Erica pulled him inside, closing the door behind them. The bathroom was dark, the only light coming from a red nightlight over the sink. Erica pushed him against the counter and stood back, watching him for a moment. She stepped forward and kissed him again, her tongue lingering in the corner of his mouth before she bit down on his lower lip. He flinched and she stopped, looking into his eyes with a devilish sparkle. She slipped her hands up to his face, running her fingers over the stubble, then she slid them up to his hat. She started to play with the edge of the cap, slipping her fingertips under the band.
“Why do you still have this on?” she whispered.
Jamie put his hand on her wrist, keeping her from removing the hat. He kissed her and she lowered her hands, running them down his back and around to the front. He felt her fingers fumbling with the button on his jeans, then she stopped, changing direction as she reached down and pulled her beer-soaked shirt up over her head. She threw the shirt on the floor, and stood back, letting Jamie size up her bare breasts. He noticed her hard nipples, was about to comment, but she was already on top of him, pulling off his shirt and pressing her chest against his. Then he felt her hand slip down his jeans. His breath caught in his throat as she slid the zipper down on his pants, and he felt her hands on him. He closed his eyes as he felt her breath on his skin, when he again opened them, she was on her knees in front of him, her fingers running back and forth over his dick. He looked straight ahead, then lolled his head drunkenly to the side, his eyes locking on the glowing red nightlight over the sink. He narrowed his eyes. It was a porcelain Jesus nightlight, giving him the thumbs up and smiling at a baby held happily in the crook of his elbow. These frat guys had a weird sense off humor. Jamie stared up at the ceiling, closing his eyes, waiting for the feel of her lips on him. Then her fingers stopped moving. Jamie looked down slowly. Erica was leaning back on her feet, her face slack and pale. She stared up at him, then turned, and vomited across the bathroom floor.
***
It had been a long night. Will had shown up at her dorm at ten o’clock sharp. Christie and Joe had just completed one of their three hour “romantic interludes,” and the sounds of their lovemaking had left Kelli depressed and restless. She was just contemplating slipping into the bath with her vibrating rubber ducky, when the suite’s doorbell rang. She walked out into the living room, relieved to see that her suite mates had slipped out for the time being. She opened the door, the sight of Will instantly pulling the rug out from under her libido.
“Ta da!” he exclaimed, holding out a DVD case.
“Wow. That’s looks great,” she said, taking it from his hands.
They walked into her room and slipped into their well established routine. She turned on the TV and put the disc into the player. He pulled two beers from his cargo pants and pried the caps off on the edge of her dresser, while Kelli grabbed several pillows out of the closet, and threw them on the floor. She gave Will the blue one. He liked the blue one.
Jesus.
She felt like slapping herself in the head. Was this like a marriage or something?
They’d been friends since their freshman year, but never anything more. Will had long established that he wished to change that, but it was not meant to be.
Until September, Kelli had been dating a guy from back home, and they’d carried on a long distance relationship for the better part of eighteen months. At the start of the year, as she was leaving for Rochester, he’d told her he was tired of making the trip, that he was starting to see someone else. Oddly, it hadn’t fazed her. She enjoyed his visits, but they were never a perfect match. After the first year, their sex life had begun a slow but steady slide into limbo. They’d get around to it once a week when he came up to visit her at school, but by the end of her freshman year, the visits had begun stretching from every weekend, to every other weekend, to once a month. By the time she’d come home for the summer, they were living all but separate lives. Her first weekend back, it had all felt normal again. She’d skipped out on her folks and stayed at his house for the weekend, where they’d all but devoured each other, but it was short lived. The rest of the summer their lovemaking was sporadic as the tension between them grew. By September the end was in sight, and when he stopped by her house the night before she went back to school, she’d known it was coming. Truth be told, she was relieved, excited by the possibility of meeting someone new. Finding something better.
