Spring has arrived in full force. Daria is loaded up on allergy medicine, and Jane is taking the opportunity to walk her painting to Gary's Gallery. Daria had explained how she sometimes forced herself to recopy a poem word-by-word so that she knew she put every nuance through her brain, and this had in a roundabout way led to Jane painting Nighthawks except Impressionist, to make herself understand the composition and the mood by changing the style. She figures there's an outside chance that Gary's, which sells reproductions to people who want to fill empty wall space, will take it. Recouping the cost of paint and canvas would be nice, and a few bucks to drop into the special fund....
A Jeep is parked out front when she arrives. She looks in through the storefront and sees Gary apparently wrapping up a big deal. A peroxide-blond man is facing away from her, gesturing like he's speaking jovially with Gary. A stack of reproductions, bound together with cords, is on the counter between them.
"You two still an item?"
Jane jumps in her boots and immediately regrets it.
Alison swings a leg out the passenger-side door of the Jeep. Her other leg is raised so that her elbow rests on her knee. The fingers of her free hand twirl an eyelash brush. "I ask," she says, "because I did what you wanted and stayed away, so I don't know if she's with anyone at all."
"You look well." Jane says it as though she resents the fact, which she realizes she probably does.
"And well I should. Daniel—" she gestures with her eyelash brush to the peroxide blond, "—has done work called both seminal and semiotic."
"What's he do nowadays, piss on Garfield toys?"
"Right now, he's buying a stack of reproductions to slice and make into a collage. You'd be surprised at the return on investment."
"I confess myself surprised that there is one."
Alison chortles. "Ha! Didn't the books she found for you explain that high art is all money laundering for the Mob and Saudi oil tycoons?"
Jane keeps her face impassive. Perhaps there is no winning move here; showing no emotion means she has feelings to hide. "And that's what you want out of the creative life?" she asks.
"Oh, Daria's darling, you'll be amazed what you're satisfied with after you do a line or two. All the more so depending on who you do them off."
"Go take a long fuck off a short pier," Jane says at last, and walks on past Gary's Gallery, once again not looking back at her.
* * *
Jane finds Daria at a computer in the public library, right where Daria had said she'd be. She looks with mild puzzlement at the painting that Jane is still carrying.
"Offloading it became a project for another day," Jane tells her. Her tone is more than enough to convey that there's more to the story.
"Well then." Daria pulls a page from her stack of printouts. "I took a break earlier," she explains in a low, library-appropriate voice. "Let me know what you think."
Jane first registers the shape of the ink. It's a poem, apparently dashed off to reinvigorate herself in between blocks of serious monograph work.
Jane's eyes go wide. Quietly but with heat, she asks, "They let you print this here?!"
It is a poem, wherein Daria portrays herself as St. Theresa of Avila, and Jane as the angel with the spear.
Daria is closing document windows, ejecting her disk, logging out of the terminal. "It's a nice day. Join me for a walk?"
* * *
A friend of Daria's old boss at the bookstore buys both the Impressionist Nighthawks and the Cubist La maja desnuda, for less than Gary would charge to cover that much wall space. Without his share coming off the top, Jane ends up with more to stash in the special fund than she'd anticipated.
Aunt Amy buys them plane tickets for prefrosh weekend and flies with them so they can all stay at a hotel the night before it officially starts. The hotel she finds is a business-traveler-oriented place near Kendall Square, and Jane ribs her a bit for showing favoritism by siting them closer to the school that Daria is visiting. Amy books two adjacent rooms. Jane figures that Daria will share one with her aunt, but Amy hands the two teenagers matching key cards. "I've been told I snore sometimes," Amy says, in a very Daria-like deadpan.
"I promise we won't touch the room service menu," Daria says.
"See to it that the front desk doesn't get any complaints and that you're on time for orientation tomorrow."
Jane wants to say something casual that still expresses gratitude for the trust placed in them, but before she can formulate a sentence, Amy asks, "Now, who wants to try the clam chowder at that place we saw around the corner?"
Daria's slight tells of nervousness are obvious through dinner. They haven't really let up since the airplane, Jane realizes. So, when they return to their room for the night, she asks, "Rope?"
Daria nods.
They have in their way skipped past most of what teenagers do. Daria holds hands in private, likes to kiss after she is asked, and lets Jane put her in increasingly elaborate rope ties.
It seems that the knots are doing their function on the hotel bed as well as they have in Jane's room in Lawndale. Daria goes through the phase of tension, of instinctively testing the ropes, and then the tension fades and she drops into calmness. If they time it right, the relaxation lasts long enough after untying that she can sleep without a tranquilizer pill, and not even wake in the night.
Tonight, Daria fades fast after untying. Jane plans to let her have one of the beds to herself, but after she removes and folds her glasses, she sleepily intricates her limbs around Jane, and Jane doesn't feel inclined to detach.
The next morning separates them too quickly. Aunt Amy hops in a taxi back to the airport, Jane catches the subway across the river, and Daria navigates, with a few false turns, to her temporary dorm, her weekend bag over her shoulder.
