Empress of the World (19 page)

Isaac says, “Nic and Battle, you guys should take the floor. Do a total gropefest and see if they try to stop you. If they do, you can slap an anti-discrimination suit on them and make a lot of money.”

“Not my idea of fun on a Saturday night,” says Battle. I nod. I could kick Isaac. He ought to know that things are still way up in the air with the two of us. I also suspect that San Francisco Boy has no idea that there are people here who would act like Alex and Ben did. I haven’t told anyone about that.

“Oh, come on you guys, it’s an excuse to dress up!” says Katrina.

“Like you need one,” says Isaac.

 

Of course, Katrina manages to convince us all that we should go, and that we can always leave if it’s too awful. She wants to do makeup for everyone, even Isaac–she claims that her Head Costumer personality is taking over. “You have no
idea
how hot you’re going to look in black eyeliner, darling,” she says.

“No, I sure don’t!” he agrees.

“Trust me,” she says. “We’ll meet you up at your room–wear that cute black button-down shirt and you baggy black jeans. You can be our Goth boy tonight.”

I didn’t bring anything even remotely formal looking with me. Katrina is delighted to discover this, because it means that she not only gets to do my makeup but dress me as well. She is obviously in her element.

“Battle, don’t you think that Nic could fit into your jodhpurs?” she asks. We have converged in her room to get ready.

“Probably, yeah,” says Battle.

“Well, go get your black ones. I have a plan.”

Battle does. She comes back with both her black ones and her brown ones. She says, “I thought I could wear these,” pointing to the brown ones, but Katrina shakes her head. “No, the concept here is to play up the whole butch-femme thing, only it’ll be kind of reversed because of your hairstyles.”

“Get over it, Katrina! Why don’t you dress us like some of those wacky heterosexuals? I think they’re
so
exotic and interesting,” I say.

Katrina ignores me. “Nic, I see you with a Prince Valiant kind of look, while Battle here will be a postmodern Tinkerbell.”

“I don’t think so! Postmodern Tinkerbell, my ass.”

I fall backwards into the orange beanbag chair, clapping my hands and cackling. “I
do
believe in fairies! I do I do! I do believe in fairies!”

“Oh come on, just this once? Do it for me,” Katrina pleads, batting her lashes.

“Hey, that may work on Isaac, but it won’t fly with me, girlfriend.” Battle shakes her head.

“You haven’t even seen the dress!” Katrina says. She begins rummaging through her giant cardboard box of clothes, which she has continued to use in preference to actually storing her clothing in the closet or the dresser.

“Here it is!” she says triumphantly. The dress she’s holding up is made of a fairly classy and subdued pale blue silk, but the bodice is outlined in purple sequins, and the skirt flares out at the bottom and is trimmed with a lavender feather boa.

“More mermaid than Tinkerbell,” I comment from the beanbag chair. “Not worthy of Her Imperial Highness.”

Battles smiles at me.

The day after we talked, she asked me if I still had the Empress. I said yes. She said, “Good.” I didn’t ask her to explain why she asked. The day after that, she said, “It must have taken you a long time to make that puppet.” I nodded. On the third day, I set the Empress out on my dresser, and when Battle came to meet me for breakfast, she picked her up and put her into her backpack.

Neither of us has mentioned her since.

“It goes
perfectly
with your coloring,” Katrina insists, holding the dress up to Battle. Battle looks down at the strapless dress with an expression that can only be described as long-suffering.

“Are you going to let her do this to me?” she asks me.

I just smile.

“Hey, when I’m done with her, it’ll be your turn, baby,” says Katrina.

“Yeah, but I like Prince Valiant,” I say.

Battle sighs. “Never doubt that I love you,” she says to Katrina, and takes her shirt and pants off, preparatory to putting the dress on.

I look away.

“Yay! Oh, I promise you won’t regret this!” Katrina says, dancing around. “Let’s see, you shouldn’t need a bra under it, it ought to cinch you up pretty tight in there,” she says, zipping Battle up in the back. “Perfect! Okay, now you, Nic–I want you both dressed before I do the makeup.”

