“Is he your priest?” Orson asks.
“No, he’s my…” she needs to get rid of Maitland, fast. “Professor, sorry to ask, but you don’t happen to have a light?”
She turns back to Orson. “Smoke?”
Through the crowd again, drinks paid, aware that everyone is watching her, hating her, and she herself can hardly believe that she has bought his attention, that he is trailing her even now, whiskey in hand. That he is stepping out into the almost drizzle and closing the door. That somehow the two of them together is warding off the other students aching for his attention.
She hadn’t intended to steal the prop cigarettes, but somehow they had entered her pocket. She offers him one and he laughs, recognizing them instantly.
“You’re kidding.”
“They aren’t even mine,” she says, blushing, seven again and ludicrous.
“Dear God. Put those away.” He removes his own pack from a pocket, along with a silver-plated lighter. He offers her one. She accepts, as though she has done this a thousand times, her reserve liberated by the immortality of the moment, by his death-defying smile. The wind spins up the street and both of them turn to the wall, an instinctive, secretive arrangement. He lights up (hand brushing her hand) and she inhales her brother, her aunt Sadie, Niamh, poison, radicalism, Orson, all of it.
“So what’s your name then, good Samaritan.”
“Viola.”
“Viola. Not too many Violas running about these days. Fan of Shakespeare?”
“I guess so.” By most other measures, Shakespeare should appeal to her; the perfect plots and profundity, the sense of the universe and all humanity. The romance. But she cannot help carrying a grudge against him, as though he and her mother conspired in the choice of her name—too grandiose, too on the nose, burdened with unnecessary associations, with flagrant thespian pretention. The awful Viola-and-Sebastian of it all. She’s never seenTwelfth Night.
He laughs. “That’s lukewarm.”
“I guess I just haven’t seen very much.”
“I’m impressed you’ve managed to avoid it.” Oddly familiar and fluid, their conversation, oddly easy to approach him with theinnocence of a seven-year-old. “I thought you might be American. I don’t know any English person who would dare to be quite so fluorescent.”
Sebastian
Burning your books for warmth sorry
Sebastian. Even five minutes ago, she could have texted him about it. Wouldn’t have, but could have. He would never have believed her, they might have laughed. But now it wouldn’t feel right. Any past understanding of Orson has given way to a living, breathing person.
“That your boyfriend?” he asks.
“No,” she says, pocketing the glowing phone.Where is this going?“I have to admit something.”
“Go on, then.”
Here’s the moment, now, declaring itself:Disclose!She always thought she would need to mention her mother, that this would be the key to his attention. But he’s looking at her like a fully formed thing, a woman whose origin is irrelevant. Perhaps it is irrelevant! How far she’s come from the country of her mother.
“I didn’t come to your talk.”
“Well, I appreciate your honesty. It was considerate of you to stay away, to be honest. The neon would have been very distracting.”
“Well, in that case, you’re welcome.”
“You didn’t miss much anyway,” he says. “It was very dull.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“That’s kind,” he says. “But I assure you, talking about yourself is exceedingly dull.”
The door swings open and a group of students she recognizes as Union people pass by them. “You all right, Orson?” one of them asks, clapping him boldly on the shoulder as they pass by.
“Stupid question,” he mutters. “So repressed. Never ask a question you don’t want the answer to.”
