Waking the Moon

“Forget him. He’s a nutjob,” she pronounced one night in a vain effort to comfort me. “Really, Sweeney. Haven’t you ever read Brideshead Revisited?”

I sniffed. “No.”

“Well, it turns out very badly for boys like Oliver.”

I didn’t care. Hanging out with Oliver was like being attached to some dense yet glittering, rapidly spinning object. By virtue of his speed and beauty he attracted all sorts of things—middle-aged professors, exotic cigarettes, postcards from Tunisia, psychotropic drugs—and now by association many of those things were becoming attached to me, chief among them Angelica di Rienzi and Oliver’s habit of increasingly sporadic class attendance and casual narcotics use.

So the semester passed. October’s acid glory burned into November ash; and one day the Xeroxed flyers appeared across the campus.

AUTUMN RETREAT

AT

AGASTRONGA RIVER ORPHIC LODGE

Friday, Saturday, return Sunday night

For Details See Balthazar Warnick, Provost, Thaddeus College

At dawn I woke to someone calling my name from outside my window. No angels, no creatures from the other side of the Door; only Oliver. His long hair was dirty and when I let him in the front door I could tell he hadn’t showered since we’d last met: he had a not-unpleasant musty smell of Tide-scented clothes, cigarette smoke, and boyish sweat.

“Oliver,” I croaked as I let him in.

Outside dew sparkled on the grass. The Divine’s domed and turreted buildings and dusty oaks seemed to float untethered above us, like the city’s dream of itself.

“Oliver,” I repeated, rubbing my eyes. “You’re up so early.”

“Didn’t go to sleep.” He bounced past me into the dorm, squeezing my shoulder and grinning. “Went back and had a little taste from Wild Bill’s terrarium.” I shuddered and pulled the door closed after him.

In the hall he paused to read one of Balthazar Warnick’s flyers. “Well!” he said cheerfully, “It’s the day after tomorrow, so I guess we still have time to pack.”

I yawned. “Pack?”

Oliver nodded. Carefully he detached the flyer, rolling it into a little cylinder and sticking it in a pocket. “There’s only a limited amount of space for these things, we should sign up now.” He turned and began walking back to the front door.

“Oliver, it’s 5:00 A.M.! And the retreat’s not till Friday—”

He stopped and regarded me thoughtfully. I had on another pair of ripped jeans, but I hadn’t washed off my makeup, and I was wearing the same T-shirt I’d had on for three days now. “Then perhaps you’ll have time to do your laundry,” he said mildly, and grabbed my arm. “Come on—”

The nightmarish thought of a weekend under Professor Warnick’s tutelage was eased by the notion that I might finally have some time alone, really alone, with Oliver. We found a sign-up sheet in the empty foyer of Thaddeus College, and he was right—only a few spaces were left, and my heart jumped to see that Angelica’s name was not there. But after fastidiously writing his name and mine in spidery letters, Oliver added Angelica de Rienzi to one of the remaining lines.

“Wait,” I said, and wrote Anne Harmon. “There—”

Two days later, Annie and Angelica and I were in the parking lot of Thaddeus College. I was wearing one of Oliver’s shirts, too big for me and infused with the musty marijuana scent of his room. Annie had on a red flannel shirt and beat-up tweed jacket that Baby Joe had given her. She was so small and compact that her guitar case looked incongruously large, like a cello carried by an earnest mouse. Angelica wore yet another gauzy flowered dress under a light woolen cape, her hair tied back with a green velvet ribbon.

“A weekend in the country…” she sang. Annie rolled her eyes.

A small crowd milled outside Thaddeus College. Beside a battered Volvo wagon Balthazar Warnick stood and read aloud from a list of names. I slunk behind Angelica and Annie and did my best to avoid catching his eye. Angelica checked us in and we waited for instructions. I dropped my knapsack and peered into the Volvo. Mounds of boxes and coolers rose from its back compartment, and I was relieved to see a number of gallon jugs of red wine. Several other vehicles arrived and were poised for flight, motors running, drivers cranking up tape players and radios. I saw Baby Joe and his friend Hasel Bright leaning on Hasel’s ancient Volkswagen bug. When they saw us, Hasel saluted Angelica with a Jack Daniels bottle.

“Avanti, Angelica! I want you to have my love child—”

Angelica smiled indulgently and blew him a kiss. People began tossing last bits of luggage into trunks and clambering into cars. The caravan was ready to go, but there was still no sign of Oliver. Angelica walked over to Balthazar Warnick, Annie and I trailing reluctantly behind her.

“Professor Warnick, someone else is coming,” said Angelica. “Oliver Crawford—”

Balthazar Warnick lifted his head to regard her coolly.

“Mr. Crawford seems to be carrying on a family tradition of holding everyone up,” he began, when Oliver came loping across the parking lot.

“Oliver!” cried Angelica. “We almost left without you!”

Oliver shoved his hands into his pockets. “Oh surely not.” He bowed, then draped his arm over Angelica’s shoulder. “Here I am.”

“All right. That’s everyone, then—” Professor Warnick folded his list and stuck it into his jacket. “Mr. Crawford, perhaps you would give me the great honor of riding with me—I want to hear how your brothers are doing, and how you have been spending your time away from my class—”

Oliver smoothed his hair back and tugged at his shirt collar.

“Yes, Professor,” he said, bowing. He was so loose-limbed, his pupils so dilated, that he looked like an Oliver rag doll with black-button eyes. “I’ll give a—uh—full report.”

“Come on, then.” Professor Warnick opened the front door of the Volvo and shooed Oliver inside. “You too, my dear—” He gestured for Angelica to follow.

“Don’t forget our bags!” Angelica called to Annie. I watched in chagrined disbelief as Oliver kissed her cheek.

Annie nodded in disgust. “Yes, Mistress! Igor obeys—” She turned to me and cocked a thumb at Angelica’s bags. “Mind giving me a hand?”

I sighed. “Yeah, sure.” With a sick feeling I watched Balthazar Warnick climb into the car with Oliver and Angelica. Then I hefted one of Angelica’s leather suitcases, grunting.

“Jeez, what’s in here? The True Cross?”

“Books on witchcraft,” said Annie, “and the entire fall line of Mary Quant makeup.”

I stared at the bag despairingly, “Why are we doing this, Annie? I mean, there’s Warnick, and—”

Annie actually went white. “Why are we doing this? We are doing this because for some insane reason you and Oliver signed us up—”

“I signed me up! I wanted to be alone with him for once, without—”

“Last train for Debarksville, girls,” someone shouted.

“Forget it,” fumed Annie. “Let’s go.”

We found two empty seats in the back of a Dodge Dart piloted by a dour young seminarian. I slumped in my seat and stared disconsolately out to where Oliver and Angelica sat laughing in the front of the lead car. Behind them Hasel’s VW rocked dangerously back and forth. Then there was a break in the traffic, and the two cars careened out of sight in a cloud of exhaust and dust.

“Hey, get over it, Sweeney, okay?” Annie looked at me and shook her head. “I’ve been wanting to ask you —did something really special happen the first time you put on that shirt? Or are you just waiting for Oliver to notice you’ve been wearing his clothes for three days?”