by Roan Parrish
Marjorie appears at my elbow, holding out a bundle of paper towel when I start to unconsciously wipe my hands on my pants.
“Thanks.”
She just shakes her head at me and I can practically hear the word “hoodlum” rattling around in her head as she takes in my tattoos and my now-dirty hands.
“Um, it’s not the cat, so that’s good. The catalytic converter,” I correct myself, when Marjorie and Paul exchange a look that clearly says I’ve confirmed their suspicion that I don’t know anything about cars. “I think it’s probably a spark plug wire. If it sparks too early or too late, it messes up your ignition timing. I can’t test the wires here, but if that’s what it is, it shouldn’t be that expensive to fix.”
Marjorie’s smiling and Paul’s looking at me blankly. Two Sludge customers holding iced coffee concoctions have found their way over and are standing next to Marjorie, staring at me.
“Hey,” I say to them. “Um, so, yeah. It’s not hard to replace them,” I say to Paul. “Mark—is it?—will just need to run a diagnostic to see which wire’s the problem and then replace that one. I mean, if that’s what’s wrong,” I say, not wanting to sound like a know-it-all. I could offer to try and fix it for them, but in a town with only one mechanic, it doesn’t seem wise to step on his toes.
“Thank you,” says Paul, holding out his hand.
“Aren’t you the new professor?” one of the coffee-drinkers—a thirtysomething woman with badly bleached hair—asks confusedly.
“Yeah, hi,” I say, holding out my hand to her. “I’m Daniel.” She seems confused by the gesture, but then gives a limp, lingering shake.
“Wow,” she says. “I’m Ellen. So you fix cars too, huh? I wonder what other tricks you’ve got up your sleeve.”
“Oh, no, not really,” I say. “My dad owns a shop in Philly, so I’ve just picked up some stuff.”
They’re all looking at me like they expect me to give them more information, but I don’t have anything else to say. I can’t tell if they’re thinking that knowing about cars disrupts the gay stereotype or the academic stereotype more. I gather up my stuff and try to extricate myself before they can ask any more questions.
“You,” Marjorie says, pointing at me. “Free coffee tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I didn’t really do anything.”
“Don’t argue; just accept it,” Marjorie says, and I smile.
“See you tomorrow!” Marjorie calls after me.
5
Chapter 5
October
For the last twenty minutes, Guy Beckenham, a skinny, mousy man with a gray mustache who specializes in medieval literature, has been flipping through what appears to be some kind of illustrated manuscript. It’s either in Middle English or my upside-down reading skills have really deteriorated. Every so often he’ll lean back in his chair, hands over his stomach, and grin as if whatever is going on in this medieval tome is just tickling the hell out of him.
It’s Friday afternoon and I am in the last place that any academic ever wants to be, most especially on a Friday afternoon: a faculty meeting. As a graduate student, I heard faculty complain about them all the time, but I was so curious about who these people really were that I imagined there could be nothing more interesting than getting to see the inner workings of the English department—who is friends with whom, who is actually a pompous asshole and who has people’s best interests at heart, what’s the real reason so-and-so took a semester off, etc.
Wrong. Faculty meetings feel like some form of psychological water torture, each inconsequential point of order boring more deeply into my skull than the last. For people who are so smart about books and history and philosophy, my colleagues do not seem to understand the whole listen and then speak thing.
Certain I’m missing absolutely nothing, I let my tired mind wander to the two high points of an otherwise draining week. Number one. I was pretty sure that Rex was blowing me off on Saturday when he took my phone number instead of giving me his, but the next evening, when I was at the grocery store, he called me. It was awkward, but I was so glad he hadn’t thrown my number out the window of his truck while laughing at how pathetic I am that I was willing to overlook that. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: Hello?
Rex: Daniel?
Me: Yeah.
Rex: Oh, hello, good, hi. This is Rex. From, um, from—
Me: I know who you are, Rex. Hi.
