The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

A Date with Lots of Talk About Dating

Previously: "Pulp Friction" 

It's a crazy idea--trapping Chelsea Cooper in Dane Matthias's mask, the way you've trapped Dane inside Gordon Black's, and Gordon inside a mask of you.

In fact, it's so crazy that--

That it couldn't possibly work.

Oh well. You lay under a desk, grip the side of your face, and pull.

* * * * *

"Wow, you clean up nice," Eva says as you lead her out the door.

"Thanks. So do you," you retort. She stops cold at that, but you grin and nudge her, and so she laughs.

Eva always looks nice, but she seems a little more spiffed up tonight. There's nothing especially fancy about her dress: It vaguely recalls a sailor suit, being white with a thick blue stripe around the hem, and with two wide blue strips running up the side of the blouse. But an air of freshness lingers about her: sea salt and ozone and lavender, maybe.

If you were on a date with her as yourself--rather than impersonating Caleb--you'd probably fumble about spasmodically. But just as you found it easy to relax when you had coffee with her earlier in the week, you find it easy and natural to open the car door for her, and to set the climate controls so that it's neither too hot nor cold, to ask her if she's hungry--

And to tell her, as you pull into the street, "You know, if I'm paying for this meal by myself, we're gonna be swinging by the BargainMart to pick up some Pop-Tarts."

She double-takes at that. "Oh. Well, I wasn't expecting you to, you know, actually, uh--"

"You're offering to help pay?"

"Well-- I guess so."

You laugh. "Okay, I'm not actually serious about the cold Pop-Tarts for dinner," you say. "And I can pay for it all if we go to Besandwitched and not someplace really expensive."

"Oh, that's fine," she says, though her tone is a little uncertain, as though she's not sure there's not some joke hiding behind your words. "That's actually about what I was expecting. But you know, I can pay for my own--"

"I'm not gonna let you do that," you say firmly. "I've got enough to pay for us both."

"But from the way you were talking--"

"Oh, that was just me talking. Underpromising and overperforming. I bet Besandwitched sounds pretty good compared to cold Pop-Tarts."

She nods, but you can tell this wasn't the best opening gambit to play with her.

But what does it matter? She's on a date with Caleb, not with you.

* * * * *

Besandwitched--or "Pentagrams on Rye," as some of your friends like to call it--is actually a pretty decent place to eat, despite having the cheesiest décor in town. It's a soup, salad and sandwich shop of good but inexpensive quality close to the university. Its main claim to fame, though, is its being decorated heavily with occult motifs. So you and Eva find yourselves seated by a wall that has an unnervingly immense, man-faced moon gazing down at you, as though it's trying to peer over your shoulders at the menu.

After placing your orders, you rest your elbow on the table and your chin in your hand. "So Will told me you almost backed out of our date tonight."

"No I didn't," she says indignantly.

"Then I guess he was exaggerating. Well, he always is. He said he overheard Chelsea putting the screws to you about me."

She rolls her eyes. "He didn't overhear anything, he invited himself to sit at our table in the library. And I don't care what Chelsea says--"

"I wish you did. I wish you felt massive pressure to break our date, but you held firm, because you really wanted to go out with me."

She smiles, but not warmly, at that. "Chelsea can make all the noise she wants, but she can't tell me what to do."

"I'm glad to hear it." You pause. "Did you hear that Chelsea set Gordon on him? On Will, I mean."

"Oh, Gordon!" she exclaims, and her eyes light up. "No, I didn't hear about that. But oh my God, have you been hearing about what's going on with him?"

It annoys you to see her change the subject like that--you wanted to hear what else she might say about you--but this sounds fun, so you raise your eyebrows in a querying way. And so she tells you the gossip.

It's all very fragmented, but the gist of it is that Gordon Black has been acting like he's hopped up on goofballs: laughing and smiling and joking--Gordon never laughs or smiles or jokes, that you have ever seen--and ditching all his usual friends for new ones. "In the cafeteria yesterday, get this, he was sitting with Christian Knouse and those guys. And it looked like they were all having fun!"

"So? Doesn't Gordon have fun? I mean, usually?"

