Travelling The Next Day

Unless you have been up all night, drinking, carousing, and doing things of a questionable nature, four-thirty is not a pleasant experience. I opened the curtains, saw darkness outside, and groaned. Even the birds—which, around Canterbury, seemed to wake up in ecstasy every morning—sung in a register and tempo which I took to mean, “This hour should not exist.” Still, I was going to get another stamp on my passport, so I manned up, took a shower, made a quick breakfast, heaved my duffel bag over my back, and walked outside.

Woolf College, deserted, looks like a prison under lock down. At least, shivering in the darkness in my pea coat, my wool flat cap pulled down low over my head, that’s what I thought about. I stood out there, waiting for The Student to head down my way from his block.

He wore a puffy brown coat—the sort of thing you’d expect to see on a child with an overprotective mother instead of an adult in grad school. The hood was pulled up over his face, and I saw that he was wearing corduroy pants and boots. He had a backpack, a messenger bag, and a sleeping bag with him. “Yo,” he called.

“Yo,” I answered.

He walked up to me and we turned towards the other side of the College, making our slow progress to the footpath. “Big coat,” I said.

“It’s cold,” he said.

I nodded. We were talking like we were in a Cormac McCarthy novel, and my overactive imagination started kicking into gear. There was no doubt that we’d get waylaid on the path by highway men. Sure, we’d reason with them, but, in the end, they’d strip us of everything of value and, because I thought of The Student the weaker of us, would kidnap him and use him for slavery. They’d kill me. No doubt there. Cannibalism might be involved if it turned out we were in The Road. As for The Student’s belongings, well, I’d be happy to let Rebecca have them.

“Supposed to be this cold in France?” I asked.

“Yep,” said The Student.

We continued on in silence. Walked past Eliot College and were now in the woods. Lapsed back to Cormac McCarthy mode. I listened to the wind for the sound of hooves on ground. Maybe diesel-powered trucks, belching smoke and driving through the woods. I’d hear gruff men shouting to each other, “Look for signs of camps.” They’d hold guns and have ammo. We’d be easy prey for killers. I wasn’t a killer. The student wasn’t a killer. I started sweating. Dead giveaway if any of them had a powerful nose. They probably did.

“Quiet out here,” said The Student. He shivered in his coat.

“Yep,” I said.

Yes, The Student would definitely be the one of us to be cut down. The arms of his coat swished against the side. Easy sound to recognize. He should have worn a wool coat. Could have told him, but that would have been useless. He wouldn’t have time to go back to Woolf to get it. The highwaymen would catch him by then. I wished I had a revolver on me, but they were illegal. Not that laws had much to do with a wild land like this. I looked to my left. A fox dashed through the trees.

We made it through the footpath and into the neighborhood at the bottom. Silence here, too. Now they didn’t even need to come through the woods. Just had to drive down the roads in their massive cars/big horses. I shook my head and snapped back to reality. I really should have had some coffee that morning. Reading No Country for Old Men the previous night probably had something to do with it. (That’s the thing about the UK. Even if you get lost in the countryside, you’re probably no more than two miles away from a country pub.)

We walked to the train station, bought tickets to Ashford, and waited. I looked at the station clock for the first time and saw that we were half an hour early. I grunted. Well, at least we definitely wouldn’t miss the train.

As the time got closer, a few people in business suits arrived at the station and, generally, looked even more miserable than us. The Student fell asleep on the station bench and I took out a book to read. Doing that was harder than I thought it would be. Apparently, my brain had no interest whatsoever in concentrating on reading at six in the morning. I closed my book (the new You Just Don’t Get It, Do You? by Richard Dawkins—chosen by the head of the course for a module next term) and took out my wallet. I have a habit of keeping receipts long past the time when they are useful. After I realize that I have no idea what they’re for (generally because the ink has faded), I use them as scrap paper or bookmarks. Today, though, I would use them as pellets to harass The Student. I did so, and he stirred a bit.

Finally, the train arrived, I pushed him awake, and we got on and both promptly fell asleep until we arrived at Ashford.

After passing through French customs and getting on the Eurostar—a mammoth train that was, at this hour, surprisingly full of people who somehow had the capacity to talk—we fell asleep again and woke up as the train zoomed into France, briefly stopping in Calais.

By the time we got to Lille, predictably, I was more tired than I had been at six in the morning. You’d think that after four years spent napping in the mid-afternoon after getting no sleep the previous night, I would have remembered the sorts of problems that came from not getting enough sleep.

We got off of the train and walked into the station. My initial reaction was that it was big. My second reaction was, “Jesus fuck it is cold in here.”

The Student nodded, shivering a little himself. “Little bit, yeah. I understand that they need to keep the sides open so trains can enter and leave, but you’d think they could have... I don’t know, doors or something in train stations. Christ. This place must get boiling hot in the summer.”

I turned to him and said, “How can you think of summer at a time like this?”