Of course, once Will picked up on her lack of weekend guests, his visits to the suite became a daily routine. By October, he’d all but roped her into weekly movie marathons in her room, or trips to the Little Theater downtown. Since they were both film majors, going to the movies had always been a regular part of their friendship, but somewhere along the line it had begun bordering on something else. Kelli wasn’t sure how to get out of it, but she knew a deadline was fast approaching. This pattern of several movies a weekend, and zero romance, was driving her through the roof. Unfortunately, though she had a more than willing male companion every weekend, she knew it wouldn’t work, and she had no desire to give it a try. So, they watched movies, each of them glancing at the other out of the corner of their eyes. Will wondering how he would make his move, Kelli wondering how she would dodge it.
Rather than One, Two, Three, Will had gone with Sabrina. A shrewd choice. Had he chosen the 1995 remake (and who would?), Will’s intentions would have been all too clear, and pathetic, but the selection of the 1954 original carried layers of hidden meaning. They were both films geeks; he would undoubtedly have weighed all the factors in his mind, just as Kelli found herself doing as she sipped her beer and watched the opening credits. Whereas the remake with Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear wreaked of the shameless attempt to fashion a modern date movie from a romantic comedy, the version with William Holden and Humphrey Bogart was not just more complex and believable, but a simple film classic. They were both Billy Wilder fans, which almost invited them to ignore the plot of a woman choosing the diamond in the rough over the playful cad, but she knew of Will’s fondness for Humphrey Bogart. Half his film quotes came from Casablanca, and the subtext of Audrey Hepburn making the unlikely choice and going with the stodgier, more serious suitor was hard to ignore. She and Will were reaching the danger zone; he’d be showing up with When Harry Met Sally any day now, and when that happened, they would have to have a talk.
She knew how the night would end. Once the movie was over, they’d sit there for a minute or two, til she got up and turned on the lights. She’d see him watching her out of the corner of his eye, wondering how to proceed next. Then she would go over to her bed and sit down with her back against the wall. They’d talk a little bit about the movie, with many long, meaningful pauses generously dispersed throughout the exchange, then, they’d either sit there, locked in a battle of wills until one of them fell asleep, or pretended to, or she’d fake a yawn, exaggerate exhaustion, and tell him she had work in the morning. This had been her tactic for the better part of two months. Once in September she had honestly fallen asleep, and had awoken to find Will curled up on the floor, pretending to be passed out, yet when she quietly turned her head a few minutes later, she caught his eyes quickly snapping shut. She lay awake for the rest of the night, fearing the moment he would summon the courage to boldly climb into bed beside her. In the end, she’d gotten up around 5:30, snuck into the bathroom to change, and snuck out of the suite, leaving a note saying she’d gone to the library to work on a paper. She’d actually spent four hours drinking coffee at Gracie’s and reading, before sneaking back to her room around eleven. Happy to see that Will had left, she’d gone back to sleep. Neither of them had ever mentioned the incident.
They’d been about halfway through the movie when she sensed Will glancing at her now and then. She’d been considering asking him about the guy in the hat who she’d seen with Will’s group at dinner, but thought it best to wait. She knew he’d only get quiet, making things more awkward.
Kelli began stiflin
g exaggerated yawns, preparing for the sleepy performance to come.
***
Fritz slipped on the icy sidewalk, falling into a frozen mudpuddle and laughing drunkenly. He and Jamie were walking back to the dorms in the dark, having left the car back at the parking lot. Jamie went over to help him to his feet, almost going down with him as their feet slid in circles on the frozen ground.
“Oh shit,” Fritz gasped.
“Come on, the last thing we need is to both crack our heads open.”
“Wait- wait- wait- wait- wait- wait- wait!” Fritz fired off as he held his hand up to keep Jamie at bay. “I can get up by myself.” He dropped his head in concentration, summoned his strength for one sober moment, and pushed himself up off the ground with his fists. He stood with a very slight stagger, and threw his arm around Jamie’s shoulder.
“You okay there, buddy?’ Jamie asked him.
“No,” Fritz slurred. “No I’m not. I disappointed for you man. I thought Erica would hook you up.”
“So you knew she was gonna do that?”
“What? Puke?” Fritz’s face scrunched up in dismay. “Hell no!”
“No, I mean the other thing. Did you tell her I liked her?”
“Yeah, I thought she’d help you relax. That’s like…her thing, you know man? She’s like the samurai of blowjobs.”
Jamie wasn’t sure what to make of this.