Rex: Right, of course. Well, I was wondering if you’re free on Saturday night?
Me (trying not to yell “yes” into the phone instantaneously): Yeah, I think so. Why?
Rex (his suave somewhat back in place): Great. I thought, if you weren’t doing anything, that maybe you’d like to come over and we could watch Gaslight. The 1940 version that your library didn’t have?
Me (trying not to yell “yes” into the phone instantaneously, again): That sounds great, sure.
Rex: Great, great. How about eight on Saturday?
Me (determined to use any word but “great”): Great! That works.
Rex: Oh, I just wanted to let you know that I put that work order in for a new lamp. I ran into Phil—ah, the guy in charge of that—at the hardware store, so I just went ahead and let him know.
Me: Wow, that’s some service. Thanks.
Rex: My pleasure. Um, okay, then. Have a good night, Daniel.
Me: Good night. Oh! Wait, um, I don’t know how to get to your house.
Rex: Of course. Do you have a pen?
Me: Can you just e-mail me directions if I give you my address?
Rex: Oh. I don’t have e-mail.
Me (impressed): Wow. Okay. Um….
Rex: Why don’t I call you on Saturday before you come and I’ll give them to you then. Okay?
Me: Yeah, sure, great.
Rex (in a ridiculously low and growly voice): Good night.
That’s it. If you edit out the “okays,” “greats,” “ums,” and “ohs,” it’s really only a few sentences, but I hung up the phone and wandered through the produce section with a humiliating grin on my face. I even bought apples because it seemed like something someone who got asked on a date might do. Then, of course, I told myself that it wasn’t necessarily a date. That Rex might just be doing me a favor, since the Free Library of Philadelphia had failed me and the library here wasn’t likely to be of more help. Or that he just wanted to hang out, as friends, and share his love of classic cinema with someone.
Still, I allowed myself. If nothing else, it made Sunday not so depressing.
On Monday, as promised, there was a floor lamp in my office. It seemed to only take 25-watt bulbs, one of which flickered with an eerie irregularity that made me constantly jerk my head around to see if someone was behind me, but at least it lent the place atmosphere.
Tuesday and Wednesday were nightmares. Like a total idiot, I’d prepped the wrong readings for my classes (I blame Rex’s delectable ass in those worn blue jeans for distracting me during course planning), so I was scrambling around all day Tuesday, didn’t sleep Tuesday night, and cocked up class on Wednesday as a result, proof that I was getting old, since staying up all night never used to faze me. To add insult to injury, Peggy Lasher, a very well-meaning but extremely irritating colleague of mine, decided to be buddies with me.
Peggy is the kind of person I avoided all throughout grad school. She’s nice enough if she likes you, but she’s incapable of letting anyone be right or achieve anything unless she’s more right or has achieved something better. She’s snobby and passive-aggressive—a quality I cannot abide—and just when you think she’s leaving, she sees something in your office that reminds her of a story she simply must tell you.
She stuck her head in my door twice on Tuesday and three times on Wednesday, and when I finally told her that I really needed to concentrate she looked so offended that I found myself admitting to her that I’d done the wrong preps for class. Rather than leaving me alone, she told me a very l
ong story about her own first year teaching here. It seemed, for a while, like it would be about a similar incident, but it quickly became clear that this wasn’t an I’ve-done-stupid-things-too story; this was an it-seems-like-I’m-commiserating-but-I’m-actually-bragging story that ended with Peggy having almost made a mistake similar to mine but catching herself in time because she pays attention to detail. I wanted to take her by her unfortunate bowl-cut and use her head to open another crack in the ceiling.
Needless to say, by Thursday all I wanted was for the week to be over, especially after I spilled coffee on my stomach walking to campus and had to go around all day with a shirt that made me look like I worked in a prison cafeteria. I got to my office already out of sorts, threw my stuff on my desk, and checked my e-mail, only to find that the afternoon’s faculty meeting, which I was going to have been able to miss because I had to supervise a lecture across campus, had been moved to Friday afternoon, so everyone was delighted that I’d be able to make it after all.