Her host turns out to be a vaguely Grecian girl with neon green hair and magenta tips who introduces herself as Marina. "Course 18," she says, then catches herself. "Math."
"Course, ah, 21, probably?" Daria replies. Marina raises an eyebrow like the weekend just got significantly more peculiar than she had foreseen.
Daria sets her duffel bag on the empty bed and is about to ask about the day's schedule when an albino boy with shoulder-length hair pops his head through the doorway. "Hey, Marina, you left your spool of primer cord in my room." He notices Daria. "Oh, hi. Prefrosh?" He offers the hand that is not holding the head-sized spool.
And then the day blurs. It's only Friday, so there are lectures, perhaps chosen to be unrepresentatively dynamic but Daria enjoys them regardless. There is lunch at a food truck, four dollars for a carton of mapo tofu. There are students playing Frisbee in the tree-ringed courtyard surrounded by imposing Neoclassical buildings. Apparently the students do this even when they're not being posed for a brochure. There is a library with two-story glass windows that look out across the river. There are tunnels between the buildings, good for winter weather, Marina says, and because tunnels are intrinsically neat.
"I've always wanted a home with a secret passage," says Daria.
They gather with the crowd in a smaller courtyard, between two dormitory buildings, for a prefrosh pasta bash. Daria loads her plate with salad and baked ziti. "The inhabitants sure are friendly," she remarks to Marina and the boy sitting across from them—Tyrone, she thinks.
Marina says, "For some of the prefrosh who visit, it's their first time meeting other brains as weird as they are."
Daria inquires, "Do any normal kids go here?"
"What," says Tyrone, "like the management students?"
Marina makes a salt-tossing gesture over her shoulder. "We don't talk about them," she says, and wolfs a bite of ziti.
Daria checks her e-mail on Marina's computer. There's a note from Aunt Amy, as expected, and one from Jane.
Dear Sunflower, being apart sucks. Figured this would reach you over in brain-town easier than a phone call. The profs here are weird, but good-weird. The beds have to be equally crap in both our dorms. It's not fair we can't test them together. Love, J.
Daria begins typing a reply.
Dearest Belladonna, I'll see your weird profs and raise you weird students. I hope you meet some of those over there, too. They might be hiding from the prefrosh because they think we're all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Try acting jaded, but loudly. It sounds like we have some annual "fun" traditions tomorrow. I'm not yet sure which ones were designated "fun" by the students and which by the administrators...
A few minutes later, she concludes, Love (and missing your ropes), your Sunflower.
* * *
Daria separates from Marina in the early afternoon to get a little breathing time. She visits the campus book-and-curio store and buys a keychain for Trent, a ball cap for Lyra, a teddy bear in a college sweatshirt for Quinn, and an Ultra Cola for herself. She knows where her room is by now and deposits her purchases in her duffel.
She realizes that splitting up with the girl who knows the weekend schedule has its downsides when she is taking the spring air in the Neoclassical central courtyard and a dozen voices all ring out, "Water war!!"
"Eep!" goes Daria behind a tree as the cacophany of spray rifles and popping balloons and riotous wet mayhem explodes around her.
"There you are," Tyrone says. He hands her a clear plastic shield and then runs off, firing water bursts into the crowd. "Get some! Get some!"
Then, coming down the road that separates the courtyard from the river, a box van is blasting... the Soviet national anthem?
The van doors slide open before it has fully stopped, and... Jane?! Followed by half a dozen others in BFAC caps.
"BFAC is crashing the water war!" screams somebody, and the melee grows louder and wetter.
Jane is suddenly beside her. "Hi Sunflower," she says, her hair dripping just a little.
"Is this your doing?"
"They took very little convincing," Jane says, "once they learned it was happening." She offers Daria a water rifle.
After a moment, Daria says, "Let us to 't pell-mell, if not to Heaven, then hand in hand to Hell."
* * *
Later, Daria is pulling her arm in through her sleeve and trying to wring the fabric out with her other hand. "I feel like I've discovered the world's least erotic context for a wet T-shirt," she says.
"Mmm," opines Jane. "I beg to differ."
* * *
A few new acquaintanceships are struck up at the pizza party that follows the water war, so a mixed group from the two schools end up ditching the Sunday events together and visiting Boston Common and the Public Garden instead.
Daria and Jane have both brought their bags so they can leave from here to the airport. They buy fried dough from a vendor—it's apparently what Boston does instead of funnel cake—along with a couple lemonades to wash it down.
"Being apart sucks," Jane says.
"Yep," Daria concurs.
"We'll have to do it too much, even when we both come here."
"'When'?"
"You mean, you aren't decided?"
"I am. If you are, I mean."
They come to rest by the pond and sit in the grass. Marina and the others are talking volubly about something, but it all recedes into the distance.
"In that, ah, case, Sunflower," Jane says, "pun not intended, I swear..." She takes the little box from her pocket and snaps it open.
