by R. R. Banks
It was also that loneliness that led me to dismiss nearly all the staff from the house. Within days of my father's death and my installation as the owner of the estate I had reduced the legion of people who constantly swarmed the house to only a cleaning staff, a cook, and the driver who I kept on call to move my vehicles around the property and drive me when I didn't feel like taking on the task for myself. Offering the staff my gratitude and generous severance and sending them on their way left the house quiet and emptier than I had ever experienced it, but it hadn't increased my loneliness. Instead, it seemed to soothe it in a way. The overwhelming staff represented the source of that emptiness inside me and removing it seemed to allow me to live in a new way. My wife and I spent time alone together, never wondering if one of the staff was going to walk into the room or stand at the ready at the door, and I knew that when the time came for us to welcome our own child into the home, it would be raised only by its mother and father and not by a servant who would one day walk out of its life leaving it confused and questioning.
Now I preferred the solitude.
The thought brought a familiar twist to the center of my chest and I shoved the door, allowing the sound of the slam to shock me away from the shadow that was creeping into the back of my mind. I left my briefcase in my study and walked into the dining room. As usual, my dinner was waiting for me at my place. No matter when I arrived home from the University, there was always food waiting for me as if it had been prepared freshly and served just as I was walking through the front door. I didn't know how Annmarie, the cook, always achieved that feat without any forewarning from me, but it was something that I was grateful for each day, one of the ways that made the house feel like my home rather than like I was still visiting my grandfather.
I ate in silence, my eyes scanning the pages of one of the well-worn books I kept on a low shelf against one wall, my gaze bouncing over each of the familiar words almost in recitation rather than actual reading. They kept me company as I ate and when I swallowed the last bite I replaced it on the shelf among the others, not bothering to mark my place. After a shower I settled into the library, choosing another book from the round table beside my favorite chair. I knew that my days of being able to relax in the evenings and read were numbered. The stretch between the summer semester and the fall would soon end and I would have to fill the hours after I got home with slogging my way through classwork, exams, and tiresome essays written by students who had been told too many times that they were intelligent and insightful. I could only hope that in the new wave of students that would soon be filling the seats of the lecture hall there would be at least a few who would engage with the class and show some promise.
Like Veronica.
The massive clock in a distant sitting room drummed in my chest, chiming an hour closer to dawn than to sunset and I set the book aside. Before going to bed I turned away from the library and walked into a section of the house that was once filled with hope, light, and energy, but that had now been left darkened and uninhabited for many years. I didn't go into this wing frequently and when I did, I didn't allow myself much time there. I walked past the light switches to the end of the hall and then turned to walk up it again. As I passed each of the rooms I reached out and touched the knobs, making sure that they were still locked. There was no reason that they shouldn't be. No one else came into this section of the house. No one else had a key to the rooms.
Satisfied that they were all still secure, still slumbering in time, I walked out of the wing and back toward the area of the house that was still inhabited, still alive. I went into the bedroom that I slept in alone and always had. My wife had never slept in this room with me. I had never slept in the room she had again.
Chapter Three
Veronica
I didn't bother to look up from where my head was resting in my hands, my elbows propped on the dining room table, when I heard the door open. I could hear faint music and then Javi's voice joined in, humming along with the tune. A loud thud finally brought my head up and I looked toward the living room that stretched off the dining area. It was advertised as a flowing layout, but it really just looked like the kitchen had accidentally been made too small and the living room had been stretched out to fill the space. I saw Javi in the middle of the living room and realized that the loud thud must have been him jumping up to hit the position he was now in. He stood with his feet far apart, his hands on his knees as he bent forward, his head swirling and his hips swiveling and bouncing to the music that was streaming through the headset he was wearing.
"Javi?" I said. He didn't stop. "Javi," I said a little louder. Still no reaction. "Javi!" I shouted.
He whirled around to face me. He was wearing a black suit, a shimmering black silk shirt, black Chanel sunglasses, and a headset similar to the one the guards were wearing the night before at the party. He looked like a member of the Gay Secret Service. He smiled and I smiled back.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi," I said. "What are you doing?"
"Dancing."
"I see that. Why are you dancing?" I gestured at his outfit. "What's this look you've got going on here?"
He glanced down and ran his hands over his chest and hips.
"It's good, right?" he asked. "I got a job acting as security at a party tonight."
"You? You're going to do security?"
He nodded, running his fingers along the microphone to the headset.
"Look at this. Isn't it so Janet Jackson circa 'Control'?"
"I love it when you reference revolutionary moments in music history that happened before you were born."
"It's in my blood."
"This may be true, but it brings me back to...you? You're going to do security?"