Which brings me to high point number two. Hands on my desk, I pushed myself back onto the two back legs of my chair in frustration, without thinking about it, then immediately froze, remembering that the last time I’d done so, the desk had scudded off its literary magazine stack and almost taken my computer to the floor with it. That time, though, all four of the desk’s legs stayed firmly on the floor. Confused, I looked at it more closely and realized that the literary magazines I’d shimmed the legs with were gone, and it was resting solidly on new legs.
And I knew it could only have come from one place.
I called Rex.
“This is Rex Vale.”
“Rex, this is Daniel.”
“Daniel, hi.” His voice warmed when he said my name.
“I, um, I—did you fix my desk?”
“Yeah, well. Couldn’t have your whole office collapsing.” He paused. “And you said you didn’t want me to put in a work order, so….”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “It’s great. I just… you didn’t have to do that. I wasn’t expecting….” I didn’t know what to say. No one had ever done anything like that for me before. “Thank you,” I said, pleased to hear that I sounded genuine and not pathetically emotional. “Really, thank you. I’m sorry. I guess I should’ve started with that.”
“Okay, now, don’t worry. You’re welcome.”
There was a pause, but it didn’t feel nearly as awkward as the ones during our last conversation, which was heartening.
“Listen,” Rex said. “They say it’s going to get real cold on Saturday, maybe storm, so I just want to make sure you still want to come. To my place, I mean.”
“Yeah, of course I do,” I say. “I mean, this is Michigan, right? I knew it had to get cold at some point.”
“All right, then,” Rex said. “Good-bye.”
Then he hung up before I could ask for directions.
“And you’re all right with that, Daniel?” Bernard Ness is saying.
“Um, I’m sorry, Bernard, what was that?” I say. Clearly I’ve been nodding along with the meeting as I thought about Rex.
“You’re all right with heading the committee?” Crap. Way to not repeat yourself at all, Bernard.
“Yep, yep, sounds good,” I hear myself saying since I can’t think of any way to admit I’ve been zoning out.
“Wonderful,” Bernard says, and ends the meeting as I sit there, dazed.
I gather my things and make a beeline for my office to get my jacket. All I want is to go home, take a shower, and listen to music with a bottle of wine. I’m slipping on my jacket when Jay Santiago pushes my door open. Jay is maybe ten years older than me, in his early forties, and seems like a nice guy, though I don’t know him well.
“The first-year personal essay committee,” he says.
“Huh?”
“The committee Bernard stuck you on while you were staring out the window. It’s for first-year students’ personal essays. You pick a first place, second place, third place, and two runner-up essays and then they read them at an end of the year open house while their parents drink wine out of plastic cups, eat pepper jack cheese cubes, and brag about their kids to anyone who’ll listen.”
“Whoa, grim,” I say. But it could be worse. I actually like reading students’ creative writing. It’s kind of cool to see who they are outside the classroom, what they think is important on their own time.
“Yeah, I did it last year, so if you need any pointers, just let me know.”
“Will do,” I say. “Thanks, Jay.” He nods good-bye.
I walk the long way home—well, it’s two blocks longer—so I can pick up some wine and get a pizza since I have nothing edible in my house. As I walk out of the store with my box of wine, though, there’s shouting coming from behind the store. It’s kind of a park, I guess, a patch of grass and a bench and a few trees.
Two guys are messing with a kid sitting on the bench. He’s maybe sixteen or seventeen, with longish, light brown hair and checkerboard Vans. You could ID him as a skater kid from thirty paces even if his feet weren’t currently resting on a skateboard. I can’t really see his face, but he’s skinny, and definitely smaller than the guys messing with him. They might be the same age, but they’re of the polo-shirt-and-boat-shoes variety, with lingering summer tans and muscles honed by football and fathers who expect certain things from them. I know the type.
