Arresting Rendition

Chapter 1

Only another true femme could possibly appreciate my current position, but, you see, I genuinely had no choice.

Walking through Davis Square in Somerville on a shiny fall day a few weeks after the start of school and right after I had a fab manicure at Julie Nail, the salon that’s been there since I was in high school, I snagged a glimpse of this guy.

Hmm, maybe not guy per se, maybe man, maybe, I hoped, geek butch so adorable that I followed him the whole way down Elm Street, across the spoked intersection, along College Avenue, to the dainty Somerville Library, stalking him through the stacks, perhaps a loose usage, even now. We were in the tech section.

I crouched two stacks away from him, watching carefully, and I hoped subtly, through spaces in the shelves, as he removed books, riffled their pages, and restored them to the shelves. Quite systematically, one at a time. Left to right, starting on the shelf above eye-level, his, and way above mine.

His face was beautifully symmetrical. Deep-set eyes behind black-framed Clark Kent glasses. Hair a smidge too long, and a lot uncombed, like he’d run his fingers through it one too many times trying to solve a problem for some professor. He wore a blue Oxford cloth shirt, buttoned right to the neckline, topped with a pert bowtie, in black and cardinal. MIT colors. Over that, a grey, cable knit sweater of good quality, maybe cashmere. Not the usual geek sweater fare.

I looked down at my beautiful nails, yellow, orange, red, yellow, orange with an apple painted on each yellow ring finger. Fall nails for Autumn, and yes, they are mine, with a gel topper. My feet were clad in flip-flops, a concession to the pedicure, and slightly colder than comfortable, but once a pedicure dries, it’s good to go for a long while. I economize where I can. Tuition, you know.

I am a Ph.D. student in the Tufts’ Department of Drama and Dance, a nice Jewish girl from the Big City, studying feminism and genderism and privilege in theatre. Once I’m credentialed, tenure ought to be a piece of cake. I am au courant with every bit of  intersectionality a girl could want.

Be that as it may, my sweet geek butch—let’s assume it till proven otherwise, shall we?—started toward impatient, then downright annoyed, still systematically taking book after book off the shelf, flipping through pages, and returning them to where they belonged. The tech section wasn’t very big, but he’d definitely chosen an analog, time-consuming process.

I tiptoed around the ends of the rows, hung my long dark hair provocatively over one shoulder, plucked the string of my courage once for luck, and said, “Hi, are you looking for something in particular?”

He didn’t turn around. “Yes, a friend left me a note somewhere in these books.” Then he gasped, and whirled around. “I mean, I guess, I—”

I gave him a shy half-smile. “That’s unusual.”

“Yeah, he’s kind of an unusual sort.”

He pushed his glasses higher on his nose.

“Want some help?” I asked.

“Why would you do that?”

“You looked frustrated. It’d go faster with two of us.”

“Uh, sure,” he said diffidently. “You’re right.”

I sat down at his feet and started on the bottom shelf. I hit the jackpot at book seven.

“Oooh,” I said. “Here it is.”

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“The same way you did. I sat down and started at the left, and kept going till—”

“I know,” he interrupted me, “but how did you know to start there?”

I had a snarky thought, but instead I said, “Just lucky, I guess.” I reached to give him the paper again, and he finally really noticed me.

I’m petite, tiny, a dink over five feet, with what I’ve been told is a luscious figure since I shed the protective layering I’d carried for most of my upbringing and my marriage, generous in all the right places. I know how to adorn it, for sure. I have long, dark, irrepressibly curly hair that I pay a king’s ransom to straighten every week at Kaya Beauty Spa at the top of School Street. You’ll never catch me sans make-up, but I only wear enough to enhance what’s there.

He reached down and took the book from me.

Then he reached down to help me stand.

Which I did.

Elegantly.

Despite the flip-flops.

“Hi,” he said, still holding my hand, “I’m Dex.”

“Hi,” I said, “I’m Miriam. Miri, to my friends.”

“How do you do, Miriam?”

He shook my hand.

“I’m well, Dex. How are you?”

“Happier since I have my friend’s missive.”

He checked his way-too-big watch face.

“It’s four. Would you like a cup of tea as a thank you for your help? We could go to the Diesel.”

“Sure, that’d be nice,” I flipped my hair over my shoulder. I had a paper due in two days for my one remaining graduate course but a cup of tea wouldn’t hinder me too much.

