Diana Peterfreund - Under the Rose

Lil’ Demon frowned. “Isn’t it the fountain of youth and the lamp of knowledge?”

Lucky shrugged. “That sounds about right. At least, there’s a lamp on the seal of my Eli throw blanket.”

Mara droned on. “There’s such a lack of respect for the traditions of this noble institution.”

“Rose & Grave?” I whispered to Angel.

“No, I think she’s still talking about Eli as a whole.”

“Well, there’s plenty of respect-lacking going on for Rose & Grave right now.” I hung my head. “I think we lost Howard.” All eyes turned in my direction. “Graverobber is still working on him but—”

“Because he’s such a good advocate,” scoffed Thorndike.

“He’s the only person who volunteered,” I argued.

Soze raised his hands. “Hey, I was on extinguisher duty.”

“So what do we do now?” I asked. “If we really lost a straggler. If he chooses the ‘new’ organizations—as our neophyte here so carefully elucidated—over us.”

Mara waved her hand in the air. “Excuse me, miss? I’m not a neophyte. They just initiated me. I’m Juno now.”

I looked at Poe. “Come on. You’re the one who knows all the policies and procedures of this outfit. Tell us what the game plan is.”

But Poe just laughed. “Right, because after that spectacular display of spitting all over my advice last spring, I’m going to completely relinquish all rights to say ‘I told you so’.” He pulled off his robe, and began to peel the Death’s-head makeup from his face. “You guys made this bed; I hope you like lying in it.”

Quoth Juno: “Where’s the party? There’s supposed to be a party after this, right?”

Quoth Lucky: “From within doth Persephone rot.”

Quoth the Middle-Eastern-guy-I-later-recognized-as-Harun-Sarmast-our-last-straggler as he stuck his head over the balcony: “Um, guys? I’ve been waiting up here with my blindfold on for a while. Anything wrong?”

I hereby confess:

I’m not proud of my Hit List.

WHY I DON’T LIKE SUNDAYS (THIS ONE IN PARTICULAR)

1) Upon waking, am smacked upside the head by calendar date and thereby reminded of all the things I need to do before Monday (usually comprising term paper, test, problem set, etc.).

2) Often regret whatever I did Saturday night. (This week it was attending an early October Jane Fonda marathon at the Eli Film Society, which was Kevin’s—a.k.a. Frodo’s—idea, though he’d ducked out somewhere in the middle of Barefoot in the Park. By the end, I thought someone had roofied my Solo cup, but then I realized it was just Barbarella. George had intimated he’d show up as well, but he’d obviously found someone better to do. Ugh.)

3) Always find a huge debate waiting for me on the D177 e-mail loop. (These are usually started by Graverobber, about the deplorable state of the society—like he would have anything to compare it to! — and seconded by Juno. It’s as if they insist the pot get stirred immediately prior to our Sunday meetings. Though this week, I was more than willing to get into a debate about the future of the society. I found it far preferable to the official event on the docket….)

4) My C.B. is tonight. Gulp.

The C.B.s, or Connubial Bliss reports, are a rite of passage for every Digger. Each of us is assigned one evening starting in late September to stand up in front of all of our brothers and discuss our love lives, soup to nuts. It’s supposed to be some sort of bonding experience—as if, after carefully detailing all the sordid details of romances gone wrong, the rest of the club will somehow think it’s made us closer, rather than giving us juicy fodder with which to earn us a spot on a Matt Lauer show of the future.

We’d had two already: Josh Silver’s and Clarissa Cuthbert’s. Josh, being first, wasn’t quite sure exactly how much information was too much, but thankfully we’d stopped him short of any description of bodily fluids. Though single at the moment, he’d had a bunch of girlfriends over the years, none who’d really knocked his socks off. Perhaps, he explained, that was the reason why he’d never been able to remain faithful to any of them. Every single one of his serious relationships had ended when Josh had failed to keep it in his pants.

“This,” George had whispered to me from our position on one of the leather couches in the Inner Temple, “is why I don’t get into relationships. No heartache if you were never trying to be faithful in the first place.”

But Josh remained hopeful. “I like having a girlfriend,” he’d insisted. “It’s nice to know there’s someone who will be there for me.”

“Even if you’re not there for them?” Demetria had asked. Nikolos snorted, which, I was learning, was his standard reaction whenever he thought discourse in the tomb was growing too girly. This occurred with annoying frequency (cf. his firebrand e-mails). Unfortunately, no serious discussion ever took place on the topic because Nikolos didn’t see any cure to what he perceived as the problem, except to get rid of the Diggirls, full stop. This had been his argument for the past six weeks, ever since we’d lost Howard.

Clarissa’s C.B. was every bit as dishy as one would expect. Of course, she discussed her misspent youth, including the thirty-year-old boyfriend she’d hidden from her parents while in high school. Odile had nodded in silent empathy, having no doubt played the ingenue to plenty of would-be movie moguls in her time. (No one could wait to hear her C.B. and find out if the rumors about her and the various movie stars and hip-hop artists were true.) A sample of the type of anecdote to which our club was subjected:

Clarissa:I mean, who amongst us hasn’t tried anal?

Most of the Rest of Us (I bet you can guess who wasn’t included in that number!): (raises hand) Um, me?

Clarissa:And after a few weeks, he asked me if I’d get a Sphinx Brazilian.

Jenny:A what?

Odile:Bikini wax. All of it.

George: (grins) Cool.

Jenny: (looks horrified)

Clarissa: (not even pausing) But after I did it, I felt prepubescent. I haven’t seen that part of me since I was eleven. I wasn’t in the mood for sex until it had grown back.

Nikolos: (snorts)

See how that might be a tough act for me to follow? I didn’t know how I’d deal with another night of Nikolos’s snorts. And what if they snickered at my more embarrassing anecdotes? At least I’d already fallen in the middle of the statistics in the “virginity lost” and “partners had” categories.

Still, I doubted my tale of prom after-party sex in the bedroom of the host’s kid sister was going to impress anyone. I’m pretty run-of-the-mill for a Digger. Especially since there was only one orgasm involved, and it wasn’t mine. I bet Odile had done it on the top of the Eiffel Tower at midnight, or maybe on the Concorde. George had probably done it on the space shuttle. Would not surprise me a bit. As for Jenny, I was beginning to get the impression she was still a virgin. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Quick C.B. and then we can all go home and study. I was all for it, especially now that it was October and classes were in full swing.

Not to give you the impression we only talked about sex! Before the C.B.s began, we’d tested the waters of knightly bonding with reports that amounted to recaps of summer vacation. I told everyone about my summer spent transcribing and editing narratives by exploited women, an experience I still hadn’t wrapped my mind around. I’d always figured I’d move to New York after graduation and work in publishing. All of a sudden I was gathering Peace Corps brochures from the Eli Career Center and looking into graduate school programs. All of a sudden I couldn’t picture myself in a cubicle, a realization I sheepishly shared with the other knights. But they were surprisingly supportive. I’d have thought with the Diggerly emphasis on ambition, the other knights would scoff at a career path that wasn’t fast track. I was wrong. Demetria had told me all about an upcoming project she was running for Habitat for Humanity, and Jenny—in one of her increasingly infrequent talkative phases—explained that she’d gone through a similar enlightenment after being involved in an Indonesian clean water project her church had sponsored two summers ago.