Albertine Appears

Sorry, Not Interested

    I spent an hour listening to Raskol and Valerie — whom I thought of, ridiculously, as Valerie Clam Fest — tell me about many, many interesting things that had happened in Babbington while I was away. Much of what they had to say wasn’t as interesting to me as it was to them. Much of it bored me, and for some reason they couldn’t bring themselves to tell me anecdotes about Babbingtonians who had missed me so much that they’d suffered piteously. After a while, I told them that I had to go, pleading that I had a long list of friends to visit.
    “You mean you’re hoping to find a better audience for your adventures,” said Raskol.
    Valerie Clam Fest giggled.
    “Ha-ha,” I said, on my way out the door.
    I stepped outside, and suddenly I felt dizzy. This was not the effect of the two beers that I had drunk, nor even the heady proximity of Valerie. What had shaken me, rattled me, befuddled me, was the astonishing discovery that life had gone on in Babbington while I wasn’t there.
    I made my way downtown, reeling, staggering, toward McGee Memorial Park, where I expected to find a clutch of my friends taking their ease, “hanging out,” doing nothing, as we had on so many pleasant Saturdays and Sundays since we had become teenagers and claimed our right to do nothing when we felt like it. I entertained a secret hope that I might find them bored, and therefore an eager audience for an account of my adventures.
    To my surprise, none of my friends were in the park. Instead, I found there most of the members of the Night Birds, Babbington High’s theater club. To my further surprise, I found that instead of lazing on the grass and savoring their youth they were pacing the pathways and wringing their hands.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked Randolph, the one among their number who seemed least inclined to mock me.
    “Everyone is in a panic,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “School starts in a week.”
    “So what?”
    “So what? I’ll tell you what. This is our final year of high school, that’s what. Anything that we are going to do in our high school years that we haven’t done yet must be done in this year. We have all been struck by the fact that we’ve done hardly anything that we are likely to look back on with the kind of nostaligic affection that will warm our later years, and that very little time remains to us.”
    “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” I confessed.
    “Not only that, but just one week after school begins, we face the dreaded Compity-Comps.”
    “Huh?”
    “The Comprehensive College Competency Exams.”
    “Oh. Yeah. I forgot.”
    “You forgot? How could you — oh — of course — I guess you geniuses who spent the summer in New Mexico at that genius institute don’t have to worry about the Comps, but the rest of us do.”
    “I never said I was a genius.”
    “No, but you look as if you think you might be.”
    “That’s not fair.”
    “Maybe not. We’ll see. Let’s see how well you survive the whirlwind we face in the first few weeks of school.”
    “There’s more?”
    “There sure is. Just one short week after we take the Comps, those of us in the Night Birds are going to mount our production of La Cantatrice Chauve.” He paused, examining me for some sign that I understood. After a moment, he said, “Eugene Ionesco. The Bald Soprano.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    “That’s your response? ‘Oh’?”
    “Well, I’m not in it, so —”
    “So you don’t give a shit? Hey, let me tell you something. Those of us in the Birds have been rehearsing all summer. While you were lazing around a swimming pool in the sunny southwest, we were working to make this a memorable theatrical experience.”
    “Look, I didn’t mean to seem—um—disinterested.”
    “You mean uninterested. Indifferent.”
    “That’s what I didn’t mean to seem to be.”
    “Although you were. But you won’t be when the show opens to widespread acclaim.”
    “I’m sure you’re right.”
    “I can sell you a ticket right now.”
    I reached for my wallet.
    “Actually,” he said, “you’ll probably want two, won’t you? One for you, one for your date?”
    “I don’t think so. I don’t have much cash left after the summer in New Mexico. The trip, all of that.”
    “Mm. Okay, then. One ticket for The Bald Soprano, opening night, third row center. Here you are.”
    “Thanks,” I said. Having bought a ticket, I felt that I had also bought a favor. “Now do you want to hear about my trip, my adventures, my experiences?”
    “Frankly, Peter,” he said, “we’re not interested.”