The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [85]
Henry never entirely understood Professor Eglantine, but he took this to mean there wouldn’t be much discussion. He slumped in his chair, relieved. He was perched in the top row of the tiny amphitheater between Rick and Starblind, the three of them tucked into too-small desks with piano-shaped tops and presiding in their game-day shirts and ties over the smaller, less athletic members of the class. Rick’s kelly-green bow tie drooped like mistletoe above a huge expanse of rumpled white oxford, armpit stains visible as he yawned and stretched. Starblind looked ready for Wall Street or maybe Hollywood, in a glossy gold tie and a shirt the shimmering vermilion of leaves in late October. Henry wore what he always wore: beat-up blue shirt, navy-and-ecru Westish tie. He and Rick wore their Harpooner caps. Starblind, who only covered his gel-slick blond hair while on the diamond, did not. Shirts and ties were a Mike Schwartz dictum of which Coach Cox did not approve. “What’s wrong with a sweatshirt?” he’d grumble as the Harpooners filed into the locker room. “Goddamn college boys.”
Henry took his physics labs during fall semester, so they wouldn’t interfere with baseball season. In the spring he stuck to jock-friendly guts and courses for which Owen or Schwartzy already owned the books. Transforming the Oral Tradition, English 129, cross-listed as Anthropology 141, was the latter. It wasn’t easy enough to qualify as a gut, but Rick and Starblind were both in the class, and Schwartzy had “edited” Henry’s paper on the Iliad to the tune of an A+.
The classroom faced east and was often flooded with light at this hour, but today the lake churned gravely and it looked like rain. Henry felt a thought creep into his mind, the kind of thought he’d never had before or imagined having: I hope we get rained out.
“Marie! Marie!” Eliot squealed, in what seemed like a hopeless bid for Henry’s attention. Starblind scribbled a note on a piece of paper, laid it on Henry’s desk:
!?!
This could mean only one thing, coming from Starblind. Henry scanned the room for the girl in question: a female newcomer seated beside Professor Eglantine. She had kinky, shoulder-length, wine-or bruise-colored hair. She looked older than a student but too young to be a professor. She could have been a grad student, but there weren’t any grad students at Westish. She looked precisely like the kind of girl—or maybe he should call her a woman—the kind of woman Henry knew nothing about. She had a wide and heart-shaped face, and she was chewing one of her sweatshirt’s strings, not out of nervousness, because nervousness was not an emotion likely to be felt by a person who looked like that, but for some other, better reason. Probably she was chewing on the string because she was concentrating hard on this incomprehensible poem and thinking profound thoughts about Modernism of which Professor Eglantine would approve.
Starblind wrote again: I’d transform her orality. Seen her before?
Henry gave a slight shrug to indicate no.
She’s no prefrosh. She’s 25, 26.
Slight nod.
A little worse for wear, but still…
Henry didn’t respond to this one.
Eggy’s girlfriend?
Henry rolled his eyes. Only in Starblind’s sex-crazed imagination did Professor Eglantine have a twentysomething lesbian lover whom she invited to class.
You’re useless. Wake up Rick.
Henry, using an absolute minimum of movement, elbowed Rick. He didn’t like to talk during Professor Eglantine’s class, not because he’d get in any trouble but because Professor Eglantine seemed as sensitive as a skinned knee, she frequently cried during class at the beauty of various poems, and Henry worried about disappointing her.
Rick’s chin jerked up. He wiped a glistening wisp of drool from the corner of his mouth. “Wuh?” he asked. Henry pointed to the top item on the piece of paper: !?! Rick