"When you set a trap, try not to fall in it yourself." – Hungarian proverb.
From the moment Dan walked into the art history classroom he felt lost. The classroom was large amphitheater filled with maple chairs. There were exactly two hundred and fifty. The professor's lectern was located on a dais in the center and there was a large screen in the back so that he could illustrate his points. Apparently, the projector was hidden somewhere in the ceiling and the remote control was hidden in the dais.
Never before had Dan been in a classroom that was this large. At Trinity, the classes were always capped at fifteen. In his senior year creative writing seminar, there had been only eight other young men who were writing poetry and short stories. Here at Harvard, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the country, it seemed that every third student he met was writing a novel, a chapbook, or a collection of short stories.
He had learned over the course of the last two days that classes at Harvard were never limited to the lectures which the professor would give for his audiences. There were always a section that met that same afternoon in one of the libraries or in another building altogether where a graduate student would preside over the group of students and review with them everything they had learned over the course of the previous two hours for another two hours. Every student's class time was doubled. If the section teacher assigned homework, the two hours necessary to complete one day's worth of homework would be turned into four or even eight
The previous night, after his conversation with Nate about Blair, Dan had been sitting at his desk until four o'clock the following morning typing furiously at his computer. Was he writing his great American novel or that essay for Vanity Fair about New York private schools that had been commissioned two weeks before? Not at all. He was slaving over his calculus homework, writing out his lab homework for his astronomy class, and then writing up a report in Latin on the First Book of Virgil's Aeneid.
Compared to Nate, whose study habits included multi-tasking while watching the TV and checking his e-mail fifty times an hour, Dan's were rock solid. Ever since his parents had enrolled him at Trinity during the eighth grade, he had stayed with the same routine. As soon as he got home from class, he would commence his homework and not rise from where he was until everything was completed. Some people would have called these habits obsessive. He viewed them as excellent.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the class began filling up with students. He had seen some of them around campus, but most of the others were strangers. Some of them wore stylish suits and ties, others wore paint-spattered jeans and clothes that would have been more appropriate at a punk rock concert.
He made his way down to the front row and found a seat that was facing the dais. From this particular angle, the professor would be a colossus the size of Michelangelo's David.
He took a pencil, a spiral notebook , and shut off his phone. He dropped his briefcase onto the floor.
The moment he leaned back into the chair, he felt someone tap him on the shoulder.
Turning around, he noticed a girl wearing a checkered coat, a white blouse, a black skirt, leather gloves, fire engine red stockings, and six inch heels. Her eyes were covered by sunglasses.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
"Yes, you can. Could you move over one seat?"
"I'm sorry, but seats are not assigned here," he said trying to make his stubbornness apparent in the most delicate way.
"I'm not stupid, Humphrey," the girl's voice turned steely. "I always sit front row center."
Recognizing Blair as the possessor of the voice, he moved one seat over. He watched her take the coat off and draped it over the back of the chair, but the sunglasses stayed. No matter how many winks he gave, she refused to take them off. He wondered if she was hung over or, worse, had forgotten to put on her makeup.
He was about to say something to that effect when lights in the lecture hall began to dim. The buzzing in his ears which had begun ten minutes before metamorphosed into expectant silence.
At least a two thousand pairs of eyes were fixed on the stage where the deity would appear in all of his radiant glory. Dan remembered a time to a New York Philharmonic concert and sat at the edge of his seat waiting for the conductor to appear. He was expecting one of the great high priests of music, but the man who appeared was short and rather gangly with a nervous tick that made him wink at the most inappropriate.
The wait seemed to take hours, but the professor did appear. He was a relative tall man dressed in a pressed navy suit with a pearl stickpin tie. He looked over his audience imperiously through his bespectacled brown eyes and approached the lectern where he placed his papers with a loud crash. "That was to get your attention," he noted slyly and then pulled out copies of the syllabus that two young women seated at the end of each row were asked to distribute. "This," he remarked pointing at the fifteen pages of cream paper, "is to keep your attention."
