Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand Read Free Book Online Page B

63 bus goes there.”
    I felt a faint buzz at my temples, a thrumming sound that spread across my skull and down my spine. I felt stoned; at least, I couldn’t make any sense out of what Oliver was saying, although he seemed to think he was carrying on a normal conversation.
    “The bus,” I said.
    Oliver nodded. “Okay,” he said, pleased. “Sweeney, huh? Mockingbirds outside your window last night, near the Convent of the Sacred Heart? O sacred head surrounded?” He tilted his head sideways, gazing at me with glittering eyes.
    I stared back, nodding like I had some idea what he was talking about. If he wasn’t so unabashedly beautiful, you’d think he was nuts. But this was Oliver’s peculiar gift—one of them, at least—that if you didn’t understand him, or were confused (and I usually was), or even just bored, you always felt like it was your fault.
    “Tom O’Bedlam,” he said, and gave my chair a little kick by way of urging me to join the fun. “You remember. Gloomy Orion and the Dog outside your window while your parents were arguing downstairs. Spread your knees and fly away. ‘Sweeney Among the Nightingales.’”
    I swallowed and riffled the pages of Finnegan’s Wake. This was worse than an oral exam. But then from outside came a faint burst of song: right on cue, a mockingbird in unwonted daytime concert. And suddenly I knew what he was talking about.
    “Dumbarton Oaks,” I said. “‘Let us go and make our visit.’” It was the only line of Eliot I could remember.
    Oliver nodded excitedly. “Right!” He removed his glasses, spun them by an earpiece. “Now, we’ll have to eat first—”
    He rattled on, more unfamiliar names. Blue mirrors and Georgetown and numbers, 330 and six-oh-five, but was that a time or a bus or an address? It was my first exposure to one of Oliver’s odd monologues, composed equally of literary and private allusions and delivered at breakneck speed in his prep school voice, punctuated by dramatic tugs at his long hair and glasses. I nervously twirled a lock of my own hair and just kept nodding. I have a gift for looking and talking as though I know more than I really do.
    But Oliver didn’t care. Oliver just kept on talking, smiling that loopy grin that let you know he’d spent a lifetime being loved by everyone he’d ever met.
    “… so we’ll hit the Blue Mirror, hardly worth the transfer anyway, save your quarters for the Rockola at Gunchers and some Pall Malls, excellent sort of sub-Deco architecture and—”
    Behind us footsteps echoed down the hall and then stopped. I glanced away from Oliver to see a figure standing in the doorway. A somewhat hesitant figure, the carnival light from our classroom’s windows broidering it with gold and red and green.
    Now what? I thought.
    It was a girl. Another of Dr. Warnick’s students, of course—if you could conceive of a Piero de’Franceschi madonna showing up for class in a Bloomingdale’s peasant dress and high-heeled Fiorucci sandals and Coach bag, trailing a cloud of perfume that smelled of sandalwood and oranges. She peered into the classroom doubtfully, turning until her gaze fell upon Oliver and me. Her eyebrows arched in a delicate show of disbelief.
    “Is this Professor Warnick’s class?”
    She had a beautiful throaty voice, with a slight vibrato. Oliver fell silent. I could hear the students in the front of the room whispering.
    “Balthazar S. Warnick. That is correct.” Oliver found his voice and gestured at an empty seat next to him. The girl smiled, a rapturous smile that made you feel lucky just to have glimpsed it. I glanced at Oliver and could see that he was actually blushing, twiddling his glasses and staring at her, transfixed.
    And suddenly all the cold misery that had overwhelmed me before rushed back. Because, of course, this was who was supposed to know the answer to Oliver’s ridiculous opening question. This was who he was supposed to meet—not me. Never me. Though from his