulders, and goes to the window. She stares down to the park below us.

  By nine at night, there is other evidence of problems: Two empty wine bottles are in the trash. I find Cass’s research paper there, too, which Klodhaven has given a D. Later, I wake to find Cass standing over me. She leans in close, a knife in hand, and I can smell the acrid stench of wine on her breath. She speaks of betrayal, in both friendship and love. She says: Some friend you are, Moira, then she quotes Medea, saying, I wish I might die. She slides the small medallion back and forth. She stumbles back, falls to the floor, and then stretches out, turns, and sleeps.

  I could press charges—I would be within my rights—but instead I decide it’s enough that I stop seeing Evan altogether, that I put my torrid little affair behind me, and journey anew into the future. I cover Cass with blankets and return the knife to the safety of the kitchen drawer.

  SOME MISCELLANEOUS FACTS: First, when considering the ethics of power, right and wrong, good and evil, there is no place for attachment, as attachment corrupts. Nietzsche, before he became so lonely and morose, sitting around listening to Wagner, all philological and suicidal, knew this fact, subscribing to what he called a pathos of distance that grows from differences between certain classes of people (actors, ethics students, a perfect case in point). Now, as I am faced with Cass’s weeping, with my own feelings of guilt, I wonder if distance is really a possibility bewteen flatmates. There are, as Nietzsche also knew, occasionally attempts at reconciliation, times when certain types of actors/thespians and nonthespian sorts come together despite their differences. It is becoming clear to me that despite Evan’s rather classical detachment and Greek obsession with his penis, and despite my own cynicism and judgments and concern with literary discourse, Cass has suffered. That we are alike in our suffering. Tragedy, absurdity, and meaninglessness all abound because of one plain and simple fact: I have been an inconsiderate friend.

  ON THE MORNING that Medea is scheduled to open, the park’s groundskeeper finds Cass lying in the snow, dressed in a pink housecoat and clogs, laughing wildly and trying (unsuccessfully; she is drunk) to make angels. The ruckus drives me downstairs and out into the cold. I huddle with other students and watch, shivering, as the groundskeeper tries to help Cass up. She bites him, draws blood. The police are called. The dean is called. There is a suggestion, as she lies there, shaking, that she might need help, that she is rambling incoherently and possibly an indigent, but the dean disconfirms this, tells everyone about the incident with the freshman. Icy blood lines Cass’s mouth (from the biting episode), and her whole body turns blue from overexposure. Someone (I don’t know who) covers her with a blanket. The police escort her to a hospital (mental institution).

  LATER, IN MY DESPERATION, I go to the dank, ill-smelling hospital. I ask the desk nurse how they are certain Cass is not simply Method acting, how they know she is not playing out a derivation on the act of revenge, abandoning the knife and poison for a form of self-destruction instead. The nurse, who looks a bit like a female version of Nietzsche, seems alarmed by my appearance (cut-off shorts, a T-shirt, no coat, hair a mess). She assures me that Cass is clinically depressed and a danger to herself, that she has probably been like this for years. She says: Are you a sister?

  An unlikely proposition, you she-man, I say, but thank you. I want to see Cass.

  The nurse tells me that Cass is in an “extreme state” at the moment and that I can come back in a day or two. I am going to be up the creek with rent problems, but I tell her, this philosopher-nurse, that I am a millionaire.

  She asks me if I need some sort of assistance.

  No, I say, of course not. You’ve done enough, I tell her/him.

  THE COFFEE SHOP is already abuzz with news of the “nervous breakdown,” and the people in my department, a serious and sober bunch of nose-pushing bibliophiles, say they are concerned that all actors possess, at some profound level, feeble minds. When I come to the table, they say, Christ, what’s wrong with you? They produce judgments as I leave. I am certain I am already the butt of their ridicule.

  An understudy, an up-and-coming freshman, has taken over Cass’s part as Medea.

  Evan calls to ask about Cass, but beyond that, we have little to say. I tell him we betrayed Cass, that our cynicism and detachment collectively have done her in. He sounds apologetic and tells me in a glib way that he understands. He says that even though he feels exhausted and sad, he will continue to
play the role of Jason, as this is what Cass would have wanted. He tells me that when Medea closes, he will sleep for years.

  I am filled with some indescribable sensation, some need for Cass, and a feeling of duty toward her. I drive to the hospital, but when I arrive, Cass is being escorted out by an older couple, possibly parents or grandparents. Cass appears to be a wholly fragile thing. When she spots me getting out of my car, running toward her, tripping in slushy snow, she turns her head away, denying me atonement.

  I SPEND MOST of the days and weeks afterward sitting in Cass’s room, filled with regret. I tell myself, I ought to have been nicer, that a little kindness and consideration goes a long way, especially with regard to flatmates, if not the world at large. All action, I realize, is bound by space and time, and each moment, significant and insignificant alike, is unrecoverable. This premise, I am certain, is at the root of all falls, from grace and sanity alike: We cannot get back our lost time.

  I am thinking seriously about quitting school.

  I am definitely, at the very least, quitting German philosophy.

  At night I no longer sleep. I imagine I hear Cass roaming the flat and am burdened by both dreams and nightmares, all of them involving her and, oddly enough, a school of thought Nietzsche abandoned. My dreams mimic the conversion on the road to Damascus. In them, Wagner is playing in the distance, and as I ride on a horse, the strains of music grow weaker. Cass waits on the side of the road, and when I pass, she asks me why I have persecuted her. I fall, weeping. In my dreams, I lose my identity, change my name. These dreams, at the end, are filled with a certain quality of hope. In my nightmares, Cass’s ghost haunts my room with a knife, a possessed, tragic, lonely figure, and she tells me only that I will pay, that our sins follow us into eternity.

  I have begun to sit in on Cass’s History of Drama class. Professor Klodhaven has noticed and eyed me suspiciously, but he has said nothing. Yesterday, when I tried to hand in a paper I’d written for Cass, one which I am certain would have earned her an A, Professor Klodhaven refused to accept the work. He looked at me as if I were deranged.