Would I be intervening if it weren’t “fag” that the polo shirts were calling the kid? I’m not sure. But I was that skinny kid and I’m sure as hell not going to watch him get the shit beat out of him the way I did, even if these guys don’t look quite as hardcore as the ones who used to throw me up against crumbling brick walls and threaten me with busted bottles if I ever looked at them in the hallways.
The kid isn’t reacting to the polo shirts at all. Not sure if he’s scared of a fight or just knows they won’t actually throw a punch, but I walk over anyway. When I get a little closer, I can see that he’s smiling. It’s a mischievous, self-possessed smile. It’s a smile that’s going to get this kid a lot of ass in a few years, or in a lot of trouble, depending on who he’s smiling at. Right now, I’m banking on the latter, because the polo shirts do not seem amused.
When I’m ten feet away, the one in the salmon-colored polo shirt—seriously, kid, salmon?—throws a punch. Whatever skater said to him was too low for me to hear, but now they’re both on him, pushing him down on the bench.
“Hey!” I yell. “Get the fuck off him.” I pull salmon polo shirt off, bobbing to the side so the punch he throws goes wide. Both polo shirts step away and stare at me oddly, but I can’t tell if they’re scared of getting in trouble or are about to start in on me too.
I’m still dressed for teaching, in gray pants, a gray and black striped shirt, and the vintage black wingtips Ginger gave me as a going-away present, but my sleeves are rolled up to the elbows, showing some of my tattoos, I’m carrying a box of wine, and, as it’s the end of the day, my black hair is probably a mess. I must look like some kind of drunken hipster poet or something.
“Get the fuck out of here!” I yell, pointing toward the street, before they can decide.
“Screw you, asshole,” and “Fuck off,” the polo shirts say, but it’s halfhearted and they’re already leaving, shooting the kid poisonous looks from under the stiff brims of their baseball caps.
I smirk and set my wine and my messenger bag down on the bench. It felt really fucking good to yell at those assholes, especially since I’ve wanted to do it to students all week.
“You okay?” I ask the kid. I lean down to look at his face. There’s a red mark on one high cheekbone that will definitely be a bruise tomorrow, but he mostly just looks a little dazed. He has big brown eyes and his olive skin is spattered with freckles. He has a small, straight nose that will probably make him handsome in a few years, but now just looks cute. In fact, the only thing that keeps him from being pretty is that in contrast to his expressive eyes, his brows are
straight, dark slashes that turn his otherwise sweet face serious.
“Omygod, you’re the guy!”
“Uh, sorry?”
“You’re the professor! The gay one from New York!”
“Holy shit. I am from fucking Philadelphia, for the love of god. And how does everyone know I’m gay? Not like I care. Just, seriously, you all gossip like a sewing circle.”
“Philly, right on,” he says. “I dig Kurt Vile and don’t laugh but I totally love Christina Perri. And, like, cheesesteaks. Right?”
“Right, as in, you’re listing things from Philadelphia? Yes.”
“Cool, cool.”
“So, are you okay?” I gesture to his cheek.
“Pshh. Those closet cases are just jealous because they know I’ll never make out with them. I’m fine.” But his lower lip is trembling a little. I sit down next to him and try not to look like a pedophile as I rest one elbow on my box of wine. I remember after I’d get in a fight all I really wanted was for someone to sit with me.
“So, Kurt Vile, huh?” I say, keeping my voice casual and tilting my head back to look up at the darkening sky. “What do you like about him?”
“Well, he’s kinda hot,” the kid says, testing the waters with me.
“He’s not as hot in person,” I tell him. “He’s kind of vapid.”
“No way; you’ve met him?” The kid’s eyes go wide and his genuine enthusiasm takes five years from his age.
“Yeah. I used to work at the bar in a club. He played there all the time. Nice guy, just kind of a space cadet.”