“Hey, what are
you
going to wear?” Battle demands

Katrina looks down at herself. She’s wearing an old World Wide Web Conference T-shirt and a ratty-looking pair of jeans. “I thought I’d go in costume as a programmer.”

“Katrina Lansdale, you are going to wear something every bit as flamboyant as this or I am never going to speak to you again!” Battle crosses her arms over her sequin-covered chest and frowns.

“Kidding! I was kidding! I’ll get dressed as soon as I’m done with you guys,” Katrina promises.

After what seems like hours, but is really only about twenty minutes, Katrina has dressed me to her satisfaction. I’m wearing Battle’s jodhpurs, which just barely fit me, with a voluminous purple silk Renaissance blouse and Battle’s black leather boots. One of the early and delightful discoveries the three of us made was that we all wear the same size shoes.

“I feel like I should be stopping your carriage and demanding your jewels or your virtue,” I say to Battle.

“What jewels?” Katrina asks.

“What virtue?” Battle asks.

“Okay, you have to close your eyes,” says Katrina, with her hands inside the cardboard clothes box.

Battle and I close our eyes obediently. The sound of a zipper, fabric rustling, another zipper.

“Okay, open them!”

Katrina is wearing a green fifties taffeta dress with silver glitter squiggles, plastic skeleton earrings, and her purple combat boots. “Look, I’m Weetzie Bat” she says.

“You don’t have a bleached-blonde flattop,” I point out. Katrina shrugs. “Battle does, so it’s artistic license. And besides, I’ve got the right makeup.”

 

“I feel like it’s Halloween,” Isaac complains as Katrina carefully blends his eyeliner. I think he’d be complaining more if it weren’t for the fact that Katrina is straddling him as she works.

“You look so good!” Katrina says. “Doesn’t he look great, guys?”

Isaac
does
look great. I’ve never seen him wear all black before. It does something for him. And the eyeliner, I have to admit, is a really nice touch. It makes him look a little dangerous, which is not Isaac’s usual look at all. It almost makes me wish that kiss at the river had turned into something more. But not quite.

“You’re gonna have to fend off the Angst Crows tonight,” says Battle, slapping him on the back.

Isaac blushes. He reaches for his glasses, which Katrina took off and put on his computer desk. She grabs them before he can get them. “Nope, not tonight, babe. You have the rest of your life to be four-eyed.”

“I can’t goddamn see without them!” he says.

“Then I’ll just have to lead you, honey,” Katrina purrs.

Isaac doesn’t have anything to say to that.

The dance is going to be in the auditorium. Apparently they can actually move out all those horrible uncomfortable chairs when the need arises.

“Somebody take a picture,” says Isaac. He actually has a camera, unlike any of the rest of us.

Battle takes the camera and says “Sit on his lap, Katrina. That’s perfect. Isaac, you’re the Jewish James Dean.”

“I’d rather be Lenny Bruce,” says Isaac.

“But Lenny Bruce already
is
Jewish, so he can’t be ‘the Jewish Lenny Bruce.’ ” I point out.

“I’d still rather be Lenny Bruce. He dated a hot redhead, too, you know. She was a stripper!” Isaac leers.

Katrina blushes.

“Take a picture of us, too?” I ask Isaac.

“Sure,” he says. Battle hands him the camera.

“I’ll do one of you and Battle, but you need one of all three of you, too,” he says.

“Wow, Isaac, that’s really thoughtful,” I say.

“What can I say, I’m just a sensitive New Age guy. Now put your hands on Battle like you’re just about to cop a feel,” says Isaac.

Battle and I shriek and refuse.

“All right, then just stand there holding hands and have a boring picture, see if I care.”

Battle and I smile at each other, and Isaac takes the shot. Then he says, “Okay Katrina, you get on the end next to Nic. Nic, put an arm around both of them.”

“That I can do,” I say. We grin like fools, and Isaac snaps the picture.

 

“My god, I’ve died and returned to middle school,” says Battle as the four of us survey the auditorium. Limp streamers and sad-looking balloons are festooned around at random intervals in the marginally transformed space. I say marginally transformed because the streamers and balloons and the lack of chairs are the only feeble stabs that have been made in the direction of decoration.

