Under the Rose (8 page)

Brunch with Josh and Lydia got stickier than the dining hall’s sweet buns when Lydia left the table for a second helping on her Eli breakfast sandwich. The Eli breakfast sandwich is the best thing our dining halls offer: greasy fried egg, greasier fried bacon, and a greasy, half-melted slice of cheddar on a greasy English muffin. It’s to die for. Josh—who had, apparently, hopped in our shower while I’d been getting dressed—stared intently into his cornflakes. I concentrated on the opinion column in the
Eli Daily News
and munched a bagel. Neither of us saw it coming.

“This seat taken?” A loaded tray slammed down beside me. I looked up to see George frowning at our little tableau.

“At the risk of reaching critical mass,” Josh said, “go ahead.”

George sat down hard and began to pound the bottom of the ketchup bottle until the contents spurted out over his sandwich. But he wasn’t watching the delectable he was currently drowning in condiment. Instead, he was staring daggers at Josh, whose wet hair was leaving little rivulets on the collar of his day-old shirt.

Oh.
I smiled and returned to the newspaper, perfectly willing to let whatever dreadful and delicious conclusion George might have jumped to stand for the time being. That would teach him to stand me up! “Josh,” I said, in the sweetest tone I could muster, “be a darling and pass me a napkin.”

He gave me a curious glance, but did.

“So, Josh,” George said, after a bite of ketchup-drenched sandwich, “you never did get back to us about that trip we wanted to take over Thanksgiving Break. You know, the one where we all go up to Canada for the cheap lap dances?”

“Oh,
really
?” I bit my lip to keep from grinning and turned the page to the comics section. Ooh,
Doonesbury.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Josh give a non-committal shrug, but I wasn’t sure it was for my benefit. After all, we weren’t under the seal of Rose & Grave right now. If I thought Josh, not Soze, and George, not Puck, were going on a strip-club lost weekend, I could tell Lydia just fine.

Of course, George played right into my hands. “Look, if I’m interrupting the two of you—”

And then Lydia came back and ruined everything. “George, scoot over,” she said, bumping his tray and setting hers back down. “They were out of the kind with bacon.” She pouted. “They always make too many lacto-ovo veggie ones.” Josh sighed and switched his bacon-laden sandwich for hers, and she beamed at him. They were so cute I could just vomit.

George snorted. Great, another snorter in the club. I looked at him and he shook his head, then winked at me. “Nice try, Boo.”

When Lydia, Josh, and I left the dining hall, I found George waiting for me in the Prescott College Common Room, legs slung over the armrest of a leather love seat. He waved, and I latched on to any excuse to depart from the company of the lovebirds.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Is that any way to greet your brother?” He feigned hurt.

“No doubt the way you would prefer I greet you isn’t very sisterly, either.”

He nodded and moved over on the seat. “That’s true. Sit down and talk to me.”

“Where were you last night?” I sat down, but at the farthest edge. There was a recommended minimum safety distance when it came to tête-à-têtes with George Harrison Prescott. Also, I preferred an immovable barrier between us, like a table, or a mountain. Otherwise, I could muster little resistance to getting horizontal, even in a place as public as the Prescott College Common Room at brunch time.

“Would you believe me if I said studying?” He watched me shake my head. “But I was. I was studying. All the time spent in the tomb has been taking a real toll on my working hours. I had a paper due last week and I got an extension until Monday because of our Thursday meeting. But we have another meeting tonight. Last night was the only time I had to work on it.”

“What was the name of your paper?” I asked. “Sarah? Mandy? Amber?”

He clutched his fist to his heart. “I find your lack of faith disturbing. It was called ‘The East German Uprising of 1953, and Its Effects on the USSR and Other Nations of Eastern Europe.’ And you, dear Boo,” he added, leaning forward, “should not be acting jealous.”

“Oh?” I crossed my arms. “
You
get the exclusive on that?”

He waved his hand back at the dining hall. “Tiny lapse in judgment.” Apparently, hundreds of thousands of years of male evolution are tough for even George to overcome. “But my point is, I have always been…available to you, for whatever. You’re the one who’s not interested in what I have to offer.” He leaned back. “
You’re
the one who left me standing outside your door last May.”

Silence spread between us in the wake of that remark, and I studied George carefully. Had Prescott College’s most popular player actually been hurt when I turned down the chance to stare at his much-observed ceiling? He’d acted with equanimity at the time, but maybe, like so much of the devil-may-care attitude George presented to the world, it was a show. After all, I was one of the few (I supposed) privy to his tale of woe about his parents and their traumatic ongoing affair. When he’d told me shortly after initiation, he’d intimated it was only our Digger connection that made him feel comfortable sharing the sordid details of his upbringing. But maybe I had broken down the barriers of the most gorgeous and eligible bachelor at Eli, and maybe I’d broken a little more than that when I’d rejected his offer.

“You shot me down,” he added, “to get, of all things, a
boyfriend.
” He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I figured it out. Your whole short, doomed relationship with that guy from Calvin College.” So George had been paying attention to my awkward exchange with Brandon and his new girl after all.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Clarissa told me.” Now he shook his head and laughed, swinging an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t you see, Boo? You’re not the girlfriend type. This is not a bad thing. You’re like me!”

“And that’s a good thing?” I snapped back. George and I might have been equally unable to deal with commitment, but there the similarity ended. Gorgeous, rich, charming George Harrison Prescott could have the women (and gay men) of the world at his feet with a crook of his finger. My face hadn’t exactly launched any ships recently.