Dex palmed the little missive into his rear pocket, which gave me a frisson, and offered me his arm.

“Such a gentleman,” I murmured.

“I try always to be a gentleman.” Oooh, and proper grammar. Swoon. “Femmes have too few of them in this world.”

“Amen,” I said fervently.

The Diesel was its usual jam-packed self, but Dex was eagle-eyed, and spotted a couple of kids packing their gear. He approached the table.

“Dex!” said one of the two, gender unspecified.

“Finley,” said Dex, “going up to school?”

“Class.”

“Have a good one,” Dex said easily.

“We will,” said a feminine voice, linking fingers with Finley’s possessively.

“What can I get for you?” Dex asked after we seated ourselves.

“Green tea,” I said. “Plain.”

“Really?”

I nodded.

“A cookie?” he pursued. When I paused, he added, “Share one with me?” Then he added a winning smile to that.

“Oh, alright.”

“A preference for type?”

“Yes,” I grinned, “cookie. Any flavor.”

“Ah,” he said like, I got it.

I like men who are quick-witted.

Allow me to rephrase.

I insist upon men who are quick-witted.

Which, between you, me, and the lamp-post, means that I get to skip a lot of them, which is fine by me. It’s an instant editorial process.

Do you have a sudden urge to accuse me of intellectual snobbery?

You’d be right.

No one can have an IQ like mine and thrive without mental challenge.

In fact, I would submit to you that everyone needs mental challenge at their own level, whatever that might be.

Into these indefinite musings, if perhaps less than politically correct in the academic circles I desired to inhabit, arrived sweet Dex with two cups of tea and two cookies.

“I had trouble deciding,” he explained sheepishly, “so I got both.”

“Makes sense to me, sir,” I said.

He glanced sharply at me. I didn’t know why.

“What kind of tea did you get?” I asked.

Safe conversational territory.

“Oh, Lipton’s, or Diesel’s version. I think they call it black tea, or maybe I call it black tea, with a boatload of cream and sugar.”

I chuckled. “Cream and sugar with a dash of tea.”

“Exactly,” he affirmed, looking pleased at my understanding. “Do you honestly not have a favorite kind of cookie?”

“Scout’s honor. Cookies of all stripes work for me.”

He clocked the shadow of my cleavage. I had on a low-cut, form-fitting sweater in a rich russet over my favorite black wool skirt with a kicky hem.

“Me, too,” he mumbled.

“Shall we share them?” I asked, reaching for what appeared to be one oatmeal raisin and one chocolate chip.

“May we?” he smiled sweetly.

“Why not? You were the one who didn’t know his own mind. That says you wanted both.”

Having been a mama to two adorables, nearly grown, talking and dividing cookies at the same time was a no-brainer for me. I think he viewed it as multi-tasking.

“So, Dex,” I settled into the sticky booth, “what do you do?”

“I work IT at Tufts,” he said simply.

There was more to it. There had to be.

“A tech?” I teased him. “One of those savior guys in a cape who arrives at the eleventh hour  to reclaim vital lost academic data?”

“Something like that,” he allowed, sipping his warm cream and sugar concoction. “What do you do, Miriam?”

“I’m teaching two courses this semester in the Department of Drama and Dance where I am finishing my last course till I’m ABD.”

“You must be champing at the bit to get to your dissertation,” he observed.

“Not exactly, or not yet. I so enjoy teaching, and it’s such a refreshing change from my old life that I’m wallowing in gratitude these days.”

His eyebrows quirked at me.

“I’m a gay divorcée,” I explained.

His clarion hazel eyes kept their focus on mine. They held no judgment. He appeared to be waiting for more, so I carried on bravely.

“I’ve been divorced for a couple of years. Left Brooklyn, and my Orthodox community, moved home to Brookline, and got my MFA in playwriting from BU.

“Part of what I like in Tufts’ Ph.D. program is that I get to teach. This semester I’m teaching a seminar on Aphra Behn, and the usual Introduction to World Theatre History that none of my peers wanted, but that I love.”

“Who’s Aphra Behn?” Dex repeated the proper pronunciation of her name precisely. Ben, like Franklin, not bane, like bane of my existence.

“The first woman to earn a living as a writer in England.”

