by William Bell
BOGEY
So long, kid.
JAKE
(waves at BOGEY’S back)
So long, Bogey.
FADE OUT as BOGEY rushes through the doors of RICK’S CAFE AMERICAIN
CHAPTER FIVE
“HERE YA GO,” Dad grunted as he heaved two strapped bundles of cedar shingles onto the scaffold beside my feet.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I’ll be around front.”
Dad was building a boathouse for an old customer, on the shore of the Creed River, and we were sheathing the walls with wooden shingles to match the house and garage on the property. I had taken the afternoon off, glad to be away from school, a place that had become full of uncertainties lately.
Using my tin snips, I cut the strap binding the shingles together and stuffed a half-dozen into the side pocket of my nail bag. It was slow, meticulous work, but I liked it. There was a rhythm to it: fit the shingle, hold it in place, nail it to the wall with the pneumatic power stapler—whap-whap! Every few minutes the air compressor would kick in, rattle away for a bit, then cut out with a sharp hiss. There was a light breeze off the river, and the cedar gave off a fragrance that always reminded me of summer.
I soon lost myself in the work, and thoughts of my broken career plans slipped into my mind. I hadn’t heard anything from Pelletier about my appeal, and I had concluded that no news was bad news and the door was finally closed. I had to accept that I was going to have to readjust my goals. I tried not to feel sorry for myself. Lots of people had dreams about the future—interesting jobs where they could make a name for themselves or pile up a fortune or do what they loved—and lots of people came up short and had to settle for second or third or tenth choice. I was lucky, I knew. I had a backup, and the proof was written on my father’s van. But that didn’t make me feel any better.
Was I feeling sorry for myself? Maybe, but I knew I would never be content unless I could write the things I wanted to write—release the ideas that were building up inside me like water behind a dam and let them flow onto the page and maybe one day onto the screen.
I reached into my belt for another shingle, tried it for a fit, trimmed the edge with my utility knife, slapped it into place—whap-whap!—and reached for another. The row of shingles, pale golden and aromatic, slowly rose up the wall, and with it my frustration. Why should I give up? To hell with the York School for the Arts! Whap-whap! If I couldn’t get the university program I wanted, I would find a movie company somewhere and sign on as … as anything that would keep me close to the action. I aligned another shingle with the blue chalkline. Whap-whap! I could be a gofer, a stagehand, a camera-lens polisher, a lighting man. I would make sandwiches, hold scripts, take out the garbage if I had to. Once my foot was in the door, I’d somehow persuade the producers and directors to read my stuff. And someday I’d come back to York and show all those teachers that I’d made it without them. Whap-whap!
I felt a surge of confidence. Yes, if the university door was closed, I’d push open another. Whap-whap!
“Ow!”
“Jake? What’s up?” my father yelled as I watched a bright red line run down the pale face of the new shingles.
“You’d better come over here,” I answered. “I just stapled my hand to the wall.”
CHAPTER SIX
I OPENED MY LOCKER DOOR, grabbed my brown bag from the top shelf, clamped it under my arm and closed the locker. Moving quickly, I left the school, crossing the playing field toward the river, and didn’t slow down until I was well into the trees. I still felt guilty about hurting Vanni that day in the empty theatre, and I wanted to avoid her.
Spring was moving in. Along the bank of the river the branches on the bushes were dotted with plump green buds. Birds, all singing and calling at once, zipped overhead and squabbled in the trees, while squirrels rushed up and down the trunks, their claws rustling on the bark, as if they had forgotten something.
I wandered along the path, glad to be alone, and eventually found myself at the bridge—“our bridge,” I had once told Alba. I laughed at myself, picked my way down the bank and sat down on a smooth, dry log in a patch of sun on the shore of the river. I looked up at the bridge.
Alba was the apex of the love triangle that had changed and not changed. I was still in love with someone who could never love me back.
I dug awkwardly into the brown bag with my good hand. My mother had constructed a sandwich of pink meat slathered in ketchup and mustard and covered in slices of dill pickle. She had given me Dad’s lunch by mistake—he was a fan of the Technicolor school of sandwich making. Out of duty I took a bite, but then spat into the river and rewrapped the sandwich, settling for the apple that came with it.
I watched the water flowing over the gravel bottom, where small fish drifted and darted like tiny shadows, and Vanni crept into my mind. I knew I would have to be content with her friendship. I was lucky to have it. I should stop what Vanni herself would call whinging. But I also knew I would always feel an ache when I remembered that there could never be more.
I tossed my apple core into the stream.
“Hi, Jake.”
I turned. “Alba!” She was standing at the bridge. “On your way home?” I stammered, surprised to see her.
“Yeah. I skipped off early today. Got room on that log for me?”
“Er, sure,” I replied.
Alba shucked off her backpack and sat down beside me, very close. “What happened to you?” she asked, taking my bandaged hand in both of hers.
“A little mishap at work.”
She held onto me. Our shoulders touched. I could smell her perfume and, under it, a hint of lip gloss.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said.
I didn’t reply.
