Everyone disagreed. When the section ended, Ted and Penelope filed out of the classroom.
“Hey,” said Ted. “Do you want to get a cup of coffee in the Barker Center café? We can do our homework in there.”
“OK,” said Penelope. She had a bad feeling about this. Hanging out with Ted in a group was one thing, but she had not really hung out one-on-one with him since the incident. She wondered what he wanted to talk to her about.
The café was on the first floor in a glass rotunda. It sold organic coffee and old sushi and was always very cold or really hot because of the windows. It might have been Penelope’s least favorite place on campus, aside from the radio station. Ted threw his backpack, which was royal blue, on a table near the entrance.
“I really hate that kid in the vest,” said Ted, sitting down at the table.
“He is kind of mean,” said Penelope, also sitting down.
“I just don’t understand rolling your eyes while other people are talking, or, for that matter, banging your hand on the table when you yourself are talking,” said Ted.
“He reminds me of William Jennings Bryan,” said Penelope.
“Yeah,” said Ted doubtfully. “Do you want any coffee?”
“I might,” said Penelope.
“I’ll get it,” said Ted. Before Penelope could really say anything, Ted had already sprinted to the coffee line. He came back a few minutes later coffee in hand.
“You like yours with just cream, right?” asked Ted, putting one of the coffees down in front of Penelope.
“Yeah,” said Penelope.
“I thought I remembered that,” said Ted. Then he looked at Penelope in a serious and pained manner that could not but strike fear in her heart.
“Actually, Penelope,” Ted said, “I was really hoping we could talk.”
“Oh.”
“About the other night.”
“Really? OK.”
“What do you think about it?” said Ted.
“What do I think about it,” said Penelope. What did Penelope think about it? She had been trying to figure that out herself. At the time, the experience wavered from unpleasant to pleasant at parts. In the contemporary moment, it was firmly unpleasant.
“I don’t know,” said Penelope.
“Do you think it was a mistake?” asked Ted.
“Sure,” said Penelope.
“Me too,” said Ted quickly. “I was really drunk and everything. I think we both acted weirdly.”
“Hmm,” said Penelope. In her mind, they had not both acted weirdly. Only one person had acted weirdly. Another person was the hapless victim of the other’s formless advances. “Plus you are with Catherine.”
“Yes,” said Ted. “I am. So that is good.”
“Yeah,” said Penelope.
“I think we can be friends now,” said Ted more self-confidently. “You and me. It was too weird before with everything so undefined. I just had to take a stand and define it. I was just acting like an idiot.”
“That’s OK,” said Penelope.
“We can even hang out now, I think,” said Ted. He ran his hands through his bangs, but they stayed put, as if shellacked to his forehead with Roman cement. “I have been trying to hang out with you and Catherine and stuff. That was fun the other night. You and Catherine are such good friends so, I mean, we can all definitely still hang out. We don’t have to tell her or anything.”
“Uh-huh,” said Penelope. She discerned the reason for the talk now and she was a little insulted by it. She would never have told Catherine anything. It was rather offensive that Ted thought she would. Penelope took out her notebook, put it on the table, and pretended to write in it, to communicate her displeasure at this intimation.
“You know, we should probably do homework,” said Ted, smiling ignorantly. He took out his textbook to read. Penelope felt that her displeasure had not been communicated very effectively.
“I think I’m going to Harvard-Yale. Definitely,” she said after about ten minutes of fake reading.
“Really?” said Ted, marking his place in his book. “Are people going?”
“Yeah,” said Penelope. “People are definitely going. I think only people in Pennypacker are not going.”
“So that European guy is going?” asked Ted.
“I don’t know,” said Penelope. “Maybe he is.”
“Are you dating him or something?”
“No!” said Penelope. “Not even a little.”
“He did call you ‘darling,’ ” said Ted.
“I think he just does that to everyone he knows,” said Penelope. Privately she did not think this.