We walked a little ways down the platform. The Student displayed a method of looking for people that resembled my own: He looked through the crowd, occasionally waving at someone, and then quickly retracting his hand as he realized he didn’t know that person after all. We walked through the train station—a place about the size of London Victoria with one major difference: Lille-Europe was actually modern. Nothing against the train stations in England, but, for the most part, there’s no difference between their appearance now and what they probably looked like a hundred years ago (save, of course, digital displays that tell you exactly how late your train will be). Lille-Europe is a big bastard, made of concrete and plate-glass up top. Shops, a couple of cafes—basically, normal fare for any transportation depot.

It was around this time that I noticed something that, for some reason, hadn’t registered before: I was in a non-Anglophone country. More so, I was in a country where, even though I was essentially on the level of a five year old with mental difficulties, I could speak the language. I looked up at one of the blue signs showing where platforms and the metro were.  “Hey, Student,” I said, pointing to the sign.

He paused in his searching and looked at me. “Yeah?”

I nodded to the left, towards some escalators, an elevator going down, and a group of ticket machines. “That way to the metro.”

He looked over. “Yep.”

“What, aren’t you surprised—nay, shocked and amazed—that I could discern where the Metro was, using only my skills dans français?”

“The symbol over that ticket machine is a white ‘M’ in a square. It’s obvious that that’s where the Metro would be. Look, I need you to shut up for a second and think where my friend would be.”

“You’ve got her number, right?”

“Yeah, but she didn’t pick up.”

I didn’t even realize that The Student had been on the phone at any point since we got off of the train. That’s what I get for being amazed by signs in another language, I guess.[1] I looked around, trying to think of where I would be if I were a French college student. Naturally, my first inclination was, “a café!” But then I realized that such an answer was a disgusting stereotype and that I should be more sensitive in the future. My second answer to my question was, “in a boulangerie!” That’s when I came to the conclusion that I’d spend the entire time in Lille giggling away to myself about the Frenchness of the city while The Student hid his face or otherwise disassociated himself with me. I saw a sign pointing outside, to a plaza separating Gare Lille-Europe from the mall (in the part of Lille called Euralille—essentially, offices and this shiny, shiny shopping center). “How bout there?” I said, pointing to the sign. “People like plazas.”

The Student shrugged and we followed the sign, walked down an escalator, and found ourselves outside in a snow-dusted plaza with a couple of statues and a bridge to our right, following the main road to the mall. It was early enough that there weren’t many people out, and those that were were dressed in overcoats, boots, and gloves. A few flakes of snow fell lazily from the sky, and a stiff, cold breeze made its way across the plaza. Off in the distance, I saw the skyline of Lille—mainly made up of cathedral and church spires, with, confusedly, the upper half of a Ferris Wheel in the distance. I nodded. I liked this place. Granted, I hadn’t really set foot outside of the train station, but it seemed like it would definitely be a nice change of scenery—if nothing else—from hanging around Canterbury so much.

The Student’s cell phone rang and he answered it. “Bonjour, Pascale! Ça va bien? Oui, oui. Ah, er, where are you?” It seemed The Student’s French was on par with mine. “By the platform? Must have missed you, okay. We’ll come back in. Au revoir.” He pressed a button (hitting a few others with his gloved finger), and put the phone back in his front pocket of his coat. He nodded and said, “Right.”

“You know something?” I asked as we made our way back to the escalator.

“What?”

“Everything here—it’s all so... French.”

Thankfully, escalators keep going up even when you don’t. The Student stopped his ascent and turned back to me. “What?”

“I mean... the Frenchness of the whole place is just insane. You can practically smell the garlic in the air.”

The Student grunted. “Look, please don’t say this sort of stuff around Pascale.”

“Why?”

“Cause that’s not—it’s just mildly—just don’t say it.”

“Look,” I said as we came off of the escalators, “if I want to say something, then I’ll damn well say it. It’s my right as an American!”

“You’re in France now.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m surprised there aren’t fucking mimes everywhere.”

He grunted. I knew, right then, that most of my enjoyment this trip would come from harassing The Student. Not his friend though, she was letting us crash at her place and I’d be a good guest. But, so help me God, The Student would come to believe that my sole goal this trip was to shit on a crepe. I’d ensure that only he would hear me, and then I would proceed to make the most absurd jingoistic statements possible. “Hey,” I’d say, “let’s go get Freedom Fries, though I bet they’re better in Amurika.” Or: “Hey, look at that church. Ain’t got nothin on an Amurikan church. Bet they ain’t even got room for a revival in there.”

We made our way to the platform and then The Student was sideswiped by a short, thin, smiling French girl with brown hair, wearing a blue coat and jeans. The air went out of him in a rush and he dropped his bags.

The Student and Pascale exchanged a burst of plesantries in French—I’m taking it all to mean some very basic catching up (after all, though The Student had better French than me, his wasn’t far beyond the level of elementary)—and then The Student turned to me and said, “Pascale, this is The Narrator; Narrator, Pascale.”

I gave my winning smile—the one I take to mean nonthreatening and the one least likely to scare off children—and said, “Hey.”

Pascale smiled and said, “Nice to meet you.” She then laughed and said, “Oh, I get to practice my English.” She had a lovely accent—I’m assuming it was vaguely Northern French, but, as I’d find out, I can’t discern Parisian from Norman. She turned to The Student. “I haven’t since Canterbury, you know.”

