Penelope (13 page)

“That was hilarious,” said Gwen.

“That guy was so fucking smart. He was kind of a dick, but so fucking smart,” said Scott.

“Yeah, totally,” said Lisa.

There was a brief silence.

“And, um, I guess I’d have to say Humbert Humbert from
Lolita
is who I would want to fuck,” said Lisa.

“Cool,” said Scott. “Very cool. Who’s next? You?” said Scott, pointing at Penelope.

“Me? Oh, OK,” said Penelope. “Hi, um, my name is Penelope. I don’t have a concentration yet, since I am only a freshman.”

“Just so you know, and really, just so everybody knows, it’s not very likely that anyone will get on the
Advocate
as a freshman unless you are just totally phenomenal. We usually don’t take any. You really just don’t know how to think quite yet when you’re a freshman. Usually you need a couple of semesters under your belt to think on the level that we’re thinking at, you know? I mean, it does happen. I got on as a freshman. But still, I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” said Scott.

“Oh, OK,” said Penelope. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Oh God, no, I just wanted to let everybody know. Just so they don’t take it personally. Where are you?”

“I live in Pennypacker.”

“And who would you want to fuck? Any character from literature at all,” said Scott.

“Oh, gee, I don’t know.” Penelope had not expected to go this early. For some reason she thought they were going to go the other way around Lisa, and busied herself with looking at more tiles while she was talking.

“Come on,” said Scott. “We are not going to judge you. This is supposed to be fun.”

“Moby-Dick,” said Penelope. Penelope knew her mother would be very disappointed if she brought up Hercule at this juncture.

“The whale?” said Scott.

“Sure,” said Penelope.

“Hmm,” said Scott. “OK.”

Scott went around the circle. After Penelope, there were two girls who wanted to sleep with Mr. Rochester and Mr. Darcy, respectively. One sophomore boy said he wanted to sleep with Sappho. Penelope thought it was a little unfair to bring up authors, but nobody said anything.

After the icebreaker was over, Scott gave another speech, this time about how Norman Mailer and T. S. Eliot were members of the
Advocate
and that it means something to be on the board. He read a little from
The Waste Land
. Then he gave out two short stories that people had submitted to the
Advocate
in the past. Everybody read the pieces in silence. The first piece had no periods at the ends of any of the sentences. The main action seemed to involve drinking orange juice and killing a homeless man. It mostly consisted of a very detailed description of the orange juice. The other story was about someone from the South stealing a jar from a store.

After about ten minutes of reading, Scott and Gwen asked everyone to discuss the pieces. Lisa and the sophomore boy dominated the discussion. Everybody liked the orange juice one.

“I just think it’s very visceral,” said Lisa, “the way the orange juice and the killing of the homeless man are on the same level of meaning.”

“I totally agree,” said the sophomore. “It reminds me a lot of those kind of short, more structurally playful submissions to the
New Yorker
.”

The Southern one was met with mixed reviews.

“I like the almost muscular simplicity of the prose?” said Scott doubtfully.

After a while, the discussion petered out and Scott stood up and resumed his position in the front of the room.

“OK, that was awesome,” said Scott.

“Yeah, really great, everyone. Great discussion,” said Gwen.

“As you guys must know, there is a party coming up. Obviously it is themed. Obviously, if you are a comper, you have to dress in the theme, no ifs, ands, or buts. And, uh, we will let you know what the theme is in your e-mail update. Also, for next time, you guys need to come up with your own submissions. It can’t be of your own work. It just has to be something you find. And we’d like you to write a couple of short essays about what you think these pieces really mean, why you think they’d be a good fit for us, what their strengths and weaknesses are and everything. We’re not trying to be intellectually intimidating here; we’re just trying to see what you guys can do in this setting. Um, thanks so much for coming and good luck on midterms. I know I will be in here with a glass of wine all week, studying my ass off.”

Penelope came away from the
Advocate
meeting mulling over what she thought were the two main takeaway points. The first was that Gustav did not appear to be a member of the
Advocate
. That was disappointing. Somehow, also, the longer she had sat at that meeting, the less likely it had seemed that Gustav would burst through the door. Fortunately, there was another fact she gleaned from the meeting; the
Advocate
was having a party.

Penelope had not gone to a party since her fateful evening at the Currier Ten-Man suite. This was for two reasons. The first reason was that there were no parties to go to. There didn’t
even seem to be people milling around anymore, trying to go to parties. On a typical Friday night, the majority of the students in Pennypacker stayed in their rooms or went to the library. Penelope found this astounding. Even though the last party she went to had involved vomit on her shoes, she still wanted to give socialization another chance. A party, Penelope’s mother once said, is a really good way to get to know people.

The second reason was a general weirdness. Penelope was still laid up from her ear infection during the last pregame, but she had heard such a full report from Catherine that it almost seemed as if she attended it. From nine p.m. to eleven p.m., Glasses and Nikil played video games while everyone else watched them. From eleven p.m. to two a.m., music was played and Glasses, Nikil, and Jason danced homoerotically with one another while Ted ignored Catherine and texted on his phone. Precisely at two a.m., Glasses and Nikil went to bed, Jason retired to his room, and Catherine and Ted were left alone in the common room. From two a.m. to four a.m., Ted and Catherine hooked up for the second time (“It was very sweet,” said Catherine). So the pregames had lost a lot of their charm, it seemed to Penelope.

Although Penelope briefly flirted with the idea of dropping out of the
Advocate
process after the first meeting, she decided to stay on for one more week and go to the party. Deep in her heart, she held out Gustav-related hopes. Even though Gustav hadn’t been at the meeting, it didn’t necessarily preclude him from making an appearance at a party. He was a fun-loving, adventurous individual and he could just happen to show up.