I shake my head. “So what I want to know is, how do they reconcile this with all those warnings that What’s-His-Name gave us? Remember? ‘Making romantic connections is not an appropriate use of your time here’?”

I was looking at Battle when he said that, I remember suddenly.

“Why, Nic, I’m surprised at you. You don’t see any romance
here
do you? This is just good clean drug-free fun, a nice change of pace for all our overtaxed genius brains,” says Katrina.

“I think they’re just hypocrites,” says Battle.

The DJ is set up on the stage, in approximately the same position that Large Pink Bald Man was in when he gave his stunning speech. I can’t identify the song that’s playing now, but it features a drum machine and a syrupy female voice. There are a surprising number of people swaying around in vague time to it. I think I see Anne in the arms of some tall guy, and I feel pleased that she did manage to snag someone new.

“Did I ever tell you guys about Anne from Archaeology?” I ask. I give them the brief précis version of the saga of Anne and John, and explain my own advice to Anne to seek solace in the arms of another. “And there she is.” I point to her. I think she’s wearing the same dress that she was wearing in that Homecoming picture she showed me back at the beginning of the term.

“Dang!” says Battle.

“What?” I ask.

“Well, you know who that is with her, don’t you?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

“It’s Kevin.”

“Oh my god, you’re right!”

For approximately five minutes, I can’t even talk because I’m laughing too hard. Isaac and Katrina ignore me and actually dance to some random gushy number. Battle stands next to me, waiting for me to recover.

I take a deep breath, and say, “Okay, I’m all right now. That was just too funny. God, I don’t want to have to talk to them, do you?” I ask.

“No way,” says Battle. “We should, as they say, blow this Popsicle stand. Let me see if I can rouse the lovebirds.”

She pokes Katrina and explains the situation. “Thank God—I hate this music,” says Isaac. “And it’s really hot wearing a long-sleeved shirt in this weather,
and
I can’t see a goddamned thing.”

“All right, we can leave. I just wanted one dance with you, my sweet,” says Katrina.

We decide to walk to the river. Woods, river, courtyard: the big three destinations I will remember from this summer. I should have Isaac take pictures of them, too.

For a while, all four of us walk together, but Isaac and Katrina are slow. Katrina keeps finding flowers she wants to pick, and every time she stops to pick a flower, she and Isaac have to kiss again, and what with one thing and another, soon Battle and I have left them behind. My heart starts beating faster as soon as I realize this.

Battle and I have been holding hands on and off all evening, but that’s all. We’re close to the river now, and I say, “Want to sit down?” Battle nods. For a while, we just sit in silence, watching the river, watching the clouds and the stars in the sky.

“Look at the color of the sky right now,” I say, speaking more softly than usual. “Doesn’t it look like the way things look when you’re remembering them? All soft and fuzzed out around the edges?”

Battle looks at me in the way she has that means I should either kiss her or keep talking, and I’m too scared to kiss her right now because maybe she doesn’t really want me to. So I keep talking.

“What I’m saying is that it’s like we’re already gone. You’re sitting in your room at home, thinking about this summer. I’m walking down the hall to class, and I bump into the wall, because I’m thinking about it, too. And this—” I wave my hands to encompass the soft dark blue sky, the trees, the rock we’re sitting on, the river, “—this is what it’s going to look like in our minds.”

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Battle says.

“I can’t even tell you how much I’m going to miss you,” I answer. She reaches out for my hand, and I grab hers like a lifeline. We squeeze each other’s hands so hard it makes us both laugh embarrassedly, and drop them.

“Eh, you think you’re so tough,” says Battle, rubbing the hand I grabbed with her other hand, as though to restore the circulation.

“Damn right,” I say in my best tough-girl voice.

But not tough enough to stand losing you, Battle. Never that tough.

My eyes are going all blurry, and I know I’m going to cry again. I’m suddenly so furious that my voice comes out almost in a shriek when I demand, “How are we supposed to stand it? How the hell are we supposed to blithely pack our things and leave this place and pretend that everything is fine when we have to go back to the stupid, pointless, idiot,
moron
world again? It’s not fair!”

Battle looks at me as though she might cry, too. Lighten up, Nic. I take a deep breath.