Rona Jaffe - Mazes and Monsters

“Jay Jay Brockway,” the kid said, holding out his hand.

“I’m Robbie Wheeling.”

“I’ve seen you before. Tan Fiat Spider.”

“Right …”

“I had one,” Jay Jay said. “Mine was red. The fecalite gave it to me for my birthday, neglecting to notice I was still too young to get my license, and I sold it to bug him and bought my mynah bird and a motorbike. Mynah birds cost a fortune if you want a good one.”

“The what?” Robbie said.

“What what?”

“Who’s, what’s a fecalite?”

“My father. It’s a petrified dinosaur turd. Sorry, am I ruining your dinner? He’s ruined many of mine.”

Robbie had never heard anybody talk that way about their parents before, or indeed about anything so bizarre, to a total stranger. He supposed the outfit Jay Jay was wearing had to do with his motorbike, but why hadn’t he taken it off before he came to dinner?

“Do you like Brigitte Bardot?” Jay Jay continued. He took a long, thin brown cigarette from a pack and lit it, then offered the pack to Robbie.

“No, thanks, I don’t smoke.”

“Because I’m giving a party tomorrow night for Brigitte Bardot’s birthday, and if you would like to attend it’s any time after eight, second floor, the room with the noise.”

“Thank you,” Robbie said. Brigitte Bardot was some old movie actress, he remembered now. “Is she here? ”

“Who?”

“Who you’re giving the party for.”

“Are you stoned?” Jay Jay asked, peering at him anxiously. He was beginning to look as if he regretted extending the invitation.

“No.”

“Of course she’s not here. Why would she come to this dump?”

“I don’t know,” Robbie said. He thought fast. “Elizabeth Taylor went to Harvard once.”

“So she did …” Jay Jay said thoughtfully. His face lit up. “Maybe next year I’ll invite B. B.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. He was very short. “See you tomorrow night. Bring booze, and no more than two friends, preferably interesting.”

Mynah bird? Robbie thought, looking after him. His first party at Grant! He could hardly wait.

At half past eight, when Robbie went looking for the party, he saw that it was already in full swing. People had spilled out of Jay Jay’s room into the hall, and into other rooms, and music was blasting. If anyone had planned to study tonight it was obviously hopeless, but no one seemed to care. There must have been at least a hundred people milling around, drinking beer or wine, smoking, talking, dancing, and making noise. Carrying a bottle of red wine he’d bought he pushed his way through the crowd to find his host. He finally saw him, almost hidden in the sea of people, wearing a tuxedo and a hard hat, and looking very happy. Next to him was one of the prettiest girls Robbie had ever seen. She had shiny brown hair and huge dark eyes, and her lips turned up at the corners even when she wasn’t smiling. Jay Jay’s stereo was playing Donna Summer singing “MacArthur Park.”

“Jay Jay!” Robbie shouted, holding up his bottle of wine.

Jay Jay steered him in like a ship to port. “This is Kate Finch,” he said. “Robbie Wheeling.”

“Hi,” she said, and smiled, and held out her surprisingly hard little hand for him to shake.

After all the loves in my life, you’ll still be the one, the record played. Donna singing, the beat of the music rocking through the room. Every time you fall in love you notice what song is playing, and you always remember it. Robbie looked at Kate Finch and knew that she would always be the record of Donna Summer singing “MacArthur Park.” He looked into her eyes and couldn’t think of a thing to say to her.

“Well, I guess you want a corkscrew,” she said.

“I guess so.”

She reached behind her and produced one, and two plastic glasses. He busied himself with opening the bottle so he wouldn’t have to think of something to say. Jay Jay had disappeared into the crowd again. Robbie poured wine into the two glasses, although he really didn’t much like wine, and handed one to her.

“You live in Hollis?” she asked pleasantly.

“Yes. Do you?”

“Right down the hall.”

“Does he really have a mynah bird?”

“Right over there.”

A black bird with a yellow beak was looking at him from a large silver cage. “Isn’t it frightened?”

She shrugged and smiled. “With Jay Jay you get used to anything.”

He wanted to say something wonderful so she would be impressed, so she would remember him, and he had never felt so stupid in his life. He looked at his still-full glass.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“I wish we could start in the middle. I wish we’d known each other for two weeks and we knew everything about each other, and we liked each other a lot, and I wouldn’t be so nervous.”

She laughed. Her laugh was just as good as her smile. “Are you scared of me?”

“I’m not usually like this,” Robbie said.

“I like it,” she said gently.

“I’m really interesting when you get to know me,” he blurted.

She took his hand and led him out of the party and down the hall to her room. She unlocked the door and led him inside, then she closed the door. He was terrified. He didn’t know what she wanted, but since she hadn’t locked the door …

She sat on top of her desk, hooked her feet over the edge, put her arms around her knees, and looked at him with big eyes filled with amusement and tolerance and genuine friendliness. “Talk,” she said.

After a while it wasn’t so bad, and soon he began to feel comfortable with her. She actually seemed to care what he had to say, no matter how dumb it was, like how he didn’t know what he wanted to do after college and how it made his parents concerned, but worried him even more. He didn’t tell her about his brother, but he did tell her anything interesting he could think of about when he was in high school, and the things he’d liked, even about his Senior year, when he’d played Mazes and Monsters so often that between that and the swimming and the yearbook he was lucky he got into any college at all.

“You play M and M?” Her eyes lit up.

“Used to.”

“What level?”

“I was up to third when everybody left for college.”

“Wow! So are we. Didn’t you see our notice downstairs on the bulletin board?”

“I never looked.”

“Jay Jay and Daniel and I … Come on, you’ll meet Daniel.” She hopped off the desk and grabbed his hand again. Before he knew it she had pushed him out of her room and was dragging him back to the party, where she introduced him to a very good-looking guy who looked disturbingly familiar. “This is Robbie Wheeling. Daniel Goldsmith, our Maze Controller. Robbie might play with us.”

For a moment Robbie panicked. He was going to do badly in college if he started playing the game; he wasn’t that brilliant to begin with. But he didn’t want to lose this girl, not yet. “How often do you play?” he asked.

“We haven’t started yet this year,” Daniel said. “We’ve been looking for another player. We only play a couple of times a week. Really. It won’t hurt your grades if that’s what you’re thinking about.”

“I sort of was.”

“Well, that’s good,” Kate said. “Because we don’t want a fanatic.”

“We do want someone who’ll stay with it though,” Daniel said. “Why don’t you give it a try and see how it works out? Nobody’s demanding a contract.”

“I know.”

“Try it,” Kate said, and smiled at him. “What the hell?”

He smiled back and nodded yes.

The four of them were sitting in Daniel’s room after supper, beginning to play the new game he had spent the summer contriving. They had already chosen their characters: Kate was Glacia, the Fighter, again, Jay Jay was still Freelik the Frenetic of Glossamir, a Sprite, and Robbie was Pardieu, a Holy Man. They sat in a circle on the floor, pencils and graph paper ready to chart their dangerous and difficult course, and Daniel had put up the small screen the Maze Controller used to hide the pages of the scenario he had invented to take them on their imagined trip.