Charade - Chapter Five

Cary’s eyes opened at just after five thirty, fifteen minutes before his old travel alarm clock was due to ignite. He got up immediately, grabbed his shaving kit and slipped out of the dark room without disturbing Michael. The bathroom at the end of his floor was vacant and so he went about the business of shaving, brushing his teeth and showering in almost complete silence. Without the hissing of huge pipes running along and up the flesh tone tile wall, Cary would have been privy to the sounds of Norton Hall’s ventilation compressor outside the frosted glass of the windows.

His cool approach to the morning masked an enthusiasm for coming events, the first day of classes. His excitement stemmed from several things. First, back in Flushing, the first day of school always came with complications. He knew he would end up spending a lot of time ignoring kids making fun of his stuffy clothes and aloof bearing. The teachers would raise their eyebrows and universally chuckle at his name. And secondly, the expectations of his father had to be managed and kept in constant check for he knew his father demanded he secure straight academic perfection right from the start. Fortunately for Cary, the academic side of school came easy.

Tim Grant would say to his son something along the lines of, "I didn’t get all the breaks you’re getting, son. But you still can’t forsake anything. Push hard from the outset." Tim, a community college instructor, part time bartender and restaurant critic, did not want his lack of achievement repeated in his son so by force of will he thought Cary would naturally achieve so much more. There would be no half measures. The incompleteness of Tim’s professional and personal existence would not be repeated.

All of his father’s wisdom echoed around in his head as he walked down the dim hallway to his door. Slipping back into the dark room he quickly dressed, assembled his three notebooks for the morning and then stopped to consider whether he should wake Michael. While his roommate did not have a class at 7:40, Cary did not see anything resembling an alarm clock. He left it up to divine intervention and departed.

Over at the dining hall, the doors had just swung open as he walked up to the podium where a sleepy coed checked his card and waved him into the humid air of the food line. The staff, all rotund, matronly women with beige aprons and plastic shower caps stood over their long steam table waiting for what may come. For now, Cary was the only customer and he took a tray while considering his options.

"How come you look so wide awake, sugar?" The first woman asked. She pointed to him using an enormous spoon. "Look at this one here, Sharice."

Sharice, manning the scrambled egg vat smiled at Cary. "Oh, lordy. Look like the Mayor come for breakfast."

Cary for his part stayed as focused as possible on making a decision between scrambled eggs or biscuits smothered in something resembling newsprint left out in the front yard all winter. He slid on down to where another woman stood, arms crossed, over a huge, deep tray of industrially trimmed fruit pieces. "Good morning," Cary smiled, then pointed through the glass at the fruit. "I’ll just have some fruit this morning."

With a grunt, the fruit matron dished up a pile of fruit cubes and heavy syrup. He then slid out to the empty, well air conditioned dining room and addressed his coffee needs at the beverage island – a series of soft drink dispensing nozzles next to which loomed massive hoppers containing train loads of coffee, juice and milk. Cary took a nearby seat and started to page through his chemistry book.

After reviewing this and rifling through the West Aversham Examiner-Herald, Cary found himself surrounded by a buzzing mass of students. He glanced at the large digital clock above the tray conveyor and decided to make his way to his first class.

The door to the Chemistry classroom remained locked, though according to Cary’s wristwatch it was 7:40. While a whole pack of dazed freshmen waited in the hallway, Cary used the time to look over notes he had taken last night while reading the first chapter of the book, Elements In Chemical Understanding.

He stood calm and pleasantly detached while considering his neatly written pages. Most of the other students chattered away or leaned up against the bulletin boards with eyes closed, hoping to steal back some lost sleep. At 7:45 a small woman holding a stack of books in both hands came through the crowd and parked herself at the door, wedging the books between her and the wall. She fumbled for keys.

"Here. Allow me." Said Cary, taking the books from her.

"Thanks. You get an A for the day." She unlocked the door and took the books back, kicking the door wide open. "Come on in everybody. Sorry for running late." She rolled her eyes at Cary in a vaguely conspiratorial fashion and as he passed her by he nodded.

The room was one of the more modest auditoriums in the Rollins Building. It had stadium seating, with desk surface running from side to side, parallel to each terrace. Cary took a seat at the far end of the front row. Most of the others seemed to be satisfied with filling the seats from back to front. "There’s nothing quite like being late for the first day of class. Sets the tone." The small woman said, her voice filling the room easily. "You’ll notice I am fuzzy on the fringes, but very exact with facts, equations and theories. Come on, come on, people lets find a seat. Don’t worry about today. I promise not to give anybody a hard time." She waited for everyone to settle in a seat before turning to the huge bank of blackboards and scrawling "Dr. Westerberg." She turned and looked around by the desk, located a wooden box step and kicked it over to the board. "Not that any of you will ever care to visit, but here you go." Using the added elevation she wrote her office hours and phone number above her name. "Your syllabus will be sent out on the Chemistry 1 Listserv this afternoon."

