Pug Hill - Alison Pace [65]
“Who wants to go first?” Beth Anne asks after a moment. No one says anything. I stare at the floor, tighten my grip on the surface of my desk.
“Anyone?”
“I will go first,” Rachel says. I look up at her; she is blinking, quite quickly, over and over again.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” Beth Anne says in her best you-are-all-little-children-of-mine voice. “We’ll be picking partners to step outside with us, to help us with our relaxation exercises and preparations. A sort of coach, if you will. Rachel, why don’t you pick someone to be your coach,” Beth Anne instructs. I look quickly back down at the floor—eye contact is bad, very bad— and think how very much I don’t want her to pick me.
“I pick Lawrence,” Rachel says. Loosening my grip on my chair, I relax ever so slightly. I squeeze one hand over the other, because now my hands hurt. A slight wave of guilt washes over me for wanting, so vehemently, not to be Rachel’s coach. But it wasn’t, I assure myself, just because I think Rachel is very freaky, but also because, come on, clearly I am in no position to be anyone’s coach.
“Okay, then. Let’s begin.”
Beth Anne walks toward the door, motioning for Rachel and Lawrence to follow her. The three leave, closing the door behind them. The four of us remaining sit in silence, everyone staring at the floor until the door opens again. Everyone looks up, but only Beth Anne has returned, Rachel and Lawrence are still out in the hall. Beth Anne smiles at us sweetly and takes a seat among us in one of the chair-desks, daintily smoothing her purple peasant skirt down behind her before she sits. We all continue sitting in silence together, and we all continue staring at the floor.
I look across the room quickly at Alec. He looks up at me and our eyes meet for a second, and I think it’s in a good way; in fact I’m pretty sure it is. I don’t know what on earth comes over me, but rather than spazzing out a little bit and looking away quickly, I keep looking at him, and I smile. Alec smiles back at me and we’re the only ones here; there’s no Beth Anne, no Amy, no Lindsay. Actually, we’re not even here, we’re far away from here, and we’re not learning how to overcome our presentation anxiety, presentation anxiety is so very far from our minds. We’re on a couch somewhere, making out. Then I remind myself I don’t want to make out with someone who uses the word “dude” so frequently in conversation, and look away.
The door opens and Lawrence and Rachel walk in. Lawrence takes his seat and opens his notebook and picks up a pen. Rachel walks up to the front of the room. The video camera guy comes out from behind the camera and shows Rachel how to hook the lavaliere microphone onto the collar of her T-shirt. As the video camera guy heads back to his post, and Rachel says, “Testing, testing,” into the mike and it comes out loud and clear and amplified, I notice how the wire of the microphone rests on the giant shelf of her chest, how it’s almost parallel to the floor.
Rachel stands at the front of the room, very straight and very still. She looks slowly around the room, stopping to lock eyes with each of us. Taking the Room: how you’re supposed to pause before you make a speech, how you’re supposed to look around calmly, confidently making eye contact with a bunch of people in the audience. It did not, the first time I heard the phrase, sound at all like something I’d like to do. And, watching Rachel as she does it, I’m still not sure about the Taking of the Room. There’s something about it, an awkwardness, a neediness in it even, that makes me wonder again if this is something that’s really done. It seems then that maybe the video camera guy doesn’t know about Taking the Room (which in itself makes you wonder) because Rachel’s not quite done with her journey of eye contact around the room when he interrupts to say, “Whenever you