CHAPTER
VII
Marius stretched, following Courfeyrac out of the theatre exit. Upon
leaving the building, Courfeyrac ducked to the side, pulling Marius with
him. Eponnyne and Keats followed, as Courfeyrac leaned nonchalantly
against the wall of the building.
“Sooooo…what didja think?”
“Excellent, as always,” Prouvaire replied softly. “First time I’ve seen
that fellow as Enjolras. He’s awesome.”
“Agreed,” Courfeyrac said, grinning. “Marius? ‘Ponnyne? What
d’you think? Is Les Miz not the greatest story existing today?”
“It was great,” the girl said, wiping her eyes. “So sad, though…”
“I liked that gamine girl, the one who followed the student around.
She was pretty cool.” Marius thought for a moment. “But the student that
she was in love with, the one who loved the other girl, he was kind of
a doofus.”
Courfeyrac’s grin broadened. “Of course, of course. So, d’you guys
want t’ go to the stage door? I could introduce you to a couple of
people.”
“Why not?” Eponnyne shrugged, glancing at Marius. “I could go for that.
That guy playing the revolutionary leader, he was pretty cute.”
Prouvaire hid his smile politely behind his hand. Courfeyrac led
them over to the stage door, where they waited for the cast to appear.
They didn’t have long to wait.
The door opened, and a young man ducked out, a backpack slung over one
shoulder. He caught sight of Courfeyrac and immediately came over.
“Hey! Courfeyrac, is that you, buddy? Haven’t seen you for
a week or two! Figured you’d be suffering from Les Miz withdrawal
by now.”
“You have no idea, dude.” Courfeyrac shook the guy’s hand, and gestured
to his friends. “You know Keats, and these are our friends, Marius and
Eponnyne. Guys, this is Tom. He plays Montparnasse, and a random,
nameless student. Isn’t that right, Tom?”
“Eh, I don’t like to think of it as a ‘random, nameless student’.
I just pretend that I’m Bahorel, since he’s not taken.” The guy grinned,
pushing his reddish bangs back from his forehead.
“Right, right, right. That’s what you want everyone to think.” Courfeyrac
laughed.
And so, the stage door experience began. Soon, the introductions
were flying fast and furious, as more and more cast members flowed out
of the door. Tourists eagerly clambered to get their autographs,
if they managed to recognize them, but the actors always spared a moment
to talk to Courfeyrac. Marius’s head was practically spinning by
the end of the evening, having met some twenty or so cast members.
As the four young people began to walk away, he accidentally bumped into
a slight young woman, who was busy signing autographs.
“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there,” Marius apologized.
She looked up at him with a smile.
“It’s okay.” She finished signing her name, as Marius watched, intrigued.
“I don’t think I met you. You’re part of the cast?”
“Yeah.” She turned to face him fully, and noticed Courfeyrac waiting
impatiently a few feet away. “Oh, I see. You’re with this loser?”
She grinned.
Courfeyrac stepped forward with an elaborate bow. “Forgive me for not introducing
you. Marius, this is Candace. She plays Cosette. Candy,
this is Marius. He’s a friend of mine.”
“Oh.” The girl turned her large blue eyes onto Marius again. “Nice to meet
you, Marius.”
The boy didn’t quite know what to say, his tongue effectively tied in a
knot. “Uh…I…well…”
“He says it’s nice to meet you, too,” Courfeyrac finally answered for his
friend, taking hold of the boy’s elbow. “We gotta go, Candy. Maybe
we’ll see ya around?”
“Sure.” She flashed a smile at Marius, who was being dragged off by an
impatient Courfeyrac. “Bye!”
Once they were out of hearing range, Eponnyne shook her head. “That was
the one you said you’d dated, Courfeyrac?”
“Yeah.” The black-haired student nodded. “That’s her all right. She’s
a pretty hot little number, huh? But a little too young for me.
I don’t wanna be accused of cradle-robbing or anything.”
“She seemed too nice,” Eponnyne sniffed. “Like, superficial or something.”
“She seemed perfect to me,” Marius mumbled. The other three just
stared at him, and he blushed. “Well, I mean…”
“Ahhh, we all know what you meant, Marius.” Courfeyrac winked to
Prouvaire. “So, you guys ever wanna talk to us or anything, you can usually
find us at one of two places. In the morning, we’re at Café
Maisha. That’s a cybercafé down in Morningside Heights.
