Diana Peterfreund - Under the Rose

I stood up and my gaze caught on one of the bookshelves lining the Common Room. A thick burgundy volume stuck out from the shelf, and on its spine in silver lettering was embossed:

The East German Uprising of 1953:

Its Effects on the USSR and Other Nations

of Eastern Europe

Or maybe not.

I hereby confess:

They’ll get our respect

when they deserve it.

It’s more complicated than you might think to choose an outfit in which to publicly report on your sexual experiences. You have to veer away from anything that screams “slutty” or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, “frumpy,” and Persephone help you if the ensemble bears any resemblance to something worn in any of the following fetish-fantasy situations: schoolgirl, librarian, secretary, or Lara Croft. A white T-shirt makes you look like a candidate for Girls Gone Wild: Cancùn, and low-rise jeans are out, for fear there might be any peeks at a thong. I finally settled on a pair of sleek brown pants and a cardigan over a not-low-cut sleeveless top, and boots (ankle, not dominatrixy) with a low heel. There. Not too conservative, not too outlandish.

Kind of like my love life, come to think of it.

At precisely five past six (VI in Diggers-time, which always runs five minutes off the rest of the world) I filed into the tomb with the others. First, we ate. Tonight, Hale had made us Cornish hens stuffed with wild rice and tarragon. Would it be awful of me to admit that so far, my favorite part about being a Digger was escaping dining hall food a couple nights a week?

“Nervous?” Angel asked. She was at my right, carefully dissecting the poultry on her plate with a skill indicating just how much time she’d spent in debutante class. My family was more of a chicken tenders type. “Don’t be. We’ll love you no matter who you’ve fucked.”

“Or how?” Lucky prompted from my other side. “Personally, I think this whole tradition sucks. Does it really foster brotherhood for us to stand up and recount our sexual experiences in front of one another?”

“Or,” said Big Demon, “in some cases, lack thereof? Is that your real worry here, Lucky?”

She shot a forkful of mashed potatoes at the jock, and, I’m proud to report, rather impressed him with her aim. “What I’m saying is, I wish we could get past all this adolescent junk and on to the real mysteries.”

“What do you mean?” Frodo asked. “Like, ‘Ten Little Diggers’ or other Murder She Wrote stuff?”

“Dude,” said Soze, “ Ten Little Indians was Agatha Christie.”

“Dudes,” Lucky mocked, “I mean mysteries. Divine revelation beyond human understanding? The secret rites of an organization only open to initiates?”

Puck shook his head, leaned over, and tugged on Lucky’s endless and ever-present braid. “You’re starting to sound like our girl ’boo here.”

Ah yes, ridicule the resident conspiracy theorist. That’ll get you laid, Puck. Still, I couldn’t help but thrill at his casual “our girl.”

Poe looked up from the corner, where he was partaking of his meal at a decent distance from our club, a physical reminder of his patriarch status. “You’re enjoying the mysteries, Lucky,” he grumbled, slicing his asparagus into perfectly bite-sized chunks. “Next week you’ll enjoy the mystery of chateaubriand.”

I swallowed a bite of Cornish hen and rolled my eyes. Poe had been inviting himself to our mealtimes a little too often for my appetite, and his M.O. was always the same. Come in, grub food, sit apart from the rest of us, and channel Oscar the Grouch. Okay, so there was a standing invite for patriarchs to share in the food they helped provide through their donations. Did that mean he had to crash every one of our dinners? There should be some kind of limit for patriarchs who happened to live in town. Rumor had it Poe had spent his graduate summer cutting grass or something. I’m sure that had to have paid better than a government internship—you’d think the kid could afford some groceries. (Though, considering the cooking of most recent grads I knew, eating Hale’s food might be reason enough to turn townie.)

Graverobber tapped his silver against his water glass and an audible groan sounded around the table. “Before we get to the main event of the evening,” he said with a nod toward me, “I’d like to once again broach the topic of—”

Thorndike cleared her throat. “As Uncle Tony for the evening, I’d like to once again remind the club that this particular topic is tabled tonight.” Under her breath, she added, “Just one whine-free meeting is all I need to die happy.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Juno said. “I’m sure you have a variety of other pet issues to shove down our throats before you even begin to get happy.”

The other Diggirls began to bare their teeth at our newest compatriot. Suffice it to say, Juno (a.k.a. Mara) had not endeared herself to the other girls in her weeks of membership. This time, I didn’t chalk it up to personality differences. She had managed to piss off each of us. I will say this for her: She was an equal opportunity firebrand. She corrected my grammar, questioned the authenticity of Lil’ Demon’s breasts, called Angel bourgeois, told Lucky that Dvorak was a scam, and suggested to Thorndike that Brown v. Board of Education had been a bad decision.

We all just loved her.

“Look, we can table it as much as you like, but that doesn’t make the facts go away,” Graverobber said. “We’re hemorrhaging patriarchal support left and right, and the donations this year have been way down.”

Thorndike twirled her finger in the air. “Woo-hoo. As long as the Tobias Trust is still in the eight figures, I’m not ready to worry about funds.” She pointed at the feast spread before us. “Hale’s not going to have to switch over to lentils and cabbage any time soon.”

“Frankly, I find your grasp of the financial details leave something to be desired,” said Juno. “Much of our prestige is derived from our wealth. If we lose that—”

“Right,” I said. “If we lose some of our big secret wealth we can’t tell anyone about anyway? Please.”

Part of me wanted to think if we gave Juno some time, she’d grow on us. It hadn’t taken the rest of us that long to bond, but then again, we’d become fast friends under extreme circumstances. Were we simply being too cliquish for her? Was her prickly nature due in part to a perception that the rest of the Diggirls were already a closed group, and if she couldn’t join us, she’d try to beat us? If so, aligning herself with the biggest misogynist in the club was a good step along that path.

“Besides,” I continued, “most barbarians already think we’ve got twice the money we do, and about ten times the power. We could be bankrupt and they’d still say we owned half the world.”

“I agree with Bugaboo on that point,” said Soze. “I don’t think our money situation is an issue at present. I myself was surprised to learn its true value at the initiation, but, like Thorndike, I don’t think we’re about to go broke. What concerns me,” he said, “is our perceived influence if we continue to alienate the patriarchs. How are we supposed to groom next year’s taps when word on the street is that the Diggers can’t get their own alums to give them internships? Don’t mistake me, I am fully committed to our Order, but I worry for next year’s tap class.”