CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
“WILL JAMES BE JOINING US?” Professor Ilaria asked as if it were of little consequence to her, as though she simply needed to know how many chalices of wine or pomegranate extract to set at the banquet.
Finch answered, oblivious to her frenzied stare. “Ah, no. He’s busy.”
Elliott added, “He sends his regards.”
“Regards?” She repeated, not even noticing Finch was there or that he’d spoken. She barked at the stage hands and technicians to fix the lighting. “Light Designer, we need empyrean white, not tinsel silver! He’s not coming then?”
What had Professor Ilaria mentioned before? Elliott stammered, “Um–the fates and the furies sent him a vision. He had to do something important.”
“What did the Moirai and the Erinyes disclose to him?”
“Sorry, the what?” Elliott asked.
“The fates and the furies.” Her eyes locked on him.
Finch laughed, playing along. “I don’t think you’re meant to repeat the oracle of the Morah so he wouldn’t know.”
“Moirai,” Professor Ilaria corrected him, the first time she’d directly spoken to him since the elaborate banquet began.
Professor Ilaria mentioned that she believed the Erinyes hounded James due to matricide.
Thus, it was very important for her to know their premonition for him.
He was never properly cleansed after he caused the death of his parent.
She was raised by pagan leaders, Finch figured she understood more than him on the matter.
However, Elliott was mystified. Did she decide to mentor James because she thought he was a murderer?
Even worse...did she believe that James intentionally took his own mother’s life?
On stage, there was a performance of several actors, and in the wings of the theater there were instrumentalists, but she hardly deigned to glance at them. “It’s pronounced Moirai.”
“That’s what I said. The Morah are sworn to secrecy with oracles, aren’t they?” Finch asked. He only knew Greek mythology second hand from James.
She seethed with irritation. “Do not presume to know what Moirai are sworn to, if you can only speculate.” Professor Ilaria momentarily left the banquet table in a flurry of annoyance.
Elliott drank from James’s chalice to keep it from going to waste. The sweet, aged wine had a raw, overripe taste. Heady and fragrant.
He didn’t know what else to do in the awkward silence but sip.
A few students began to pick at berries and apples, complaining about staying up all night to endlessly paint and re-paint the set designs by hand. A couple of costume crew students lamented about hand-stitching the intricate robe Elliott didn’t want to wear at first, glowering at him then still.
Elliott drained the wine in three swallows, abashed.
The lighting designer tweaked the ambiance of the direct fixture lights, in case Professor Ilaria became upset about it again. The lighting crew followed after the designer, nibbling on the spiced cheeses.
The scenic painters and scenic carpenters double-checked that the imported Mediterranean paint had dried.
A handful of senior stage managers moaned about the expensive wine and how rare it was for them to find. “I drove six hours to Montréal for it, and she hasn’t even taken a sip. I think we bought the wrong one.”
“No, she insisted on this wine. It’s his favorite port.”
As she returned, Professor Ilaria’s face was powdered, her pale skin blemished with rubescence, as though she’d freshly been crying, but she clapped her hands for attention. Every student went obediently silent.
“All is well. All is perfect. Let the stars above bear the witness instead, shall we?” She declared, sweeping Elliott onto his feet, winking at him as though she were thrilled on his behalf. In her next breath, she announced, “Behold! Meet your winter Er?s!”
Expletives and groans resounded around the overcrowded banquet, and a trickle of students left the banquet early, grumbling how they’d broken their necks and spines for the part.
“The rope burn made my throat sore all week.”
“I was hung from a tree for almost three minutes. I could’ve died.”
“When did he audition?” One of the actors questioned her, a rare act of mutiny.
“Ah, he didn’t need to. I knew at once, he’d be our beauteous Er?s!”
A sparse applause occurred only after she staked her glare into each of them. She squeezed Elliott, and it dawned on him to make a magniloquent speech to the rows of make-up crew, prop makers, musicians, and dancers.
James would’ve smirked and winked in return, entertaining them with a well-timed quip to win them over. To assure them all that he was the only one that could exceed expectations in the role.
Finch spoke on Elliott’s behalf when Elliott couldn’t think of anything. “He’s speechless and honored. Nice work, Elliott. Congratulations.”
His words were fine enough to earn modest applause, and Elliott nodded, now stricken with fear at the prospect of speaking in front of everyone. How could he perform a winter recitation?
He couldn’t speak well in front of crowds. Not to mention, half of the student body despised him.
The libations began once Elliott stuttered through his thank you to Professor Ilaria, who grandly accepted the praise and credit for the banquet.
