Opening Act (3 page)

“Look,” he said, and she could tell he was getting a little irritable, having to cajole her while all this noise was getting in their way, “you're the one who, when we were reading Shakespeare and Spenser and Sidney, told me it was your dream to live in Elizabethan London.”

“Well…it was. It is. Everything about it.” She grimaced. “What's that got to do with anything?”

“No one ever bathed in the sixteenth century. They slept in their clothes and only changed once every two months or so.”

“That's disgusting.”

“That's Elizabethan. So use that vibrant imagination of yours. Just throw something on, and come to lunch. Pretend I'm Philip Sidney and you're the queen.”

“I'm pretty sure Elizabeth I changed her clothes more than every two months.”

“When Elizabeth I died there was half an inch of permanent makeup on her face. So don't even.”

She gasped. “You're lying!”

“I'm not. She never washed it off. Just kept applying new layers.”

She laughed, aghast. “Liar!”

“Google it. And meet me at noon at the Glass Onion on Ferris.”

She Googled it. He wasn't lying. Also, after her death the queen's coronation ring had to be sawed off her finger because skin had grown over it. Loni was delightedly horrified. She wondered if Byron knew
that
. Probably. He was such a wonderful repository of bizarre facts and anecdotes.

She pulled on a cotton dress and sandals—not exactly Elizabethan—and spritzed herself with plenty of the sea-mist perfume her mother had given her for Christmas. Finally, something from her mom was actually coming in handy! (Usually Loni wore no scent at all, which she'd told her mother at least five hundred times.) Then she pulled back her hair into a ponytail and put on a purple beret she'd bought at a carnival on an impulse and which she'd looked at the next morning and thought,
I will never wear that
. Never say never, she reminded herself.

That made her think of Overlords of Loneliness—“Never Till Next Time”—and sent her back to Zee's room to take the CD from the player and put it back in its case. As she dropped it back on Zee's stack, Shay Dayton's brooding blue eyes caught her attention once more.

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Sorry, buddy,” she said. “Not gonna work on this girl.”

It was a beautiful day. There'd been a swift and sudden rain shower while she drove to the restaurant, but it had cleansed the air, swept away the humidity that had hung over the morning, and left behind a slight sharpness, as showers sometimes do. Loni and Byron sat at an outdoor table, and Byron was wearing his robin's-egg-blue shirt, which Loni had once complimented him on—after which he seemed to wear it more often than not.

She felt a little stir of something in her chest…a suspicion. It wasn't the first time she'd had it. And she felt herself suddenly glad she wasn't at her freshest and most attractive. They engaged in the usual small talk—faculty gossip and the like. One of the TAs, a guy Byron despised and Loni occasionally defended, had been caught in a sexting scandal and had been fired, but he was fighting the dismissal. “I guess he doesn't mind the department board reviewing the ‘evidence,' ” Byron had sneered.

Loni had said, “Maybe he's got nothing to be ashamed of,” which had made Byron blush. But the waiter arrived, and after they ordered Byron's manner turned suddenly serious.

“Do you remember Tammi Monckton?” he asked.

“Sure. She was your TA when I first started studying with you.” She knit her brow. “What about her?”

“She took a sabbatical to write. I just heard from her. She's finished her project and now she's looking for a publisher.”

Loni felt a flash of envy. Someone who had been bold enough to live her dream. “Good for her,” she said, and tried to drown her jealousy with a few gulps of iced tea.

“And she wants to come back,” Byron said.

Loni licked her lips and put the glass back down. “Pardon?”

“She wants her job back. I told her I'm moving to St. Nazarius, and she doesn't care. She's been at a writers' colony in Maine. She doesn't have any roots. She'll go to the West Coast, drop of a hat.”

“She wants to be your TA again?”

He nodded.

They sat quietly for a moment as Byron allowed Loni to process this. Then he reached across the table and placed his hand over hers. “I told her I'd offered the position to someone else. Someone who hadn't yet accepted or declined it.”

Loni nodded.

“And I'm not retracting the offer. You're my first choice.” He paused, then withdrew his hand. “But.”

“But…?”

Their waiter appeared and set their salads before them. Byron waited till he'd gone, then smiled a bit crookedly and said, “You're very young. And I'm very fond of you. So I've allowed you to go all this time without giving me an answer. Even though it isn't really fair to me.”

Loni gulped. “I'm sorry. I didn't think…”

“I know. As I said, you're young. But I leave in two-and-a-half weeks, Loni. Fine, fine, I know you, you're brilliant, you're gifted. I want you on your terms. I want you to be comfortable—happy, even. So I haven't pressed you.” He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “But now it's not just unfair to me; it's unfair to Tammi.”

Loni looked at her salad. “I see.”

“Now I've upset you. Please don't get all gloomy. This is the reason I didn't want to talk about it over the phone. Let's have a nice lunch and enjoy ourselves. My treat, by the way.”

“Thank you,” she said, barely audible.