“OK, darling,” said Ted, which was not funny, but Ted started laughing anyway, which was right when Catherine snuck up behind him and covered his eyes with her hands.
“Surprise!” she said loudly. Penelope was the most surprised. She almost jumped out of her chair. She did not hear or see Catherine approach. Despite her glands and boxy shoes, the woman was as silent as the grave.
“Hey!” said Ted. He looked slightly abashed.
“What are you guys doing here?” asked Catherine, hugging Ted around the neck in a hold that could have been interpreted as a half nelson by those with less generous minds.
“We just wanted to get a cup of coffee after section,” said Ted.
“How fun!” said Catherine, pulling up a chair and setting herself down at the table.
Ted seemed to decide that the best way to handle this interruption was to soldier on with the original conversation. This was not how Penelope would have handled it.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Penelope,” said Ted, “it really pisses me off that European guys can’t handle that football means something different in America than it does in Europe. That is the most tired thing ever. Like of course it’s not the same sport. It’s so annoying. I bet that that guy never played a game of soccer in his entire life.”
“Who are you talking about?” asked Catherine.
“This friend of Penelope’s,” said Ted.
“What friend? Penelope, you never said you had a friend!”
“Well, I don’t really,” mumbled Penelope.
“Who is he?”
“He’s this really weird British guy that acts super old-fashioned. Is he British, Penelope? He sort of sounds like he’s British, but he also kind of doesn’t.”
“He is a citizen of the world,” said Penelope.
“That is so cute!” said Catherine. “That you have a friend.”
“They are going to Harvard-Yale together,” said Ted.
“No, we aren’t,” said Penelope.
“I didn’t know people were going to Harvard-Yale,” said Ted. “Maybe we should go too.”
“I don’t know, Ted,” said Catherine. “What about all our work?”
“Yeah!” said Penelope.
“We can do it another time,” said Ted. “Let’s go on a double date with Penelope’s friend.” Catherine smiled, hit Ted on the arm, and placed a large, disgusting kiss on his lips.
Penelope privately wondered at her bad luck.
“Bad news,” Henry Wills-Mather intoned like a bass bell. The cast was just starting to get into places for Act 4, Scene 1. This was one of the few times in the play that Penelope was offstage. She was glad of the respite. In this scene, both Caligulas were to be clad in matching bloody tutus and dancing ballet to the recorded sound of barking dogs. It was not one of Penelope’s favorites.
“Gather ’round, everybody,” said Henry Wills-Mather. He motioned everyone to sit on the front of the stage. The cast sat down obediently. Henry Wills-Mather stood on a chair in the front row. He stared into the distance sadly. Then he spoke.
“Craig dropped out of our dear little production.”
A collective groan went through the assembled cast members. Penelope was trying to think of who Craig was. She believed he had a line in Act 4, Scene 1, but she was not sure about that. Perhaps he was a senator. It was hard to tell what was happeni
ng really.
Henry Wills-Mather cleared his throat.
“I just want you all to know that what we are doing here is important. It may not seem like it is. It may seem like we are just a small theater company, trying to do the best job we can with a notoriously difficult text. But, in fact, we are doing something important. We are doing something terrifically important. We are staking a claim for independence in a world full of soulless conglomerates. Because this is a dangerous time in experimental theater. A very dangerous time. Thirty years ago, people didn’t need spineless iterations of Disney musicals in order to keep Broadway afloat. They wanted real shows that engaged with the very real political climate of the time. Now people want to see Shrek onstage. A huge, lumbering Shrek yelling at Princess Fiona onstage.”
Henry Wills-Mather looked almost as if he was about to cry. Penelope wondered why Craig dropped out of the play. It was probably because of homework. Penelope couldn’t really imagine it was for any other reason. Her hazy memories of Craig did not indicate a revolutionary spirit.
When Henry Wills-Mather recovered himself, he spoke again.
“I’m afraid we are looking for a replacement for Craig. Emma is on it, of course, but until then, I want one of you to take over Craig’s role, just for the time being. We are running Act Four, Scene One today. Who is offstage in this scene?”