“You know, I never went back with Chad,” she told me.
“Yeah, I heard.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Neither could she, I guess. We sat listening to the birds and squirrels.
“You used to have feelings for me,” she said after a few minutes, her words like an accusation.
“Yes, I did.”
“Maybe we—”
“The thing is, I’m over you now.”
Alba dropped my hand. “You make me sound like a case of the measles.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Just joking,” she said unconvincingly. She tried to smile, then heaved a theatrical sigh. “Two lonely people,” she said. “What a shame. Oh, well. ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ ”
“‘Gone with the Wind, right?”
Alba nodded.
“ ‘We’ll always have Paris,’” I said to lighten the mood.
“Casablanca?”
“Right.”
“Who says it, Ingrid Bergman or Humphrey Bogart?”
“Bogey. ‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’”
“Huh?”
“Just talking to myself.”
“You should watch that, Jake. It isn’t normal.”
“Getting ready for exams?” I asked to change the subject. “They’ll be on us before we know it.”
“Yes. I drew up a study schedule last night. But I think I’m okay. My average will be an A or better.”
“Really? What about the BP grade? Won’t it pull you down?”
“It was changed. Saul told me today. They reconsidered. I got an A.”
“Oh. That’s … great.”
Alba got up and retrieved her backpack. “I guess I’ll be going. See you tomorrow, Jake.”
“Okay,” I mumbled toward her back as she walked across the bridge.
Panofsky had said that she, Chad and I had received the same grade. I had an F. Alba’s grade had been raised to an A. Did that mean … ?
I snatched up my lunch bag and took off down the path, my feet crunching on the gravel as I ran. I burst out of the trees and sprinted across the newly mown grass of the playing field. As I rounded the corner of the theatre building, my feet s
quirted out from under me and I went flying, sliding across the lawn on top of my lunch bag and coming to rest with my mouth full of grass clippings. Cursing and spitting, I got to my feet and brushed off the bits of green as I walked quickly into the academic building, leaving the bag behind me.
In the main office I stood at Mrs. Zhou’s desk, waiting while she chopsticked the last few noodles from a bowl into her mouth. She slurped and put down the bowl, then looked me up and down. I followed her gaze, noticing for the first time a wide green smear across my T-shirt and a fist-sized ketchup-and-mustard stain on my upper leg.
Just then, the door to Pelletier’s office opened. “Jake,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you.” She looked me over. “What happened?”
“I, er, fell.”
“Well, come on in. This won’t take long.”
Her office hadn’t changed much since the day my father had persuaded her to let me enrol in York. The Persian rug still decorated the floor, and the brass lamp stood on her desk, illuminating a sheaf of papers. She went behind the desk and sat down. She didn’t invite me to take a chair.
“It’s about your appeal,” she began.
“Yes?”
“I wanted to let you know that it’s been upheld.”
“Which means what?” I asked, a bit too abruptly, I knew, but I was nervous.
“Which means you prevailed.”
“So …”
“So your grade—or, as you so eloquently put it in your, um, presentation to the Appeal Board, your production’s grade—has been changed to an A.”
“This is official?”
“Jake, I am the principal.”
“You’re not going to change your mind?”
“Certainly not.”
The rush of relief carried my breath away. I stood silently for a minute.
Then I felt the anger rising like heat through a soldering iron. Just shut up, thank her and get out, I told myself.
“It’s too bad the three of us—Alba, Chad and I—had to go through all this agony,” I said evenly.
Pelletier’s face softened. “Jake, take a seat. No, close the door first.”
I did as she asked.
“I want to tell you something,” she began, “but I need your assurance that you’ll keep this in confidence.”
“Okay.”
“The original grade was the result of, well, some heavy lobbying on the part of one of the grading teachers. The rest of us allowed ourselves to be too much influenced by him. We made a mistake.”
“You mean Mr. Panofsky.”
“We needn’t name names. That’s not the point.”
“You mean Mr. Panofsky.”
“He takes professional standards very seriously, Jake. And he’s fiercely proud of the school’s reputation. It wasn’t personal.”
“It’s my future. It couldn’t not be personal.”
“I’m asking you to put this behind you.”
I forced myself to calm down a little. “Okay,” I said, not sure I meant it.
“I don’t want you to hold this against Mr. Panofsky.”
I looked directly into her eyes, on the edge of telling her she might as well ask the rain not to fall.
“I’ll try.”
The principal stood up. “Good.”
I went to the door. Before I opened it I heard her voice behind me. “Jake, I want you to know I’ve never regretted bending the rules a little so you could come to York. I’ll be sorry, in a way, to see you graduate.”
I turned, nodded and let myself out of the office.
As I passed Mrs. Zhou’s desk, she grinned mischievously. “Starting a new fashion trend, Jake?” she asked, pointing to the grass stain on my shirt and the ketchup on my pants.
I laughed, my relief finally finding some expression. “Yeah, what do you think? Pretty stylish?”
“Well, they used to put egg and beer in shampoo, so why not?”
