Under the Rose (9 page)

Graverobber tapped his silver against his water glass and an audible groan sounded around the table. “Before we get to the main event of the evening,” he said with a nod toward me, “I’d like to once again broach the topic of—”

Thorndike cleared her throat. “As Uncle Tony for the evening, I’d like to once again remind the club that this particular topic is tabled tonight.” Under her breath, she added, “Just one whine-free meeting is all I need to die happy.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Juno said. “I’m sure you have a variety of other pet issues to shove down our throats before you even begin to get happy.”

The other Diggirls began to bare their teeth at our newest compatriot. Suffice it to say, Juno (a.k.a. Mara) had not endeared herself to the other girls in her weeks of membership. This time, I didn’t chalk it up to personality differences. She had managed to piss off each of us. I will say this for her: She was an equal opportunity firebrand. She corrected my grammar, questioned the authenticity of Lil’ Demon’s breasts, called Angel bourgeois, told Lucky that Dvorak was a scam, and suggested to Thorndike that
Brown
v.
Board of Education
had been a bad decision.

We all just
loved
her.

“Look, we can table it as much as you like, but that doesn’t make the facts go away,” Graverobber said. “We’re hemorrhaging patriarchal support left and right, and the donations this year have been way down.”

Thorndike twirled her finger in the air. “Woo-hoo. As long as the Tobias Trust is still in the eight figures, I’m not ready to worry about funds.” She pointed at the feast spread before us. “Hale’s not going to have to switch over to lentils and cabbage any time soon.”

“Frankly, I find your grasp of the financial details leave something to be desired,” said Juno. “Much of our prestige is derived from our wealth. If we lose that—”

“Right,” I said. “If we lose some of our big secret wealth we can’t tell anyone about anyway? Please.”

Part of me wanted to think if we gave Juno some time, she’d grow on us. It hadn’t taken the rest of us that long to bond, but then again, we’d become fast friends under extreme circumstances. Were we simply being too cliquish for her? Was her prickly nature due in part to a perception that the rest of the Diggirls were already a closed group, and if she couldn’t join us, she’d try to beat us? If so, aligning herself with the biggest misogynist in the club was a good step along that path.

“Besides,” I continued, “most barbarians already think we’ve got twice the money we do, and about ten times the power. We could be bankrupt and they’d still say we owned half the world.”

“I agree with Bugaboo on that point,” said Soze. “I don’t think our money situation is an issue at present. I myself was surprised to learn its true value at the initiation, but, like Thorndike, I don’t think we’re about to go broke. What concerns me,” he said, “is our perceived influence if we continue to alienate the patriarchs. How are we supposed to groom next year’s taps when word on the street is that the Diggers can’t get their own alums to give them internships? Don’t mistake me, I am fully committed to our Order, but I worry for next year’s tap class.”

“I had a patriarch internship,” I argued.

“Yeah, a terrific little patched-up, last-minute affair,” came the voice of Poe from the corner. He scowled at me. “Everything worked out just grand for you. But how many of the rest of us were screwed?”

I looked around at the show of hands and ducked my head in guilt.

But Angel lifted her chin. “I lost my job because of my father. He could say it was a patriarch trick, but the old man and I would have had it out either way. And there are six women sitting in this room who would have been out a lot more if we’d given in to their demands last spring. Are we paying a price? Yes. But it was worth it. Didn’t we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are many more patriarchs who support this step than condemn it?”

“Yes,” said Poe, “but are they the ones coughing up the big bucks?”

“Or handing out entry-level positions at CAA?” Frodo added.

“I think we’ve been through a trying time,” Soze said, ever the politician. “And we need to work a little bit to get back in good graces with our base. At the risk of being crucified for actually expressing this opinion, there is something to be said for the idea that maybe the patriarchs who voted to let the change go through
might
not have been people who were all that committed to the society to begin with.”

“Much as I hate to admit it,” said Lil’ Demon, “Soze may be right. A lot of people picked up that
Maxim
spread I did, but they weren’t the ones buying my CDs or going to my movies. My true fans hated that I was sullying my image. Maybe the patriarchs who didn’t care if there were women in Rose & Grave also didn’t give a shit whether it ruined us or not.” She shrugged. “Not that I think it’s ruining us.”