Penelope raised her hand to mid-height. Five other people, including Catherine, did as well.
“Good,” said Henry Wills-Mather, pointing to Penelope. “You can take over Craig’s lines.”
“No, that’s OK,” said Penelope.
“Just temporarily,” said Henry Wills-Mather.
“I am just getting over this ear infection,” said Penelope.
“This really isn’t a very big deal,” said Henry Wills-Mather.
“OK,” said Penelope.
“It really is temporary,” said Henry Wills-Mather apologetically. “You’ll just be reading a senator’s lines. Let’s start from the beginning of the scene.”
Catherine was looking at Penelope in a surprised and not necessarily pleasant way. Sometimes Penelope wondered if Catherine suspected something about the dead fish incident. If so, she was doing a great job of keeping Penelope psychologically on guard. It was the move of a classically trained detective.
If only they could all stop being friends with one another. When Penelope thought about it, it seemed that all of them, even Glasses and Nikil, hated hanging out with the others, and yet all of them kept doing it. Penelope wondered what she could do to extricate herself from this situation and nothing occurred to her. She wished for the thousandth time she could get out of going to Harvard-Yale with Ted and Catherine. What if they insisted on this double date with Gustav, which had started, like one of those horrible jokes, to become less and less hypothetical as time wore on? She had already used up the parade excuse and the ear infection excuse, and she couldn’t think of any more excuses.
Penelope was roused from this flurry of anxiety when she felt something gently biting at her ankles. It was Raymond and he was doing it in a friendly way. Lan was standing a little behind him. She was wearing a T-shirt that said HELP FIGHT CHRONIC FATIGUE: IT IS REAL in Gothic lettering and had been watching the progress of Henry Wills-Mather’s speech with her arms crossed.
“Hey, Lan,” Penelope whispered. She motioned for Lan to come closer to her. Lan reluctantly did. “Are you here to start lighting design?”
“No,” said Lan.
“It’s good that you brought Raymond,” said Penelope. “I bet he loves plays.”
Lan started rolling a cigarette. Raymond kept biting at Penelope’s ankles but in a slightly less friendly way.
“Are you really taking over for Craig?” asked Lan, tucking her cigarette behind her ear.
“How long have you been standing there?” asked Penelope.
“They will never find a replacement this late. I bet you will have to take over for him permanently,” said Lan.
“I hope not,” said Penelope.
“I hope so,” said Lan.
“Places!” said Henry Wills-Mather. Penelope opened her script and started reading Craig’s lines. There were more of them than she expected.
The day of the Harvard-Yale football game dawned bright and clear and much too quickly for Penelope’s liking. By this point, she was actively dreading it. The possibility that she would see Gustav was exciting on the face of it but mostly nerve-racking. It was horrible thinking about prospective conversations and what she could possibly do to screw them up. As Penelope fixed her hair in the bathroom, she seriously toyed with the idea of getting on a bus and going home early for Thanksgiving. Her mother, she knew, would be pleased.
Emma woke up as Penelope was coming back from the bathroom.
“Hey, what time is it?” she asked drowsily, her head peeping out from her covers. Emma slept with a keratin treatment in her hair, which made her look like she was wearing a nun’s habit in the morning.
“It’s like nine-ish,” said Penelope.
“Oh, shit,” said Emma.
“What?”
“I have to get to this mimosa breakfast at the Pudding. Shit! I am so so late. Oh God. You have to get out of here. I have to change.”
“OK,” said Penelope. She quickly went into the common room.
Lan was setting up rows of red cups on the floor. She was wearing a blue shirt that exclaimed I WENT TO NEW HAVEN AND ALL I GOT WAS SHOT! Raymond, who was sitting on the futon, was wearing the same shirt in a smaller size.
“Hey, Lan,” said Penelope. “Are you going to the game?”
“No,” said Lan, who did not look up.
“Are you having people over here?” asked Penelope.
“No. I am not,” said Lan.