“You’re doing fine,” The Student said.

“Okay,” Pascale said, “shall we go to ze train and zen we will go to my apartment?”

“Please God, yes,” I said. “I’m exhausted.”

The Student groaned.

“Okay, follow me.” She led us through to the areas that said ‘Metro’ and to a very bizarre form of ticket control.

Lille’s ticket system ran thusly: There were no homicidal gates. The ticket barriers didn’t look the least bit intimidating; they were clean, steel columns about three feet high with a little black slot with two, welcoming lights—one red, one green—above it. The purpose of the slot was to stamp the ticket. The process involved no chance of the ticket getting caught in the machine, a total time of one second—one point five if you were slow or confused about it all—and very little chance of getting crushed in any onslaught of passengers. I even took a few trips on this thing during rush hour and had no problems at all. There was a black line connecting all of the columns, running at an angle to the escalators, which, I think, served to tell you where you could go if you hadn’t paid for a ticket. The whole system ran on trust that people wouldn’t go through and ride without a ticket. (In fact, it seemed like the business that ran the metro in Lille only checked tickets twice or so a week—around five o’clock during weekdays.)

Of course, I wasn’t there that long, and I wasn’t in the company of ne’erdowells, so there is a very strong chance that I was only seeing one side of Lille—but, hey, I rather like my invention of the city.

Anyway, we walked up to the ticket machine—similar to any digital dispenser with the exception that it was, of course, in French. This threw me for a minute. I had to utilize my rusty, piecemeal language abilities to navigate through the machine. Suddenly, I was back in my high school classroom with the utterly insane Mr. Edwards, who stopped a lesson on verb conjugation to rant about the Concorde, and whose car was found to possess massive amounts of porn and hypodermic needles when he brought it in to the mechanic shop at the high school. I wept a little bit, then, and Pascale came over and explained exactly what I had to do.

I wiped my eyes and said a tearful, “Thank you.” I bought a day card (an easily-losable strip of paper about a third of the size of a credit card) and joined The Student and Pascale in the long schlep down the escalators and into our train.

---

[1] A while ago, I was in Houston visiting my brother. At one point, he took me to the Vietnamese part of town (which boasts the highest Vietnamese population outside of Saigon), and, I’m not kidding, I took thirty pictures of street signs that had Vietnamese characters under the English. Easily amused does not begin to cover my mentality.

The Epilogue to The Traveler's Second Tale

I jumped up and applauded when The Traveler finished his story. I’m not sure what it was about it—perhaps it was the fact that, like everyone in my generation, I’d grown up with Mario—but it really struck a chord with me. The Drunkard rose his glass to The Traveler. The Student looked at his watch and said, “Good story, my friend. However, I’ve got to go.”

“It’s three,” said The Drunkard.

“Yeah,” said The Student. “But, well, you know how the busses are. What with their not-quite stable schedules and propensities for being late. I figured that—”

The Drunkard reached up and gripped The Student by the shoulder, pushing him down. “Have a seat,” he said. “I insist. You can walk up to campus if needs be. The weather’s not that bad.”

“I saw a rabbit fling against the city walls, propelled by the wind, as I was riding the bus earlier,” said The Stalker.

The Drunkard shrugged. “Well, you know, tough shit on the rabbit, I guess. Anyway, I enjoyed the story, Traveler.”

The Writer cleared his throat and drummed his fingers on the table. It was clear he had something pressing to say. “If I may interject,” he said, “with a comment upon your story—for that is why we are here, is it not?”

“I thought we were here to while away the time,” said The Drunkard, “but I guess not.”

The Student snorted.

The Stalker slurped at his cider and said, “I consider your methods of interjecting when you did barbarous, Writer. Karma, as they say, remembers all.”

“Who says that?” I asked.

The Stalker turned to me. “People of note.”

“Anyway,” said The Writer, “it pains me ever so much to see you once again not sticking to real life. Why, oh why, must we all—except for me, of course, avoid real life? Why must we all cling to falsities like folklore, and, ah, characters from video games? The world is a place of enough existential confusion that a wealth of philosophically-charged stories may be produced. Enough to fill a library—and, by my reckoning, that’s only by one person.”

For all the pretension in that statement, there was a valid point. It was true that life threw enough challenges in the way of the average person that anyone had the potential to become a philosopher. And, for the record, I was never one of those people who believed that writing things of, to use a term that may be horribly vague, “literary merit” was a waste of time because such projects did not sell. I don’t think anyone in our circle was a subscriber to that train of thought.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” asked The Student to The Writer.

The latter raised his eyebrows. “Pray tell, what?”

“You’re being an intellectual fascist.”

The Traveler grunted. “You don’t change your mind often, do you?”

“A constantly changing mind,” said The Writer, “is the sign of a weak mind. We must hold to our convictions if we are to have any effect on the world’s ways.”

“However,” said The Stalker, “what you’re failing to grasp in your infantile, posturing mind, is that when faced with the possibility that you’re wrong, it is perfectly acceptable to admit you’re wrong.” He slurped from his cider. “For example: When The Drunkard’s flatmates dragged me out to Madame Guillotine, I realized that skinning and hanging a rabbit from his door frame was the wrong way to take criticism. And, thus, I have not done it again.”

