Tell Me If the Lovers Are Losers (19 page)

Niki had a bridge game at ten—“I'm working up to playing
for stakes. Money, eventually; they're coming around”—and Eloise lingered, reluctant to leave. Ann, who thought she would let her new resolution settle in for a night before she got down to work employing it, welcomed the distraction.

“Where's Hildy?” Eloise asked.

“In the library. She studies there.”

“Is this her bureau?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I thought so; it's peculiarly bare. Doesn't she have any photographs of her family?”

“I've never seen any. How are your roommates?” Ann hadn't thought about them for weeks.

“They're fine, I presume. We don't encounter one another frequently, and when we do— They like having me be on the volleyball team, do you know that?”

“We're getting a reputation. Some of the people in my Shakespeare class said they were going to come to a game. Do you like that, being famous?”

“Yes,” Eloise said firmly. “Yes I do. I never . . .” Her voice dwindled off.

“I know.”

“We've really left the Hall behind,” Eloise said. “Not just me, you too. Doesn't it seem a long time ago, if you remember last fall? Like another country.”

Ann agreed, and added that she was not sorry. “But I loved it there. If I have a daughter, I'll send her there. If I get married.”

“Is Niki being humorous most of the time?” Eloise asked. “I'd never realized that before. Now it seems possible. Is it all intended to be amusing?”

“Who knows?” Ann said. “I doubt it, but I can't be sure. Sometimes, I think maybe. It's easier to take her that way, so I try to. You should too.”

“I'll try,” Eloise said.

They chattered and gossiped until a few minutes before the dormitories would close. Then Eloise started to leave. “It's pleasant here,” she said.

“Even Niki?” Ann grinned.

“Try my terrible twosome from Texas. Niki's not so bad, not so bad at all.”

They met Hildy on the porch, and she and Ann stood
together watching Eloise trudge down the path between the trees.

“You like her,” Hildy said to Ann.

“Yes I do,” Ann answered.

“But you didn't always?”

“No. But I didn't know anything about her, not really.”

“You are a good friend for her,” Hildy said finally. “And that is right.”

The match against the top sophomore team took place on Tuesday afternoon. When the freshman challengers arrived at the gym, the benches were full and people had overflowed onto the floor. Ruth was the one picked to sit out the first game, glad to do so. She watched tensely from beside the center pole, where the Munchkin, in a heavy camel hair coat, sat behind her.

The first game did not last long. The freshmen never took control of the ball. Nothing went right for them. Balls they sent close to the end lines seemed to float out of bounds. Sets were too low. Passes wobbled across the court. Balls popped up off the palms of their hands erratically. Ann felt herself closing into herself, lowering her expectations to the most basic elements of her game, trying to just hold her arms correctly and receive the shot, trying to find the point at which she could begin to play again. But every time, she slapped desperately at the ball. She lost her sense for what the others were doing, so focused was she on her own part of the court. Her confidence waned, dwindled, then fled. During the last points, she even began to shy away from the ball, leaving Niki more room to play in.

“Let me go out,” Eloise asked Hildy. “Please. It's too tense. I can't when it's so tense, I just can't.” Hildy agreed.

That was not like Hildy. A further change. Ann, waiting to be called into position, looked at the sophomores. Their eyes were smug.

Niki harangued the team. Her hands waved impotent fury, her fists pounded the air. Ann did not listen, thinking that in ten minutes it would all be over, and ten minutes was not so long. “And Annie”—Niki's voice broke into her thoughts—“Annie's quit. Sarah's playing like a pregnant cow. You can't
do this. Hildy—watch the ball, for God's sake. For somebody's sake. Bess, you've got to move. Not stand there like a lump of lard. Ann, you're wallowing in self-pity. You can't do this to me, you hear? If you do, so help me I'll—” her teeth clenched around unspoken thoughts—“I'll find a way. Every one of you. And you'll be sorry.”

Ann felt a silly smile spread over her face, prelude to a giggle.

“Try me, Annie, just try me,” Niki growled.

Her fierceness was like a slap in the face, a direct physical assault. Ann was sobered, even frightened.

