Raul got Miller talking about the production. Soon he was being shown the stage design. After that, Miller went on to the problems he would have with Hinton. And then he talked about casting Iago.
He said he was thinking of either Michael or John. Raul looked shocked and hurt. Miller looked sadly at him. He said he had to give the part to a senior or a junior. He knew Raul could handle the part better than anyone else, but there were other problems. Raul was too skinny: he wouldn’t look good in tights. Exercise? Maybe. If he could build himself up before next year, he would reconsider. Nothing was definite, he ended, he just didn’t want Raul to hope for much. There would be a good part in the fall production in any case.
Raul told this to Alec, Davis, and Hinton. The three of them decided they would go to Miller to get him to realize how important it was to give Raul the part. Davis threw a fit. Who else could play it? Raul wouldn’t play it very well, but who else could? Alec just frowned and said it was absurd. Hinton said he didn’t want to play Othello without Raul supporting him.
Though all the major leads pleaded with him, Miller promised nothing. To Alec and Davis, he pointed out that Raul would overshadow Hinton. Raul’s voice, no matter how much Hinton improved, would point up its faults. Then there was his body, and the fact that he would be only a fourth former. There had been an uproar about his giving second lead to a third former. They had to remember that, under the circumstances, no one else could have played Rosencrantz.
Hinton spoke to Miller alone, and after that no longer stood behind Raul. He didn’t desert him, but he treated him as he did all the other candidates.
Raul went to Miller and said this to him. He wanted the part terribly, however he understood why Miller might not give it to him. Miller repeated all his reasons, promising a lead in the fall production and a marvelous lead in his senior year. He wanted to save him, he said.
Raul was exhausted from this. Harassed, disappointed, listless, he didn’t, or couldn’t, care about honor. When his father came into his room to apologize for hitting him, Raul nodded — I don’t care, he thought. You’re a liar. He promised his parents he would work. Pass his make-ups, go to the school next year and not cut.
He pulled himself together to face the awful week ahead. Nine make-up tests; nine hours of waste, anguish, and humiliation. Within, the blackest hate grew for this system that shattered the mirror he held up to himself. In his eyes, he was the most miserable of worms. In his diary he wrote: “My lips are raw from the asses I’ve kissed this week.”
After that week, though Raul knew he had failed nearly all the tests, his parents, believing he had done well, left him free to see Alec over the weekends. The weekends with Alec were bursts of sunlight in the midst of threatening skies.
During the next week Bowden, Miller, and all of Raul’s teachers smiled and patted him on the back. “Glad to see you’re working hard,” Bowden said. Miller smiled at him. “Keep your nose clean,” he advised. He hadn’t failed all his tests, and with the teachers he had, it didn’t matter — just that he made them up.
“By lying,” Raul told Alec, “I’ve bought a little freedom.”
When Raul had just begun to relax, to feel free to walk about the campus without teachers running up to him, asking about this test or another, he got the news that the gym department was after him.
“Trouble comes in a downpour,” Bill said. “One of the jocks was up in Miller’s office asking about you.” Bill had a class, he had to go.
Raul sat down and sighed. “Why don’t they leave me alone?” he cried. “Why can’t I have any peace?”
He tried to avoid them, but two members of the gym department came into the cafeteria, spotted him, and went over to him. They tried to make him feel as uncomfortable as possible. He promised to go. He didn’t and heard nothing more about it.
At last his peace was won. The next trouble would come with final examinations.
Iolanthe was nearing production. Alec had been seducing one member of the cast after another, but he seemed tired of it — the hours of stupid lies and inane protestations of love. Raul talked to him for hours about having a serious relationship, and Alec became eager for one.
A girl named Barbara, who had seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, became his target. Not for mere seduction but for love. What blinded Raul to the absurdity of the decision was his happiness at the attitude.
Neither of them, for this was a joint seduction, looked very carefully at the girl’s character but went full steam ahead into a mass of ignorance. Alec took her out but failed miserably to interest her even in a good fuck.
Raul knew why Alec was suddenly so clumsy. For a change, his line was truthful, and nothing is so absurd as sincere affection.
Barbara took mescaline, and they knew she would be tripping that night. On Raul’s urging, Alec said she could come over, for they would be smoking.
Alec was more than despondent — the blow to his ego had been a sharp one. It’s like seeing a god in misery, Raul thought, that this great seducer should suddenly lose his prowess, his image.
Alec was sure she wouldn’t come, Raul tried to convince him otherwise. Alec insisted she wouldn’t; evidently they had exchanged bitter words, but Alec was vague about it.
They smoked, their respective losses of face passing from view. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern rose easily within them. Their egos were riding high as they assumed the grace and power of the stage, the music’s volume surrounding them with majesty.
After a time, deep in the dance of their game, the ringing of the telephone, a sharp reminder of reality, broke through the suddenly discordant noise.
Alec left the room, Raul subsiding in a heap, lost without his companion. Soon Alec reappeared. He turned the stereo off, leaving the room in a dismal silence. “It’s Barbara,” he said. “She’s downstairs somewhere and wants us to meet her.”
They left the apartment in silence. Alec looked troubled, Raul dismayed. In the elevator Alec said, “Did you hear the doorbell ring?”
“When?” Raul asked absently.
“When we were in the room.”
“No,” he said, surprised. “Why?”
“Barbara said she was here, ringing the doorbell.”
“Maybe she was trying the wrong apartment.”
“I don’t know.”
They met her at the corner of Eighty-sixth Street. She looked tired and degenerate. They walked back. “I kept ringing the doorbell,” she whined somewhat frantically. “Where were you? I kept ringing and ringing. With the number getting bigger.”
“What number?” Raul asked.
“The door number!” she said, surprised he didn’t know. “Where were you? What the fuck were you doing?”
“We were just listening to music. We must have had it on too loud,” Alec said.
“Oh,” she said, and fell silent.
Neither Alec nor Raul responded to anything. Raul was lost in another world and looked blankly on this one. Alec was deep in thought; troubled, his face looked severe. Barbara was slowly calming after feeling paranoid and lost. They walked the rest of the way in silence, remaining so until they reached the apartment.
Alec turned the stereo on, lighting another joint. Barbara did not wish to smoke, saying she didn’t like grass. Alec sat apart, by his desk. Raul sat on the bed in front of the lava lamp. Barbara sat near him. She slowly began to weave a story. Depressed, anguished, she spoke of how she had overheard, when she was young, her father saying, “I don’t love her.” Beginning to cry, she repeated the phrase over and over. Echoing deep within Raul was the thought that this was bullshit; but he felt a great compassion for her.