The Writer cleared his throat. “There’s a slight difference between skinning a rabbit and refusing to change your mind.”

The Drunkard returned to the table. “Is fuckface talking again?”

The Writer sighed. “And the crass voice of the day returns to the table. Please, Drunkard, find your way out of conversations that are above your comprehension. Perhaps you should find your Cloyd friend and talk to him about NASCAR.”

The Drunkard responded in a quite civil way, I felt: He threw his whiskey in The Writer’s face. (I wondered just how much money The Drunkard had to be able to afford literally throwing it all away on drinks. The man must have been walking into some serious debt when he finished here.) Then he stood up to order another one. The Writer nodded and said, “I may have deserved that.”

“Do you not agree,” said The Student, “that dipping into pop culture in order to illustrate a point might just be the way some people think? I’m not saying that’s the way The Traveler thinks, but—”

“Some times it is. I thought having a piranha plant pop into a story would be hilarious.”

“Ha!” said The Writer. “You see? He didn’t even go into it with any sort of thought of having a deeper meaning! There was no commentary intended on the purposelessness of the modern middle class life. No wise message about—”

“I really, really wish you would shut the fuck up,” said The Stalker.

“—the way society chews people up and spits them out,” continued The Writer.

The Stalker dragged a palm down his face. “Really, I wish you would stop talking. You’re giving me a headache.”

“In short,” continued The Writer, “your tale, Traveler, was mindless entertainment, worthless to the point of vapidity. Void of substance. Lacking any value. You have wasted the time of everyone at this table.”

The Traveler took all of this with one eyebrow raised.

The Stalker, however, was clenching and unclenching his fists. “One more word from you,” he said, “attacking this man’s story, and I swear to God I will hit you.” There was something different about his voice. The undercurrent of terror was gone. Now, I think, there was only the voice of a normal man tired of hearing someone who’d—and I’m going to lapse into a bizarre phrase here, one that I wouldn’t normally use but seems to be the only apt thing to say—gotten too big for his britches. “You’re prattling on, mimicking things your instructors have probably said in workshops to students trying to write things for fun.”

“Ha,” said The Writer, leaning back in his chair with a triumphant grin on his face. “That’s where you’re wrong. I haven’t been in a single workshop this year.”

“That’s fucking it,” said The Stalker. He leaped out of his chair, about to dive for The Writer when The Traveler blocked him and walked him out to the beer garden.

“Um,” said The Student. “Right. Well, look, Writer, perhaps you should take his story as a commentary on the tropes of folklore. Something to poke fun at the inherent pessimism of a story about a being that possesses people to fulfill a purpose.”

The Writer snorted. “Oh, good. A spoof.”

“Your mom’s a spoof,” said The Drunkard, returning to the table.

The Writer’s head drooped. He took off his glasses, folded up the end bits, and laid them, gently, as if his spectacles were a flag being put to rest upon a coffin, on the table and said, “Drunkard, your method of argument is infantile.”

“So’s your face,” said The Drunkard.

The Writer placed his glasses back on his head, nodded, and got up from the table and left the pub.

A Cheshire cat’s grin spread over The Drunkard’s face and he took a triumphant sip from his glass of whiskey. “The day is mine, huh?”

“I guess,” I said. “Student, should we head out? I haven’t started packing.”

“Woah,” said The Drunkard. “Where are you two going?”

“Lille,” said The Student, standing up, “in France.”

“And I wasn’t invited?” asked The Drunkard.

“Er,” I said.

“Well,” said The Student.

“Nah,” said The Drunkard with a laugh, “don’t worry about it. The French don’t really have the best of beer, and I can’t drink wine to get drunk. Feels like blasphemy.”

We said to say goodbye to The Traveler and The Stalker (if both of them came back in considering they had been out there for a bit, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that The Stalker had cut The Traveler’s throat for getting a glimpse of... I don’t know, the dual nature of his being.) Then, we left.

The Traveler's Second Tale

Frederick Smythe-Tensington Rexley, B.A., Ph.D, M.D., J.D.
The Hedgerow
Yaxley-upon-Stour
Yaxleyshire
YX2 8IS
4 August, 2010
Dear Mr Rexley, B.A., Ph.D, M.D., J.D.,
In answer to your query posed the First of July: No, I am reticent to admit that I have not followed the current cricket contest between England (God save the Queen) and Pakistan. I find sport abhorrent in its very nature and something to be enjoyed by only the common folk in our country. As you are well aware, in my youth, I would make my way down Oxford Street upon my horse, Mercury, and trod upon those who I deemed common—so it is, of course, unlikely that I would have anything to do with those vagabonds. (Before you waste precious ink distilled from the fat of whales—as I know this is the only sort of ink you use—allow me to state two things: Firstly, I was never charged with a crime, for, as you know, I am related to every MP of note in the Southeast, Southwest, Midlands, and Greater London area. Secondly, no, I do not judge you for enjoying sport, I simply state my only preference.
In regards to your question about whether or not the recent election was favourable to those of us in, shall I say, higher positions, I need only turn your attention to the recent decrees put forward by the Prime Minister. I say, “eat shit,” as our American brethren would say, you dirty council house-dwelling proletariat. And I do not feel I must make a point upon the imminent dissolution of the Film Board—that amoral institution responsible for besmirching the name of Film. There are, of course, those rogues, the Liberal-Democrats working in supposed co-operation with the Conservatives, but I sincerely doubt they are making their presence known beyond flailing around Parliament, shouting and crying like some puppy squashed in the road. Rather amusing, I must say. Of course, we here in Fizzleshire are an admittedly removed lot—those whose income totals less than £300,000 per annum are removed to Kent. (I had briefly considered embarking upon a diatribe on the subject on that miserable excuse of a county, that stain upon England [God save the Queen!] but I am quite certain even you are beyond the point of hearing anything new I have to say on the subject.)

