EEEE-RRRR-EEEE-RRRR!
He drops the bag. Plop. Behind him, one of the demon trio has slugged him with a wooden dowel. It’s not painful, really, but it’s shocking enough, will leave a mark. He looks behind him, comes face-to-face with a grinning triplet. The man smells of rot—dirt, sulfur, compost. Bryan looks closer, sees that the face is not a face at all, but a mask painted onto a face. It’s very good. It looks real. Kudos to them. He wonders, for a moment, what the face beneath looks like. Disfigured? Handsome? Nervous? The demon-man hits him three more times—whap, whap, whap—then straightens up, walks out of the bathroom, joins the others. Bryan dives back for the plastic bag, brings it out. Inside is an envelope. Score.
In the bedroom, Jane, Jaidee, and Victor are scrambling, opening drawers, feeling inside them. The clock reads: 5 min, 42 sec. Jane and Jaidee have one envelope each. Victor has two. The demon triplets are clumped in the corner of the room, seemingly dazed, waiting for their alarm. Once in a while, they chuckle dumbly. When they do, their lips hit their ears.
Bryan shakes his head. What a mess, he thinks. What a fucked-up chaos.
A fucked-up chaos.
A fucked-up chaos.
Simone had used that phrase a lot. A fucked-up chaos. For a while, she’d worked as a server at the Spaghetti Shack downtown, slinging bowl after bowl of pasta (unlimited refills!), and when she’d gotten in the weeds, when she’d been double, triple, quadruple sat, when the kitchen was slow, or the printers weren’t working, or the manager followed her around, making sure she was taking plates away and pouring refills quickly, she’d come back to her apartment, flop on the couch, and say, Work was such a fucked-up chaos.
When Bryan cheated, when she’d come home from work early one day to find him with his tongue down Leslie Hemming’s throat, she’d told him, later that night, that her head wouldn’t stop spinning, that everything going on inside was some serious fucked-up chaos.
Why her? she’d said. Why the fuck her?
Thing was: he hadn’t even liked Leslie that much, but he’d just been hanging out at Simone’s, waiting for her shift to end, and Leslie had come over. She’d asked for Simone, and when Bryan said she wasn’t home, that she was at work—didn’t she know that?—Leslie had pushed her way in, asked if Bryan had any beer, sat on the couch. She said, Can I just stay a bit before I go to work? I’ve got, like, an hour to kill. He said yes. She downed her beer, asked for another. He gave. And then they made out.
We just kissed, Bryan said.
I almost wish you’d been fucking, Simone said.
What?
That kiss . . .
It’d been just a kiss, but it’d been an honest kiss, an urgent kiss, a kiss that’d surely lead elsewhere. Bryan knew this. But still.
You really wanna trade me in for some skinny white chick? Simone said. Is that it?
No, he replied. Of course not.
Are you a cliché? she said. Is that what you are? Just some tired cliché?
I don’t know what that means.
She shook her head, mumbled, What a fucked-up chaos.
They’d talked and talked—that evening and many evenings afterward—but Simone couldn’t get the kissing image out of her head: Bryan’s head tilted, tongue sliding, eyes closed, hand running through Leslie’s blond hair, and Leslie’s arms folded near her chest, shrinking herself, making herself vulnerable, leaning into his strength. Simone had eventually kicked him out, and he’d moved back in with his mother, calling Simone every night, receiving dial tone. The few times Simone answered, she asked why: Why would he sacrifice everything they’d built for some inconsequential romp with her coworker? Why would he choose Leslie of all people, the prototypical white girl? Why didn’t he just push her away, remind her of Simone? Was she that powerful that she could cow him into submission like that? Her petite frame and blond hair and small tits, was that all it took? At these questions, he blanked, partly because they came as a full-on barrage, but mostly because he didn’t know the answers. Leslie had been nothing to him—then, now, forever—but something had happened, and he couldn’t take it back, and moments like those, moments where behaviors effectively erased purported values, were forever defining, he knew, and there was nothing he could say or do now to make it go away.
