Waking the Moon

When I finally got back to my room, there was a note on the door from Angelica, elegant lettering in peacock blue ink.

Sweeney—

We’re going to dinner early but it won’t be the same without you! Meet us out front!

Angelica

I drew the note to my face and smelled the woodsy odor of sandalwood and a sweet scent like mandarin oranges. I went inside and changed, throwing my velvet pants and sweat-soaked shirt on the floor and flinging on a T-shirt and black jeans. I pulled off my lace-up boots, thought of putting on sneakers but decided on my old, battered cowboy boots. They were of worn black cowhide with faded crimson stitching and pointed steel toes, still lethal enough to punch holes in drywall. I tugged them on and thumped back downstairs.

Angelica was waiting outside the dining hall, another girl beside her. I felt a jolt of disappointment that we wouldn’t be dining alone.

“Sweeney! Do you know Annie Harmon? She’s my roommate, she’s in the Music School—”

“No. Hi—”

Annie stuck out a small sticky hand. “Pleased to meet you. Nice boots.”

Her throaty voice was totally incongruous with her appearance: a weary old whore’s voice coming out of this little girl. She only came up to my chin, a slight figure in old green fatigues and a moth-eaten flannel shirt and very small red tennis shoes. Her thin brown hair was cut short and stuck up in a ragged cowlick. Next to Angelica, with her bird-of-paradise hair and exquisite makeup and expensive clothes, Annie Harmon looked like an inquisitive quail. But she had beautiful woeful eyes, deep brown touched with violet, and I was certain she was not wearing tinted lenses.

“Thanks,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

Annie nodded solemnly. “Charmed.”

We walked into the fake medieval Dining Hall, Annie and I first. Angelica followed, smiling and nodding as other students passed. I felt as though we were in a procession, clearing the way for the Queen. Angelica had changed into a tight black dress that ended just above her knees, the bodice inset with a revealing panel of black lace, and replaced her Coach bag with a tiny lozenge-shaped purse covered with jet and lapis beads.

“Kinda dressed up for dinner, huh?” Annie remarked, cocking a thumb at her roommate.

“You never have a second chance to make a first impression,” Angelica said primly. She let loose with that improbable laugh, and pointed to something bubbling on a steam table. “What do you suppose that is?”

We found a table in a corner. Angelica was quiet, picking at her salad and sipping ice water. I was so tired I was happy to let Annie do all the talking. She rambled on in her throaty voice, eating whatever we left on our plates.

“So they didn’t let me in the first time I applied,” she said, taking the crust of my apple pie and eating it with her fingers, “So I tried again in the spring. Zilch. But then I tried again in July, and bin- go! Third time’s the charm, and they accepted me.”

Angelica smiled fondly, as though this had all been her doing. For all I knew, it had been.

We left when we heard the Shrine’s bells ringing 6:45, faint tolling beneath the clatter of silverware and eager conversation. Angelica went first this time, and more heads turned as she passed. A few people called to her by name. She smiled and waved, but didn’t stop.

“Get used to it.” Annie nudged me. “Living with Angelica is an amazing experience. I walk into a room with her and poof. I’m invisible.”

Outside, the sultry afternoon had faded into a glowing early evening. The sky had deepened to a pure lacquered blue. A few supernaturally bright stars defied the jaundiced glow of the campus crimelights. We walked without speaking, Annie noisily scuffling her sneakers through the damp grass. The air smelled of mud and marijuana smoke and roses. It was so warm that I felt as though I had no skin; as though my blood flowed directly from my veins into the soft blue light. From off in the distance a percussive beat echoed from a stereo, melody and vocals smelted away by the heat. Angels looked down upon us from the stone facades of dorms and classroom buildings, and a skein of friars in their white summer habits strolled across the green lawn, silent but somehow companionable as they watched a few students playing Frisbee and hackeysack. From the onion-shaped dome of the Ma es-Sama mosque came a ululating cry, and the echoing croon of sleepy mourning doves settling in the elms. It was all improbably lovely and strange. We approached Reardon Hall, and the great white porticoes of the Colum Library, and finally crossed onto the Strand.

“So you had lunch with Oliver, huh?” Annie asked. She paused and removed her sneakers, wiggling her bare toes in the grass.

“Yeah,” I said. “How’d you know?”

Annie pointed at Angelica. I shook my head. “I mean, how do you know Oliver?”

“Oliver? Hey, everybody knows Oliver.” Annie yawned and wiped a bead of sweat from her lip. “I mean, look at him. He’s like the E-ticket guy for the whole freshman class. Someone in my Composition Seminar saw him at the Vigilant last night with Maxwell Rheining.”

“Who’s he? What’s the Vigilant?”

Annie glanced at Angelica, who said nothing. “It’s a gay bar in Southeast,” Annie said at last. “Max Rheining’s artist-in-residence at the Pater Theater this semester. You’d recognize him if you saw him.”

“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 si, 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