Iris Has Free Time

by Iris Smyles

  You have been banished to the Second Level of Hell!

  You have come to a place mute of all light, where the wind bellows as the sea does in a tempest. This is the realm where the lustful spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire as punishment for their transgressions. The infernal hurricane that never rests hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. You have betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy are two that share in your fate.

  8:00 AM

  I walk into class and greet everyone with a cheerful, “Good morning! I trust you’ve enjoyed a long weekend of fascinating reading and can hardly wait for our discussion to begin.” A few students giggle. A few yawn. Most say nothing. One says, “Ms. Smyles, you crazy.” I look to see where the voice is coming from. It’s the girl who wrote the email.

  I smile as if it were a well-tailored but frayed passion of mine to discuss Dante with twenty teenagers on a Monday morning in upper Manhattan. I offer this weary smile throughout my lecture. It suggests I know a lot more than I am telling. It suggests that my knowledge is rich and varied, that I might just be a Dante scholar but only have time in this class to skim along the text’s surface. This is my Hemingway trick. I show only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface, however, is not more iceberg, but CliffsNotes and Wikipedia articles.

  What do I know about Dante? I read The Inferno once back in college and barely paid attention when I did, the way my students barely pay attention now. And then I read it once more after I was assigned to teach it along with a bunch of other epics for World Humanities I. I get around what I don’t know by organizing the class according to questions I have for them, a teaching technique I’ve adapted from my relationships with men. I try to answer all questions with more questions: “Where was I?” “Well, where were you?” “Why is Virgil Dante’s guide through hell?” “Excellent question. Class? Why is Virgil Dante’s guide through hell? Let’s write on that for five minutes and then we’ll have open discussion.”

  Mostly no one does the readings, so I don’t have to worry too much about their asking me questions, and when they do, if I don’t know the answer, I just go mum and disapproving, as if they would know the answer themselves if they looked closer at the text, or else I suggest they do some supplementary research for an extra credit project. I take a moment to wax lyrical about the joys of research and correct citation format as dictated by either the MLA or Chicago Manual of Style.

  I begin calling roll—this is where you go after you complete a Master’s and before you earn a PhD; this is where you pause, indefinitely—then I write a few questions on the board and ask them to free-write. While they write, I review my to-do list:

  1. Shave legs

  2. Floss

  3. Wash face and moisturize

  4. Pay Con Ed bill

  5. Alphabetize magazine mailing list and email list to Janice

  6. Call Mom

  7. Grade last week’s quizzes

  8. Review student portfolios and enter final grades for Monday class

  9. Proofread short story, write cover letter and submit to BOMB magazine

  10. Do dishes

  11. Pick up clothes in bedroom

  I begin my lecture but am almost immediately interrupted by a hand. It’s Juan in the front row. He has a question about the final paper due next session. About citations. I explain that the author’s name must be written, “last name comma first name.” I write on the board: “Last name, first name.” He responds, “So, Alighieri, Dante.” I say, “No. In that case, it’s just Dante.” He stares at me along with the rest of the class and waits for an explanation. I oblige: “Dante dropped Alighieri like Madonna dropped Ciccone.” I shrug. “Let’s move on. We’ve a lot to cover. . . .”

  9:30 AM

  On my way out of the classroom, I open my phone in order to look busy and avoid talking to my students in the hallway. It says I have fourteen messages. All accumulated in the last week. I’m too bored to listen to them, so I check the missed call log instead. Most of the calls are from Janice, who always calls back anyway.

  The phone rings while I’m still holding it. Janice. I pick up. “What’s up?” “Did you get my message?” she asks. I say, “Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet.” I arrive back at my office and go inside, shutting the door behind me. I ask her what she said in her message and she says she just said it was Janice, stated the time, and then asked me to call her back. I tell her that the call log tells me what time she’s called, and that it was she that called, and so she doesn’t need to state her name and the time when she calls. She says, “but then I’d have nothing to say on voicemail.” I don’t say anything. Then I ask her, “So what’s up?” and she says, “Nothing.” Then she tells me she’s thinking about texting my friend Jacob whom she slept with a week ago and who hasn’t called her since.

  I ask her what she wants to text him and she says, “‘What’s up?’” I suggest she make it more specific. I suggest she text him, “Shit Fuck Rat Cock.” “Won’t that be weird?” she asks. “Yes. It would be weird, which is why it will up the chances of his replying, maybe even calling you back. He’ll want to know what the hell’s the matter with you. He’ll be intrigued.” She is silent for a second. “I don’t know,” she says. I say, “Think about it for an hour and see how you feel. Type the words into your phone just to see how they look on the screen, to see if you’re comfortable with them. If not, delete.” “Okay,” she says. “Okay,” I say. “Good luck. Now I have to go. Tons of papers to grade.”

  I get off the phone and stare at the wall. At a conference poster featuring an image of the Irish countryside that one of the other adjuncts hung up.

  9:54 AM

  My phone rings again. I’ve set the ring to a soft spooky whistle so that whenever it rings in public places like a supermarket or bookstore, people around me become frightened. They look around, and I can tell they’re wondering if they are the only ones that hear it, if maybe they are being haunted for something terrible they did earlier that day that they thought no one knew about.

