I swallowed and riffled the pages of Finnegan’s Wake. This was worse than an oral exam. But then from outside came a faint burst of song: right on cue, a mockingbird in unwonted daytime concert. And suddenly I knew what he was talking about.
“Dumbarton Oaks,” I said. “‘Let us go and make our visit.’” It was the only line of Eliot I could remember.
Oliver nodded excitedly. “Right!” He removed his glasses, spun them by an earpiece. “Now, we’ll have to eat first—”
He rattled on, more unfamiliar names. Blue mirrors and Georgetown and numbers, 330 and six-oh-five, but was that a time or a bus or an address? It was my first exposure to one of Oliver’s odd monologues, composed equally of literary and private allusions and delivered at breakneck speed in his prep school voice, punctuated by dramatic tugs at his long hair and glasses. I nervously twirled a lock of my own hair and just kept nodding. I have a gift for looking and talking as though I know more than I really do.
But Oliver didn’t care. Oliver just kept on talking, smiling that loopy grin that let you know he’d spent a lifetime being loved by everyone he’d ever met.
“…so we’ll hit the Blue Mirror, hardly worth the transfer anyway, save your quarters for the Rockola at Gunchers and some Pall Malls, excellent sort of sub-Deco architecture and—”
Behind us footsteps echoed down the hall and then stopped. I glanced away from Oliver to see a figure standing in the doorway. A somewhat hesitant figure, the carnival light from our classroom’s windows broidering it with gold and red and green.
Now what? I thought.
It was a girl. Another of Dr. Warnick’s students, of course—if you could conceive of a Piero de’Franceschi madonna showing up for class in a Bloomingdale’s peasant dress and high-heeled Fiorucci sandals and Coach bag, trailing a cloud of perfume that smelled of sandalwood and oranges. She peered into the classroom doubtfully, turning until her gaze fell upon Oliver and me. Her eyebrows arched in a delicate show of disbelief.
“Is this Professor Warnick’s class?”
She had a beautiful throaty voice, with a slight vibrato. Oliver fell silent. I could hear the students in the front of the room whispering.
“Balthazar S. Warnick. That is correct.” Oliver found his voice and gestured at an empty seat next to him. The girl smiled, a rapturous smile that made you feel lucky just to have glimpsed it. I glanced at Oliver and could see that he was actually blushing, twiddling his glasses and staring at her, transfixed.
And suddenly all the cold misery that had overwhelmed me before rushed back. Because, of course, this was who was supposed to know the answer to Oliver’s ridiculous opening question. This was who he was supposed to meet—not me. Never me. Though from his expression he seemed quite unnerved. He looked away, shoving his glasses back onto his nose. “Ummm—a seat?” he asked, and tentatively patted the empty chair.
The girl stared at Oliver. Her eyes narrowed, and a curious expression crept over her face. Mingled apprehension and longing, but also a sort of restrained hauteur, as though she waited for a servant to come show her to her chair. As though she, too, had been expecting someone different. It was an unsettling expression to see in someone my own age. I wished I had taken a seat in the front of the room, wished that I’d never come here at all.
Her gaze flicked from Oliver to the chair beside him, and then to me. I found myself staring right back at her—a cat may look at a queen, right? For a long moment her eyes held mine. Luminous eyes, bottle green and almond-shaped, with long curled lashes tinted a dusky green as improbable as her irises. At the front of the room the muted conversation had stopped.
“We-ell,” the girl said softly. She shifted her bag to her other shoulder and stepped into the room. Then, to my surprise, she spun on her heel and sank into an empty chair.
The chair next to me.
“I am Angelica di Rienzi,” she said, and smiled.
“Wow.” An explosive breath from someone in the front of the room. “Daddy, buy me one of those.”
She was like a pre-Raphaelite Venus. Those enormous slanted eyes, cheekbones so high and sharp you’d cut your lip if you tried to kiss them. A wide curved mouth carefully shaped and colored with pale violet lip-gloss, hiding perfectly white teeth and just the slightest hint of an overbite. Her hair was a gorgon’s tangle of bronze curls, pulled back loosely with a thick purple velvet ribbon and hanging halfway down her back. Between soft tendrils glinted a pair of gold hoop earrings set with amethyst beads, and around her long neck hung a fine gold chain set with another, single tear-shaped amethyst. She wore a flowing cotton peasant dress, with short gathered sleeves and a scoop neck and little violet ribbons trailing from the bodice. Your basic trust fund hippie look, and just about anyone who affected it—me, for instance—would look infantile or perhaps, if they were fortunate, engagingly girlish.
But not Angelica di Rienzi. Angelica looked regal. How can I describe what it was like, seeing her in a university classroom? A classroom at the Divine, to be sure, but still just a classroom, smelling of chalk and cigarettes, floor wax and earnest fear. It was like glimpsing a peacock on a lawn in New Rochelle; like hearing someone sing the Magnificat in Grand Central Station. No one could look at her and not believe that the world would give her whatever she wanted. Not even Oliver. Not even me.
She tilted her head. “And you must be—?”
“Sweeney,” I said, my voice cracking. “Sweeney Cassidy.”
“Angelica.” Oliver repeated her name slowly, unconsciously aping Angelica’s theatrical diction. He moved his desk and chair closer to hers and extended his hand. “Oliver Wilde Crawford.”
Angelica nodded graciously. She pulled a notebook from her bag and let the purse slide to the floor, then, with another dazzling smile, took his hand.
In the front of the room someone giggled. I twisted around to see a heavyset young man in mirrored sunglasses staring at Angelica, his face expressionless, a cigarette dangling from one hand. I had a glimpse of dark eyes and a handsome, broad face with Asian features. Then with deliberate slowness he turned away.
“Are you related to the Wilde?” Angelica was asking Oliver. Her innocent emerald gaze made me kiss the pre-Columbians good-bye.
“Ah, yes. ‘The old somdomite,’” he said, giving her one of his vulpine smiles. “As a matter of fact Vyvyan—his son, Vyvyan—”
But at that moment Professor Warnick cleared his throat.
“Good morning, gentlemen and ladies. Welcome to the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine.”
One of the other students called back, “Good morning!” and another laughed. Professor Warnick gave a small tight smile, more like a stoat baring its teeth, and glanced at the papers in his hand. He was a diminutive man, his longish black hair touched with grey, but with a young, rosy face and blue eyes that blazed almost angrily beneath thick black eyebrows. He looked comfortable at his podium, despite clothes as ill suited to the weather as my own: a stylish and expensively tailored suit of charcoal black worsted, cream-colored shirt, and an expansive paisley tie of purple and poison green. The podium he leaned against had been specially designed for him. Its brass fittings were set into richly gleaming wood—rowan, I was to learn, and ancient oak imported from Aylesbury—the whole thing set upon polished casters that squeaked malevolently when it was wheeled from classroom to classroom. It might have been all of four feet tall, and Professor Warnick himself perhaps a foot taller.