Ye Olde Lorde and Ye Olde Lady of the Manor is still chuzzahing, they are still asking each disparate quarter of the room which side of the room so therefor desires to be serv-eed first must express ye desire in chant. There is a raucous ovation. Jennifer Flood and Miss Arkansas are cheering as if they are in a varsity pep rally. One side of the room is performing the wave. Again I try to ask Harmony to avail more details about her exclusive tete-a-tet with Lynn Minton and again she is reticent before standing up and cheering when the Lord gesticulates in our directions. I’ve already decided that this is cheesy. I’m already in somewhat of a sour mood. From the across the table Jennifer Flood shoots me a look as if to say don’t you have anything better to do with your life than haggle my roommate to death.
Harmony is smiling. She tells me this is great.
"Haven't you ever been to a madrigal dinner before?"
Harmony says no.
"Back home there's this school that I really wanted to go to that all my friends go to and, even though my father has taught in their school district for twenty years. I mean, that's where literally all my friends attend and they have this huge madrigal dinner every year, I mean, the high school more or less closes down and they have people literally camping overnight for tickets."
Harmony does a little jig with her eyelashes as if to say wow. She is looking at me like she is paying attention and she is not paying attention at the same time. From across the table I can hear Nat pontificate that Tremont literally washed the floor with Limestone's JV wrestling squad.
I want to ask Harmony about her school. All she has hinted is that it is rather large and she is in the process of taking several Advanced Placement classes.
She turns to me
"Does your school have a madrigal dinner?"
I try telling Harmony that the school I go to is lower income. That my class alone will be truncated by a third. That the school I attend we are more or less groomed to be statistics.
"No, my school really doesn't have much of anything."
From down the table I can hear Nat huff a muffled cough once again. It sounds like he is warbling something about future welfare recipients. Harmony gives me a look with her eyes that says ignore him while Jennifer Flood is giving me the same look stating if you can't play with the Big Boys go back to the Kiddie table
I have finished my soup. I have asked Nat to please pass the God damn rolls at least 12 times. It doesn't even bother me that Banky's lips have in retrospect, monopolized as much time on Harmony's cheekbones as that of my own. I can’t understand why one second Harmony seems madly in love and the next she is completely apathetic about my advances. I still have not availed to Harmony about my on-phone tiff with her roommate who is all three feet to my left. Harmony still seems that she is not interested in anything I have to say.
I look up. There are two rolls left.
"Excuse me." I tell Harmony, standing up, pushing my chair in behind the bottom hem of the table. I walk behind Nat. The moment I reach for the platter with the two tolls Nat picks it up.
"Would you like a roll?"
At first I think Nat is talking to me. I tell him Thanks. Instead is holding the platter up in front of Miss Arkansas. She smiles and says yes. Nat then takes the last roll and bites into it.
He is from my hometown. He is the closest thing I will have to an actual human body to remember this trip. He is the person who won the young columbus contest one whole day before I did, the person whose visage was in the paper
I say nothing to Nat. He is chewing and making abbreviated mmmming sounds with his lips. I say nothing. Nat takes the napkin in his lap and swipes it across his lips.
"I'm sorry did you want a bees-quit? You should have asked politely now there are no more left." He is talking to me like I am four.
Miss Arkansas is smiling a devious smirk.
I say sorry. I say excuse me. In a way I was hoping to still rectify thing with Nat. In a way I a trying to apologize for last night when I snapped at him. In a way I still want to have a brother to drive out to in the country in a couple of months once I get my license with a shoebox of photos to reminisce over this experience we have shared.
I sit down. I look at my empty bowl of soup. I am dazed. I am lost in the folded haze of the room. The Jester passes our table and makes a little sad face in my direction when he looks at me. I can hear Nat laughing. I swipe my hand in his direction. Harmony is looking at me like she is going to cry.
I realize that I still have not told Harmony about Harrods during the day. I turn into the direction of my makeshift bride.
