Pug Hill - Alison Pace [64]
chapter nineteen Haiku Is a Seventeen-Syllable Verse Form
All week, I’ve gotten into work early each day and stayed late each night. I have not out-clocked Elliot, but I have put in many respectable hours on the Rothko. I’ve been here more than Sergei has. I’ve told myself that I’m spending all this time at work because I am diligent and dedicated, not because I am bucking for a promotion, because I don’t want to, all of a sudden, be competitive in the midst of all these things—good at being single, good at public speaking—that I now must endeavor to be. I have told myself that I have spent so much extra time in the Conservation Studio this week because I need to finish the red part of my Rothko, not because Elliot is here and so nice to look at across a room. I have told myself that I am here for all these reasons, but not because I suspect Pamela may have been trying to tell me that as solitary as I like to be, I might just be no good at being single.
As the Express 4 train hurtles from Eighty-sixth Street to Union Square, as I walk down lower Fifth Avenue, I think of how much I have practiced, of how many times I have read my poem over and over again. I feel like I’ve done my homework, and that’s always been a feeling I’ve enjoyed. I walk, almost confidently, into room 502. I’m ready.
I head for my seat, and I notice that there is a video camera set up in the back of the room.
There is a video camera. I take a deep breath. I wonder if it would be simultaneously overzealous and kind of embarrassing to do The Lion in an attempt to calm myself. I decide that it would be. I sit down and turn around halfway in my chair-desk. I stare transfixed at the video camera, letting the gravity of the situation sink in.
There is a video camera in the back of the classroom. It’s on a professional stand. It’s hooked up by a bunch of wires to a VCR that’s sitting on a cart behind it. There is a man with a goatee wearing a short sleeve T-shirt over a long sleeve T-shirt. He is looking through the video camera and fiddling with the lens. There is a video camera in the back of the classroom and it is freaking me the fuck out.
Beth Anne closes the door and I turn the right way in my chair, looking quickly around at the rest of the class as I do. Martine is not here. I wonder if it might be because of the complete absence of lactating women in the class. Lawrence has moved in closer in the horseshoe and has taken her seat. This makes me think she’s not possibly late but that she’s really not coming back. I have no idea why, but I think it’s too bad that she’s gone. Lawrence is wearing a bright white sweater; it makes me think immediately of nothing else but Clorox. Amy is here looking angry as always, and next to her is Lindsay, looking meek. With his legs stretched out in front of him, looking as handsome as he did before his frat-boy, dude-filled personality was revealed, is Alec. Rachel is back again, too, looking a little freaky.
“Claaaaaass,” Beth Anne says, stretching the word all out, making it sound grander and bigger and more important a word than it actually is. I can’t help thinking that maybe she is saying it like that because our class, once much larger than this, is now quite small.
“It looks ...” She pauses to glance at the clock and then stares back at us. “It seems that some of our friends might not be joining us tonight.” She turns to her desk and peruses a list on her clipboard. There is something in the angle of her neck, the bowing motion of her head as she studies the list that puts me in mind of a moment of silence.
“Let’s give them another minute or two, and then let’s get started.”
We all sit in silence; it’s a silence so anticipatory, it’s almost painful. I distract myself from all the anxiety, floating like bubbles all around us, by looking sideways over at Alec and thinking that he’s hot. Super hot, I think in spite of myself, and then I think, Really Hope, how far away can penis-lunging actually be?
I hold on to the edges of my desk, less because I am concerned