On my way down the hall a thought elbowed its way into my mind. It was the Vulture who had stuck up for Chad, Alba and me.
Life was funny sometimes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THAT DAY I STAYED LATE in the workshop, having got special permission to remain after the security system kicked in. I needed to take stock of things and absorb the good news, and the best way I knew to put my mind on an even keel was to work with my hands, so I puttered away on the Pirates set until well after suppertime.
At home, I dragged myself into the kitchen and forced down a plate of meatloaf Mom had kept warm in the oven. She hadn’t burned the edges too badly this time. I washed it down as well as I could with water, then took a coffee up to my room.
I still felt guilty about Vanni. She hadn’t been avoiding me lately, but she had definitely been keeping her distance, which was ironic because I had been doing the same. I didn’t blame her. She was probably wondering what kind of fool she had picked for a friend. Someone who switched love interests the way a bee moves from one flower to another. A guy who blind-sided her with a declaration of love for her, knowing she was lesbian.
I decided to call her and tell her about the Appeal Board decision. She didn’t answer her cell, so I left a message. I put on some music and settled into my easy chair to read. Then Vanni’s book on the shelf above my desk caught my eye. I had been so preoccupied lately that I hadn’t read her poems carefully. I took down the book, recalling the day at the Blue Note when she told me she was about to be a published author. She had been so proud. Vanni was brilliant. And funny.
What a loser you are, Jake, I said to myself. You find the perfect girl, except for one thing.
Although she had unknowingly got the details mixed up, Vanni had been right. We were both in love with someone we couldn’t have. It was a classic love triangle, the basis for hundreds of screenplays.
I opened the book to the title page and read the inscription Vanni had written:
To Jake
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
Love, Vanni
I didn’t understand the quotation. Well, Vanni, I thought, I can’t apologize again for upsetting you, but at least I can try to work out the meaning of what you wrote for me. She had told me the poet’s name. I sat at my desk and went online. I didn’t know how to spell the last name, so I tried a few variations: Dunn, Dunne, Done, Dun.
“Do you mean John Donne?” the search engine asked, mocking me.
John Donne was a sixteenth-century English poet and Protestant minister—a playboy in his youth and a preacher later. I read the brief biography, then searched the long list of his poems. No help. All I had was the one line. Now that I knew his name, I investigated a few more sites. It took a while to nail down the title of the poem I was after. It was called “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.” Great, I muttered. This is going to be one of those poems that send you to the dictionary at least twice per line. I printed it off and pulled my dictionary from the shelf above my desk.
Valediction: a farewell.
Okay, a goodbye poem. Strange title, though. I struggled through the nine stanzas. Somebody was dying at the start, and that was about all I got. I slipped downstairs for another cup of Mom’s prize-losing coffee and returned to my task. My parents were glued to the tube watching the eleven o’clock news.
Back at my desk, I reread the poem—a few times. There was nobody at death’s door after all. It was a simile. The speaker in the poem was going away, and he was telling his lover not to cry. Let their parting be as quiet and gentle as the soul leaving the body. That explained the title. I reread the poem several times. I couldn’t say I got all the rest, but I thought I understood the stanza where Vanni had found the line she quoted in my copy of her book.
Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
What are you trying to tell me, Vanni? “Our two souls, which are one” suggested … w
hat? Our friendship? Okay.
I got up and stretched and paced my room for a few minutes to increase the blood flow to my brain. I still wasn’t getting it. I sat down and read the poem out loud, slowly and carefully, the way the Vulture had taught us.
And that was when a certain line jumped out at me: “To tell the laity our love.”
That didn’t sound like friendship.
But Vanni hadn’t quoted the whole poem—just one line. What she was saying was in that line, “like gold to aery thinness beat.” Another simile. What was like gold beaten to the thinness of air? The “expansion.” The expansion of what? “Our two souls.”
So, I was back to the idea that the two souls are “one.” They’re united. United in friendship?
That wasn’t what the poem said. The poem said “our love.”
I gasped. My heart rate leapt into a higher gear.
I snatched at my cellphone, sending it spinning and clattering off my desk to the floor. Cursing, I got down on my hands and knees, fished around among the dust balls and retrieved the phone. My hands shook so hard I could hardly hit the redial button.
She answered after four rings.
Still on my knees I almost shouted, “Vanni! I’ve been reading ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.’ I wanted to know what ‘Like gold to aery thinness beat’ means.”
“Didja, now?”
“You love me! I figured it out!”
“It took you long enough.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
IF YOU WERE TO LOOK UP THE WORD “awkward” in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of Vanni and me on the morning after our life-changing telephone conversation. I’d been waiting at her locker since I arrived—earlier than usual—at school. A few minutes before nine I caught sight of her walking down the hall toward me.
She wore her usual outfit, carried her bag in the usual way. But she seemed different, as if I was seeing her for the first time. Her thick black hair, as unruly as ever, was held at the back of her neck by a silver pin, and the effect was to emphasize her face—her light brown skin, those beautiful dark eyes, the full red lips with their ironic curve, the I’m-here-get-used-to-it nose.