  I look at the phone to see who’s calling, hoping it’s a telemarketer or maybe someone I don’t know who fell in love with me while I wasn’t paying attention. It’s Janice again. I debate whether or not to answer and then finally pick up, fearing she’ll leave a fifteenth message.

  “What’s up?” I say. She says, “Not much.” “Oh,” I say. She says, “I’m just calling to remind you about emailing me the mailing list.” “Yeah, I’m on that,” I say. She sighs. I wait. She sighs again. “Just tell me if you’re not going to do it,” she says. “I’m going to do it,” I say. “Okay, good,” she says, “because I’m swamped. And honestly . . .” I brace myself. She always says “honestly” right before she complains. “Honestly, I just feel like I end up doing most of the work.” “So stop,” I say, while pulling at a hangnail. “But then nothing would get done!” she says. I don’t say anything. I decide I need a nail clipper. I should carry one in my purse. “Can you go to Staples later and get Post-its?” “Fine,” I answer.

  Janice is still angry at me for losing a batch of manuscripts last week, so I agree to go to Staples even though we don’t need Post-its and all the “work” she supposedly ends up doing herself, she creates out of boredom. Like now. Because Jacob hasn’t called her, she’s decided to make mailing labels—“And get more labels,” she adds. “We’re nearly out.” I don’t mention the fact that we have not yet mailed anything to anyone. I just say, “Okay.”

  About last Friday: Janice invited me to meet her at a bar in my neighborhood, and when I showed up, she ambushed me with a pile of submissions to the magazine we’re starting, “official documents” she wanted me to take home. If anyone has a right to be angry, it’s me. Who brings important stuff to a bar on a Friday night?

 
She was having drinks with a few girlfriends from her Teach for America days. When I got there they were talking about their rewarding but difficult work and drinking very slowly. I ordered a shot and texted the guy I’d planned to meet up with later—a novelist/memoirist in his early forties who’s written extensively about his battles with alcoholism. For our first official date, he suggested we meet for drinks. “Just come now,” I texted.

  Janice and I had both met him the previous weekend, first at the Brooklyn Book Festival and then again at the Corduroy Appreciation Club Meeting where I made him promise to contribute something to our magazine. “Even if it’s just a urine sample,” Janice added.

  He and I immediately hit it off. He’d recently fallen off the wagon, so we ended up having a swell time smoking pot in a lavatory (he was doing cocaine, too, but I declined) and getting sloshed at three different bars (I on the whiskeys that he bought for me, and he on the fruity cocktails that I bought for him), followed by forties on an LES stoop—and then an even more swell time over the phone the next day trying to piece together what exactly had happened the night before. It was a great place to start things, and I was already fantasizing about the long romantic days of wine and roses we might share before his next bout of recovery.

  We weren’t supposed to get together for another hour but I told him, “Just come now” because the conversation among the girls had moved to Hurricane Katrina and whether or not they all shouldn’t just quit their teaching jobs and move to Louisiana to help with the relief effort. It was a tough decision and for a moment they fiddled with their Live Strong bracelets in silence. Who needed them more, their poor students or those poor hurricane victims?

  As he and I were leaving, Janice kept saying about the batch of manuscripts she’d brought, “Don’t forget the bag, don’t forget the bag,” like she knew I was going to forget the bag. So I left with the guy and with or without the bag, I forget, and we went to a bunch of bars and did what we did, and then she called me in the morning all curious to see how it went with the guy and also the bag. “What bag?” I asked, still in bed and in the middle of my ritual early-morning reproach. The guy had already gone.

  Janice sighed. “You’re kidding right?” “I’m sorry,” I said. She was silent. “Are we still on for the meeting later?” she asked. “Of course,” I said, trying to pretend I knew all about the meeting. “Just tell me where and when.” “It’s at your place,” she answered.

  “It’s not fair that you get to come up with all the ideas while I’m stuck doing all the work,” she told me in my apartment. It was an “executive meeting,” which meant the two of us sitting on the floor looking at manuscripts, complaining about men, and waiting for her pot dealer to call us back. “Well, no one’s stopping you from coming up with an idea,” I said. “When I do, you shoot it down!” “Because all your ideas are bad. Do you want me to say yes and put out a shitty magazine, just so you can feel good?” “No, but it’s the way you do it. It makes it hard for me to be creative. We should collaborate more. Anyway, I don’t have time to come up with good ideas because I’m too busy doing all the work while you’re having fun brainstorming.” “Okay, so do you want me to come up with fewer ideas, or just not tell you about them?” “Just shoulder some of the work!” “I do!” “No, you don’t!” “Fine. I’m sorry. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.”

  She looked down at the agenda she brought over and then reached into the bag of new supplies she got from Staples. She placed a gold star next to one item. “Here,” she said. “We need to alphabetize our mailing list. It’s a total mess.” She handed me the agenda. I handed her a beer. Then she told me what a jerk my friend Jacob is, how he called her up last night, “at like two in the morning,” and came over and how she had sex with him. “You showed him!” I said and chugged my beer.