I am frightfully sorry to hear the news that the only opening your progeny, Fitz-William Froderick Tinsing Rexley, B.A., could find in the Forces was in the Royal Welsh Guard. Now, yes, I am well aware of their spotless record and the history of the aristocracy in the regiment, but surely you are not letting that blind you to the fact that your son will be associating with sheep-buggering Welshmen. Of course, I more than trust that you have instructed him upon the proper manner of dealing with a Welshman: a stiff, back-handed slap to the face followed promptly by a truly prodigious amount of spittle to the face. Nevertheless, you may, of course, count upon Martha and I to send him a few of our excess servants in order to assist in the back-handed slapping, as I imagine there shall be quite a lot of it to go around.
So pleased to hear that you’ve acquired another one hundred hectares of land. I was even more pleased to read that you acquired it by raiding and setting flame to the adjacent council estate. Jolly good thing that you bought up the local constabulary a decade ago, isn’t it? I wonder, what is it that you are going to do with all of that new land? Will you be building a new estate? Or, as you did fifteen years ago, grow a crop of life-sustaining wheat, only to infect it with smallpox and have it sent over to the Ethiopians? Jolly good practical joke that was; such a shame you “caught flak” in the press about it. No matter, as it was fifteen years ago and all those involved—at least among the Africans—are dead. You simply must clue me in on the proper methods of raising, training, and maintaining a militia, as, you see, the local underbelly of Kentish society has taken to racing their motor-vehicles quite near my grounds. I wish to deal with the matter in a fashion that will quite obviously state my displeasure. (Spitting their corpses and sending them back to their mothers—who, no doubt, have twelve more children roaming around all willy-nilly—is not out of the question.)
And now, my dear Rexley, B.A., Ph.D, M.D., J.D., I have something of a pickle for you to consider. You see, at the last market in Fizzle-upon-Fizzle’s Market Square, I came across a rather curious item: What is known, in some obscure botanist circles as carnivori piranti—in layman’s terms: a piranha plant. If you are not familiar with this species, do not feel ashamed: it is, as I said, quite rare in these Northern latitudes. It appears thusly: Like most plants, it has a long, green stem, off of which there grow leaves which, in the summer time of every even-numbered year, sprout seed pods—prickly little buggers which attach themselves to birds, quadrupeds, any number of things, really. The bulb of the plant is a red-and-white speckled thing. Quite lovely in its own right, it is marked with a white line spreading around the circumference of the bulb. This is where the plant becomes simply astounding. Upon sensing nearby prey, the bulb opens up along this white line and displays two rows of incredibly sharp teeth—rather like that shark’s jaw you showed to me last year when I visited your hunting trophy room.
As you are aware from my last missal, I had decided that I would rather enjoy a spot of gardening here and there. Endeavouring to embark upon this venture in the most proper way possible, I promised myself that only the rarest plants would make their way into my back garden—which, as you know, is larger than that mass of twisted metal and distraction known as Thorpe Park. And so, coming upon this piranha plant in the Market Square, I realised that I had, put quite simply, found the perfect specimen. And so, I gladly paid the £15,600 the Gypsy (for, sadly, we cannot have this Market without their presence) behind the counter—the proceeds of Martha’s last auction of goods stolen from the border towns of Kent more than covering it—and took the plant back home.
It was, at this time, no larger than six inches tall, and the Gypsy had assured me that it would not grow further than eight inches in height. (I know, I know, I should never trust one of their kind, but the excitement of finding such a thing was forefront in my mind, more so than it should have been.) I decided that I would tend to this plant personally. It had been quite a long time since I had engaged in any sort of manual labour, and my latest doctor (after sacking three in a row after they had told me that I should cease my habit of smoking thirty Cuban cigars a day), learning from his predecessors, told me that, instead of quitting smoking, I should spend ten minutes a week gardening. Such advice is well worth the money I pay him to avoid talking about my supposed ill health.
I went in the back of the garden, dug a medium-sized hole, and transferred the plant—roots and all—into the hole, to hopefully take root and make itself prosperous. Oh, it certainly did.
