Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [69]
Professor Rosen was waiting for him backstage with two copies of The Zoo Story tucked under her arm. She wore a black turtleneck and pleated black corduroys. Her shiny short brown hair was parted on the side and combed neatly behind her ears. She looked very theatrical.
“Peter! You’re here.” The professor had gotten into the habit of addressing them by their stage names.
“Adam. It’s Adam.”
“Yes, well. Jerry is here too. So as soon as you’re ready I’ll go out and introduce you.”
Tom was seated on the wooden park bench where Adam was supposed to sit throughout the play, holding a red bandanna over his mouth and nose. Eyes closed, he inhaled deeply.
“Are you okay?” Adam asked.
Tom nodded, keeping his eyes closed. He inhaled again. Adam thought he could smell paint thinner.
“I’m going to introduce you now,” Professor Rosen said. She held up the copies of the play. “If for any reason you’d feel more comfortable reading from the text, that’s fine too.”
Adam and Tom shook their heads.
“Well, just know I have these, if you get into trouble.” The professor blew them a kiss. “Good luck, boys.”
Tom stood up abruptly and left the stage. Adam took a seat on the bench, his shoulders slumped. The lights went out. A single beam shone upon the red velvet curtain. Inside the glass-fronted lighting booth at the back of the modern, three-hundred-seat auditorium, Nick sneezed explosively.
Perched in one of the ergonomically designed front row seats, a beaming Professor Blanche sat with a sleeping Beetle tied to her chest with a yard of hemp fabric bought at the Common Ground Fair in Unity. There was a smattering of applause as Professor Rosen walked onto the black lacquered stage to greet the packed house.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming. It’s my pleasure to introduce two very talented freshmen actors, Tom Ferguson and Adam Gatz, performing The Zoo Story by Edward Albee. I read the play for the first time in college—a hundred and ten years ago—and it’s stuck with me ever since.”
Body twitching and saliva oozing from the corners of his mouth, Tom peeked at the audience from offstage. His parents were sitting in the front row. Shipley sat next to his mom, holding his mom’s hand. Eliza sat next to Shipley. The three of them whispered back and forth, giggling like nervous schoolgirls.
Professor Rosen bobbed up and down on the balls of her feet. Her hair was a helmet of copper beneath the spotlight.
“My seven-month-old has a thing for bubbles,” she said. “I blow them for him until my mouth hurts and I can’t take it anymore. He watches them, floating around in the air and bursting. Sometimes two bubbles bump into each other and float around together for a while until they both burst. This play is sort of like that—two totally separate bubbles colliding and floating around together, until they burst.” She clapped her hands together. “Pop!”
The spotlight dimmed. Tom staggered against the closed curtain so violently there was a murmur from the crowd. He shut his eyes, blacking out for maybe three seconds, maybe three hours, maybe an entire week. The curtain opened. The play had begun.
Adam took off his suit jacket, folded it carefully down the middle, and laid it on the bench. He loosened his tie, waited a few seconds, then pulled it off completely and laid it down on top of the jacket. For a minute he just sat there, looking out at the audience as if it were a baseball game. Shipley was in the front row. He scooted back on the bench and looked up at the ceiling. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Then he picked up his magazine, which happened to be the December issue of A Muse, Dexter’s literary journal, hot off the press. Shipley had written one of the poems. It was in the table of contents: “The Years Between Us,” a poem by Shipley Gilbert, page 11.
Tom swaggered in from offstage, shoulders twitching,