At night, we’ll usually be at Corinne’s, which is this Irish pub-bar-thingy,
also in the Heights. And myself, sometimes you can catch me at Les
Miz.”
“We’ll look you up,” Eponnyne replied with a smile. “Thanks for the tickets,
it was really great.”
“Thank you for coming, mademoiselle.” Courfeyrac kissed her fingertips
with mock ceremony, flashing her a grin.
Eponnyne smiled, and her cheeks flushed just slightly in the dark.
“All right, c’mon, Casanova,” Prouvaire said, tugging at his friend’s sleeve.
“Bye!” Courfeyrac waved, as he and Prouvaire started out in the opposite
direction from Eponnyne and Marius. “See you guys soon!”
*************************
“ ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age
of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epic of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the winter
of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were
all going directly to Heaven, we were all going directly the other way—in
short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its
noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,
in the superlative degree of comparison only.’ ” Combeferre fell silent,
his gray eyes flickering closed. “Splendid poetic sentence, magnifique.”
Enjolras sighed softly, his cheek resting comfortably against the older
boy’s naked chest, one arm draped across Combeferre’s stomach. “I love
you, I think.”
Combeferre smiled teasingly. “Do you then?”
Enjolras shifted his gaze from the pages of the book that Ian held in one
hand, up to the other boy’s face. “Yeah, I do.”
“That’s probably one of the most common post-sex comments the world has
ever known.”
“Oh, and I suppose an oral reading of Tale of Two Cities is a common
post-sex activity as well?”
“Touché.” Combeferre grinned, kissing the top of Enjolras’s head
gently. “Everyone needs their daily dose of French-themed literature.”
“Naturally.” Marc smiled, tracing his friend’s abdominal muscles with one
fingertip. “Go ahead, Ian. I listen.”
The dark-haired boy cleared his throat slightly. “Right then. As
I was saying—‘There were a king with a large jaw, and a queen with a plain
face, on the throne of England…’ ”
**********************
“Feuilly! You stupid good-for-nothing! Get your lazy ass down
here right now!”
Lukasz Feuilly looked up from his painting, wiping his eyes and unconsciously
staining his cheeks with bright blue paint in the process. He sighed
in frustration, ignoring the shouting from downstairs. Unfortunately,
the shouter didn’t ignore him, and a moment later, the door banged violently
open on its hinges.
“Idiot motherf***er! Are you deaf or somethin’?!”
“I don’t have your money, Alario.” Feuilly didn’t look up from his masterpiece.
“You’re gonna get my money, or you’re gonna get a knife in your
back!” His landlord crossed the tiny room in one quick stride, ripping
the canvas from the easel and breaking it over his knee. “Now stop d***in’
around, and go out and get a job!”
Feuilly’s jaw clenched, and his brown eyes darkened to a hard, dull color,
but he remained stubbornly standing, his fists at his sides.
“Now you listen, and you listen good. You got three days t’come up
with that cash, or I’m just gonna hafta sell your art crap to pay your
bills, and you gonna find yourself kicked ass-first out onto the street.
Got it?” When he got no reply, Alario flung the canvas remnants into
the corner of the room and stomped out, slamming the door behind him so
hard that the entire building seemed to shake on its foundations.
Immediately, the Pole scrambled to the corner, gingerly lifting the pieces
of his painting. The young woman in the painting, her hands folded
delicately on her satin-covered lap, her black hair braided with ribbons,
seemed to gaze sadly from the two pieces, torn directly across her pale
face. Feuilly bit his lip, placing the two pieces side by side, so
that the picture was once again united.
“I’m sorry, my dear Martyna…my dear mother…I will paint you again.
All the world will see that I am proud to be your son…” He glanced at the
model that he’d been using to paint the picture: a small locket, one side
containing a faded photograph of a woman, young and proud, her traditional
Polish finery unspoiled by years of wear and tear on the locket.
He sighed softly. “You wanted me to be American, Mama. Did you know
what America was like?”
***********************
“Keats! Keats, will you stop it, goddamn you?! Some of us are
trying to get some sleep here!” Courfeyrac pressed the pillows against
his ears, glaring in the direction of Prouvaire’s room. “If you don’t stop
playing those drums in the middle of the night, I’ll throw them out the
window!”