The professor introduced himself as Dr. Wolfgang Schneider, one of the foremost experts on Renaissance art and proceeded to list his publications. Dan saw a smile of recognition on Blair's face. Unlike most of the other students, she knew who he was.
There were the usual preliminaries that preceded any class on the first day of school. Dr. Schneider went over the rules, the projects, and the papers that would be due. He explained to the students that each one of them would have to purchase one art book and visit the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' Titian exhibit and write a report on that. "I don't want you to tell me what you saw," he emphasized. "I want you to tell me what you saw, how it made you feel, and what you believe the artist is trying to say. Any questions?"
Blair's hand immediately shot up. "With all due respect, Dr. Schneider," she began. "Is it truly necessary for us to talk about how we feel about a Titian? A Titian is a Titian is a Titian."
"Miss," Dr. Schneider gazed down on her angrily. "A Titian is a Titian, but art is ultimately what you and I invest in it."
Blair raised her hand again in protest, but Dr. Schneider had moved to a leggy, Scotch red-head who questioned him whether Early Modern wasn't a more appropriate name for the art that they were to examine over the course of the semester. "You say potato and I say potahto," Schneider with a twinkle in his eye. "I was taught that the proper term is Renaissance and that is the term we will use even if Early Modern is a much more accurate name."
Other questions followed. It was only after Dr. Schneider had explained his attendance policy for the fourth time that he took out a legal pad and asked his now captive audience: "In his treatise on painting, Leonardo Da Vinci states that there are ten things you can see and which are easily seen with the naked eye. What are they?"
Instantly, fifty hands rose in the air.
Dr. Schneider scanned the audience and called on the red-headed alto. "Yes, Miss Potahto."
"Darkness and light, body and colour, shape and location, distance and closeness, motion and rest," the red-head replied.
"Correct."
"With all due respect to Miss Potatoe," Blair had raised her hand and continued without Dr. Schneider calling on her. "I believe that the translation is incorrect. According to my translation, they are darkness and brightness, substance and colour, form and place, remoteness and nearness, movement and rest."
"Miss…" Dr. Schneider began.
"Waldorf," Blair corrected him refusing to be called by the pseudonym of an artist she detested.
"Miss Waldorf," Dr. Schneider continued. "I asked for the ten things you can see as named by Leonardo. I did not ask for a translation. If I wanted that, I would be teaching an Italian class."
"But…" Blair's voice in protest.
"It's not worth it," Dan gave her a side whisper. "You can talk to him after class about it."
He sat back in his chair fully expecting that she would either completely fly off the handle and state outright exactly what she thought of Dr. Schneider or that she would turn on him and tell him that it was a battle well worth the fight. Neither of these things happened. Blair took her pen back, smiled graciously at Dr. Schneider, and began taking notes in a florid hand that made Dan's look like the chicken scrawl it actually was.
"Can you believe what that Scot said?" Blair exclaimed as they made their way to the door. "It was like she wanted to show me up. The gall. The..."
"I know that you don't take advice from strangers," Dan began. "But she did what Dr. Schneider asked her. She answered the question."
"She didn't just answer the question," Blair's voice rose another octave in annoyance. "Didn't you see the provocative way she crossed those pale legs of hers as she answered the question? It was like she was bribing him!"
"She was answering the question," Dan continued in the same calm voice that he had used before. "That's all."
"No. She wasn't."
"Yes, she was."
"Fine, Humphrey," Blair huffed. "But she used the wrong translation."
"The wrong translation?" Dan rolled his eyes. There was no winning with her.
"Yes. The one that I've read is much more poetic, don't you think? Hers was so commonplace. It was almost idiotic."
"It sounded fine to me."
"You did not just say that," Blair's face suddenly went up in flames as he opened the lecture hall door for her. "You of all people should know better than to acknowledge hackwork like that."
"Come on, Blair," Dan cajoled her as he touched her hand to calm her down.
