Sweet Nola

Chapter Seven

Every week, Eleanor would come over to visit for Allie's piano lessons. Some days she'd stay the night if her schedule was free. One day, she requested a strange favour from Nola.

"I have only ever attended the Conservatoire in my youth," she said, "show me what it's like to attend a normal university."

"Like, you just want to walk around it?"

"No, I've been to universities. I teach in one. What I want to do is attend the classes."

They walked to college together the next morning. It was all well and good except she dressed in a ludicrously high class concert dress that drew the looks out of every eye, male and female.

Nola covered her face with her handbag. Her face was flushed from embarrassment from drawing all the looks.

"Nola, you are easily embarrassed. You will never become a performer," Eleanor said. She carried the air of a queen among peasants. She let out a high haughty laugh, laughing at the childishness of Nola's flustered self.

"Aren't you embarrassed?"

"By the age of three, I was performing all thirty Goldberg Variations by Bach in concerts and reading dissertations on music."

Nola had much doubts that she could read at three years old but with Eleanor, anything was possible.

"At four, I had already written my first composition in pianoforte. Five, I had composed nine symphonies and by six, I was personally conducting them in the courts of aristocrats."

"Really!?" Nola's eyes were wide with amazement.

"No, I'm joking. Have you lost your sense of humour?"

Nola had a great sense of humour and Eleanor's remark rubbed her off the wrong way. She had always laughed when appropriate and even at times when it wasn't. Such an occasion occurred at her grandfather's funeral. Her sister Silvie's favourite food was beans on toast. When she was happy, she had beans on toast. When she was sad, she had beans on toast. When was stressed, she also, had beans on toast. Beans on toast was her coping mechanism and drug to happiness. The hotel they stayed at that had a breakfast buffet. She was in beans and toast heaven as she told Nola. In the solemn and grave silence of the funeral hall, she had held Nola's hands and looked at Nola with bottomless abyss in her eyes. "I can't hold it in anymore," and proceeded to let it rip the biggest and loudest fart she had pent up in death's ceremony. She farted so hard she felt herself propelled up into the air. Nola laughed her tears out.

"I guess you're right. I think I'm starting to lose it these days. There's something weighing in my mind." Nola looked to Eleanor with a fresh face full of confidence and laughed.

"Why are you laughing now when my joke was ten seconds ago," Eleanor looked bewildered at her sudden outburst. "You've always been weird."

They went into a dark lecture theatre hall and sat at the back row.

"So this is what being normal is like," she said the lecture. "How do you bear to live like this?"

Nola excused themselves from her social circle who were all dying to know who this strange princess sitting at the back of the class was. They grabbed lunch at the canteen in the Concourse. It was rare that they were alone together. Allie was usually there.

"I see that you are friends with everybody as usual," she smiled icily. "Why are your closest friends foreigners though?"

"Your words are cold as ice," Nola played along, "as usual."

"Those Indians, how can you stand their accent! Can't you pick better people to be good friends with?"

"I'm a foreigner myself!" Accents were the last thing she was worrying about. No doubt they would keep asking her for Eleanor's number tonight with how incessant they were.