A moment later, the noise stopped, and Prouvaire appeared silhouetted in
the doorway. “I’m sorry, did you say something, Courfeyrac?”
Courfeyrac shot him a cranky look. “Oh no, Jonathan. I was just talking
to myself again.”
“Oh.” The poet scratched his cheek thoughtfully. “You should get a professional
to check you out, Courfey. It’s possible that you’re not completely
normal…” He thought on that for a moment, then burst out in a rare, sweet
laugh. “What am I saying? ‘It’s possible’?”
“Do you see me laughing, kid?” The older boy pouted.
“Hey, if you’re so upset about my practice hours, go sleep on Combeferre’s
couch.”
“He doesn’t have a couch; he lives in a dorm room, dumbass. Besides,
he and Enjolras are probably very, very busy right now, if y’catch
my drift.” He grinned roguishly.
Keats turned beet red. “That better not have been a sexual implication.”
“And you expect any different from me?” Courfeyrac winked.
“Right, right.” Prouvaire turned, heading back to his room. “Maybe they
wouldn’t
mind if you went and stayed the night with them.”
“Ahh, that’s okay. I’ll just be a martyr, and stay here, and try
to
get some shut-eye.”
“Fine, I’ll pack up the drums for tonight. Besides, the landlord’ll
have our necks if I’m not careful. It won’t matter how much more
money we offer him.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” Courfeyrac shrugged. “He’d cave eventually.
You’ve got plenty of cash, and I’ve got
plenty of cash, and no red-blooded landlord
of New York City can resist that.”
“Uh-huh.” Prouvaire called from his own bedroom, packing his drumsticks
back into their case.
“’Night, Keats.”
“Goodnight, Courfey.”
*************************
“ ‘…and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and faltering
voice.’ ” Combeferre hugged Enjolras closer to him, unashamed of the tears
that streamed down his cheeks. “ ‘It is a far, far better thing that I
do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than
I have ever known.’ ” He closed the book gently, setting it on the nightstand
beside the bed. He turned back around to find Enjolras smiling up
at him. The golden-haired boy wiped the tears from Combeferre’s face.
“It is sad, isn’t it?” Marc said softly. “If only…if only things
had been different for Carton, he could have had everything. But
as it is, he ends up with nothing…”
“…yet he has everything, at the same time,” Combeferre replied quietly.
“If only everyone could be like that.”
“Personally, I am glad that I was not dealt the fate of Sydney Carton,”
Enjolras said, twining his arms gently around Combeferre’s waist. “I don’t
think I would have had the courage that he had.”
“You would have,” Combeferre said. “In that sort of situation, you would
have found the courage.” He fell silent for a moment, then suddenly said,
“Do you think that Grantaire girl is all right, after last night?”
“What made you think of her all of a sudden?”
“I dunno.” Combeferre leaned back against the pillows, pulling Enjolras
down with him. “I was just thinking. I mean, I was thinking about
Tale
of Two Cities, and Sydney Carton, and then I remembered her.
She really seemed to like you, y’know?”
“Yeah, so I noticed.” Enjolras frowned.
“Don’t be upset, Enjolras. It’s okay that the girl likes you.
I do pity her a bit. She seems as though she hasn’t had the best
life up till now, and then she met you, and she obviously had her world
turned upside-down.”
“I don’t care,” Enjolras replied quietly. “I don’t care how much I’ve ‘changed
her life’. I don’t care for her, and I never will. It’s better
that she gets that idea into her head from the very beginning, so she doesn’t
get her hopes up, then become disappointed later on.”
Combeferre sighed, and Enjolras glanced at him.
“What? What is it, ‘Ferre? Are you angry with me for standing
by you and not abandoning you for the first drunk who takes a liking to
me?”
The sarcasm caused Ian to sigh again and shake his head. “Marc, don’t be
so callous. You know better than that. Twenty-four hours ago,
you were the one stuck in a situation of potentially unrequited love.
For all you know, I might have had no desire whatsoever to be your lover.”
“But you did, and that’s what counts.”
“I disagree.” Combeferre closed his eyes. “I disagree, but that doesn’t
mean, naturally, that I’m willing to give you up to her.”
“Naturally…” Enjolras closed his eyes as well, drifting off to sleep, wrapped
in his best friend’s arms.
**********************
Journey
on...
Go
back to the Frat House...