“—and, of course,” he concluded, “you must continue to use prudence when you roam the campus after dark. No boy—I repeat, no boy—is to be off dorm alone after 5:30 P.M. A violation of that policy will be considered a major disciplinary offense.”
Richard approached Thomas and Greg after the assembly was over. “Which altar is it they use to sacrifice the virgins?” he said.
Thomas told him to shut up.
“Come on, let’s have a full report,” Richard said.
“It’s not funny.”
“This whole fiasco is funny as hell,” Richard said. “They’re too cheap to close down the school and find the guy, so they’re asking us to pair up like Little Men.”
Thomas reminded him that they had seen policemen all over the campus all morning. “It’s not like they’ve lost interest in us,” he said. The three boys were walking back to Stringfellow in a crowd of students, Thomas in the middle between Greg and Richard. The weather was clear and cold.
“The cops haven’t found diddly,” Richard said.
‘’That means Angus is off campus,” Greg had said. “If he were here, they’d find him.”
“Bull,” Richard said. “He’s hiding in the secret tunnel.”
Greg said there was no secret tunnel. “The cops looked all over the basement of Stringfellow Hall and the gym and the Homestead, and they found nothing,” he said.
Richard asked how they could ignore the blueprint that showed a passageway.
“I figure somebody messed with that diagram,” Greg said. “They must have drawn the tunnel in as a place it might have gone, not where it was.”
“You’ve changed your mind?” Richard said. “No more search for the road to Shangri-La?”
Greg said the blueprint had been in the library for years. “If it had been legitimate,” he said, “somebody would have found out before now.”
“So,” said Thomas, “you ended up with a sackful of squirrel.”
“While you ended up with a handful of heaven,” Richard said. “Now tell us about how you knocked back McCorkindale in the chapel last night.”
Thomas could not tolerate Richard any longer. “Go away,” he said, and he pushed ahead to enter the building alone. Up on his dorm, he tried his home number in Georgetown. No answer. He tortured himself by picturing his parents and Jeff out for brunch somewhere, forking in the eggs Benedict and the fresh melon. It was more likely his mom was catering a brunch and his dad was down at the newspaper, writing. He wished they had invested in an answering machine.
Maybe he could call his sister, Barbara, at Mason.
Or maybe Hesta.
Okay, practice. She gets on the phone and you say Don’t hang up. I have to apologize and she says something like Make it fast, and you say I don’t know what got into me last night but all I know is I love you and I wish you wouldn’t be mad, and there’ll be a long pause, and then she’ll sigh and say Oh, Thomas, of course I love you, too.
But when he called, he spoke to a very unsympathetic Susie Boardman, who told him Hesta was not available to talk.
“Would you tell her to call me?” He was trying hard to be cool.
“I’ll tell her you called. Got to go,” she said.
Thomas hung up the telephone and wished he could push the reset button, delete the file, erase the disk, and boot up the computer to start his life all over again. He returned to the room ready to crawl into bed forever.
Then Greg asked him if he was ready for play practice.
“Hell,” said Thomas. He had forgotten about his 3:00 play rehearsal. “I’m not going,” he said. “I’ll quit.”
Greg pulled a chair over to the bed where Thomas was lying on his back.
“Everybody says you were good at the audition,” said Greg.
“Bullshit.”
“I was hoping you’d help me with my lines,” said Greg. “I’m having the hardest kind of time with them.”
“Get Farnham to help you. He’s the pro.”
Greg said Thomas was more convenient. Thomas would not oblige any attempts at cheering him up.
“You just say it the way Othello would say it,” said Thomas. “It’s no big deal.”
“Show me.” Greg had the white paperback in his hand. “There’s a hard place in Act IV.”
Thomas snatched the book away from him and started to flip through the pages. “Do something we’ve covered in class,” he said. “I haven’t even read the whole play yet. We just finished Act III.”
“Okay. There’s a tough place in Act III, too.”
“Where?” Thomas was sick of school.
“Scene 3.” Greg explained that he didn’t understand whether or not Othello was angry at Desdemona at the beginning of the scene. Desdemona keeps asking Othello to invite Michael Cassio for dinner, and Othello keeps putting her off.
“He sounds mad,” said Greg, “but Desdemona doesn’t seem to think he is.”
Thomas read through the scene. As angry as he was, he couldn’t help getting interested in it.
“You’re mad at her,” he said. “But you’re also mad at yourself for being mad at her. The only thing you can do is to tell her to get the hell out of there. Politely, so that you can maybe get yourself under control.”
“But I’m not alone. I’m left on the stage with Iago.”
“Exactly. You tell the wrong person to leave. It’s the turning point of the play.”
He was surprised by his own insight.
“Damn,” said Greg. “You should take over from Farnham.”
“Shut up and read the lines,” said Thomas, though the compliment pleased him. He forgot his earlier threat to skip rehearsal. “If you do this right, you can get the audience scared to death.”
“Why scared?” said Greg.
“Scared because they know what you don’t know,” said Thomas. “They know there’s a maniac loose, and they’re dreading that you’re not going to recognize him.”
“Everybody knows what happens in this play,” said Greg.
“Not everybody,” said Thomas.
SCENE 2
There were all kinds of residue backstage from the mixer the night before, and Mr. Farnham was furious about it.
“I told