"I know you girls were all at the interview-thingie this afternoon but you should have seen it. I mean, Harrods, Harrods was really amazing, wasn't it Nat."
Nat continues to chomp on the roll and ignore me. Nat knows that inside Harrod's I saw him hitting on eight graders in Daisy's group.
Both Harmony and Jennifer Flood nod. Nat is sucking on his fingers after finishing his final bee-quit.
"And the food. I mean, they had this huge fresh fish and deli section. I mean,
“So Nat, I saw you looking at the fresh meat. Why don’t you tell us all about the fresh meat at Harrods.”
Nat again pretends he doesn’t hear me. Harmony shoot me a look again. She is talking to me with her eyelashes. She is telling me to stop it. Just stop it.
"Yeah, in fact Nat spent alot of time looking at the fresh meat. I tell ya Nat, there's nothing like a fourteen ol' rack.:
Harmony is finally smiling. Both Jennifer Flood and Nat's girlfriend seemed intrigued. Apparently they were in the interview with the British kids today as well only Lynn Minton didn't seem to pay much attention to anything they were saying. I am letting Nat's proclivities from this afternoon go. I wonder if I should tell Harmony about Longhorn and Dimas and how they stole a bottle of port they filched although I fear that someone at this table might snitch. I think about the cool conversation I had with Tamera about Artemis and dendrites. I think about Jill and her fellow hot Italian girl friend holding up a diaphnous kind of lace in the lingerie section and then laughing."Yeah, in fact Nat spent alot of time looking at the fresh meat. I tell ya Nat, there's nothing like a fourteen ol' rack.:
I try not to picture Harmony trying on lingerie.
I try to to picture what she is wearing under her outfit.
I am getting a subtle hardon.
I cross my legs.
"Yeah, it was crazy, you know my friend Mark from bus #4 whom I'm always hanging out with."
Harmony smiles and says yes. She addresses Mark as Denis' friend.
"Yeah, actually, he was wearing shorts and Harrods has some kind of ass-backwards dress code and he was asked by a constable to leave."
The girls are finally looking at me as if I have their attention. Nat says something into his arm pit. I can hear him mentioning Mark name stating that the reason your chap Mark was kicked out of Harrods was because Mark is a butt. He says that Mark is a butt something-something. He is saying something about the reason why Harrods exiled Mark.
I look towards Nat. Harmony shoots me a look like please, don't instigate another conversation like the one that happened last night
I point at Nat. I don't mean to snap but I point at everyone-knows-what-a-chink is Nat.
"Don't be talking about Mark."
Again Nat says Mark who? Again, as he did last night when he claimed that I went to a high school full of Niggers Nat feigns naivete. Everyone at the table is looking at me. I want to stand up. I want to point my finger into Pflderer's face and tell him to shut the fuck up. I want to crumble up my napkin like a white rose and toss it in his directions and tell him lets go. I want to tell him that I don't care about the discipline bus anymore as I get up and tell him to shut the fuck up. As the Lord and Lady and harlequin of the manor pause. Liz Madigan shoots me a look from across the table as I spontaneous hurl my limbs on top of Nat Varsity Tremont wrestling frame. Before I know it I am pummeling the shit out of him. Something seems to break the moment the curvature of my knuckles embrace the angular feature of his nose. Harmony is telling me to stop. Jennifer Flood and Beau have moved to the far end of the table. Miss Arkansas is screaming at the top her already-shrilled out vocal range. Several dishes and a cup of wassail goes flying. I have Nat pinned down on all fours. He is not even fighting back. Several members of the Big Ten are addressing me as Harry telling me to chill. I have not been in a fight since Aron Rothman earlier this year when I easily could have gotten expelled from school and Coach Man was walking down the hallway the way he always walked and pretended he didn't see anything. I am not going to let Nat get away with talking about the social-economic purlieu of my academic environment.
I am not going to let him disparage anymore people I care about.
I am not going to let get away with his shit.
I am not going to let him win.
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