“OK,” said Penelope. “But then what are you doing with all those cups? Why are you putting them on the floor?”
“Felt like it. Plus I am having a party here,” said Lan. “Are you leaving soon?”
“Um, I think so,” said Penelope.
“Nice,” said Lan.
Penelope put on her coat and left.
In one of her weak moments, Penelope had promised Ted and Catherine that she would meet them in Ted’s room before the game. Glasses and Nikil were having a pregame there at ten in the morning. Penelope knocked on the door in a resigned manner.
Glasses answered the door.
“Oh, hey, Penelope,” said Glasses. He smirked, perhaps at the remembrance of a certain incident. “Have you come to our pregame?”
“I guess so,” said Penelope.
“Awesome,” said Glasses.
Nikil and Ted were sitting on the futon with a bottle of whiskey between them. Ted looked extremely inebriated. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was slunk so low on the futon that only his head was propped up. Catherine was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her head lying against Ted’s shin. She was wearing a Harvard sweatshirt and a Harvard hat with a white pom-pom on it. Jason was lying facedown on the floor a couple of feet away. It seemed everyone had been drinking for quite a long time.
Ted tried to look slightly more lively when he saw Penelope. It was a futile effort.
“Hey!” said Ted.
“Oh, hi,” said Penelope.
“Do you want a shot?” Glasses asked Penelope.
“No thanks,” said Penelope.
“Why? I have had six shots this morning,” said Glasses.
“That’s nuts,” said Ted groggily.
“Not to mention the peppermint schnapps,” said Glasses. “That means I’ve had seven shots.”
Penelope hovered silently near the coffee table while everyone else had a mumbly conversation about football and alcohol. She looked around her. The room was messy. It had beer cans lying discarded next to the trash can, for example; but it was messy in a more normal, less existential way than Penelope’s room, it seemed to her. This room had posters on the walls and books stacked on shelves. Penelope’s suite had cigaret
te butts all over the floor and cat hair in the bathroom. Penelope would try to clean it occasionally, but her efforts were like sad jokes.
“I’m sort of glad I’m not going to the game,” said Nikil.
“You aren’t?” asked Penelope.
“No,” said Nikil. “We both have something for EC 10 on Monday and need to study this morning. We figured we could drink, but we couldn’t go to the game. That’s a lot of time. I need to keep my A average up. I bet none of the bastards at the Crimson Business Board had an A in EC 10. A straight A! That was such a political piece of bullshit—”
“Well, I think we should go to the pregame,” blurted out Ted.
“Aren’t we at the pregame?” asked Penelope.
“I mean, I think we should go to the game,” said Ted. He stood up. Catherine stood up too.
“Do you guys want a shot before you go?” said Glasses in a leering tone that Penelope did not think was appropriate.
“No thanks,” said Penelope.
“I’ll have one,” said Ted.
“Me too!” said Catherine. “Although whiskey is so gross!”
Ted and Catherine took shots quickly.
“Ouch, that burned,” said Ted. He zipped his coat and walked toward the door. Catherine and Penelope followed him.
“Bye, guys,” said Penelope. She looked at her phone. Gustav had not texted yet.
“I could not stand another second of that,” said Ted, a bit too loudly, as they walked down the stairs. “I’ve been listening to Nikil whine about that Crimson thing for the last eight weeks. When will he get over it?”
“Maybe never,” said Penelope. “He is probably like Joe Kennedy.”
“It’s really sad,” said Catherine. “It’s just really sad.”
It was a brilliantly sunny, frigid day. Ted, Penelope, and Catherine walked down Massachusetts Avenue and over a stone bridge that ran across the Charles River. On the other side of the river was the Harvard football stadium, a late Victorian replica of the Coliseum that was both imposing and wholly devoid of irony. When they finally arrived at the entrance to the field, there were cops stationed there checking to see whether the students had alcohol in their possession. Ted was forced to throw out the beers he had stowed in his coat almost immediately.
Penelope Page 15