“All of you,” Niki said. She glared at five pale faces, each pair of eyes staring at her. Only Hildy's were unshocked.

They trotted out onto the court, with Niki behind them. Ann was dreadfully aware of where Niki stood and where Niki looked. She did not dare return a glance.

Hildy served. The sophomores passed the ball forward and sent it to rear center, low, curving away. Ann's ball. It was too far away to be fetched, but Ann dived anyway—because Niki snarled—and, incredibly, she got a clenched fist under it. Ann struggled to put any kind of punch into her shot, to lift the ball high enough, just that much, so that Hildy or Bess might pick it up. The sinews of her shoulder twisted.

She managed it, and Hildy managed a shot forward, and Niki slammed the ball into the vacant center of the opposite court.

“All right,” Niki muttered. Not in approval but in continued threat.

The next point went on for minutes. Ann strained after the ball, her eyes fixed on it, her muscles always ready. She could half-see Hildy, beside her, moving as she herself moved, in parallel. She was aware of Niki at the net, her eyes (her whole will it seemed) bent on the receiver of the ball. When Ann was that receiver, she could feel the hot anger Niki emanated, hanging over her, like a curled tidal wave.

This point too, they won.

After five points Hildy was still serving. The sophomores played well, but the freshmen played hard, as if something stood behind, pressing them.

After ten points Hildy was still serving. The sophomores were less smug now. The freshmen were desperate, as before;
but careful too, as if they knew that a slip would put them at a greater disadvantage than slackened effort.

Hildy served the fifteenth and final point. The sophomore receiver muttered to herself, drew back with arms raised, and caught Niki's glare through the net. She fumbled the ball. It sailed out of bounds.

The stands erupted into cries and cheers and the incongruous small sound of applause. Ann had played the long game in a vacuum of concentration. She awoke and looked about her The same dazed expression she saw on Ruth's face was probably on her own.

“Change courts,” Niki ordered. They obeyed, like automatons. “You're not through yet,” she warned them. “You hear me?” Five heads nodded. “Annie?”

“Yes?”

“You serve next. When we get it.”

Ann nodded. She had heard the threat. She swallowed twice, thickly, bent her knees, and looked up to the whistle. The sophomore served to the center rear Ann fixed her eyes to the ball, and silence descended upon her again. She could hear nothing except Niki, and she only imagined that Niki spoke to her.

Ann served, not boldly or powerfully, but with unfailing accuracy. Time and again, Ann pulled back her clenched fist to drive the ball at the opponents. Always, as she knew it must, it stayed within bounds. She was hard, she was relentless, she would make no error.

The silence within Ann spread to the audience. The gym was empty of sounds, except for the grunts of the players and the slap of palm against the ball. Through the silence moved Niki's anger and Niki's will. She was darker, by degrees, than anybody else playing. She sweated more profusely and gnawed on her lower lip. She swiveled her head with sharp, vicious motions, watching the members of her team make their shots. And when she leaped to spike, you could see her exert her strength to snap gravity's hold, as if actual hands twisted around her ankles, to seize the height, to make the play, to win the point.

Hildy leaped with a diver's ease, as if those fingers that clutched at Niki turned light and springing for her. She soared up, a temporarily winged being, overreached the ball and gave
to it her own curve, descending. Her head was touched by the beam of sunlight that wafted in through the high windows and her hair turned the pale, fading light into fire. Hildy spiked often, to countereffect the lackluster quality of her other shots, her passes that did not fall into receivers' fingers easily, blocks that misfired as often as they won the point.

Ann had not kept score—she bent her head, gathered her resources, looked up to serve again—and was surprised that the other team was not there to receive the ball. Silence dissolved into a roar of approval from the audience as the freshmen won the third game as they had the second, fifteen—zero. Miss Dennis was on her feet, clapping.

The crowd drifted away, leaving the freshmen alone with Miss Dennis. They did not notice her, however. They waited for Niki to dismiss them. But Niki lay belly up on the floor, her eyes closed. Her skin was blotched, mottled.