Within a week, it had grown to a foot and a half tall and had taken to eating other plants. Damned peculiar behaviour for a specimen of plant, cannibalism. At any rate, the blasted plant kept growing and eating other plants in the area of the garden until, quite suddenly, it stopped. I had been observing the plant with a curiosity normally reserved for scientists working diligently upon a cure for cancer, and, thus, I noted that it had begun consuming various specimens of wildlife in lieu of other plants. Once again, damned peculiar behaviour, I believe—and yes, I am well aware of the carnivorous appetites of plants such as the Venus fly trap, however, to my knowledge, that species does not snap out its stem to capture foxes.
That’s right, old boy, the damn thing took to consuming foxes whole. I must say, the beasts’ screams at night is a truly unnerving sound. Makes sleeping quite difficult. After a few weeks of the piranha plant continuously eating foxes that wandered into my back garden (as you may remember, ever since the November of 2008, my garden has some property that attracts foxes), it grew to double its size and began consuming my dogs. As I’ve told you before, I rather enjoy the company of the hounds—Irish Wolf Hounds, all of them purebred—and do hate to see them get picked off by a giant, red-and-white plant. Currently, the beastly piranha plant occasionally consumes a hound, though it has, by and large, taken to its new prey rather nicely.
As you are aware, Kent is overrun with an illegal immigrant population consisting of the Turks and the Poles. Well, one day, after the plant had eaten its tenth canine (luckily, I own over one hundred), I decided that, blast it, enough was enough, and ordered my driver Geoffrey (you know, the one with the stutter that we find oh so amusing) to drive me out to Kent to procure services from some of them. We went out to some Godforsaken little town infested with the working class known as Chatham and picked up a couple of Poles.
I intended to pay them the barest minimum I could: £0.10 for the day’s work. They protested, but when I made them aware that I had very powerful connections with the Home Office, and they gladly took the offer. And so, I dispatched them to my back garden, pointed them in the general direction of where the plant could be found, gave them a couple of shovels, and said Godspeed.
Well, the day progressed and, after enough time had passed so that I was sure that, by then, they had trekked the seven miles to the back border of my garden, I decided to walk to the top of my house—where I have the observatory—and see if I could spy what was going on. No sooner did I look through the telescope instaled up there that I viewed the bulb of the plant snapping up in the air with two pairs of human legs dangling madly from the mouth of the carnivori piranti. It had, you see, eaten the Poles. What’s more, it had grown to over the fifteen feet mark and thus surpassed the height of my garden’s wall.
I was in quite the pickle. You know as well as I that Poles don’t count for a penny in the world, but it was a bit of an issue, considering their corpses allowed the plant to grow another ten feet. Drastic measures had to be taken. Thus, I contacted my cousin, Lord Henry John-Smythe Smythington Wilkinson, who owns the arms manufacturing plant in Manchester, and placed an order for ten flamethrowers, to arrive at my grounds the following morning. Never let it be said that, when one owns the worldwide parcel delivery service, that anything is impossible. The flamethrowers were delivered to my door not that morning, but the very night I ordered them!
The next day, Geoffrey and I picked up a group of ten Turks, drove them to my estate, and outfitted them with the flamethrowers. As before, I instructed them as to how they would receive their £.10 per person, pointed them to the back garden, and made my way to the observatory.
What I saw would put any Hollywood war film to shame. Such a battle of plant versus man could never be imaginable. Flames shot up the sides of the plant—damned hard not to refer to it as a “beast”—the carnivori piranti literally screamed in such a manner that the pheasants I keep in another section of my garden broke free of their confines and flew through the air. (No matter, I shall simply order more.) However, at the end of the day, the plant triumphed over the Turks. and, one by one, consumed them whole. I’d hoped that the inherent inferiority of the Turk would kill the plant, but, alas, it was not to be, and the plant grew to a height that I was unable to measure.
It has now begun to snatch helicopters from the air and consume them whole. I fear that, if this behavior continues, it shall grow through the very stratosphere and find a way to breathe in space, consuming satellites and thus destroying my ability to communicate with my innumerable accountants, bankers, bookkeepers, estate agents, biographers, and tailors around the world. And, as I’m sure you are aware, such an event would, no doubt, impede your own ability to do the very same.
And it is so, my dear Rexley, B.A., Ph.D, M.D., J.D., that I turn to you in my hour of need. Have you any idea, any inkling of a notion, of how I can deal with this pest? I would be in your debt.
Give my love to Louise, and do ensure that your progeny knows how to properly back-hand a Welshman.

