Fool on the Hill (28 page)

They crossed Fall Creek Bridge and meandered through the Arts Quad where the statues of Ezra Cornell and Andrew White kept their vigil, patiently awaiting midnight when perchance a passing virgin would free them to take a brief stretch. George and the two women were several hours too early to make the test, but George saluted Ezra all the same.

Then they were passing between Olin and Uris Libraries, both dimmed for the holiday. There in the shadows beneath the great Clock Tower stood two figures, holding hands. The fog parted fortuitously just then, and a chance ray of moonlight revealec that the figures were, in fact, two men.

“That is
disgusting
,"
Cathy Reinigen pronounced, when they were safely out of earshot. Aurora remembered her mother’s first, and only, visit to Cornell; George, usually a bear for argument, let the moment pass. Though it didn’t, really.

As the trio drew nearer to Collegetown, an astonishing number of same-sex couples began materializing out of the fog, most of them extremely taken with each other. Aurora noted this with interest; George stared openly (for he always stared at everything); but Cathy Reinigen took it as a personal affront, as if the law of averages had conspired to set up a visual gauntlet for the express purpose of making her uncomfortable. Which was close enough.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” Cathy said, as they reached the Fevre Dream and spied two women necking in the front seat of a parked van. It was the sixth lesbian couple they had come across in less than ten minutes. George admired them greatly, for they were content in and of themselves, but his contemplation of them was interrupted by a blurred form that came bursting out of the bar. It was the Bohemian Love-Minister Aphrodite, and she had Panhandle slung over her shoulder like a war bride.

“Evening, George,” she greeted them, “everybody. Hey, hurry on in, drinks are seventy-five cents until nine o’clock.”

That said, she spun on her heel and rushed off down the block, still carrying the unconscious Panhandle.

“Well thank God for
normal
people,” said Cathy, morally vindicated. Still bracing herself against possible improprieties, she thrust open the front door of the Fevre Dream and stepped inside.

Smiling discreetly at each other, George and Aurora followed.

V.

Though the members of Ithaca’s gay community never understood why, the hand of Fate pointed in their direction that night. The town rednecks stayed home and bloated themselves on turkey and football. Among the Community, connections were made; the weak found courage, the lonely found companionship, and one and all found good fortune.

Over on East Hill, a seventeen-year-old football prodigy admitted to his parents during dinner that his unseen steady girlfriend was actually the team’s wide receiver, a fleet-footed beanpole named Jonathan. Now it so happened that the football prodigy’s father was a devotee of Lyndon LaRouche, and thus his first thought—actually more of a reflex—was to beat the living hell out of his son. But even as he rose out of his chair, a spoon clenched in one chubby fist, he lost his balance and pitched face first into a bowl of lumpy mashed potatoes. Inexplicably struck blind, the old man was carted off raving in an ambulance, and spent three sightless days as a guest in Tompkins County Hospital. Finally, at sunrise of the third day, he awoke from a deep slumber crying, “All right, all right!” Instantly his sight was restored. He went home, embraced his son, and thereafter did good works.

Down by the shores of Cayuga Lake, three men who had been infected by the AIDS virus were walking in Stewart Park when they heard a hidden
lyre playing a distinctly Greek variation of a Calvinist hymn. At the sound the disease fled their bodies, entering into a nearby pack of squirrels who went mad and cast themselves into Cayuga’s waters. Likewise four thugs in pursuit of a lone lesbian had their bashing days brought to a premature end when a sewer gas explosion blew the roof off a (thankfully unoccupied) Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, showering the thugs with fire, brimstone, and extra-crispy wings.

This sort of thing went on throughout the night, and the only real disappointment came when a mysterious one-block power outage forced the early closing of Jenny’s New Wave, the gay bar downtown. But the problem was easily solved; their spirits undimmed, the patrons relocated to The Hill—to the Fevre Dream. And the upshot of that was that Cathy Reinigen spent a good deal of time hiding out in a locked stall in the women’s room, while George and Aurora, untroubled, took advantage of the bargain price on mixed drinks and got quietly trashed.

“Tell me why,” Aurora asked over her third Tequila Sunset (she had tried one at the Halloween party and fallen in love with them), “you don’t like Christians.”

“What makes you think I don’t like Christians?”

“Little things. They way you looked at the drawings on Cathy’s wall.”