"Oh!" he scurried a few steps toward me. "Yes. So last night after the incident, I had a conversation with a very nice security guard named Lamar and he told me that there is a little invitation-only soiree tonight on Fraternity Row and his team was in need of an extra set of hands to keep the boys under control. So, I agreed. But I figured that if it's a frat party that means that there's going to be music, so I need to make sure that I have selected an appropriate outfit to look fearsome and deter misbehavior, but also to allow me to dance." He jumped back into his previous dance position. "So, I'll be working and twerking."
I didn't much have the heart to tell him that despite the daydreams that were probably going through his mind, his extra set of hands probably weren't going to be used the way that he wanted them to be and that nothing short of dressing him in a suit of armor studded with poison-dipped nails and arming him with a mace was going to make him look fearsome. I tried to nod encouragingly but felt a twinge of pain in my temples. I massaged into them and turned back to lean on the table again.
"What's wrong?" Javi asked, the sparkle gone from his voice.
"Just a headache," I said.
He walked up beside me and I glanced up to see him looking at the papers that were spread out across the table in front of me.
"No wonder. What in the living hell is all this?" he asked.
"My class schedules, rehearsal schedules, and performances from the next year, plus bills and cost projections. I'm trying to figure out how much money I need to make and how I'm going to fit all of that into the time that I'm going to have."
He reached forward and picked up a piece of paper.
"This says 'long-term physical therapy and rehabilitation'. Are you planning on throwing yourself out of a window in the near future?"
"No," I said. "But I might hurt myself dancing. That is a serious reality I have to face. I've been building myself up for years for a dance career, but what if that doesn't pan out? What if none of the companies choose me? What if there aren't even any teaching positions available for the season? What if I hurt myself training or performing and can't dance for a few weeks or even months? All I'll have is my English degree to fall back on, but I would have to actually find
something that I could do based on that, and that could take some time. So now I'm hurt and can't dance, and I've lost everything I've been working for my entire life, I don't have a job, I have no way of making any money, you're off being successful and I'm going to end up getting evicted and living in a shoebox because I didn't plan ahead."
I let out a breath and looked up at Javi, who was still holding the paper but looking at me with slightly widened eyes.
"Honey, you know that you are still sitting here at the table, right? You just went on a dark journey in your mind. We're doing just fine twerking and talking about Janet and suddenly you have yourself tucked all up in some cardboard under the overpass where the world just exploded all around you."
"I know. It escalated pretty quickly."
"You know, a shoebox probably wasn't the best choice for your post-financial apocalyptic housing selection. Unless you can get your hands on some Pretty Woman Vivian Ward thigh-high boot situation, you're not going to have much room to work with."
"I would make sure that I found a boot box for an addition so that you could visit."
"Thank you," he said, kissing me in the middle of the head. "But you know I wouldn't ever let that happen to you. I can't be seen under the overpass."
"I'm aware."
"Besides, you seem to forget that you do own a house."
I had hoped he wouldn't mention that. I didn't want to think about the house that was sitting untouched. I hadn't been in it in longer than I wanted to think about and had little to no intention of being in it again anytime soon, if ever. That couldn't be a part of the plan that I had for myself going forward. I would rather just pretend that it didn't exist.
"I just need to get serious about my future," I said.
"You're always serious about your future," he said. "You always have been. You are the most serious person I have ever known. All you ever do is think about what you are going to do when you're done with college and study and rehearse. You're like a really flexible stuffy old lady with an awesome skincare routine that has kept you devoid of wrinkles. You don't even do anything fun."
"I went out with you last night."
"That was an absolute anomaly and you know it. You never go out. You don't have any social life. Do you even know the names of more than three guys who go to this school?"
"Is three some kind of magic number?" I asked.
"Yes. Schoolhouse Rock taught us so. But that's not the point. You need to stop worrying so much about what's going to happen after you graduate and think more about the rest of the time that you have here. This is supposed to be the time of your life. You should be thinking less about the possibility of something going wrong and instead think about making things go really, really right."
He was giving me that look. That look that he had been giving me since an ill-fated game of Truth or Dare that might or might not have involved us piercing mini marshmallows on chopsticks and holding them over a candle in the living room trying to make s'mores during our first year living together. That was when he discovered that not only had I only gone on a handful and a half of dates in my entire life, but that I was still a virgin. That hadn't changed much since. I might be all the way up to two handfuls of dates. Not for lack of trying on Javi's part. He had given me that look when he committed himself to becoming my own personal sex coach, determined that he was going to help me solve whatever it was that was keeping me hitting the books rather than the sheets.
"Javi, I love you, but still no. I will get around to the whole dating thing at some point, but for right now I just don't have time to think about anything but making sure that I get in all of the rehearsals and classes I can, keep my grades up, and start saving more money. I can't compromise what I want for my future just to party. I'm sorry."