Very sincerely yours,

Reginald St Smythe-Smythington Holst-Dulverton, B.A., Ph. D, M.D., J.D.

The Black Gate

Fizzlehurst

Fizzleshire

FZ1 7US

Prologue to The Traveler's Second Tale

I found myself down at The Sub-Pope’s Flock the next day, amongst my group as we sat in silence, waiting for someone to volunteer to go next. It appeared that the Muse had decided to go on vacation. Outside, rain pelted people, the wind blew, and the bells of the cathedral rang, echoing across the city. There were a few people aside from us inside the pub. Most of them were older and looked like they had literally nothing to do with their lives but sit around and drink in their waking hours. Ah, the glories of retirement.

“I could tell another story,” said The Writer. He was wearing a blue-and-white checkered shirt and some light jeans. It looked like he was trying to appear down-to-earth.

“No,” we said in chorus.

Another few minutes passed. We sat in silence. I looked at the ceiling, trying to see if maybe I could come up with a prompt for a story by the way the wood rafters bulged out in some places and sunk in others. The Tale of the Wooden Rafter, or, Four Centuries of Propping up a wall. Jesus, I was falling asleep just thinking of the title.

The Writer watched us. I presumed that, since a) he’d already told his story, b) he’d had a pot and a half of coffee that morning, and c) he wasn’t staring at a computer screen, he had plenty of ideas to pass around. New Yorker kind of stuff. The sort of stuff that distinctly lacked exploding spaceships flown by pilots blind to what was in front of them. He sipped from a pint of bitter and grinned as the silence continued.

The Student stared, slightly cockeyed, at the top of the table. His wristwatch ticked away the seconds. He absently checked his cell phone, pressed a few buttons, sighed, and put it back down. He drummed his fingers. “Ah!” he said, raising a finger in the air. Everyone turned and looked at him as his face fell and he said, “Wait, no. That’s incredibly stupid.” He grew conscious that we were staring at him and he said, “Brief idea of a story about talking furniture. Sorry, guys.” He took a sip from his coffee.

The Drunkard grinned. The grin of an office worker that says, “Why yes, I’ve already done my work. Perhaps you should have as well instead of sitting around talking about TV shows at the beginning of the day.” He had a whiskey. The ice had melted and the whiskey turned slightly more translucent.

The Stalker, who hadn’t spoken since we arrived, didn’t even make the usual effort to unnerve us. I guess that The Drunkard’s words at Hanukkah had more of an effect than we thought.

“Hey,” I said, “Stalker, how about you?”

“What,” said The Drunkard.

“No,” said The Stalker. “I think I’ll pass for now. Not, ah, feeling it at the moment.”

The Drunkard shrugged.

As I said, I wasn’t about to tell a story. I had no idea what I could do, what it would be about, what sorts of characters I’d use other than people sitting in a bar. (Unless I had some odd experience recently, my imagination tended to short out.)

“Well,” said The Traveler, “I think I might have one.”

We straightened up in our chairs. “Oh?” I asked.

“It’s not genre fiction, is it?” asked The Writer. “I mean, really, guys. It’s not hard to translate real life into fiction, and you might just learn something about yourself instead of wasting time.”

The Drunkard dipped a couple fingers into his whiskey and flicked them at The Writer. “Jack Daniel’s purifies you.” He did it again. “You are saved, brother. Go. Enjoy a good Star Wars novel.”

The Writer grunted.

“Please,” said The Student, “go on. I have to be out of here by five to call Rebecca, and it’s already two.”

The Drunkard snorted. “Whipped.”

“Look, just because I have the common sense to go after women who value a relationship and not... whatever it is your flatmates do.”

The Drunkard shot out of his chair and grabbed The Student by his collar. “What are you tr—”

“Hey!” I said, pounding the table. “Story time!”

The two sat down. The Drunkard glared at The Student some more.

“Okay,” I said. I gestured to The Traveler. “Sir.”

The Traveler cleared his throat. He cracked his knuckles and his neck. Apparently, storytelling was a physical thing. “All right. I call this, ‘The Piranha Plant.’”

“What,” said The Drunkard.

“Just hear me out,” said The Traveler.

Trip Planning With The Student

Over the next couple of days, most people left campus for home for Christmas. Those who didn’t have the money to return home moved around the place like it was a ghost town. Of course, when eighty percent of those in the university leave, it might as well be a ghost town. Some days, I’d walk outside in the cold and ever-increasing winds and felt like I should see tumbleweeds bouncing through the courtyard.

One day, a few days after Hanukkah, I went over to The Student’s to plan our trip to Lille. I’d never been in his flat before—in fact, the only person whose flat I’d been in was The Drunkard’s. (The Traveler didn’t allow me in, for fear that The Drunkard would come with me and wreck something; The Writer didn’t allow me in for fear that I’d instigate a fight with Stasia; and The Stalker... well, as I said before, I’m not sure his own flatmates knew he lived there.) I had, of course, heard of his problems with his flatmates, and so I prepared myself for the worst.

I stood in front of the doors to his building, waving my mobile in the air, trying desperately to get a signal. Finally, I caught one and sent The Student a text. He appeared at his kitchen’s window—a couple floors up—wearing a gas mask. I thought this was strange, but didn’t have time to think more about it, as from the window there dropped his key fob and a miniature gas mask—which looked something like Star Trek. I opened the door with the fob and put the breathing apparatus on as I climbed the stairs. I arrived at his flat, opened the door, and vomited.

The smell was horrendous. It was as if someone had left a side of beef out to rot in high summer and sprayed it with paint. The stench pervaded the flat. I wiped the tears from my eyes, secured the device in my mouth, and made a note not to breathe through my nose. I looked up and saw that UPP, the company that owned the College, had put up notices of biohazards, pleas to clean, and, finally, pictures of housecleaners that had gone missing. The Student walked in from the kitchen, waved at me, and I followed him down the hall to his room.

