The Art of Reasoning
Chapter III: Chicken
"So what did you think?"
"Absolutely breathtakingly brilliant," I breathed as Sean and I walked out at the head of the little group of CUA students. "Seriously I have never been to anything like it."
"Nor will you again," Sean said, and I could tell he was pleased with my reaction. Heck, who wouldn't be?
"Unless I go to Latin Mass next month," I reminded him, pausing to wait for the walking signal to turn green in Judicial square. "You know, you should start a Facebook group for Latin Mass, and see who signs up," I teased.
"What an excellent idea! I believe I shall," (yes, he talks like that. He's the Emperor for a reason.)
"Then you can make this regular," I said, finally starting across the road, and waiting for the others on the far side. What can I say? I'm a fast walker. I've long legs for my thin 5'8" frame. "I'd definitely come back next month."
"Great! So will you be walking with us tonight?"
"Sure."
'Walking' was an evening ritual by now. There were four of us—Rachel (my roommate), Sean, and Brad (another friend) got together pretty much every evening for walks. I have no idea how it started, but it's a good way of keeping any of us from being tempted to go out partying at night. We all met in Regan's downstairs lounge at around 11:30 and wandered about campus till around 1:30, with no particular destination in mind. Just… walking, and chatting about whatever came to mind. Usually it ended up with Rachel and Brad talking about pop culture and random hilarity, and Sean and I discussing the hierarchy of the church… what excuse can I give?
We got off the Metro at the CUA stop at around six-thirty, and headed over in a group for dinner at the Pryz… earning our share of stares, all of us in suits and dresses as we were. Thankfully the rain that had been coming down earlier had held off mostly, so though the ground was damp, that was all.
We met Abby purely by chance in the line, so she joined us at our table (and probably felt right out of place in her casual clothes, now that I think back on it). "How was the Mass?" she said, sipping from her Diet Pepsi.
"Awesome," I said around a mouthful of chicken. Pryz food is terrible, but the chicken is good. "I wish I'd studied Pre-Vatican II Mass, though, so I could tell what all the symbolism was. It was still really neat."
"Mmm," she said, having just taken a bite of hamburger.
"What about the thing going on at the Music School? Did Dr. Noone really show up?" I said, attacking the chicken again.
"Oh yes," she said with a grin. "Everyone was in costume, it was amazing…" and she was off, chattering away. Thankfully I didn't have any questions, since my mouth was full, and she really didn't expect me to respond anyways. Our esteemed Dr. Noone, philosophy teacher, had apparently gone as the Italian Mafia and played the harmonica, which I found so amusing I had to reach for my cran-raspberry juice to stop from choking. There were some skeletal trombonists, a pair of pirates, and the nearby middle school had put on a ghostly children's choir.
"…but the best by far was the violinist, I've never heard anyone play like that before!" Abby went on, her brown eyes dancing with excitement. "It was amazing, Carol, I wish you could have been there—" and she went on to fumble for words, including (but not limited to) 'haunting', 'exquisite', and 'so unbelievably sad I wanted to cry, right there, though that would have seemed dumb'.
"Well, who was it?" I said impatiently. "AJ?" I asked, naming the one violin performance major I knew from Regan, though he was a freshman and it wasn't likely him.
Abby frowned. "No, he went with me to see it, it couldn't have been him," and only then did I realize she hadn't even stopped to think about who it might have been. "Maybe one of the Music professors? I don't know all of them, you'd have to ask someone in the School."
"Well what did he look like?" I demanded, and was met by an eloquent shrug.
"Tall, and skinny," were my only rewards. "Sheesh, what am I supposed to say? Not like I had the best seats in the house, and besides, he was in Zorro costume—black hat, mask, cape, sword, and all, so I doubt I'd know what he looked like even if I were closer."
"Zorro?" I said with a grin, remembering the next movie was coming out in only a couple weeks. "Sounds like a man after my own heart," I added with a sly grin that earned an evil glare.
"Noone would be jealous," she said, her glare evaporating immediately into a grin. "He covets the position as your favorite professor."
"Oh, pshh," I said, but I couldn't help smiling anyways. "Zorro's probably a senior over at the Music school anyways, and one I wouldn't recognize if I crashed into him at that."
"Oh, so you're going to just let it go?" Abby challenged. "What's this I hear? Carol not following up on something."
"You…you!" I said, waving my arm widely. "You just wait when I have it figured out, I'll be all evil and keep it from you."
"You would, too," Abby said, standing up and picking up her tray. "Come on, I have to finish my humanities paper for tomorrow."
"Did it three weeks ago," I said smugly, but stood up anyways. She rolled her eyes. "Alright, alright, I'm coming…"
Fifteen minutes found me back up over the hill, past the chapel with its ever-present organ music, up two flights of stairs and collapsed in a chair in my dorm room, back at the laptop. Ava wasn't on, in fact, no one from Taiar was on, so I spent my free time over at Fan Fiction Net, planning on reading the latest PotO stories until there was something else to do. Unfortunately the site hadn't refreshed since I checked after finishing my chemistry homework, which meant no new updates, so I found myself googling about online after random subjects.