“But I need your answer very soon. That's all.”

“How soon?”

His face momentarily reddened, and Loni realized she'd insulted him. He was trying so hard to be accommodating, and she was treating him like he was some horrible surgery she kept putting off. “Four days,” he said. “I told Tammi I'd give her my answer this weekend. Which means you have to give me yours before then.”

She nodded. “I will. Promise.”

“Growing up is hard. I understand that. When you're young, everything is wide open. You have a seemingly infinite number of possibilities before you. And then,” he said, smiling sadly, “you start making choices, and with each choice, a door closes. But that's how it is, Loni. That's what it means to be an adult. You make choices, and you say good-bye to the possibilities those choices preclude.”

“I know,” she said, using her fork to toy with her salad. “You're right.”

He sat back. “Anyway, that's all I'm going to say about it. Now, tell me what your crazy roommate's been up to.”

Interviewing for a job,
came immediately to mind.
Closing doors. Growing up.
But instead, she told him about Zee's misadventures at a recent strip-Twister party, and by the time the second course came he was almost choking with laughter.

CHAPTER 2

Zee was a fairly normal-looking girl. She was an average size and had naturally curly hair that she was always straightening in imitation of the girls with naturally straight hair (who were always curling theirs). She looked great in casual clothes and was always running around in shorts and a hoodie. She got a lot of attention from guys, who liked her sporty, easygoing style.

But her obsession with music seemed to derange her. Loni had seen it happen before. Zee would go into her room to get ready for a concert, and she'd come out wearing a black leather bustier, her hair all teased, and wearing enough mascara around her eyes to give the
Exxon Valdez
spill a run for its money. She had a tattoo on her lower back of a burning kitten—the residue of her infatuation with another band she didn't like anymore (called, perhaps obviously, Flaming Kitteh)—and she usually tried to cover it up, but on concert nights she didn't bother. The only good thing about that tattoo, as far as Zee was concerned, was that it had taught her not to make lifelong commitments to rock-and-roll bands. If she hadn't learned that lesson, probably the only un-inked skin she'd have left would be on her scalp, under her hair. Some of her friends, alas, had never learned that lesson. Looking at them, Loni wondered,
Where exactly are you going to get a job?
Not to mention the piercings. Zee, who had been in the workforce for a couple of years, knew to shy away from too many of those, something her wilder friends had not twigged to. Loni imagined what it would be like, twenty years from now, when the bagger at her supermarket was a middle-aged woman with a cobra tattoo around her neck and a Diet Coke can through one earlobe.

So in that respect, Zee was more conservative than her concert-going friends. But tonight when she came out of her room, slinging her bag over her shoulder, Loni had to gasp.

“How do I look?” Zee asked.

Loni groped for some euphemisms, but they failed her. “Like you were ridden hard and put away wet,” she said.

Zee grinned and said, “You're so sweet,” then gave Loni a peck on the cheek. “But we gotta get going here. Seriously, Loni. Get dressed.”

Loni took up her own purse and said, “I
am
dressed.”

Zee looked at her, appalled. Loni, seeing this, gave herself a quick reappraisal and couldn't figure out what was wrong. She was wearing designer jeans, a filmy tank top, and a burlap-colored hoodie. She thought she looked awesome. Badass, even.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

Zee gave her a wary, sidelong look. “Nothing. I mean.” She grimaced. “If you're sure.”

“I'm sure.”

“It's just…this is a
rock concert
, Loni. Not a meeting of the Daughters of the American Revolution.”

Loni swung her purse at her and hit her in the arm. “Just because I don't look like a sex worker!”

Zee laughed. “No worries there. Not a man alive who'd pay for
that
.”

“Only because I'd charge more than the seven-dollar special
you're
obviously offering,” Loni shot back as she followed her out the door.

They laughed together as Zee locked the door behind them.

In the cab to the concert, Zee was obviously feeling celebratory. It was turning out to be a great week for her. The interview had gone well, and she'd been asked back for a follow-up the next morning. Now she was on her way to see her favorite band, with an invitation to party with them afterward.

She fiddled with her right earring, a big black quartz alpha symbol (her left was an omega), which annoyed her by continually pulling itself out of its clasp. “Now, remember, you have to stay with me,” she said. “We can't risk getting separated.”

Loni furrowed her brow. “What do you mean? How can we get separated? Aren't we seated together?”

She snorted. “There's no seating, duh! It's all standing room. For dancing. Or moshing, or whatever. Seriously, you've never been to Club Uncumber?”

Of course she'd been to Club Uncumber. It was one of the city's only hipster hangouts. It was impossible to have a dating life in town without getting dragged there at least once. But the few times she'd been there she'd avoided the main floor. The noise from the bands had always been so loud she could feel it resonate in her pelvis. Instead she opted for hanging out by the bar, where she tried to have a conversation with whichever guy had brought her there. It had been like trying to make small talk in a jet engine. So her experiences at Club Uncumber hadn't exactly been memorable.