"I still reserve the right to look at you judgmentally and try to drag you out into the world of the living occasionally, just so you know, but I have an idea."
"Does it involve a different type of dancing than I've been training for my whole life, not that there's a problem with it, but I don't think that I'm really cut out for all that?"
"Wow. You sure do cover your ass quickly. Have you ever considered transitioning into a political career after the whole dancing thing peters out?"
"I don't like you very much."
"Yes, you do. But that's not the point. Why don't you look into being a TA?"
"A TA?" I asked. "As in a Teaching Assistant?"
"Yes."
"No."
"What? Why?"
"I'm trying to do well in my own classes. I don't have time to babysit underclassmen through their own."
"But that's the thing. You don't have to try to do well in your own classes. You always do well in them. You're good with people. People think you're supportive and encouraging for some reason that I haven't yet landed on. You'd be perfect."
"It would look good on my resume," I said.
"It would. People love a helper. Look how well the Girl Scouts do. They've taken over the world with cookies. Why? Helpers."
"Alright. I'll go to the department office tomorrow and look for a position. Hopefully, a procrastinating professor will still be looking for someone."
"Good." He leaned down and kissed my head again, pausing to mutter against my hair. "I love you. You use up most of your supportiveness and encouragement on me and I know it."
He pressed a button on the side of his headset and I could hear the music blasting through again as he made his way down the hallway toward his bedroom. I checked the time. He probably only had enough time to swish some mouthwash around, put a little more strategic spackle on his hair, and then make his way to Fraternity Row to not make anything more secure in any way.
I looked back at the papers spread across the table and let out a sigh. Maybe he was right. At least assisting a professor would keep me on campus and save me the need to try to find a job in our already-saturated community.
The next morning, I was feeling more optimistic about the thought of being a TA. I had visions of striding into a classroom of fresh young faces and getting the privilege of watching the professor find the kernel of interest in each of them and spark it into learning and passion. I might have also hummed a few bars of "To Sir, With Love" as I made my way to the office to look for that position I just knew was waiting for me.
That all went to hell fairly quickly.
"They don't pay at all?" I asked.
The woman at the desk shook her head at me, each sweep back and forth brushing away some of the music out of my mind.
"No," she said. "These are strictly volunteer positions. The selected student is compensated in the form of experience and credits as applies to their particular situation."
I wanted to ask her if she was reciting from a laminated form hanging on the desk in front of her, but I told myself that my disappointment wasn't her fault. I gave a nod, knowing that arguing wasn't going to make her suddenly change the policy for me, and walked out of the office. I had started the day so optimistic, feeling like I had finally found something that was going to allow me to focus on the things that I needed to and create a little cushion in my savings account to keep me floating during this last year of school. I was very aware that the figure on my statements had been dwindling after three years of school without a job and now it was time to stop coasting. I needed to start refilling the account if I was going to be able to keep surviving through this year and my fledgling months out in the real world. This morning that thought had been exciting. Now I felt like I was about to be shoved out of a nest without the proper wings to carry me.
Jude
I stepped out of the office seconds after Veronica disappeared through the door. She hadn't noticed me standing there, but I had seen her the moment she walked in and had kept my eyes on her as she stood at the desk and signed up for any possible TA positions. I knew that the chances of her actually getting a position were very slim considering the ma
jority of professors who utilized such assistants either maintained them year to year until they were no longer available, or had long-since chosen them for this semester. The fact that she had expected to be paid if chosen was only another mark against her. Some universities offered payment for their TA positions, but it had always been the tradition of this institution not to, something that I would think that she would know if she was interested in that type of work.
I walked up to the desk and asked to see the list.
"There aren't many options, I'm afraid," the receptionist said. "Most have already been chosen."
I nodded and took the list from her. Veronica hadn't taken her name off the list and I looked down at it, tracing the curve of her handwriting spreading in a combination of frenetic strokes and smooth sweeps like coffee spilling across the page.
"Did Ms. Parrish give you contact information?" I asked.
"Oh," the receptionist said. "I forgot to cross off her name. I don't think that she's interested in a position."
"Why would you say that?"
"She was looking for something paid."
She said it in a slightly whispery voice as if the thought of being paid for working as a professor's assistant was offensive to the very fabric of the university's existence.
"Did she leave contact information?" I asked again.
"Just her email address."
"Thank you," I said.
I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and withdrew a pen. Crossing off Veronica's name, I handed the list back to the receptionist. She stared at me as I put the pen back into my pocket and walked out of the office without another word. I hadn't asked her for Veronica's email address. I didn't need to. I still had it from the semester that I taught her. It was just the generic convention given to students by the school, but it was enough to contact her and let her know that I would like for her to be my TA.