“Cool,” he said, blowing on his tea. “Why don’t your peers like to teach World Theatre History?”

“It’s a survey course, and the Academy has used the same book to teach it for three hundred and fifty years, or it feels that way.”

He laughed wryly. “I know that one.” He paused, “But you like to teach it?”

“I’m an expert in feminism, genderism, and privilege in the theatre from the beginning of time until now. I like to teach the intro course, but I, well, I suppose I teach Intro With A Little Extra.” I sparkled at him.

He beamed at me. “You go, girl.”

“Oh, I do, Dex, I do.”

We sat still, connected in some belly sort of way, but I couldn’t have told you why at the time.

“These are good,” I indicated the cookies.

“They are,” he agreed, “I think of cookies as the fifth food group.”

“I know women who swear chocolate is.”

Dex looked thoughtful.

“I might fight them for it,” he observed.

“You have your justifications no doubt,” I returned his serve. “Do you like IT?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dex enthused. “Computers have their own language, and I was born speaking it fluently.”

“How?”

“They told my foster parents I was a whiz kid.” His face said stricken. “They weren’t interested until I aged out of the system the same week I got into MIT.”

“Wow,” I said, duly impressed.

“Yeah, well, what they wanted was my scholarship money, but ... too bad,” said with a wry spin, “I was a legal adult by then. The money was mine.”

“Good for you,” I said.

My twins were well past their eyeballs in college applications. Their dad had plenty of money, no matter where David and Devorah, pronounced da-VEED and de-VOR-ah,  got in, so scholarships for them weren’t on my radar. They were, however, on my radar for me.

“Yeah,” he replied sheepishly. “I didn’t intend to brag.”

“It didn’t sound that way. It sounded like the facts.”

“Well, they are the facts but some people think I brag.”

“Dex, a kid raised in the foster system who gets a full scholarship, I’m assuming, to MIT is something to brag about. Not only that,” I barreled on, “but it’s a great example to other kids in similar situations.”

“That reminds me,” he said absently, and reached for his back pocket making flutters in my belly again. “Thanks for finding this. He’s making it more and more complicated as time goes by.”

Dex opened the flap of paper and read it quickly.

“Cool,” he said. “Good enough.”

“What’s good enough?”

“You know how you said my scholarship is a great example? Well, since I graduated, I’ve tried every semester to foster a kid who needs it. It’s sort of gotten around campus in the social services departments that if there’s a kid who’s having a rough time, Dex will show up consistently and help. This is from this semester’s kid. His name is Darlin.”

“Darlin? Like from the South?”

Dex laughed.

“No, I don’t think so. They’d be okay with me telling you this. I think they started out a Darlene, and the prevailing wisdom when he was transitioning was to choose a name close to your original one. He fabricated it. It suits him though.”

We sat peacefully drinking tea.

“Dex,” I said, “that’s a kind thing you’re doing.”

“I do it as much for me as I do for them. When I was a kid, I wanted a family, a brother, a sister, so badly I could taste it. These kids are like that.”

“I still think it’s swell,” I said approvingly, and my deep cheek dimple showed. “Why does he leave you notes inside books?”

“In different libraries, too!” Dex added. “It’s a game to him. He’s a gamer, or, he was. He was into designing games, but his schoolwork hit him hard, so sending me over hell and gone for his little billets-doux is the only game he’s playing this semester.”

“What’s Darlin studying?”

“He doesn’t know yet.”

“Is he perchance into theatre?”

“He’s into role-playing as part of gaming.”

“Maybe you ought to send him to 3Ps?”

“Which are?”

“Is,” I corrected, “the oldest, longest-extant college theatre club in existence. It stands for Pen, Paint, & Pretzels. It’s huge, and starting right after Thanksgiving, they play a long-running water pistol game with a monetary prize at the end. If Darlin were to go to some 3Ps’ meetings, he’d be allowed to participate, and he’d recognize most of the people who were in the game.”

Dex was thoughtful.

“You know, Miriam, I think he’d love that. How does he learn about 3Ps?”

I gave Dex various email addresses and web coordinates.

“Are you going to campus?” Dex asked me.

“I am. I have a paper due in two days, and I need to do some research.”

“A paper on what?”

“Elizabethan cross-gender costuming.”

His eyes rolled back in his head.

© 2017 Susan Corso
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