In the motel room, they have only three envelopes left to find.
Victor’s arms are streaked red—he has jumped and jumped and jumped. He tells Bryan that he’d thought the drawers would fully detach, that he’d just need to pull and hold on, but that wasn’t the case: he and Bryan not only have to jump but they must brush away the brambles, pull the drawer open, and reach inside in the second before gravity tosses them to the ground. A few times Victor’s held on to the drawer, dangling, opening drawers beside the one from which he dangles, but his arms weaken quickly, and the falls burn his legs.
Bryan, strangely, has grown softer to Victor. The guy has proven himself willing to do shit Bryan didn’t think he’d do. There was something in every person, Bryan thought. Something remarkable beneath the surface.
And Victor’s been lucky so far. In his first fifteen tries, he’s found two envelopes, one on his second jump. But now it seems the battles with the skittering woman and the minotaur from Cell One have fuzzied his mind.
EEEE-RRRR-EEEEE-RRRR!
And then there are the freaks, seething in their corner. Their awful unison cry every twenty seconds—animating, racing around the room, striking with their ridiculous sticks.
The blue-stick man comes after Jane, who screams and runs toward the bathroom. She’s trapped but somewhat safe: the blue-stick man abruptly turns, runs for Bryan. Jane edges out, but the dowel-man blocks her way. She stares at him for a second. His mouth is full of saliva. He moves his lips up and down, fishlike. Each time he does, threads of spit form a miniature prison in his mouth. She shakes her head, manic.
Remember, Bryan calls to Jane, leaping onto the bed, jumping. He’s just a person.
3 min, 25 sec.
Bryan’s sweat rains down on the green shag carpet. He jumps, opens, finds nothing, drops. He does this five times, realizes that if he wants to reach the drawers at the very top, he’ll have to climb. Each of those drawers, he knows, contains an envelope. They have to.
But those vines and those man-made thorns! Imagine his hands and arms! What if one of those razors hits something vital? What then?
And yet: climbing is the only way to stop all this fucked-up chaos. So he goes to one of the bureaus, kicks away some brambles, puts his foot gingerly on one of the drawer handles, tests his weight. It holds. He looks up, grabs a handle wrapped in vine. A thorn pokes into his middle finger. He breathes, ignores the sting. He moves his other foot, his other hand, and slowly, gracefully ascends. Behind him, the shouts of his fellow contestants are muted. Halfway up, he feels a wooden dowel hit his ankle. If I fall, land on my neck, what then? He continues up. By the time he reaches the top, his legs, cheeks, hands, and arms are latticed with scratches, some long, some short. His body burns, but he’s thinking of envelopes. He’s also thinking how strange it is that he’s actually connected to this very real, very dangerous game, that he’s sat at the owner’s dinner table, that his cousin is a parking-lot girl, that all of this exists just a few miles from where he grew up.
He opens a drawer at the top, reaches in. Envelope. He reaches across, opens another top drawer: Envelope. He reaches for a third drawer: Envelope. He looks down. If he falls, he’ll break a leg. The Quigley House will not be responsible. He signed a goddamn contract. How valid? Who knows. But he can’t chance it. Careful now, he thinks. Careful, careful, careful. He descends.
1 min, 22 sec.
Bleeding, he shows his comrades his arms, the envelopes.
Oh my god, Bryan, Jane says.
You did it, Victor says.
Damn, Jaidee says, panting.
The men in masks huddle in their corner. In unison, the contestants look to the scoreboard.
Below the clock, the
se words: YOU MAY PROCEED.
Jaidee
On dorm move-in day, after Jaidee and his new roommate had both settled in, Jaidee stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking everywhere but his dorm-mate’s eyes. It’d taken four years of collegiate rejection for him to get here, four years of working for his dad at the bank—licking envelopes, folding letters, punching numbers on a small calculator—four years of revising his personal statement, inserting phrases like “rich cultural heritage” and “diversity of experience” and “self-motivated toward success,” four years of mindless American television and American novels and English language exchange, and now, after all that waiting, he stood in a room the size of a jail cell. Jaidee frowned. The brochure pictures had connoted spaciousness, but there was hardly any space at all; indeed, after his roommate, Bryan, had moved his loveseat in—pushing it beneath his raised bed, propping a TV tray next to it—the room seemed unreasonably truncated. Given the vastness of the land outside the room, this smallness seemed an affront.