"Not like this, and not with guys like Christian Knouse. He's usually just grumpy, sits around not talking. Jessica says he's like one of those big, frowny Easter Island statues. But yesterday--" She covers her face with her hands and laughs. "Well, it all started with Chelsea."

"Doesn't it usually?"

"Okay, I don't guess you know, since I never see you in the cafeteria or anything, but he always brings Chelsea her food over to her, because she's sitting at the table lording it over the rest of us. But yesterday, he sits down with his tray and hasn't got anything for her, and he starts talking to the guys, and Chelsea just stares at him hard, and finally says 'Oh, I guess I'm getting my own lunch today,' because she's this totally passive-aggressive bitch when she wants to be. 'Oh, I guess I'm getting my own lunch today.' And Gordon says--" She bites her lower lip and grips the edge of the table. "He says, 'Hey, when you get your tray, can you bring me another chocolate milk?' and goes right back to talking to the other guys."

"I thought you said he ate with Christian and them."

"Yeah, because of that! Chelsea started screaming at him, and he just stared at her, and his eyes got bigger and bigger, and then he said, 'Man, this is freaky!' or something like that, and she started hitting him in the shoulder. And he didn't get mad or anything, he just looked over her head and said, 'Hey, there's Christian, I gotta talk to him and those guys'." And he gets up and leaves."

"What did Chelsea do?"

"After she picked her jaw up off the floor, she stormed out without eating. But I guess it worked out or something." Her expression fades to one of disappointment. "We all saw them after school, heading out to the parking lot early, and they were holding each other real close." Now her expression turns shrewd. "It makes me wonder if there's something else going on there, and if Chelsea isn't wondering the same thing."

"Like what?" you ask, though you can only summon up a fraction of the interest Eva is showing.

She gives you an appraising gaze, like she's not sure you're smart enough to understand what she's going to say next. Evidently, she decides you are, or that she can dumb it down enough for you, for she leans forward to speak very quietly.

"You know, they've been going together for a long time, and Gordon's never been happy around her. And I don't blame him. She's horribly high-maintenance, always demanding he do all this shit without being told to do it, and to do it perfectly. Like, did you know she expects him to give her little presents without knowing that she wants them? There was this one weekend, where they were going to a party--"

There follows a tedious anecdote about a string bracelet, a omnivorous puppy, and a cataclysmic argument at Maria Vasquez's house after the first got eaten by the second. "I heard they actually broke up over it, for almost an hour," she concludes. "But I don't believe it. I think that if he ever does break up with her, it'll be the happiest day of his life, and Chelsea knows it, and that's why she's was acting real affectionate with him after school."

You say nothing for a moment, then confess you've no idea what any of what she said means.

"I mean," she says, "that if Gordon finds another girl, she won't be as awful as Chelsea is, and that'll make him happy. And that's such a rare emotion for him it'll blow his mind, leave him acting like he's high or something. Which is how he's been acting, you know." You tries to look very wise.

"So you've been telling me."

"Uh huh. He's high and he's happy and he doesn't give a shit what Chelsea says or does to him. Like he's basically cut his ties to her. And I think that's what she's afraid of."

"And this is what you and your friends have been talking about?"

She blinks. "Well, not yet, we haven't. It's only just occurred to me." She gets a faraway look in her eye, then focuses back on you. She smiles. "You're so easy to talk to, Caleb, and so smart." She grabs and squeezes your hand.

So you let her do the rest of the talking through dinner, and afterward, and that seems to leave her very happy, though it leaves you rather more exhausted than excited, even after she lets you kiss her again in the car as you're dropping her off.

* * * * *

"There you are!" Caleb exclaims when you open the basement door. "The fuck has been keeping you?"

"Your date," you retort. "And what are you doing here? I stopped by your house but Dane's car wasn't there. It was only a hunch I'd find you here instead."

"I'da called, but you have my phone. Give it back. And get out of that mask. We've got a test to make."

"What kind of test?"

"I cracked it," he replied with a wide, gleaming grin. "That goddamned spell. I got it to work finally!" He picks up one of those metal strips from the table and hands it to you.

Blue letters seem to float above its surface, over the runes: CALEB JACOB JOHANSSON.

* To continue: "Of Two Minds" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"