“I loved those drawings,” George said truthfully. “Wish I had a book of them.”

“The way you act around Brian sometimes.”

“Well now, with Brian Garroway you’re talking about a two-way street. He’s got a way of acting around
me.
"

“I know.”

“With me,” George added. “what you’re basically dealing with is the Baskin-Robbins theory of Christianity.”

“The what?”

A low chuckle rumbled from an adjoining table, where a mountain of a man sat with five beer mugs arrayed in front of him like toy soldiers.

“The Baskin-Robbins theory,” the mountain said, speaking in a rich bass. “Thirty-one Flavors. Disliking mint chip doesn’t mean you boycott the entire store.”

“Exactly,” said George.

“Nonsense,” replied the mountain. “You are a storyteller, George, and all storytellers are liars and prejudiced. In your case the prejudice happens to be for outcasts, which puts you in a natural opposition to any organized religion. You also have delusions of godhood and don’t like anyone ridiculing your theories, most of which are romantic trash.”

“This,” George explained to Aurora, “is Rasputin.”

“The Queen of Hearts,” Rasputin added with a nod. “Tell me, has he fed you the one about Romeo and Juliet yet?”

Aurora smiled, charmed, as most people were, by Rasputin’s unabashed rudeness. “Yes,” she said, “he’s mentioned them.”

“No doubt you were discussing homosexuality. He has a writer’s fixation about that. George, you see those two dykes over there?” He jerked his thumb at a pair of women in checked flannel shirts who sat at the bar arguing with Stainless Marley.

“I see them.”

“Do you think they would make it out of your Shakespearean tomb alive?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“You see?” Rasputin looked triumphantly to Aurora. “He doesn’t even know the ladies in question, and already he’s granting them nobility and strength of character. What if I told you, George, that they were the two biggest neurotics in New York State, ready to fold their cards at the first sign of crisis?”

“Fuck that,” said George. “I like the way they smile at each other.”

“Naturally. Be truthful—you fantasized about lesbians in your adolescence. That’s the real story.”

“You’ve got me pegged, Raspy.”

“Hmmph . . . liar.”

“Christians can be outcasts,” Aurora spoke up.

Rasputin cocked an ear. “Beg pardon, my dear?”

“I said Christians can be outcasts, just as much as anybody else.” She fished beneath the collar of her blouse and brought out a tiny golden cross on a chain. “Do you have any idea how some people react when they see this? Unless you’re obviously wearing it just for fashion they get nervous; mention God as more than a concept and the conversation ends like someone pulled a plug.”

This brought another low chuckle. “That’s the spirit! Well spoken—take it from Rasputin, my dear, you keep talking like that and you’ll have him eating out of your hand in no time.”

With a final nod, Rasputin dismissed them and left the conversation as abruptly as he had entered it. Focusing his attention back on the rest of the room, he raised a beefy hand; at this signal five lithe choirboys in silk shirts appeared from various corners of the bar and replaced his beer mugs with slopping-full champagne glasses. It was strange.

“You have a point, you know,” George told Aurora, looking at the little cross. “But I promise I won’t pull the plug if you start talking more than concept. It’s just that I have a hard time believing God only wrote one Book. Hell, I’ve got three novels under my belt and I’m not even especially hot shit.”

“Oh, I’d say you’re at least warm shit,” Aurora said seriously (and seriously not intending any insult, no matter how it sounded). “As for God, I
don’t claim to know if the Bible is all She wrote or not. In fact, there are a lot of things I don’t claim to know.”

“Then you’re not mint chip,” George pronounced, “and I can deal.” He

raised his glass in a toast, then paused. “Did you say ‘She?’”

Aurora twitched her nose mischievously and sipped her Tequila Sunset. “Maybe,” she said. “Will you put me in one of your stories?”

“What kind of story?”

“A fantasy, like
The Knight.
You remember the woman in the enchanted forest?”

“The one who turned into a grizzly bear when the moon rose?”

“Yes,” Aurora said, “but never mind the grizzly bear part. That’s the kind of character I'd want, sort of off the beaten track.”

“Sort of outcast?”

“Maybe.” She toyed with her cross.

“You should keep wearing that,” George told her. He let one of his own hands stray to Calliope’s whistle.

“Who knows?” said Aurora. “I might get a bigger one.”