“The samurai of blowjobs, huh?”
Fritz waved his arm like a pinwheel. “I’m telling you, she’s the best.” He staggered on for a moment. “Ah well, maybe next time.”
“No, don’t worry about it, man. I don’t really wanna hook up with a girl like that.”
Fritz turned to him, puzzled.
“But that’s the beauty of it. She’s not looking for anything more. She just loves giving em.”
“Really, I’m fine.”
They were trudging up the hill towards their dorm. Jamie looked at his watch. It was two in the morning.
“Dude, how we gonna get in?”
“It’s cool,” Fritz answered. “Just be cool. If we see anyone from campus safety, we just…act…sober...” He paused dramatically, his hands held aloft in cautious glee.
“They’re gonna know we’re drunk.”
“No man. No. Just relax.”
Jamie looked around the quad. It seemed pretty quiet, but every so often a car drove by on the road that looped around past the dorms. He expected to see a campus safety car at any moment.
“Trust me,” Fritz continued. “It’s a piece of cake.”
Apparently it was, though Jamie felt sure they’d be stopped at any moment. They arrived at the building, fumbled with their keys, and stomped up the stairs to their floor. Fritz was by far the drunker of the two, leaning against the smooth walls in the hallway as his feet carried him down the hall. They stopped at his room and he opened the door.
“Hold on a second buddy,” he said, holding up his index finger. “Just let me grab something, just let me...“
Fritz trailed off as he disappeared in his room. Jamie continued down the hall to the water fountain. A moment later Fritz staggered down after him, holding out a couple off white caplets.
“Here, take these.”
“What are they?” Jamie asked.
“Vitamin C. Trust me man, they’ll help with your hangover tomorrow.”
Jamie accepted the pills and swallowed them with a gulp of water from the fountain. Fritz did the same, then leaned back against the wall as he slid to the floor. Jamie looked down at him.
“You sure you’re okay man?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Fritz slurred. “Sit down for a while.”
“You don’t want to sleep?”
“Nahhhhhh. I’m not tired. Let’s talk.”
As he spoke, Fritz’s head lolled from side to side, heavy with fatigue. Jamie hesitated, then sat across from him, reclining against the opposite wall. Fritz stared down at the floor for a minute, then slowly looked up, locking Jamie in his gaze. Jamie looked at him apprehensively. Fritz stared right back.
“Why did you have that operation?” Fritz pointed to Jamie’s head. “What was wrong with you?”
Jamie hesitated, wondering if Fritz would even remember their conversation tomorrow. He sat with his mouth poised to speak, debating, then decided what the hell?
“ I have a pretty severe case of Parkinson’s Disease, one that just kept getting worse. My doc decided we had to try something new.”
“And what was that?”
“Implanting a sort of pacemaker in my brain to help clear up the signals in my head.”
“Parkinson’s is the one that makes you shake around, right?” Fritz asked.
Jamie nodded his head. “Among other things.”
“Wow.”
Fritz looked up at Jamie’s hat, then turned and looked down the hallway suspiciously. Jamie watched him with a half smile.
“Does it work?” Fritz asked conspiratorily.
“It seems to so far.” Jamie replied. “I’m here aren’t I?”
“How does it get power?”
“Well, it sounds funny, but it has something like a fifty year battery.”
Fritz raised a wavering finger in the air, a look of drunken disbelief crossing his face as he pointed at Jamie’s head “You’re telling me you’ve got, like, a Duracell up there?”
Jamie laughed. ‘Yep.”
“Damn.” Fritz stared at him again. “Tell that story to chicks. That’s a foolproof way to get yourself laid.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Just tell ‘em it powers your vibrating feature!”
“Well, it didn’t work any wonders tonight.”
“Whatever!” Fritz waved his hand in impatience. “She’s a different story. And you didn’t even try it yet. Girls will think that’s cool. But-” He stopped short.
“What?” Jamie asked.
“Are you bullshitting me? You’re not gonna go crazy like The Terminator or anything are you?”
“No, I’m not. And I’m not bullshitting you either.”
“That is so fucking cool!”
