Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

When the week was over they had been everywhere they could think of to go, including the Metropolitan Museum, where they went to see the medieval artifacts, including armor and weapons. It didn’t seem any unlikelier a place for Pardieu to be than any other they’d tried. Jay Jay took Kate and Daniel to the Museum of Modern Art to see a couple of old movies he was fond of, and they took him to Times Square to see a really gross porn film because none of them had ever seen one. They made him sit between them because he looked so young they were afraid some pervert might bother him. Jay Jay was rather moved — they really did care about him. In return he took them on the Staten Island Ferry, even though it was corny, and then Daniel insisted on riding on the Roosevelt Island Tramway because it looked interesting. One night they went to a disco.

The three of them were having dinner in a little Italian restaurant they’d found in Greenwich Village, talking and laughing and joking, when Jay Jay realized what had happened. This week was the first time the three of them had done anything together that wasn’t in some way connected to the game. Even the parties they’d had, like last Christmas, had been only token celebrations culminating in a game session. They had started the week in New York looking for Robbie, trying even though they knew it was almost definitely hopeless, and they were ending the week as good friends having fun together. They still worried about Robbie and felt heartless and guilty for enjoying themselves … but it had happened anyway.

The odyssey they had just been through had been their transition to real life. They didn’t need the game to be friends, or for anything else. Maybe they had once, but they didn’t need it now.

“Next term,” Jay Jay said, “I’m going to join the drama group and direct a play. Something morbid, with lots of props. Hamlet maybe, or Macbeth. ”

“They could really use you,” Kate said.

“They sure could,” Daniel said.

His friends.

That night when they went back to his apartment and Kate and Daniel went to their room to go to bed, Jay Jay wasn’t jealous at all. He could see they really loved each other, and they seemed right for each other. He even hoped it would last forever. If they got married he would give a fantastic bachelor party for both of them.

The phone next to his bed rang sharply in the dark, waking him up. Jay Jay groped for the receiver groggily. “Unhh …”

“It’s Robbie,” Robbie’s voice said. “I’m at Covenant House. You said you would come and get me.”

“Robbie!” He was wide-awake. “Stay there! Stay there! We’re on the way.”

When Jay Jay, Kate, and Daniel ran into the reception room they were not prepared for what Robbie looked like. No matter what he’d said he had been through, he looked worse. He was skinny, as if he had been starving, and there were sores on his face. He had a scraggly mustache and beard, and his hair hung in his eyes. They could even have walked right past him in the street and not have recognized him. But the sweetness in his face was Robbie’s, and the sanity in his eyes was real.

They flung themselves on him, their wounded warrior, and bore him off to Jay Jay’s apartment in relief and joy.

“They said I was at that place once before,” Robbie said. “Is that true?”

Robbie stayed with his friends at Jay Jay’s New York apartment for three days. He wasn’t so frightened anymore about having flipped out, because they kept telling him it was all right. He remembered bits and pieces: Jay Jay’s party at school; calling them from Times Square, terrified because he didn’t know how he’d gotten there; and waiting for them at the refuge they’d sent him to. He could tell from looking at himself in the mirror that he’d been through a lot, but Kate and Daniel and Jay Jay kept telling him over and over that anyone who’d been living on the streets without money for as long as he had was lucky to be alive at all. He knew that was true, and he began to realize that perhaps Hall was dead. If Hall had taken on another identity and was leading a normal life he would have written or called. No … Hall really was gone forever. It was so painful to accept that Robbie felt numb instead of grieved, but he was starting to accept it.

He had called his parents the minute he arrived at Jay Jay’s. His father had answered, and had actually begun to cry. Robbie was surprised.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he told his father. “I didn’t want to hurt you and Mom — I just had to take off for a while.”

His friends had told him what to say.

“Look,” Daniel said, “you were under unbearable pressure at school. It’s always hard the first year; college is so different from high school. And you were on the swimming team, and we all played the game too much.”

He hadn’t told his parents where he was the first time he called. His friends insisted he get his head together first, just in case other people upset him by asking too many questions too fast. Robbie agreed. He didn’t want to disappoint his parents any more than he already had. Pressure was the operative word. His parents used it to him, and Robbie used it back to them. Demands … career choices to be made, schoolwork, and of course the emotional tensions of his broken romance with Kate. He and Kate had been too young and too rushed for big decisions, and Robbie realized that when he mentioned “a difficult love affair” people immediately responded with understanding and sympathy. He didn’t feel sorry for himself, and he and Kate were the best of friends now, but it was so easy to say that love had been one of the things that had pushed him over the edge. In fact, she had suggested he might offer it as a contributing factor to his flight from school.

The second day, after spending every waking moment with Kate and Daniel and Jay Jay, Robbie called his parents and told him where he was. They wanted to come to get him immediately, but he told them he was afraid of reporters — it was too soon, and he was so tired. His mother wanted him to see a doctor, but Robbie said there was no need. He felt fine, just tired, and he didn’t want to discuss where he’d been and what he’d done. His friends would drive him to Greenwich the next day. That was better, wasn’t it? He’d already seen the newspapers, and there was an item about him. It said he’d called his parents and was “safe in an unidentified place.” There was also his old high school yearbook picture in the paper, next to the story, and he was afraid his parents would be shocked and upset when they saw how much he had changed. He didn’t tell them about the sores on his face, and with good food and a lot of vitamins they were going away.

“Should I leave the beard?” he asked his friends.

“I like it,” Kate said. “It’s sexy.”

“Then I’ll definitely keep it,” Robbie said, pleased and embarrassed at the compliment. He felt he had been starving for the kindness and love of his friends for such a long time he wondered how he had been able to survive. What could he have expected to find out there on his flight?

“What am I going to do about exams?” Robbie asked, worried.

He wouldn’t flunk out or even have to take makeup courses. His parents had called the school, and he could take the exams in the fall. Apparently he hadn’t been the first person to panic and run from the pressures.

Pressures.

He would be given another chance.

Daniel and Kate and Jay Jay kept asking him what he remembered from those lost seven weeks. He didn’t remember anything. That was the frightening thing — not being able to remember — but they told him over and over that it would be all right. Perhaps, Daniel suggested, when Robbie was home for the summer he might see a psychiatrist to help him deal with all this. Then when he went back to Grant in the fall he would be stronger, and better able to handle whatever came up. Of course, they all agreed, none of them would ever play the game again.