"No," Blair pulled herself away. "I still think that you should have supported my view."
"Why?"
"Because you're a poet."
"Great. Do you have anything else that you want to say about what happened back there or are we through for now?"
"Don't you remember what I told you last night about people that get in my way?"
"You didn't go into specifics."
"I destroy them," Blair stated flatly.
They continued wandering through the building, making their way down to flights of stairs, and found themselves at the front door. Blair was still talking, but Dan wasn't listening. He was much more focused on the last thing she had said. He wondered how it was possible for someone so intelligent and beautiful to be so full of herself as to think that she could destroy another person simply because she didn't happen to use the correct translation when answering a simple question on the first day of class. Was it possible that this young woman whom he had met the other night at The Thirsty Scholar was nothing more than a conceited, spoiled brat who thrived on watching other people suffer? And if she was, what would account for the anger that seemed to pour of out of every cell in her body as she recounted over and over that infamous incident? Was she obsessed? Was she possessed? Was there something else that Nate was keeping from him and not telling him?
The mystery seemed to deepen before him. There wasn't just one Blair Waldorf. Like a Russian nesting doll or a Chinese trick box, there was always another Blair Waldorf that climbed out as soon as the doll was opened. Over lunch at a vegetarian restaurant at Harvard Square, her mood had shifted entirely and she had begun picking his mind about Audrey Hepburn movies. Considering that he derided them as stupid and girly, he failed miserably at the task.
"Oh, Humphrey," Blair's voice dripped with sweet, saccharine pity. "We're going to have to remedy that situation at some point, aren't we?"
"Why would you want to change my taste in movies?" He questioned. "I like The Double Life of Veronique."
"You only like The Double Life of Veronique because that is the only thing you have been exposed to," Blair noted. "If you watched some of the movies I like, you might find that you enjoy them."
"I'm sorry, Blair, but what could I possibly enjoy in a musical version of Pygmalion?"
"I don't know, Humphrey," she leaned her head against her gloved hand and sent him a wistful smile. "Maybe you would learn that people are not always what they appear to be and that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover."
"What on earth is that supposed to mean?" Dan noted sarcastically.
"That you shouldn't judge others based on the movies they watch or the people they decide to excoriate."
"First of all, I'm not judging you," Dan protested.
"Oh really? Then why did you go out of your way to defend that Scottish piece of trash?"
"Blair," he said looking her straight in the eye. "I was just pointing out how ridiculous it was for you to even go after someone just because they answered a question before you did and with a worse translation."
"It's not ridiculous," Blair pointed out.
"It is."
"Look," Blair sighed. "I really think that you're being the ridiculous one by not seeing that incident from my perspective."
"And why should I?" Dan's voice had suddenly become angry. "Why should I even care?"
"Because you and I are friends."
"We're not friends," Dan snapped. "Three hours of conversation at a bar does not a friendship make."
"True, but even acquaintances support each other. Haven't you read The Post Office Girl?"
"Of course, I have."
"Then you know," Blair's voice had taken on a didactic strain, "that the baron tried to protect that young woman from the rumors and even warned her about them. Isn't that what friends do, Humphrey?"
"Yes, that's true," Dan conceded.
"Then why aren't you supporting me in taking her down?"
"I really don't see why you need to take her down over something like this," Dan protested. "Look, I don't punch guys that look at me the wrong way. Do I?"
"No," Blair agreed.
"And I don't get ticked when someone answers a question before I do, right?"
"Right," she sighed.
"All that I'm saying is that you should give that girl a chance. Like I said in class, pick your battles."
"But what if…?"
"Don't torture yourself, Blair," he patted her hand. "She's not worth it."
A/N: Thanks to all of the fabulous Dairlings that have been reading, favoriting, reviewing, and following this story. You motivate to churn out the chapters much faster than I ever did before. Please let me know what you thought of this one. Did you like it? Do you think Blair will take down the red-head? Please let me know what you think in a review!