Finally the Munchkin spoke. “Miss Jones?”

Niki opened her eyes.

The Munchkin nodded her head, up and down, twice. “I congratulate you.” She held out her small hand to Niki, who reached up to shake it. “That was well executed. Crude, but having signs of splendor.”

She turned from Niki to smile at the others, but warmer for Hildy. “Miss Koenig. How do you find the glasses?”

“Confusing,” Hildy said.

“One becomes accustomed,” Miss Dennis said firmly.

“Yes,” Hildy said.

The small woman left. She hurried to the exit, without looking back.

Niki looked around her. “God damn but I'm tired. Sorry, Hildy. You know the thing about the Munchkin? She is perfectly laconic, but never without the right word to say. Let's get out of here.”

♦   ♦   ♦

Later, after baths, after dinner, Hildy asked Niki: “You sent Eloise from the game?”

“Did I?” Niki asked.

Hildy's eyes flashed. “Don't lie. You spoke to her. I could see.”

“If you say so,” Niki answered.

“You knew that you could not drive her so?”

“That. I also thought she might collapse. I didn't know if she was too strong or too weak. It wouldn't have worked with her. Like it didn't work with you, only you permitted it.”

Hildy continued to study her.

“That's all. That's the complete truth,” Niki said. “It's almost Halloween.”

“So what?” Ann said.

“So I'm going to New York.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. A guy I know at Columbia—they throw a big party for Halloween. He said he didn't have a date for it so if I wanted to come down I could.”

“You'll miss classes,” Hildy said.

“Not English, and that's the only one I need to keep a perfect face for When do you think we'll play the juniors?”

“Not until you return,” Hildy promised. “Saturday afternoon, I think. Eloise must play.”

“Fine by me. I'll be back Friday. I've got English Friday.”

“I will give up wearing these glasses,” Hildy said.

“Don't you dare,” Niki said. “Don't do that. What's the point of the technological nightmare if you don't take advantage of the little it can do for you?”

“I cannot say that,” Hildy said, “but—”

“No buts.”

“Perhaps. In any case, I will need them for the writing of my long paper, if I am to type it myself.”

“But I'll do that if Niki can't,” Ann offered. Hildy shook her head. “What are you writing on?”

“King Lear.
Cordelia.”

“Why her?” Niki asked. “She's such a weenie.”

“A what?” Ann giggled at the sound of the word.

“A weenie.” Niki waved her hands. “You know. She trundles across the stage and you say to yourself weenie-weenie-weenie. You know what I mean.”

“No I don't,” Ann said, “and I'm not sure I want to. Cordelia should make a good paper for you, Hildy. You should put some quotes in, to prove your points. Do you know how to do that?”

Hildy said she did.

Ann loved
King Lear,
although she could never feel she
understood it completely. There were always new and unexpected facets, she felt.

“You know what my favorite line in
Lear
is? When he meets Gloucester on the beach and says, ‘If you would weep my fortunes, take my eyes.' The play turns on that line.”

“How is that?” Hildy asked. Niki listened.

Ann summarized her notion of compassion in
King Lear
and showed how the characters fit into it. She discussed the theme in relation to plot, especially the irony of Edmund's capitulation at the end. She tied it into tragedy, the alternate themes of power and justice, and the parent/child motif. She found herself excited by her own idea, delivering a small lecture to her roommates, without realizing what she was doing. Until Niki began to applaud. Then, Ann smiled foolishly and apologized.

“Well, except for the beginning, with that lamentable favorite-line gambit, I'd say she's done a creditable job.” Niki said. “Wouldn't you, Hildy?”

“Oh yes,” Hildy said. “I could understand only a small part of it.”

“Maybe because the rest was hot air,” Ann suggested.

“Don't do that kind of stuff, Annie. Don't cover yourself in that way.”

“Yes, dear,” Ann spoke meekly. Then Niki thought her ideas were good?

“Which is not to say I'd sign up to take a course,” Niki said, answering that unspoken question. “But again”—she grinned—“I might.”

♦   ♦   ♦