The next day, Penelope was in her English Survey section with Ted. Penelope’s TF, a frightened-looking woman who always wore a scarf that looked like a long, boring Oriental rug, was talking about their first paper. Apparently, she had been inundated with phone calls and e-mails about it.

“Do you see the difference here? I don’t want a paper about the meaning of class in
Beowulf
. But maybe I do want a paper about the meaning of upstairs and downstairs in
Beowulf
. Does that make sense?”

“Did they even have stairs during Beowulf’s time? I thought they lived in those very long huts,” whispered Penelope to Ted.

“That’s what makes it all the more interesting as a paper,” said Ted.

Penelope nodded.

“So just push your analysis a little more. OK, you can go,” said the TF. Everyone filed out.

“How did the meeting at the literary magazine go?” asked Ted as he and Penelope were walking down the stairs.

“It was cool, sort of. Did you know that T. S. Eliot was a member of the
Advocate
?”

“Yes,” said Ted.

“Well, I did not,” said Penelope.

“What are you doing now?” asked Ted. “Do you want to get lunch?”

“Oh, I would, actually, but I can’t because I have to meet with Jared the proctor. He is also my TF for Counting People, and he wants to talk to everyone individually about their midterms.”

“That’s kind of nice of him,” said Ted.

“Yeah, well, he wears a necklace,” said Penelope.

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Well, I guess I’ll just peel off here then,” said Ted.

“OK, bye,” said Penelope. She ran toward the Science Center.

The Science Center was given to Harvard by the Polaroid Camera company and was rumored to look like a Polaroid camera from the sky, which Harvard denied. Inside, it was decorated in jarring primary colors and had many different useless staircases. Penelope came to this building very rarely. It was where all the science classes met. It was also where Jared the TF’s office was.

Penelope took the elevator to the third floor and knocked on the door to Jared’s office.

“Just a minute,” yelled Jared through the door. “I’m with a student.”

“Oh, OK,” said Penelope. She sat outside in the hall. She
took her Images of Shakespeare paper out of her bag and looked at it. “Fat but Fit?” had gotten a pretty good grade, but it was covered in comments. At one point the TF had scrawled, “You have no idea what a semicolon is, do you?” in the margin but then crossed it out.

After a couple of minutes, Jared opened the door a crack.

“Well, that’s a very interesting story,” Penelope could overhear Jared say, “but I have another student waiting in the hall, so I think I better cut this discussion short. I didn’t really know they had yurts in that area of the world.”

“You could have knocked me over with a feather, old chap, when I saw those yurts, there of all places. The Jeep almost destroyed one, actually. Luckily, Goldsmith has a tremendous ability to maneuver when under pressure,” said a voice that sounded suspiciously British and German.

“Well, that’s good,” said Jared.

Penelope saw Gustav get out of his chair and turn toward the door. He was going to walk right by her.

“You can come in now,” said Jared to Penelope.

“Oh, OK,” said Penelope. Gustav was walking toward her. He was wearing a navy-blue silk jacket, a light blue button-down, and cream twill pants. It was not seasonal, but that was because, thought Penelope, it was winter in the Argentine.

“So sorry to keep you waiting,” said Gustav to Penelope. He winked. Penelope quickly slunk into a chair inside Jared’s office so she wouldn’t fall on the floor.

“Bye, all,” said Gustav, and he was gone.

“Hey, uh, Penelope, welcome. Can you close the door?” said Jared.

“Sure,” said Penelope, who pushed it closed from her seated position.

“Are you feeling OK?” asked Jared.

“Oh, yeah,” said Penelope.

“Great, well, then, let’s get down to business. So, Penelope. You are a freshman. So first I just want to ask you, you know,
how everything is going. How is your first semester at school? Are you adjusting OK?”

“Oh, fine,” said Penelope. “It’s been good.”

“How’s Pennypacker been treating you?”

“Fine,” said Penelope.

“Have you been to the radio station?” asked Jared.

“Yeah,” said Penelope. She had never been to the radio station, but she had to feign understanding of it so often it almost seemed as if she had. It always made her nervous when people brought it up.

“I proctor in Pennypacker now, but when I went here I lived in Straus as a freshman, so I was lucky. It was near Annenberg too, and I was a breakfast eater!” Jared laughed.

“You went here for undergrad?” asked Penelope.

“Yeah, it was, uh, six years ago now, that I was a freshman.”

“Cool,” said Penelope.

“I still have friends from Straus. We get together for unofficial Straus reunions in Boston sometimes. I loved it there. Later on, I lived in Lowell House, and I got very into my house life, through intramural rowing, which I suggest you do when you move into a house because it is a great place to meet people.”

“Rowing! That seems so difficult,” said Penelope.

“It is!” said Jared. “Mostly, I just met the best people here. There were just so many great conversations. Probably the best conversations you’ll ever have.”

“Yeah,” said Penelope.

“I just remember staying up late and not wanting to go to bed, because everyone was so interesting, but then having to tear myself away, because I had to go to bed! That was the best part, really. Do you like your classes?”

“Yeah, I like them OK,” said Penelope.

“Um, do you have any questions for me? What do you have to say about this class? Do you like it? Do you have any constructive criticism?”

“The class is really fun. I never knew anything about demography,
really, before this, so I’m glad that this class has allowed me to, you know, literally think about what counting people actually is.”

“That’s so great,” said Jared. “That is just what we want.” He smiled at Penelope. Penelope smiled back. “I was worried that you thought the class was boring.”

“No!” said Penelope. “What made you think that?”

“Because, you know, you seem sort of distracted during class sometimes. It’s part of the reason I set up this meeting with you. I just wanted to talk with you and see what’s going on with you, you know?” said Jared.