Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

Jay Jay was rather looking forward to Spring Vacation this year because his mother, when he phoned to tell her when he’d be home, informed him that she was going to Key West to decorate the house of a new client. She was all excited. Jay Jay didn’t dare ask her if she’d touched his room, and she didn’t say anything, but of course she never did. It would be fun to have the whole apartment to himself. He thought of inviting Kate and Daniel and Robbie to visit him, but the thought of having Kate and Daniel behaving like a honeymoon couple in his own apartment was too much; he’d have to be a masochist to inflict that on himself. Besides, his mother was always afraid his friends would scratch some of her precious furniture, or make cigarette burns or spill something, if they stayed over when she wasn’t there. It was tempting to invite them just to bug her, but the pleasure of upsetting her wasn’t worth the other thing. Anyhow, Kate was going to Daniel’s house. Meet the folks. Yuck.

Jay Jay mailed out fifty formal invitations. He would probably ask about a dozen other people when he ran into them — anyone who looked like a good addition to his life. Fifty was the perfect core number for a party.

“Do you need any decorations?” Perry asked him. “A nice pickled embryo?”

“I want them to have a good time, not get sick,” Jay Jay said.

They played the last game of the Winter Semester in the caverns on Saturday night. It was a particularly long session; they were all reluctant to leave things unfinished. But, of course, things were always left unfinished in the game … that was one of the things that was so good about it. You were always in suspense, wanting to go further.

April Fools’ Day was clear and not too cold. By the time the sun disappeared everyone was well into the planned evening of merrymaking in Jay Jay’s room and the hall. Jay Jay was wearing a red cashmere sweater, immaculately pressed jeans, and his World War I German helmet with the spike on top. Daniel and Robbie took turns as disc jockey. The music was loud, the guests were making rash promises they would later regret or forget, and Merlin’s raspy voice seemed to have the authority of a Greek chorus.

“I love you,” Perry said to Tina, whom he had just met.

“April fool!” Merlin said.

Tina laughed. She had metamorphosed into Kim Novak now, and was wearing a plain silk shirt and a tight skirt with a slit. Tiny pearls replaced the safety pins that used to be in her earlobes. Jay Jay decided he was definitely destined to become a starmaker.

“Kate,” Jay Jay demanded, “take pictures!” He had a beautiful twin on either side of him, and he thought he might send the photo in to The Grant Gazette. It was the sort of thing they liked: a record of happy college days. Kate ran to get her Polaroid camera, and Cindy and Lyndy smiled their dazzling smiles for publicity.

Jay Jay’s favorite joyful records were blaring from his stereo, a glass of his favorite white wine was in his hand, sexy women were making a fuss over him, and he was in charge of this entire event. He had made all these people happy, enlivened their lives, brought them another terrific evening they would talk about for weeks. He was the instigator, the leader. He felt wonderful. The great Jay Jay had done it again.

“April fool!” Merlin said.

A Greek chorus is more than a commentator on events or an indicator of splendid ironies. Sometimes it also foretells the future.

Often it warns.

Robbie lay on his bed in the dark, listening to the party guests making noise downstairs, the music playing. Moonlight was shining in through his bedroom window. He was thirteen again, and he had gone upstairs to be alone for a while. None of the people down there were his friends, and he couldn’t connect with them at all. He was still dressed because he might want to go back to the party anyway, and he wondered if everyone would be so glad to see him back if he had run away.

He was the Robbie then and the Robbie now, waiting for Hall to come in. Part of it was like a dream, seeing the past and the future — knowing Hall would come in although it had not yet happened, feeling his throat close with the pain of tears because he knew what would happen, needing to see Hall. It was Hall’s sixteenth birthday party, April first, and soon he would come to say good-bye and then he would disappear. It hurt so much to know all of this that he couldn’t bear it.

Pardieu’s hand reached out again to touch the little pouch of spells he always wore tied to his belt. He took out The graven Eye of Timor that had the power to raise the dead, and he stroked it like a touchstone. Every indentation of it was familiar to his fingers so often had he felt it, waiting for the time that he could use it. He waited for The Great Hall, and then he appeared, slipping through the wall, standing all pale and shimmering in the moonlight.

“Now, Pardieu,” The Great Hall said. “You are worthy. You know how to find me.”

The tension flowed out of Pardieu’s body and he sighed with gratitude. “At last …” he whispered.

The Great Hall seemed to dissolve just as he stood there in Pardieu’s sight, but Pardieu was neither afraid nor sad because he knew that soon he would be with The Great Hall again, this time forever. He rose from his bed. He had his sword, his coins, and all of his charms, and he would use these and his wits to be safe from evil. He was worthy. He knew his mission. He would bring back The Great Hall and then everything would be right again.

He slipped out into the dark, away from all Humans and Sprites and other beings who wasted their time with frivolity, and walked along the road, heading east. The landscape was changing with the beginning of spring. Pardieu could smell the flowers under the ground, feel the dampness of the unborn green shoots, all of nature waiting to be reborn. He was a part of this now, and of all things unseen and unknown: the highest level of Holy Man after so long a time of waiting and trial … at last.

On a quiet weekday night nobody paid any attention to the clean-cut college student walking down the dark road in jeans and Windbreaker. He walked so steadily, with such an obvious sense of his destination, that anyone who saw him would simply not notice him at all.

The day after Jay Jay’s party everyone started to leave for home. Daniel and Kate went together on the train to stay with his parents. Jay Jay had planned to ride to New York with Robbie, in Robbie’s car, but Robbie’s door was open, his bed hadn’t been slept in, and his things were still there, so Jay Jay figured he had struck it lucky at the party and found love. If he was shacked up in another dorm who knew when he would decide to get his act together for going home? It might be tomorrow. Jay Jay didn’t plan to hang around this dreary campus till then. A couple of people had asked him at the party if he needed a ride to New York, so he put a note on Robbie’s bed and left with a congenial group who had plenty of room in their large car for him and Merlin. It was typical of Robbie, Jay Jay thought, not to bother to lock his door. He didn’t worry that someone might steal his stereo or records, or make long-distance calls on his phone. Not that a person who wanted to pick those flimsy dorm room locks couldn’t anyway, but you didn’t put temptation in the way of the greedy. Jay Jay had his own lock: a dead bolt. His insecurity probably came from having his mother redecorating his room all the time, but it also came from practicality. He owned a lot of expensive things.

On the drive to New York Jay Jay did something unusual for him — he took down the phone numbers of everyone in the car and gave them his. He said maybe he’d have a small cocktail party during the two-week vacation, and invite them. The euphoria of his successful April Fools’ Day party was still with him. He didn’t mention that he had no other friends in New York to invite.