Graverobber snorted. Of course. “If we have to keep pussyfooting around the topic, we’re never going to get anywhere. Of course it’s ruined. We’ve lost one tap already. If things don’t start turning around in here, I might start thinking he had the right idea.”

For a moment, we all gaped at him, even Poe. “You wouldn’t,” he whispered from his corner. “Your oath.”

“Oh, please, like we haven’t had attrition before?”

“Not for decades.” The law student’s face was stricken, reflecting all our shock. “Maybe even for a century.”

Thorndike cleared her throat. “No one’s making any hasty decisions they’ll live to regret. We know the issue is out there; we’ve been arguing about it since school started. And we will figure out a way to fix it. No quitting, okay?”

I nodded. “And before we go about setting up a false dichotomy of ‘involved patriarchs hate women’ and ‘slacker patriarchs say
Go girls!
’ let’s remember that my internship—however it might have been arranged”—I shot Poe a dirty look—“was, in fact, arranged by one of the members of the board of trustees. A more involved Digger you couldn’t hope to find. Those are the people we need to be reaching out to.”

“As well as trying to win back those we’ve alienated,” Soze said. “I’ve done it before for candidates in much more dire straits. Before you dismiss us for lack of current alumni connections, remember our club alone wields some significant firepower.”

“My dad thinks we’re cool,” Puck said. “And, historically, the Prescott contributions have been no small part of the Trust.”

Graverobber slumped against his seat, conceding the point. We’d dodged the bullet for another meeting. But how much longer before his threats to quit took shape in reality?

The danger of attrition was twofold. First, the obvious: We’d tapped a person for a reason. We clearly wanted him to be One of Us. Anytime we lost a tap, we lost every bit of potential he offered us in terms of future accomplishments, influence, and money. We lost a dynamic team member, a valuable brother, and someone with a potentially entertaining C.B. No matter how much Graverobber pissed me off, I couldn’t deny that when he bothered to speak on any other topic, he had many worthwhile things to say. And we were all still smarting from Howard’s dis on Straggler Initiation Night. I’d only spoken with him for a few moments, but he still seemed like someone I’d love to get to know. Now whenever I saw him around campus, I felt a definite pang of regret for what could have been. Had we all handled ourselves better, he might have been our brother. (I’d had to steel myself on several occasions from walking up and saying hi. I wondered if he would recognize me sans cloak and glow-in-the-dark face paint.)

The second danger was to our storied secrecy. For instance, Howard had been in the tomb and seen much of our initiation before opting out. How much worse would it have been had he been a fully-fledged Digger before he quit? Someone like Graverobber, for example, who was not only fully initiated, but understood so much of the day-to-day running of the society? He had access to all the Phimalarlico e-mail, had explored the entire tomb with the rest of us last spring, and at this point had even sat in on several C.B.s. I couldn’t imagine a guy like that on the loose, no longer bound by his oaths.

Assuming, of course, they were oaths he’d ever taken seriously. Here I was about to tell my deepest, darkest secrets to the room, and I wasn’t even sure I could trust them all.

“Not to veer away from such a scintillating topic,” Angel said, proceeding to do exactly that, “but has anyone given any more thought to that weird e-mail we got?”

“
You
got,” Big Demon corrected. “Whoever was threatening didn’t see fit to send it to anyone but the girls.”

“If they were even threatening,” said Juno. “It was just a nonsense rhyme.” I got the distinct impression our newest female knight was a bit jealous she hadn’t been included on the Diggirl list. But she hadn’t even been a Digger yet.

“You think so?” Lucky asked, playing with the wishbone on her plate. “But who could have sent it, and why?”

“Who cares?” said Graverobber. “You haven’t gotten any more messages and nothing dreadful has happened. It was a prank. Probably some other society who got their hands on our club’s roster.”

“If you say so, Graverobber,” said Lucky. “I’m surprised you of all people are so dismissive, considering your constant insistence that this society is indeed rotting from within. What if it’s
not
a nonsense rhyme?”

Soze considered this. “Do you want to look into it, Lucky? You can track down users and stuff, right?”