And then there was his roommate.
Jaidee excused himself to the bathroom, sat in the stall. He thought perhaps he could go to the housing office, tell them he wanted a single, or that he wanted to be moved to a different hall. Bryan was not what he had expected—he didn’t know if he’d be able to acclimate.
It’s not that he’s Black, he would tell the housing office, it’s just that I’m not used to—
To what? He had nothing.
He left the stall, splashed water on his face, and returned to the dorm room. Bryan was hanging shirts up in the closet, running his hands over the length of each one, smoothing them out.
“So you’re from Thailand, huh,” Bryan said, standing back from the closet, taking inventory.
“Yes,” Jaidee said.
“Huh,” Bryan said. “That’s cool.”
“Yes.”
“Come a long way from there,” Bryan said, looking over at him.
“Yes. A long way.”
“Well, welcome to America.”
“I like it here. So much space.”
Bryan laughed. “Maybe too much.”
They ate dinner together in the student union—Bryan got pizza, Jaidee a burger—and after they’d opened their respective cardboard containers, Bryan asked about Thailand—what’s the food like? What’s the weather? Is it true, the sex tourism? How long was the flight? Jaidee, surprisingly, warmed to Bryan’s earnestness, and thought, during that first dinner, that perhaps he’d wait a while before going to the housing office. After all, if he’d been roommates with someone he felt attraction toward, how would that affect his studies? School needed to be his primary concern: his parents would require frequent grade reports, and if he was caught lying . . .
Bryan’s questions dissipated, and Jaidee felt compelled to ask some of his own: Was he from Lincoln? What’s the weather like? Where was the nearest mall? What kind of music did he listen to? When his questions dried up, they sat silently, paying close attention to their food. After a few minutes of this, two men—one tall, one short, both Black and athletically built—came up to the table and clapped Bryan on the back.
“Look at the geezer,” the short one said. “Midlife crisis, huh?”
Bryan looked over at him, smiled. “Hey, man, still wearing your baby sister’s hand-me-downs, I see.”
“Nah. She outgrown my ass.”
They all laughed. Jaidee picked at his bun. He’d never understood the allure of the hamburger. It seemed almost offensively simple—just bread and a slab of meat. Still, he was hungry. He took a bite.
“Hey, this is my roommate,” Bryan said.
“Oh yeah, you’re in the fuckin’ dorms,” the tall guy said. “You are a freshman.”
“Hey, dude,” the short man said, extending his arm. “I’m Terrence. And I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Jaidee said.
“Yeah, sorry they put you in the geriatric wing.”
Jaidee chuckled. “He’s not old,” he said. “I’m older than him, I’m sure.”
“Seriously?” the taller one said. “You look like you’re fifteen, no offense.”
“I’m twenty-three.”
“Damn,” Terrence said. “You two are ancient.”
“Terrence’s brother’s my good friend,” Bryan said, smiling at Jaidee. “I’ve known this kid since he was shitting in diapers.”
“Dude,” the taller guy said. “He’s still shitting in diapers. You see that bulge in his ass?”
“That is my ass,” Terrence said. “It’s just that I got an ass, see?”
“Yeah, an ass that emits radiation. My whole body’s singed just from standing next to you.”
“And I’ve also known this kid since diapers,” Bryan said. “Except he grew a bit more since then.”
“Cheap shot,” Terrence said.
The taller guy extended his arm. “Eli,” he said. “Nice to meet you.” They shook. “You keeping this guy in line?”
“We just met,” Jaidee said.
Both Eli and Terrence laughed. “Hey, what’re you guys doing later?” Terrence said. “There’s a party out at the Bottoms. Lots of girls—Kappa girls, ya know? Jaidee, has Bryan told you about Kappas yet? No? Well, he should. Kappas are—how would you explain ’em, Eli?”