“Would you really prefer that whole deal Josh has with your roommate?” he asked. “Lie to her for a few weeks or months, then cheat on her? Tell me you think it’s not headed in that direction.”

He had me there. “But there are good relationships, too.”

“I’m sure there are,” he said. “But I know I’m already one strike against a relationship. How does it have any chance with me involved? It’s doomed from the start. You’re the same way.”

“You think I doom relationships?”

“Ask me again after I hear your whole C.B.” He put a finger to my chin. “You know I’m dying to learn all about you.”

Crazy shivers spun through my system and I clamped my thighs together. “Why are you saying all this?”

“Why do you think?” He flung himself back to his side of the couch. “I like you. I’m interested in you. I’m pretty sure you feel the same way about me, and yet I think you’re playing hard-to-get because of some sort of outdated idea of what romantic relationships should look like. And,” he added, standing up, “I have a strong personal interest in making sure the thesis of your C.B. tonight makes you sound as desirable and sexy as possible, rather than reading like a laundry list of broken dreams.”

Now, if that wasn’t a promise, I don’t know what was. “If you had your way, my C.B. would suddenly acquire an extra entry,” I said to his retreating back.

“Say the word, babe.” And then he was gone.

Interesting. Laundry list of broken dreams, huh? And here I’d been laboring under the impression that George didn’t know me very well at all; that to him, I was another conquest.

Was I dismissing him unfairly? Had I bought into his player persona so fully that I didn’t recognize when he was actually trying to make a connection with me? I figured if I didn’t sleep with him, there were easily half a dozen others who would gladly take my place. I automatically assumed every time he ditched the Diggers for another event, it was because some pretty young thing had agreed to see his etchings. But maybe I’d pegged him all wrong.

I stood up and my gaze caught on one of the bookshelves lining the Common Room. A thick burgundy volume stuck out from the shelf, and on its spine in silver lettering was embossed:

The East German Uprising of 1953:

Its Effects on the USSR and Other Nations
of Eastern Europe

Or maybe not.

I hereby confess:

They’ll get our respect

when they deserve it.

5.

Apple of Discord

It’s more complicated than you might think to choose an outfit in which to publicly report on your sexual experiences. You have to veer away from anything that screams “slutty” or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, “frumpy,” and Persephone help you if the ensemble bears any resemblance to something worn in any of the following fetish-fantasy situations: schoolgirl, librarian, secretary, or Lara Croft. A white T-shirt makes you look like a candidate for
Girls Gone Wild: Cancùn,
and low-rise jeans are out, for fear there might be any peeks at a thong. I finally settled on a pair of sleek brown pants and a cardigan over a not-low-cut sleeveless top, and boots (ankle, not dominatrixy) with a low heel. There. Not too conservative, not too outlandish.

Kind of like my love life, come to think of it.

At precisely five past six (VI in Diggers-time, which always runs five minutes off the rest of the world) I filed into the tomb with the others. First, we ate. Tonight, Hale had made us Cornish hens stuffed with wild rice and tarragon. Would it be awful of me to admit that so far, my favorite part about being a Digger was escaping dining hall food a couple nights a week?

“Nervous?” Angel asked. She was at my right, carefully dissecting the poultry on her plate with a skill indicating just how much time she’d spent in debutante class. My family was more of a chicken tenders type. “Don’t be. We’ll love you no matter who you’ve fucked.”

“Or how?” Lucky prompted from my other side. “Personally, I think this whole tradition sucks. Does it really foster brotherhood for us to stand up and recount our sexual experiences in front of one another?”

“Or,” said Big Demon, “in some cases, lack thereof? Is that your real worry here, Lucky?”

She shot a forkful of mashed potatoes at the jock, and, I’m proud to report, rather impressed him with her aim. “What I’m saying is, I wish we could get past all this adolescent junk and on to the real mysteries.”

“What do you mean?” Frodo asked. “Like, ‘Ten Little Diggers’ or other
Murder She Wrote
stuff?”

“Dude,” said Soze, “
Ten Little Indians
was Agatha Christie.”

“Dudes,”
Lucky mocked, “I mean
mysteries.
Divine revelation beyond human understanding? The secret rites of an organization only open to initiates?”

Puck shook his head, leaned over, and tugged on Lucky’s endless and ever-present braid. “You’re starting to sound like our girl ’boo here.”

Ah yes, ridicule the resident conspiracy theorist. That’ll get you laid, Puck. Still, I couldn’t help but thrill at his casual “our girl.”

Poe looked up from the corner, where he was partaking of his meal at a decent distance from our club, a physical reminder of his patriarch status. “You’re
enjoying
the mysteries, Lucky,” he grumbled, slicing his asparagus into perfectly bite-sized chunks. “Next week you’ll enjoy the mystery of chateaubriand.”

I swallowed a bite of Cornish hen and rolled my eyes. Poe had been inviting himself to our mealtimes a little too often for my appetite, and his M.O. was always the same. Come in, grub food, sit apart from the rest of us, and channel Oscar the Grouch. Okay, so there was a standing invite for patriarchs to share in the food they helped provide through their donations. Did that mean he had to crash every one of our dinners? There should be some kind of limit for patriarchs who happened to live in town. Rumor had it Poe had spent his graduate summer cutting grass or something. I’m sure that had to have paid better than a government internship—you’d think the kid could afford some groceries. (Though, considering the cooking of most recent grads I knew, eating Hale’s food might be reason enough to turn townie.)