“A transvestite bar,” Angelica corrected her. “On a houseboat in the Potomac. Rheining does a lot of work Off-Broadway. He’s pretty famous.”
I tried not to look impressed. “So how does Oliver know him? I thought he just got here last night.”
“Oliver is a very busy young person,” said Annie.
“So how do you guys know all this?” I persisted.
Angelica gave me a sly smile. “See what you miss when you skip class?”
Annie laughed. I slung my hands in my jeans pockets and turned to look at the Shrine. “Oh.” I felt a sudden hollowness inside me. “Well, that’s cool, I guess.”
“So, Sweeney.” Angelica adjusted her earrings and smoothed the bodice of her dress. “What did you and Oliver talk about at lunch?” Her tone was casual, but her eyes fixed on me like two searchlights.
“I dunno. Just stuff. Where he grew up, his family, stuff like that.”
“That’s all?” Angelica’s eyes grew even wider, and her voice rose in an exaggerated schoolgirl squeak. “Nothing else? He didn’t ask about me?” She laughed.
“I don’t think so.” I was starting to get pissed off. I glared at the Shrine and tried to think of some excuse to leave. I’d left my knapsack and all my books back in my room, so I couldn’t really go to the library. But I didn’t feel like returning alone to the dorm, either. Before I could say anything Annie’s hoarse voice broke in.
“Well, I hate to miss all the fun, but I got to hit the stacks for a while.” She raised an eyebrow at Angelica. “You gonna be home tonight?”
“Eh sì, bella.”
“Okay.” Annie stood on one foot, arms outstretched like a bird taking flight. “Wish I could go with you to your pah-tay, Angel, but…”
“Oh, man…” I gazed in dismay at my T-shirt and black jeans, the patina of dried mud on my cowboy boots. “I forgot all about the reception! I can’t go like this…”
Annie poised in mid-flight and eyed me quizzically. “But you can’t go. You’re not one of them, are you?”
“Huh?”
“A Molyneux scholar.” She glanced at Angelica and then at me again, her face expectant: as though in those intervening seconds I might have changed into someone else. “Naaaah…”
I felt myself blushing. From the Shrine came the first notes of the carillon. “I don’t—”
“Of course she can come.” Angelica’s tone was offhand. “She’s my guest; I mean, they’re not going to say I can’t bring a guest, are they?”
Annie sniffed. “That’s not what you told me—”
“This is different, Annie.” Even as Angelica smiled, there was a soft threat in her voice: don’t argue with me. “Sweeney and Oliver and I are in the same class.”
Annie started to protest, then shrugged and looked away. “Whatever you say, Angel.”
And that was that. With a satisfied smile, Angelica turned to stare at the Shrine: the great Byzantine folly silhouetted against the darkening sky, a few stars salted across its dome. Suddenly, as though it had been strafed by an invisible enemy, the entire huge edifice burst into flame. I gasped, and Annie’s hand shot out to steady me.
“Hey! Relax, girl—it’s just a light show—”
It was, but like nothing I’d ever seen. There were spotlights, footlights, rays of gold and silver and blue streaming from hidden recesses. The bell tower tolled seven o’clock.
Bong. Bong. Bong…
I looked up with a growing sense of unease. I felt as though some strange game was being played out by everyone I met, and I hadn’t been cued in to the rules. But when I glanced at Annie, my own anxiety sharpened into a blade driving deep into me. Because she was staring at Angelica, and her eyes were bright with fear.
“Do you really have to go?” she whispered. “Do you, Angelica?”
Angelica seemed not’ to hear. “Do you?” Annie asked again.
Now I was getting freaked. “Hey, Annie—you okay?” But when I tried to touch her, she shook me off.
“I never heard that they had a guests policy,” she said coolly.
“Oh, come on!” Angelica gestured dramatically at the floodlit Shrine. “That’s for us! I mean for the reception—all of us, the alumnae and everybody. They do it at Homecoming too—”
“And when we win a field hockey game,” Annie snapped. “Keep it in perspective, Angel.” She spun on her heel. “Bring her home by midnight, will you, Sweeney? I don’t want her waking me up at dawn.”
“Ciao, Annie,” Angelica called.
“Chow chow chow,” echoed Annie, and headed for the library.
“They really do light it up for us,” Angelica said as we started away from the Shrine. The last echoes of the carillon hung in the sultry air. “It costs a thousand dollars a night. This reception is going to be great.”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Angelica. I’ve got all this work to do, and—” I gestured at my T-shirt and scuffed my boots in the grass. “I just don’t know if I really feel up to it.”
Angelica took my hand. She pulled me after her into a narrow drive that led up a tree-covered hill to where a single domed building gleamed in the darkness. The breeze brought me the sweet musky scent of her perfume, sandalwood and oranges. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sweeney, come on. And don’t worry, you look fine, very gamine.
“Besides,” she added, giving one of her odd clear laughs. “No one will give you a hard time. You’re with me.”
Garvey Hall stood at the far end of the campus, atop the hill known as the Mound. The broken concrete drive wound through white oaks and tangles of sumac, with a row of ancient iron lampposts casting a bleary yellow glare through the leaves. We saw a few other people straggling up the path—middle-aged couples in evening dress; students in thrift shop finery, stained velvets and satins; a tall black woman wearing elaborate African tribal robes. One young man in a dusty tuxedo did a double take when he saw Angelica, turning to stare at her so that he ran into a tree. Angelica pretended not to notice, but when we rounded a curve in the path she burst out laughing.
“They really do think with their dicks, don’t they?”
“That one was walking with his.”
She giggled, tilted her head to regard me with pursed lips.
“May I?” she asked, and gently smoothed the hair from my temples. “You know, you should cut your hair, Sweeney.” Her touch gave me goose bumps. “Really. You have such beautiful eyes, they’d really stand out if your hair was shorter. I’ll do it for you if you’d like.”
I laughed uneasily. “Yeah, well, maybe. Maybe over the weekend. I’ll think about it.”
Angelica continued to stare at me, her gaze intense and yet somehow oblique. I glanced away, finally said lamely, “Look, about this party—I just feel a little under-dressed, that’s all.”
“I told you, you’re with me.” Her voice took on that same tone it had earlier with Annie: impatient, subtly threatening. “Look, Sweeney—do you want to go to this thing or not?”
She grabbed me, not roughly but with unmistakable insistence. “Do you?”
I swallowed but didn’t pull away. A few inches from mine her eyes were huge, their color washed to topaz in the sulfurous light. I tensed, resisting her. If she let go of me, I was certain I would fall.
“Do you?”