Having exhausted all the usual topics—my name, my friends, my professors—I image-searched Zorro on the CUA website and came up with nothing. The website hadn't been updated since Saturday, so the article on the presentation wasn't up yet. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe there'd be something in the Tower—the campus magazine—about it.
Maybe not, too. With a sigh I stuck up a generic away message and curled up on my bed to read the Terry Brooks novel my parents had just mailed to me the week before.
11:30 came quickly, and before I knew it I was shrugging into my blue jacket and taking the steps down two at a time to Regan lobby. Rachel and Brad were already there, and Sean appeared a moment later, looking very 60-ish in his usual corduroy jacket. Or, as I preferred to call it, very much like Tolkien, sans the grey hair… and lot shorter.
"Where to?" I asked the traditional question brightly as we traipsed out into the midnight air.
"You know by now, we don't go anywhere, we just walk," Brad said, the customary answer. True enough.
"I'm glad you enjoyed Latin Mass today…" and so we were off on our meandering course, both physically and conversationally. I have to say I'm very happy that campus is safe enough for us to walk; we do it even to this day, though there are certain parts I adamantly refuse to walk by. Too many memories, see… that night, though, we went by them all; the fountain at University Center West, Mary's Garden, and of course the 'dark corner' of the Basilica.
The Basilica is one of the ten largest in the world, and quite a jaw-dropper to walk into, even though I'd been to St. Peter's and St. Paul's and Notre Dame, and half a hundred other grand churches. There's nothing quite like having a place like that on campus. One side faced the parking lot, and that's the part that everyone sees. The other side is screened off by trees mostly, and is much less-visited. We always walked by there on our evening strolls. There was this one particular section with a narrow grassy sward, nestled between a rotunda and an inner corner of the building, which we had discovered and dubbed 'the dark corner'. There was a convenient stone wall we could sit on and talk, which we usually did for a good hour of our walk.
We don't go there any more, ever, but we did that night.
Sometime around 1:15 I sighed and said, "Well, I have class at 9:00 tomorrow, and I want to be halfway awake for it, so I'm going to diverge." Diverge is my way of saying split up to go to bed… I have no idea where it comes from. Too much calculus, I suppose.
Usually we'd head back together, but I just waved with a last "g'night" and walked off on my own, leaving them to return back later. "Night!" they called back after me, and I wandered off, taking the quickest path back to Regan Hall. It invariably led me past the arched doorway to St. Vinny's chapel.
The organ was playing when I walked by the doors.
This time I literally stopped. Okay, it was one thing to be playing all hours of the day, which always seemed to be happening. But a quick glance at my watch told me it was 1:30 in the morning. Catholic might have so many Masses that you trip over them every two feet, but this was an ungodly hour in the morning.
I wondered why no one had woken up, only then realizing how otherwise quiet the night was. The Metro stopped running sometime around midnight, and only the occasional rattle of a passing train disturbed the silence angrily, as if enraged at the world in general, and that somewhere in northeastern Washington D.C. a small college was hushed, listening to the sounds of an organ played in a tiny chapel on campus that didn't care about the business world, about markets and economy, and that just outside the oak doors stood a teenage girl so captivated by this music that didn't care that the train was thundering by…
It was past midnight, it was Sunday, and I had 9:00 class the next morning, so by all rights I should have just kept walking and let the sheer distance of the night carry the music away from my ears, but instead it just grew louder. Without realizing it I was standing now only feet away from the doors, and now I could hear notes that were lost to me before. Whoever was playing was doing so very softly, so softly that you'd almost have to be right up close to hear it, and I realized that no one was woken up because the sound simply didn't travel that far.
So there I was, half past one in the morning, with class to get to tomorrow early, but dithering on to stare at a pair of closed doors just because some overzealous music student had decided to practice his piece at an unearthly hour.
Part of me said that Sean, Brad, and Rachel would be along, and if they saw me still up I'd never hear the end of leaving the walk early. That part of me ushered me on by the chapel and to the door of Regan Hall, up the stairs and to my dorm room.
Instead, blinking, I found myself reaching for the handle of the chapel door, fully expecting it to be locked. It wasn't.
As a matter of fact, it swung open before I could touch it, leaving me standing there with one hand stupidly extended, staring up into the eyes of the tall, broad-shouldered man who had just swung the door open.
Dark, almond-shaped eyes.
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Disclaimer: I own Phantom in none of its permutations, derivations, or other forms; music, art, literature, etc. Credit belongs to Mr. Leroux, Mr. Webber, and Mrs. Kay, and all others of which I am not aware but who deserve mention.
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