Cary took note of this, writing down the office information inside the front cover of his chemistry notebook and making a note to go by for a physical copy of the syllabus. The girl seated next to him looked at his fountain pen, then at him and screwed together a smirky sort of smile before consulting the window to see if anything outside might be of better amusement. He thought she looked marginally less serious than most in the crowd populating the terraces of the hall.

His first class was rolling and as it went on it seemed as though his enthusiasm for it began to rub off on the older-looking co-ed immediately to his south. She started to pay attention and even produced a pen and took a few notes. Pleased Dr. Westerberg didn’t lecture from the book, Cary also felt slightly (and guiltily) disappointed.

When the professor suggested they find one or two students as study partners, a veiled implication meaning someone with which to share notes, the girl next door began giving Cary the serious "eye," even to the point of tossing in a flirtatious grin.

After class ended, somewhere around 8:20 or so when the little woman got down off her hoist, disappearing through the door before anyone was the wiser, the girl next door put a hand on Cary’s forearm. "She’s pretty crazy, isn’t she?"

Cary looked at the hand on his forearm, then looked into her green eyes. "She is a bit of a card. But she really knows her stuff." He did not like the serious tone of his reply and stuck out his hand. "I’m Cary Grant. A pleasure to meet you, Miss …"

She snorted. "Right, and I’m Carole Lombard."

Cary had heard this name before, but usually out of someone much, much older, like his mother’s agent. In fact, he normally didn’t get a reaction out of people his own age when it came to his name. His style and demeanor usually caught their attention. Fortunately for him most kids his age had no idea who the other Cary Grant had been much less be able to come up with the name of Carole Lombard. "Ah," he uttered, "film student, perhaps?" He stood up.
Carole Lombard looked up at him and narrowed her eyes. "What’s your real name?" She stood up and gathered her book, laptop, cell phone and Mickey Mouse pen, shoving them all into her backpack.

"I can understand your, um, no, really, that’s my name." She eased by him and he followed her to the door. "And your name, your real name?"

"Rebecca." She called over her shoulder.

Outside Rollins, Rebecca asked him if he would like to be her study partner. "After all," she stated in an unrestrained way, "I do think Carole Lombard and Cary Grant made an outstanding screen couple."

Although Cary never presented himself as any sort of an authority on his Hollywood version, he did have a relatively decent file to reference when it came to trivia, though co-stars always a roll of the dice. He had spent much of his life hearing about them from adults trying to make jokes. While he knew the famous Mr. Grant had made movies with Carole Lombard, they would not be on the tip of any casual fan’s tongue. "Are you sure they made a good team, Rebecca? I don’t know much about it, but you may want to check and see if they ever made a movie together." As they walked through the arches of the Union, he was happy these types of conversations did not happen more often. They walked out on to Mullen Piazza and he noted Rebecca’s propensity to nervously tuck a shock of long, straight black hair behind her left ear.

She huffed, then began to rattle off trivia at an astonishing rate. "The Eagle and The Hawk. 1933. Fredrick March was top bill. In Name Only. 1939. Lombard replaced Hepburn opposite Grant." She shifted her book bag from one shoulder to another. "Don’t you know your own filmography?"

"Sorry. I don’t know much about it at all." Cary smiled, knowing he had watched those movies at one time or another, but most likely years ago. They were not high in the Grant body of work.

"I mean, like, how can you not with your name? What was it, some cruel hoax by your parents?"

"Um, no. Actually I am named after my Uncle on my mother’s side of the family."

"And no one thought about the obvious?"

"Not that I am aware of." They reached the front door of Francis Portage. "Are you going in as well?

She looked up, then swung her backpack around. "No, I’ve got to get over to Stinson for my next class. Here…" She produced a pen and took Cary’s hand twisting it so the palm faced up. "My number. Call me later and we can talk about Chemistry. It’s going to be a total bitch unless we join forces." She backed down the library steps, "And you’re exactly right. I’m a film major. How’d you guess that?" Rebecca waved, turned and walked away leaving Cary with a bemused expression.

He looked down at his palm marked up with a four-digit phone number, then set his notebooks and book up on the stone railing of the east portico. Producing his pen, Cary transferred the phone number to his chemistry notebook and put an exclamation point behind it. Women had not traditionally offered him their numbers and so he wondered if college did something to young ladies. Perhaps the academic landscape invigorated them with a confidence and liberty not encountered during high school. At that moment he saw a girl dressed in all black, with bright orange hair skateboard across Mullen heading for the Union. For a second he felt like he had bounced back into high school and that the whole exchange with Rebecca was, in fact, a daydream borne out of a scary feeling of sudden isolation. "Nonsense," he said, picking up his stuff and entering Francis Portage on the way to read his Visual Comm assignment.