“What did Joe Brighton say the other day? Studious and playful? Playful and studious? Anyway. They’re real nice.”
“I still have to unpack,” Jaidee said. “What’s the Bottoms?”
The two men stared at him. “Unpack?” Terrence said.
“Yeah. I have clothes still in my suitcases and—”
“Dude,” Eli said. “You’re in college now. Haven’t you seen any American movies? We don’t unpack when we get here. And the Bottoms is where we hang, where everyone hangs.”
“Hey,” Bryan said. “If he’s gotta unpack, he’s gotta unpack. And there won’t be any Kappas there. You know that. They don’t go anywhere but the frat houses. And really. I might have to unpack a bit myself. Still need to shop too. Preparation, gentlemen. Can’t do it hungover.”
“You are ancient,” Eli said. “You gonna get in your jammies at eight p.m. too? Set your alarm? Drink some herbal tea and read a book?”
Bryan shrugged. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“Well,” Eli said, “if you change your mind, give me a shout. Hopefully I’ll be finished unpacking by then.”
“Welcome to UNL, bud,” Terrence said, walking away. Jaidee didn’t know if he was talking to him or his new roommate. “Catch you later.”
After they’d gone, Bryan turned to Jaidee and smiled. “Don’t mind them,” he said. “They’re good guys overall. Jokesters, you know? But good guys. I was Eli’s babysitter when he was a kid. The guy wouldn’t sit still. I lost him, like, five times. Seriously. Him and his sister would just run out of the house late at night and scare me to death. I’d be chasing them and yelling at them and they’d just be hollering and waking people up. But then as a teenager he changed, joined this band, really got into the saxophone. And he’s in the marching band here. I think he’s even won some awards.”
“He seems good,” Jaidee said. He’d eaten his burger. His stomach bulged. He felt slightly nauseous.
Bryan leaned over, put his elbows on the table. “You really have to unpack?” he said.
The house was crowded by the time they arrived, the rooms trembling with synth pop and top forty, each space fashioned with a different, elaborate sound system. There was a keg in the kitchen, and students huddled around it, filling their red cups with cheap beer, pumping the handle, laughing. Bryan zeroed in on a tall Black girl with wavy hair and sparkly eye shadow. “My ex,” he said in Jaidee’s ear. Jaidee nodded. “You wanna meet her?” Jaidee shrugged.
After pouring a couple beers, Bryan and Jaidee went up to the girl, who stood alone, surveying the room. She looked unamused, her face a series of sharp, unforgiving angles. Jaidee thought she was a strange pairing for his new roommate.
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“Hey, Simone,” Bryan said. The girl looked at them both, her face unmoving. “How you been?”
She didn’t answer, just looked at Jaidee. Jaidee looked away.
“This guy is my roommate,” Bryan said. “He’s from Thailand.”
“Thailand?” Simone said.
“The kid comes all the way from across the globe to Nebraska. That’s fuckin’ nuts.”
For a moment, Simone’s face relaxed. “One of my group members in my finance class last semester was from Korea,” she said. “Really, really smart.”
“Why did you come here anyway?” Bryan said, turning to Jaidee.
“What?” Jaidee said.
“I mean, it just seems like they’d have tons of universities over there, right? So why come here? Just ’cause it’s America?”
Jaidee shrugged. “I wanted to study abroad. Many people in America go abroad to study too.”
“Yeah, for like one semester. They don’t pack up for, like, four years.”
“Bryan,” Simone said, her eyes narrowing, “everyone wants to study here, don’t you know that? It’s well known.”
Bryan shook his head, tipped his red cup, swallowed. “Well, I’d never want to go to college in a place where I didn’t know the language. Can you imagine? How would that even work?”
“I know the language,” Jaidee said.
“Well, you know what I mean.”
Jaidee’s temples burned.
“He speaks fine to me,” Simone said. “I think the accent’s cute.”
Jaidee smiled. “You have the accent,” he said. “You realize that, right?”
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