  10:01 AM

  I take out the stack of quizzes I gave last week, which I’ve yet to grade.

  “The daily quizzes should be easy,” I told my students at the beginning of the semester. They will consist of one or two straightforward questions that serve only to verify that you’ve done the reading. It’s nothing to worry about,” I said, brushing off their concern, “provided you’ve done the reading.”

  I look at the one on top.

  QUESTION: What does Oedipus do after he finds out he has killed his father and married his mother?

  ANSWER: He is sad.1

  I draw an X next to the answer and then put the whole pile in a drawer.

  10:02 AM

  I go online. I email a guy I’ve been leading on for just over two months; I don’t feel guilty because he seems to enjoy it. We met at a reading in January when I was at my most irresistible due to the fact that I was crying all the time. I was haunting the drinks table when this well-scrubbed Asian guy in an oversized hockey jersey asked me my name. He told me his and then claimed, very quickly, that he wasn’t on speed but worked in finance. He’s since asked me out ten or fifteen times, both personally for drinks and via mass emails for cocktail-hour events, which are addressed back to himself with my address bcc’d, though I suspect I am the only one he’s inviting. I think it’s a trick where I’m supposed to think I’m showing up to a party, but find upon my arrival that it’s just him and me. This actually makes me like him more. Still, invariably, I tell him I’m busy. Usually he’ll email and then I’ll email back. But the other day he called, so I’m emailing him back. I write:

  Sorry, I didn’t call you back the other day. I had to return a pair of khakis to the Gap after having fallen victim to their latest and most insidious ad campaign yet, the one in which khakis feature prominently as a winter wardrobe essential. In the commercial everyone is dancing and looking great, so I got the khakis, tried them on at home, and found that standing still, they have the fit of a paper bag. I tried dancing in them for a few minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, and it’s true, they do look good this way. But then, most of the places one wants to wear khakis don’t encourage dancing—work, for example. So dancing can’t be relied upon to bring the pants to life, and if I do go out dancing, I probably won’t want to wear khakis but a dress or a skirt and heels or something more flashy—puzzling. So I decided to bring them back. This took some time.

  And then I was about to call you yesterday morning when I realized I’d forgotten the toast in the toaster oven, again! It wasn’t burned, just cold, so I had to make another toast, and then I got caught up with that until I was rushing out of my apartment to get to work. I was going to call you on the way in, but before I knew it I was underground and had no reception, and then when I got out of the subway I had my mittens on and it was too difficult to take them off and carry my bags and dial all at the same time, so I just figured I’d wait until I got inside. And then by the time I got my mittens off, I was at my office in a rush with my keys because I was worried I might run into the professor in the office next to mine who keeps asking me how I am.

  “How are you?” he pries, every time he sees me, and then I’ve got to stand there and think about it. Anyway, he must have heard me wrestling with my keys because he poked his head out the door just before I got right with mine. I improvised: “Fine, how are you?” And then I had to talk to him awhile about how he was—he claimed he was fine, too, though I have my doubts—which is why I couldn’t call you back right then.

  And then after I dropped my stuff off, I had to get to class. I put some notes on the board, and then everyone arrived, and then we had to talk about The Inferno. I was rushing out of the room after that, removing my phone from my purse, excited finally to use the opportunity to call you back when I ran into a co-worker who asked about calling me later to meet up for drinks. I told him I was swamped with work and that the first free moment I had was going to be spent with this speedy Asian guy I’ve been meaning to call for ages, but then accidentally threw in that I’d call him later—it’s what people say—but not until I call you first!

  And then I was downtown again a
t home about to wash my hair because I didn’t have time to wash it this morning, what with the toast debacle, and then by the time I got out of the shower it was already so late; I could hardly call you at that hour. So I figured I’d just write you instead the next morning, which is what I’m doing now. Anyway, thanks for the invitation. It sounded like a lot of fun and I’m very sorry I had to miss it. Let’s have drinks soon though. I really want to.

  10:16 AM

  I receive a mass email Janice has just sent to all of our literary magazine contributors asking them to send a two- or three-line bio for our author’s page. “Like this:” she writes, and then proceeds to write a fake bio for Jacob, whose poem we are publishing. “Jacob is a self-absorbed jerk who eats his own shit and doesn’t respect women.”

  I try to calm down.

  I write an email back to her about what an idiot she is and then press Delete. I decide to call her instead. The phone rings and when she answers, “What’s up?” I tell her calmly that her email was very “unprofessional.” “What are you talking about?” she mumbles, the way she always does when she’s lying. I read the email aloud to her. She says, “I didn’t write that.” I say, “I’m looking at it right now.” She says, “Come on, it was a joke.” She laughs.

  “It’s not funny. You’ve insulted one of our contributors for all the rest to see. They don’t know us, Janice, and think, unless we give them adequate reason not to, that we are running a serious magazine. And besides, what you wrote is gross.” “I thought it was funny,” she says. “It’s not funny, it’s retarded.” “Don’t say retarded, my cousin’s retarded.” “Fine. It’s stupid and not funny.” “Don’t tell me what’s funny!” she says.