The two of them sat there for a moment. Jamie was far more sober than Fritz, but even he was starting to feel the weight of the night’s activities. His eyes were drooping. Then he heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and turned to see Will trudge around the corner looking extremely disgruntled. He was holding a DVD in his hand. Fritz turned to the hallway and shouted to him, his voice echoing in the empty corridor..
“Yo, Will! What’s happening?"
Jamie kicked him, and Fritz caught himself, lowering his voice to a whisper.
“What’s happening man?” he whispered.
“Not much,” Will muttered as he continued down the hall.
Fritz bobbed his head back towards Jamie.
“Girl troubles?”
Jamie nodded knowingly. “Hey listen… About that implant thing. Can you try to keep that to yourself?”
Fritz nodded his head. “Of course man. Of course.” He held up his hand. “My bird is my wand.”
Jamie blinked but decided to let that pass.
‘I appreciate it,” he replied.
Fritz slumped back against the wall, his eyes fluttering shut.
“Let’s call it a night.” Jamie said as he staggered to his feet.
“Sounds good to me.”
Fritz started to stand, then stumbled to the side. Jamie caught his arm and helped him to his feet. Fritz walked a wiggling line to the door of his room, then spun around, saluted Jamie, and closed the door. Jamie stood in the hallway for a moment. He was alone again. He walked down the hall to the bathroom. The bright fluorescent lights stung his drunken eyes. He blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the flickering lights, then walked over to the sink and splashed water in his face. He looked up at his reflection, then reached up, pulled off his cap, and studied the long, dark scars. He wondered if Fritz had believed him. Even to him, the implant sounded
a bit farfetched. He lifted a handful of water to his head, running his fingers over the bumpy surface, feeling the water trickling down the sides of his face.
***
Fritz’s vitamin C capsules eased the pain of the next day’s hangover, but something, most likely the massive quantities of alcohol, had played strange tricks of the mind all night. Jamie woke constantly, struggling to discern between a steady stream of nightmares and reality. It didn’t help that each dream sequence began with Jamie being jolted awake, obscuring the line between sleep and awakening . His first impulse was to fear for the implant -- An infection or rejection was poisoning his mind, forcing disturbing and unwanted imagery to the surface. No. It was just the alcohol. He was hung over. He had to remember that, he was just hung over.
The first of the nightmares came soon after he fell asleep. He’d gone into the bathroom, washed his face, then stumbled into his room and collapsed face down on the bed. A few hours later, in his dream, he awoke to a soft scratching at the door of his room. There was a high-pitched sound in the background, a sort of wailing moan, then the rumble of someone banging his fists on a wooden surface. In the dream, Jamie sat up in bed, walked over to the door, and saw a man’s shadow moving back and forth in the dim rectangle of light that spread out across the carpet. Jamie looked through the peephole, but saw nothing. He stood there for a moment, his hand on the knob, bracing himself to throw it open. His heart beat heavily in his chest, his breathing was dry and painful, the taste of rust rose up in the back of his throat. When he finally swept the door open, the hallway was empty. He stepped out into the corridor and looked around. No one. Jamie had awoken from this dream disoriented, but quickly fell back to sleep.
In the second dream, he again awoke to the sounds of scratching on the door. He stood, and again saw the same restless, pacing shadow. This time he was angry. He lunged for the door and ripped it open. Again, the hallway was empty. He stepped outside, looking from side to side. The lights were dim. All the doors were closed. Silence. Jamie hesitated, then went back into his room, closing the door behind him. He leaned forward slowly as he closed the door, peeking through the peephole at the empty hallway. No sooner did his eye focus on the space outside, than the face of a man, his features obscured by a black cloak, lunged at him through the peephole. The man’s icy blue eyes glared at him through the glass, twitching wildly. The moaning noise returned, undulating through the door as the man tried to shove it open. Jamie smashed his shoulder against the heavy door, trying to close it, but the man’s strength all but overpowered him. Jamie heard another strange howling, grunting noise, and suddenly realized it was the sound of his own guttural terror. He took a final lunge and slammed the door shut. He was just reaching for the lock with his finger, when he awoke, letting out a final gasp as he sat bolt upright in his bed.
On/Off - A Jekyll and Hyde Story Page 7