Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

“Don’t cry,” he told her gently. “I’ll be with you soon. Just ten more days.”

“I know,” she said tearfully.

“I send you a kiss,” he said. “This is a real kiss, okay? I mean, I’m kissing you , it’s coming right through the telephone wires to land on your face.” He kissed into the phone. “Got it?”

“I got it.” She sent one back to him. “That was yours.”

“It felt great,” he said.

“I have to go now,” she said.

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said. “Talk to you tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

After they hung up he stayed there for a while by the phone, feeling peaceful, until a girl he hardly knew came over and gave him a kiss. Robbie wished she hadn’t done that. He didn’t want to kiss anybody but Kate; it was necessary to be undefiled.

At midnight on New Year’s Eve Daniel was in bed with a girl named Sharon whom he’d seen a couple of times during the holidays. She was an economics major at B.U., a Junior, and she had her own apartment, which she shared with two other women who were away. She was enthusiastic and outgoing and very sexy, and she liked to be with him alone more than she liked to be with him at a party, so she had dragged him home from the party at ten o’clock. After nearly two hours in bed they were both quite tired, and they were sipping champagne and eating cookies.

She ran her hand through his thick hair. “Happy New Year,” she said.

“Happy New Year.”

“You’re the only man I know who’s prettier than I am.”

“I’m not pretty, Sharon, come on!” Daniel said, annoyed. She always made him feel like an object.

She grinned. “You’re gorgeous, how’s that?”

“Okay.”

“And bright. And a nice guy. And a terrific lover.”

“Thank you.”

“These cookies are stale,” she said. She got up and went into the bathroom. She had a beautiful body, very firm and smooth and curvy. He poured a little more champagne and turned on the small black and white television set she had on the floor next to the bed. The reception was terrible; he couldn’t tell if it was snowing in Times Square or the snow was on the screen, or even if it was Times Square. He supposed she hardly ever had time to watch TV anyway.

He felt depressed. The sex had been great, and she was a nice person, but he didn’t care about her and he knew she didn’t really care about him either. He never knew what she was thinking, and when he tried to ask, it always turned out that what she was thinking had very little to do with him. That was just as well — it would be unfair if she had more feelings for him than he did for her. This was just right the way it was. He should be pleased.

But New Year’s Eve was a special time, and he wished he were in bed with a girl he loved, not here with someone who was almost a stranger.

The stranger, with whom he had just engaged in all sorts of erotic, pleasant, and intimate acts, came back and got into bed.

“Can you stay all night?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Good. Where do your parents think you are?”

“All-night party. That’s where I was. ”

She laughed. “I got my own apartment so I could stop lying to my parents. They do control the money, after all. They’re sending me to school, so I like them to be happy. Commuting was the pits. I lived in the dorm for a year, but when I had to go home for holidays my parents acted as if I was still their little girl. This way they can tell themselves what they want to hear.”

“True.”

“My roommates and I are going to London this summer,” she said. “If you want to sublet this apartment, you can.”

“What’s the rent?”

“Four hundred a month, but it has two bedrooms, so you can share.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll think about it.”

“You get it all furnished, of course,” she said. “It’s a steal.”

He thought how his friends at school would probably think he had spent a sophisticated, romantic, sexy New Year’s Eve — a typical Daniel’s New Year’s Eve — practically attacked by this luscious creature, now in bed sipping champagne together.

A typical Daniel’s New Year’s Eve, he thought sadly, was lying here casually discussing a real estate deal.

Jay Jay spent the same New Year’s Eve he had spent for as long as he could remember: alone while the rest of the world was at a party. His mother had gone out in a long white evening gown, trailing a cloud of Opium and two dates, both of them gay. Jay Jay had prepared a little supper of champagne, Scotch salmon, Brie, and grapes, and was lying on his bed watching television. Merlin was his date. For a special holiday treat Merlin got some grapes too. When all the midnight nonsense was over, Jay Jay switched channels until he found an old movie. He had called Kate, Daniel, and Robbie earlier, but they were all out at parties, like normal people. He’d spoken to Kate’s mother, who seemed very nice and was entertaining a few friends; there was no one at all home at Daniel’s house; and Robbie’s mother was completely drunk but friendly. Jay Jay had the feeling she was lonely and glad to have someone to talk to, even if it was just a kid who was a school friend of her son’s. She talked to him for fifteen minutes. He didn’t mind; in fact he liked it.

So the old year was over and good riddance. The new one was going to be much better. He turned off the TV so he could concentrate and got out the pile of new Mazes and Monsters Challenge Modules he’d bought at the hobby shop. He’d already gone over them several times, checking off perils that could be reenacted with real props in a real setting like the caverns. He pictured the mazes he would invent in the caverns as a sort of deadly and terrifying fun house, with masks and eerie lighting waiting around corners, a coffin, real bones, a sword in a pile of stones, lumpy misshapen creatures made of rags and stuffing, coins, fake jewels, the robe with the mysterious potion in its pocket, and a pile of the Perilous Sand. But best of all would be the real bottomless pools, the pitch-dark uncharted labyrinth; the shivery feeling that no magic scroll could ever help you if you got lost. He, of course, would have a compass and a map.

He would need all the time he could get to prepare the game he had in mind. While the others were studying for stupid Winter Finals he could be working out the game, because he never needed to study. But it was really going to be complicated to get all that stuff, like a kind of scavenger hunt. The more Jay Jay thought about his plans for his new game the more excited he got. He knew that tonight he wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. It was pointless to hang around New York anymore now that the important holidays were over. He could split tomorrow, go back to school early. His mother wouldn’t care.

That would give him ten days, all by himself, to get started.

Back in the dismal winter landscape of the deserted university, Jay Jay made it vibrant with the colorful creatures of his imagination. The school authorities had turned down the heat to save energy, but Merlin’s heater kept their room nice and warm. Once, he ran into the security guard, who asked for identification — not because Jay Jay looked like a local vandal, but because he seemed too young to be there at all — and for some reason, after he had ascertained that Jay Jay was in the dorm legally, the security guard seemed sorry for him. Jay Jay couldn’t understand why, since he was having the time of his life.

He went methodically down his list of necessary props, checking off each one as he found or bought it. He hadn’t yet decided what the treasure should be, but there was plenty of time for that. Smaller treasures, to keep the adventurers going, were easier. But he had the feeling that the monsters in the caverns would be the real treasure.