"Earrings?" asks Daria.
"I wanted something, uh, different. Because we're still figuring out what we are together. But I know I want to do that together. They're made from meteorite fragments," Jane adds. "Thought you'd like that more than, you know, regular rocks."
Daria takes the box. "They're lovely. And they mean I get to punch holes in my head for your sake."
Jane is quite a bit more solemn than usual now. "I don't know how much pain you need to make all this work."
Daria keeps the jewel box in one hand and gently brushes Jane's open palm with the fingertips of the other. "Maybe a lot," she admits. "I trust you to figure that out with me."
Jane enters the Morgendorffer house for the last time. By arrangement, it is empty.
"Hi, Mr. Morgendorffer," she says to the vase on the mantel. "Just returning Daria's house key." She drops it in a prominent place on the coffee table and crosses her arms and stares at her booted feet. "Daria doesn't think that you're there to hear anything. I... I guess I need to hear myself talk sometimes even if no one is listening.
"First of all, your daughter's in love. With me," she adds, attempting levity. "Maybe you could have guessed that. We're going to college in Boston together. Not the same school, but, like..." She makes a pincer with her thumb and forefinger. "This far apart. We don't know what we're going to be. I don't think the world is ready for whatever Daria decides to become. I think... she looks very pretty. I bought her earrings. Sort of an engagement gift, for whatever kind of pairing we're making for ourselves. I think... you'd be such a proud Dad... to see your daughter in earrings..." She chokes back a sob. "Goodbye," she says, going for the door and wiping her eyes.
* * *
Lyra has spent half the summer working on the Tank. Amy has kicked in some cash for new parts. Daria has been living out of a pair of suitcases in the Lane house for months already. Now she's moved them to the back of the Tank. Jane hefts her own bags in beside them.
"I can't believe you convinced me this is a good idea, Sunflower."
"Why, Belladonna, which part?"
"Any part."
"So, you'll let me pick the road music, then?" Daria holds up Quinn's comedic going-away present, a Boys R Guyz CD.
"Fuuuuuck you, my love."
January weather sucks ass balls through a dick.
Daria has a long "break" between semesters, but for her this means putting ten-hour days into her Pynchon monograph. Against all expectations except Jane's, she has found a professor who is willing to pay her to do that, along with various other editorial and grading tasks that are overburdening the tiny department. There's never enough time for all the together they need, but they know every time they hold each other that they'll never work apart.
They're heading up Huntington past the Museum, against the wind, and they duck into Falafel Bucket for a reprieve. Daria goes to the counter to order while Jane claims one of the narrow booths in the railroad café. "Two nuclear espressos and two chocolate baklava, please."
She has just set the cups and saucers on the table and settled in across from Jane when the door opens and a gust of winter comes in, followed by a boy rubbing his hands for warmth. His wireframe glasses are fogged over. He takes them off to clean them on the edge of the sweater beneath his coat.
His eyes are sea-green.
He holds his glasses back up, squinting at the menu, sees it and then sees them.
"Oh, fuck." / "Holy shit." / "It would."
It is very definitely Tom Sloane, and he is very definitely wearing a BFAC sweater under his winter coat.
"Film program! Mid-year admissions!" he exclaims, raising his hands like a man screaming take all the money, just don't hurt me.
"Well, that's a... partial explanation," Daria says, "of a very perplexing development."
"Weren't you supposed to be at Bhromwhell?" Jane asks. "In, like, the Sloane wing?"
"The best-laid plans?" Tom offers.
"He didn't need our permission to come here," Daria points out.
"I didn't know you would be here," he says, plaintively. "We haven't spoken since, like..."
Jane finds her mental landmarks for time and adds up the months. "Yeah," she says. "Fair."
"I'm going to, um, get a coffee?" He buys a cup poured straight from the urn. When he turns around, hot caffeine in hand, Daria has moved to sit beside Jane in the narrow booth. It is both an invitation and a very clear statement.
Tom carries his coffee like it's a precious elixir and sits across from them.
Jane speaks first. "One thing. You," pointing with index finger, "me," thumb, "separate girlfriends."
Daria wears the meteorite earrings now, plus a stainless loop that echoes Jane's.
"Yeah, I can see that," Tom says.
Strangely, now that the initial shock has passed, he seems more relieved than anxious.
"Let me guess," Daria says. "You're thinking that we—or I specifically, perhaps—might be more likely than anyone else to understand what's been going on with you."
Tom takes a deep whiff of coffee vapors. "Good guess."
Daria takes Jane's right hand in her left, meets Jane's eyes, tucks her hair behind her ear in a motion that accentuates her latest piercing. She says "Just a minute" out loud to Tom, not having to use words for Jane at all. She scooches herself out of the booth and returns to the counter. "Triple bucket with everything and a large side of fries, please," she requests. She turns back to her ex-boyfriend and her achingly lovely Belladonna. "We've got at least two long stories among the three of us, right?"