She scowled. “Like I have time for another project?”

I smiled at her. “That will teach you to volunteer.”

But Lucky closed down. “It’s a lesson I’ve already had, thanks. And if no one here thinks it’s important, then why should I spend my time on it? You can all go to the devil just fine without my assistance.”

Um,
okay.
This chick PMSes like no one’s business. One second, she’s fun and kind of snarky, and the next second—
boom
—the bitch is back. I never knew what to expect from her. It was all Dr. Jenny and Ms. Hyde.

“Are we all done with dinner?” Thorndike asked to diffuse the tension. She pointed at the grandfather clock (no, not an atomic one) in the corner of the room, which was nearing the all important VIII marker. “I think Bugaboo here has some juicy stories for us.”

There was a ripple of chuckles around the table, and I felt a corresponding turbulence deep in my stomach as we adjourned from the dining room and filed up the stairs to the Inner Temple. The round, domed room had become one of my favorite places on campus in the few short months since I’d been tapped into Rose & Grave. Eli had some gorgeous architecture, but this secret room thrilled me more than all of the Gothic glory of the library or the carved marble starkness along the Presidential Plaza or Memorial Hall. This room was mine—or ours. I was one of the few people who ever got to appreciate its deep blue ceiling, dotted with tiny gilt stars, the rich wood paneling scarred by centuries of Diggers scraping their chairs against the walls and regularly decorated with art, relics, and trophies the members had “crooked” from the college over the years. I was one of the few given the privilege of sinking into the cushy couches we’d been using during the C.B.s. Today, they were arranged in a semi-circle facing the large oil painting of the voluptuous nude we called Connubial Bliss. It was before this portrait I would stand as I spoke about my experiences.

I stood to the side a bit as my brothers got ready to call the meeting to order. Thorndike, this evening’s Uncle Tony, donned a long black hooded robe, took her seat on the dais at the top of the room, and turned a pedestal so that the wooden engraving of Persephone faced the room. She struck a small gong thrice, once, and twice. “The Time is VIII. I hereby call to order this, our Seven thousand, one hundred, and twenty-ninth meeting of the Order of Rose & Grave.”

Keyser Soze, our club’s Secretary, took his seat to the right of the dais, and the other Diggers, including me, followed suit, each perching on one of the couches.

“In honor of Persephone, the Keeper of the Flame of Life and the Consort of the Shadow of Death, we, her loyal Knights, salute and honor her image.”

“Hail, Persephone,” we intoned. Well, most of us. I was sitting next to Lucky, and I noticed she didn’t intone a thing. She didn’t even whisper it. She noticed me staring and rolled her eyes. Clearly, we’d entered the Hyde phase.

“Omni vincit mors, non cedamus nemini,”
Soze said.

Thorndike continued with the rather arcane calling-to-order ritual, which included a list of fines incurred in the previous week by members for various infractions:

Lil’ Demon:
cursed before the altar of Persephone—$3.

Puck:
used barbarian names when Bond had beat him in Kaboodle Ball last Thursday—$2.

Graverobber:
twice caught without his society pin—$10. (“Get a tattoo like ours and you’ll be golden,” Angel suggested.)

After that, there was a sort of group-bonding activity in which we turned to our fellow knights and messed up their hair. I liken it to that moment in church where you shake hands with the people next to you in the pew. We sang a few traditional songs (singing is really big at Eli, no matter what activity you’re involved in), which tended to be, at once: spooky, ribald, and filled with literary allusions.

Next up, Bond reported on the developing plans to steal back a small bronze statue of Orpheus that had been recently pilfered from our courtyard. Thanks to some recent surveillance, we were pretty sure the thieves had been Dragon’s Head, and Bond and Lil’ Demon had been combing through the archives in the Library to find records showing how to break into Dragon’s Head and retrieve our property. This tradition of “crooking” from other societies was one of the oldest we had. The tomb was chock full of memorabilia from generations of Diggers who’d been trading trophies back and forth with all the other societies on campus. I thought most of the stuff was junk, myself, but I’m sure to the class of 1937, the mangy stuffed lion’s head they’d swiped from the tomb of Book & Key represented a triumph of criminal ingenuity.