Act 2, Scene 16
A Night at the Opera

We hurried to the dorm to get ready. I was hyper with hormones and beaming with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. Or some kind of visions dancing in my head. I got a shower, dressed in my one set of semi-nice clothes and headed to Heather’s room to pick her up.
Only to find she’d invited her roommates, and our friend Beth, and Beth’s roommate. They were all joining us in our box.
I sulked, but I didn’t want to give away my plan, hoping we could go the next night without the whole entourage, though I was already in the mood for the plan to work that night. But Beth was feeling down so Heather insisted we try to cheer her up. I opened the wine and we drank it on the way to the theater.

It turned out the theater was the building at which we’d received the town’s marching band welcome, the one that sounded like a melting phonograph. I hoped this evening’s musical entertainment was a vast improvement.
I snuck the bottle in with us and we headed up the stairs to a balcony box. Inside the place was beautiful, in a tired, slightly run-down fashion. It was exactly like the theater from The Muppet Show, small with a couple rows of balconies lining the walls, dark with peeling paint and red velvet seats. Classic opera house.
There were a couple seats in the front of our box and a couple in back. We gave the other ladies the seats up front and I passed the bottle around.
There was a very minimalist stage setting, a pedestal with a vase, a chair and not much else. We spotted a couple of other friends in the crowd and they came up to join us. We ran out of seats so Heather sat in my lap and we were one big happy family as the show began. The actors wore modern suits and sang well, though it was all in Italiano and got dull quickly. I looked around the theater and watched some of the other students enjoying the show, some gradually falling asleep. We neared the end of the wine and things were slightly blurring. Bored and bold, I slipped my hand up Heather’s skirt when nobody was looking. I couldn’t get far in the booth crowded with our friends but I did my best to make sure Heather knew what I’d had in mind for the evening. By the end of the show we were both flushed, and not from the wine.
On the way home she leaned over and apologized for inviting everyone else along, “I didn’t know it would be like that.” she said.
“Yeah, well, how about we try again tomorrow night?” I said, only mildly irritated.
“OK!” she said. I knew her well enough to know what was going through her head, since it had been going through my head all day.
The next day I found out the performance was one night only and all those wonderful mental pictures would remain only that - mental pictures.

Fuck.