“We’re being GRADED on this?” someone else yells, clearly outraged.
“I hardly think that an event meant to build team spirit should be scored,” someone else chimes in.
“Now, now,” Dr. Jessup says. “It’s all in good fun. Dr. Veatch would have wanted it that way.”
I don’t think anyone in this room actually has any idea what Dr. Veatch would have wanted, since no one here—including me—really knew him. Maybe he would have thought that making houses out of newspaper was fun.
He definitely would have been in favor of scoring the houses, if you ask me.
“Isn’t this a riot?” Muffy asks, as our team gets to work on our house.
“Oh yeah,” Tom says. “I’d much rather be here than in my office.”
Tom is totally lying. His office computer is loaded with Madden NFL, his favorite video game. He plays it all day… when he isn’t busy busting up keg parties and attempted date rapes. He’d play it all night, too, if his boyfriend Steve would let him.
“Me, too,” Reverend Mark says cheerfully. Then he looks at me and stops smiling. “Although of course I’m sad for the reason why we’re here.”
Muffy stops smiling, too. “That’s right,” she says, looking at me with her big dark Bambi eyes practically tear-filled. How does she do that… and right on cue, too? “You two worked together. You must be devastated. Just devastated.”
“You were Dr. Veatch’s secretary?” Reverend Mark asks, looking at me with concern… coupled with the sick fascination everybody feels for someone who’s recently stumbled across a corpse.
“Administrative assistant,” both Tom and Dr. Kilgore correct him, at the same time.
“Why don’t we get started on our structure,” Dr. Kilgore adds, holding up our pile of newspapers between a thumb and forefinger, clearly not wanting to get ink smeared on her clothing. The New York Times is notoriously smeary. “How do you propose we do this?”
“Well, it’s got to be free-standing, right?” Tom takes the newspapers from Dr. Kilgore, clearly losing patience with her girlishness. “Why don’t we make four supports, like this”—he rolls a few sheets into a thick, stick like object—“and use them as props, and just stick another sheet over it, as a roof.”
“Bingo,” I say, pleased. “Done and done.”
“Um,” Reverend Mark says. “No offense, but I did some mission work in Japan, and I was thinking if we folded each piece, like so—here, let me demonstrate… ”
Reverend Mark takes the papers away from Tom and begins to do some kind of fancy tearing and folding technique thingie. Muffy and Dr. Kilgore watch him, clearly impressed by the way his fingers are flying over the newsprint.
“My goodness, Mark—may I call you Mark?” Muffy asks.
“Of course,” Mark says.
“Well, my goodness, Mark, but you do that so well. ”
“In many cultures paper folding is considered an art,” Reverend Mark says conversationally, “but it’s actually more closely associated with mathematics. Some classical construction problems in geometry, for instance, can’t be solved using a compass or a straight edge, but can be solved using only a few paper folds. Intriguing, no?”
Muffy’s dark eyes are wide and admiring. “Totally. The Japanese are so great. I just love sushi.”
Tom and I exchange glances. Tom rolls his eyes.
“Good,” Dr. Flynn is walking around each group saying. “Good. I see that you’re all coming together, working with one another. This is what Gillian and I were hoping we’d see. The staff, overcoming adversity, defying tragedy—”
“Where’s my Day Runner?” Tom mutters.
“—and now, because I see this is way too easy for all of you, I’m going to throw a spanner in the works, and—blindfold all of you!”
From out of a cardboard box Drs. Flynn and Kilgore have brought with them, Dr. Flynn produces a couple dozen cheap silk scarves, which he proceeds to distribute with the instructions that we’re to tie them around our eyes and proceed to build our newspaper houses without looking.
“But if we can’t see,” Simon from Wasser Hall wails, “our houses will look like shit and we’ll get a bad score!”
“Nonsense,” Dr. Flynn declares. “One teammate will remain unblindfolded. It’s up to all of you to pick that teammate. And that teammate will guide the others.”
“I pick Mark,” Muffy says quickly.
“Oh,” Mark says, looking up from his complicated woven wall with an embarrassed expression on his face. “Really, I—”
“I’d second that,” Gillian says mildly. She turns to look at me and Tom. “Do you two agree?”
“Um,” I say. We’ll be here all day if Mark is our team leader. I have no idea how he’s going to teach us to do origami house walls. Especially if we’re all blindfolded. But whatever. “Sure.”
“I don’t know,” Tom says slowly. He has a strange, dreamy look on his face that I don’t recognize. “I mean, Heather’s been so traumatized today, walking into her office and finding her beloved boss—not even her boss, but her mentor, really… isn’t that what you told me Owen was to you, Heather? Your mentor?”
I stare at him. “What?”
“Don’t be modest,” Tom says. “We’re all friends here. We know how badly seeing Owen like that freaked you out. You can admit it, Heather. This is a place of trust. I mean, seeing his blood spattered all over my old desk—”
“Oh, Tom, for God’s sake,” Gillian says, looking disgusted.
“I’m just saying. I really think Heather should be team captain,” Tom says piously. “After what she’s been through today, it would be cruel to make her wear a blindfold. She told me earlier that every time she closes her eyes, she sees Owen’s brain matter coating his Dilbert Month-at-a-Glance bulletin board—”
“Garfield,” I correct him.
“Would you two please—” Gillian begins, but Reverend Mark cuts her off.
“I agree with… Tom, is it?” Mark closes his eyes and shakes his head. “After what she’s been through, Heather should completely be team captain.”
“I think so, too,” Muffy says quickly. She looks at Gillian with tears in her eyes. “It’s only right.”
Dr. Kilgore looks like she’s about to have an aneurysm.
“Fine,” she says through gritted teeth, handing out the scarves she’s been handed by Dr. Flynn. “Everyone put on one of these. Everyone but Heather.”
“You, too, right, Dr. Kilgore?” Tom asks, with a smile.
“Me, too,” Gillian says grimly, tying on her blindfold.
“Mark,” Muffy says. “I can’t quite get mine. Can you help?”
“Oh,” Reverend Mark says. “Well, mine’s on already… but I’ll try… ”
Reverend Mark reaches out fumblingly for Muffy, and manages to grab a big handful of the boob she’s thrust directly into his palm.
“Oh my God!” he cries, blanching.
“Oh!” Muffy blushes prettily beneath her blindfold, though I know full well she’s thrilled. “That’s all right.”
“I’m so sorry!” Reverend Mark looks like he wants to kill himself. His handsome face has gone from snow white to beet red in three seconds flat. Even his neck, all the way to his shirt collar, is red.
“It’s not your fault. You can’t see!” Muffy reminds him. She manages to secure her blindfold the rest of the way herself, as she’d always been able to in the first place. “Oh, look at that. Never mind, I got it.”
“Are y-you sure?” Reverend Mark stammers. “Perhaps Dr. Kilgore… or Heather—”
“It’s all good,” Muffy purrs.
“Well, now that Heather is our team leader,” Gillian says dryly, “perhaps she ought to start leading.”
“Sure,” I say. “Mark, why don’t you show us how you make those wall thingies you’re doing?”
“Well, it won’t be easy,” Reverend Mark says. “Especially blindfolded. But I suppose, in the spirit of coming together as a team, I can try. First, you take a sheet of newspaper, and you tear it, like so—”
Gillian and Muffy both begin ripping strips of newspaper. Tom fumbles forward in an attempt to take a piece of newsprint off the pile, and leans in the direction of my ear—or what he approximates to be my ear, though it’s more like the top of my head. “This,” he whispers, “is the gayest thing I’ve ever done. And I don’t think I should have to remind you that I am, in fact, gay.”