“Well, I orchestrated it all for you, dearest Er?s. I spared no expense for my finest student.”
“We spared no expense of our time and effort,” a junior mumbled into their chalice of Aegean wine. “The preparation took us all month.”
Finch rasped a cough. He fought back a hacking sound, not wanting to appear as sick as he was, grasping for some of the baklava. It was flaky and warm, and Elliott ate more than he should have as Professor Ilaria plied him with plates of ram until he built a thirst.
She presented him with refills of wine.
Elliott washed down the last of James’s replenished chalice. Then he reached for his own, but Finch grasped Elliott’s chalice.
He whispered, “Can I drink yours? I can’t consume alcohol with my medications.” Professor Ilaria had plentifully supplied wine to all those who were twenty-one and older. However, she had endowed Elliott with his own chalice of a medley of foraged fruits.
“Sure. I think it’s pomegranate extract mainly.” The extract appeared darkened, far more tenebrous than the wine, and therefore Elliott couldn’t distinguish which distinct bounty of fruits it was. “Maybe cranberry extract?”
A bearded senior slid into the seat on the other side of Elliott as everyone chatted and devoured the provisions. “How did you get the part?”
I almost died and Professor Ilaria took pity on me. Elliott wanted to tell the truth, but he figured he couldn’t. “I…um…I made an impassioned speech.”
“Speech? You mean you performed a monologue or a soliloquy?” A junior interrogated, as though they didn’t believe him. “James Wilde put in a word for you, didn’t he? I see you with him all the time.”
The senior cross-examined bluntly, “What theater productions have you acted in before?”
“Do you have any experience in the theater?”
His peers mumbled to each other, craning their necks to take a look at Elliott.
“He doesn’t even look like he’s acted before. He carries himself as though he’s afraid of himself.”
“Has he even read a script?”
Elliott kept his head down, hoping they’d lose interest and stop staring at him, questioning his every movement.
“He hasn’t been trained in antiquity.”
“He eats with his left hand. Is he messing with us?”
“I heard he didn’t even know the name Er?s.”
“He probably knew Er?s only as Cupid.”
“Why is he the lead again?”
Elliott felt a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m really proud of you, Elliott.” Finch smiled at him, his pallid skin was wan.
He dried it with a cloth. “When I first saw you in the rapids, you had bruises all over. You never backed down from a scrimmage on the ice in front of the coach. I’m glad you still have that fight in you to take on something like this. ”
“Thanks, Finch, but I didn’t pick any of this. It all sort of happened.” Elliott grinned back at him. “Regardless, you were one of the best hockey players on the team. That means a lot coming from you.”
Finch socked him in the arm. “Don’t get sentimental on me now. Are you going to sketch the banquet as a memory keepsake?” He posed, and they fell into a moment of passing the time, flipping over Elliott’s sketches.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” Finch asked quietly.
“What do you mean?” Elliott questioned.
“The sketches from five years ago. The stars were aligned to look like James, right?” Finch inquired, as though he’d always wanted to ask Elliott.
“Yes, but I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t mention it in front of him back then. I pretended not to know what it was.” Finch took a bite of the wild, bright strawberries. “This was really nice of you to invite me to the banquet.”
“No need to thank me at all,” Elliott said, feeling his cheeks warm. “About James, I…”
“He liked you. He was always watching you when you weren’t watching him.
I knew you two would be friends. I felt you would…
replace me, if that makes sense. I had to give you shit for it.
You needed tougher skin to befriend someone like him.
” Finch chuckled, his wheeze a bit thinned.
“I don’t think it would’ve mattered what we, or anyone, had to say about it.
James would’ve befriended you behind our backs, if he set his heart on it.
I just…I’m glad you’ve stuck beside him.
He needed someone to look out for him when I was sick and Knox left. Thanks for being with him.”
“James was the one who looked out for me.”
Finch squeezed his shoulder. “It was both of you. With how his mother and his grandfather died and how his father treated him afterward, I wanted to be there for him the way you were. I’m really thankful you were there when you were. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
Elliott felt his ears heat. “Honestly, I liked him, so it was easy. Everyone liked him.”
Finch snorted, reaching for the chalice. “He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s charming enough that no one minds it. That’s why.” Finch gazed wistfully in the distance, as if remembering the past. “We had all these big dreams of who we’d be when we were adults. His charm talked me out of a dark place.”
“A dark place?”
Elliott never heard the explanation. Finch had sipped the pomegranate sap of Elliott’s chalice. His eyes went wide.
Suddenly, Finch grasped his throat, as though he couldn’t breathe.