“Good. Can I ask you a personal question?”

She twitched her nose again. “If you promise to put me in a story.”

“It’s a deal.”

“OK, shoot.”

“How did you fall in love with Brian Garroway?” George asked. “He’s mint chip to the core, or at least he seems to be. I don’t see the attraction.”

Aurora first laughed, then fell silent, searching for words. It promised to be a long and difficult explanation, but she was spared by Rasputin, who chose that precise moment to vent a remarkable gout of wind. Big men as a rule cut big farts, but if flatulence were visible he would have literally been enveloped in a vapor cloud. Embarrassed, he tried to cover up his
faux pas
as best he could.

“
Hmmph!
”
he grunted, pretending it had just been a noisy throat-clearing. “
Hmmph!
"

Holding her nose and grinning, Aurora glanced at him and then past him, her eyes fixing by chance on yet another pair of women at the bar. She gasped, and not from Rasputin’s scent.

“My God,” she whispered.

“My God what?”

“There.” George looked where Aurora pointed, recognizing Bijou, a female guitarist who had once played with Benny Profane, and with her a dark-haired woman he did not know.

“That’s Bijou.” he said “Rock musician. I know her, if you want to be introduced.”

“No, no, not her. The other girl.”

“Bijou’s steady, probably. What about her?”

“That’s Cathy’s roommate.”

“Cathy
Reinigen's
roommate?”

Aurora nodded. And then, out of nowhere, a smile bloomed on her face, stretched wide but not quite making it to a laugh.

“What?” said George.

“Oh my . . . I just realized.”

“Just realized what?”

“Her name,” Aurora said. She seemed to have trouble getting the words out, as if she actually were laughing.

“I don’t know her name,” said George.

“
I
know it.”

“You know it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what is it?”

The smile stretched so wide George feared it might snap and hit him in the eye. Aurora’s cheeks dimpled.

“Juliet,” she finally managed to say. “Her name is Juliet.”

“Hmmph!” grunted Rasputin.

VI.

Cathy Reinigen never did return from the bathroom. At some point she had simply evaporated; and it was funny, but George and Aurora felt no real compulsion to go looking for her. Instead, when Bijou and a few other free hands got up an impromptu rock jam at ten o’clock, they danced, and drank some more, and did not leave the bar until nearly closing time.

Outside the fog had tightened like a corset, and they were completely isolated as they walked back onto campus. It did not really surprise either of them when a horse trotted by out front of the Straight, for by that time they were past the point where anything could seem very odd. The filly walked right up to George, nuzzling his neck like an old acquaintance.

“She’s beautiful,” Aurora said, entranced. “Do you know her?”

“No, I don’t think we’ve met.” George’s first thought was that she must belong to one of the Bohemians, but she wore no saddle—and he did not recognize her coloring, grey-olive coat with a midnight-black mane.

“We should go for a ride,” Aurora suggested.

“Hmmm?” The storyteller was momentarily distracted; he had reached up to stroke the horse’s head and discovered the mane had an unsettlingly familiar feel to it.

“We should go for a ride,” repeated Aurora. She stepped up and patted the horse firmly. “That’d be all right with you, wouldn’t it, girl?”

The horse whinnied in what Aurora took to be the affirmative; George

struggled to catch up.

“Did you say take a ride?” he asked.

“Sure did.” Aurora took a step back and then swung herself effortlessly onto the horse’s bare back.

“But this horse’s got no saddle,” George protested.

“It’s all right—I'll show you how to bounce.”

“You’ll show me . . . you’re saying you know how to drive this animal?”

“Oh, come on, George,” said Aurora “I’m from
Wisconsin
,
for God’s sake.”

That seemed to settle things. She offered him a hand and he reached up to grab it, a few of the black mane-hairs still tangled between his fingers. As their palms contacted George felt a jolt, and like magic he was behind her on the horse, his arms locked around her waist

The ride that followed seemed to take both forever and no time at all. They ranged far, perhaps as far as the caslern reaches of the Cornell Plantations and back, and George discovered through the rhythm of the horse and the woman that bareback was not such a terrible deal at all. They seemed to flow through the night, caught up in an enchantment that bore them along on hooves of ivory . . . it was a pleasant journey. More is the pity, then, that George could never remember later—nor could Aurora—just when and where they finished their ride and turned the horse loose again.