He’d made a few adjustments that must have set him back a couple of hundred pounds. For one, he attached a new door to his original. In doing so, he created an air lock. We entered the air lock and then his room.

I walked in, tore the breather out of my mouth, and gasped for air.

His room was a paradise compared to what was going on in the hallway. It was neat and orderly. Whereas mine was taken over by dust in some places, had Amazon boxes strewn around, and an absurd amount of knick-knacks, The Student’s consisted of things arranged by size, put away in drawers and clearly-marked containers. A few posters of famous paintings hung on his walls and, on his wardrobe, there was a Keep Calm and Carry On poster. No telling how many times that had kept him from dropping out of his degree.

“Dear God,” I said, “what was that?”

“The stench,” he said, “was a combination of bacon that has been left out to... I don’t know, soften, a bizarre black mushroom soup, and a dead fish that has been sitting on our kitchen table for a week and a half.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Different culture.”

“Different culture? Man, you have to worry about hygiene. You might die if you touch a surface in your own kitchen.”

“Yes, well, that’s the status of my home life at the moment. Also why I ordered these things,” he tapped his breather. “I’m still waiting for the bit that goes in your nose, though.”

“You’re obviously not intending on fixing the problem.”

“Narrator, there are four of them and I’m still not sure if three of them can speak functional English. No, I just eat freeze-dried food and microwave it to bring it in here. Life goes on.” He clapped his hands. “Right, shall we figure out what we need to do to get to Lille?”

I said yes.

He sat in his chair, gestured at the bed, and I sat down. He turned on his computer, turned on iTunes, and started playing Beethoven. “Okay,” said The Student when Firefox opened up. “Our Eurostar leaves Ashford at six in the morning.”

I made a sound that I shouldn’t have been able to make. Something in between a Tusken Raider and a rusty gate. “What?”

“Pascale, my friend, has class at ten that day, so we have to get to the city early so she can get to class on time.”

“We have to be at Ashford at six in the morning? What time do we have to leave here?”

“Well,” he said, switching from the second movement of the Fifth Symphony to the last movement of Vivaldi’s Summer suite, “that’s what I was going to talk to you about. We can either get a cab from here to Ashford—something ungodly like forty pounds—or we can get a high speed from Canterbury West.”

“West.” It was a no-brainer.

The Student nodded. “Good. In that case, we’ll get the six o’clock to Ashford, get there in twenty minutes, and have plenty of time to spare.” He stood up to one of the shelves above his head, pulled out a manilla folder, took out a piece of paper, and handed it to me. “That’s everything you need to bring with you.”

The word “passport” was written down in the center of the page in a sans-serif font. I cocked an eyebrow. “You didn’t think I’d know that?”

He shrugged. “With you, I never know what to think. So, get here at five o’clock on Tuesday and we’ll head down there. Oh, bring a sleeping bag.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Cool. Man, this is going to be great. Pascale’s super nice.” He snapped his fingers. “I need to get The Traveler’s jambalaya recipe.”

I turned pale. “Nah,” I said. “Nah you don’t. That’s unnecessary.”

The Student snorted. “You kidding me? Gotta say thanks somehow, why not cooking?”

“Because cooking jambalaya isn’t a way to say thanks, it’s a way to punish.”

The Student snorted. “Come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Oh? I seem to remember you weeping more than me.”

The Student ignored me and sat back in his chair. “Of course, I’ll have to do away with the Diablo peppers. That was overkill.” He looked at me. “There’s a difference between spicing up a recipe and making it unpalatable. Do you agree?”

I stood to leave and put the breathing apparatus over my mouth. “Yeah, sure,” I said. Sadly, the breather did not render my voice similar to Darth Vader’s. “Hey, do you know if we’re doing another story round before we go to Lille?”

The Student nodded. “I think The Writer is itching to hear more—why, I can’t imagine, since he hates everything we churn out at the pub.”

I shrugged. “Perhaps it’s because everything we do is so full of childish glee that he just can’t bear to be away.”

“I doubt that.” He stood up and we walked out of his room, through the airlock, through the stink, and then into the main corridor.

I took off my mask, handed it to him, and said au revoir.

The Night Before a Terrible Hangover

K Bar, for some reason, was shut. This was a normal occurence on campus, though I never understood why it happened. As far as I knew, Kent Union—the body of students who work the various bars and shops on campus—have an army on hand, so it clearly was nothing to to do with a staff shortage. My best guess was that, some nights, the student populace decided they’d go through and ravage the town bars instead of the campus bars, the staff at one of the bars would get bored, and everything would shut down a couple hours early.

It’s understandable, and, frankly, I don’t view not being able to drink at a bar as one of the worst possible things in life. I’d put it somewhere in between running out of milk and waking up late. For The Drunkard, though, you’d think that his house was carpet bombed. We walked through Keynes college and he grew serious. “There’s no noise,” he said.

There was noise, it was just the humming of vending machines instead of the cacaphony of drunk freshers that we were used to hearing in the corridor. “Okay,” said The Traveler. “It might be a quiet night.”

The Drunkard whirled on The Traveler. His eyes were bulging and red-veined. “Don’t patronize me. You know the sound of a quiet bar. You’ve probably been to more quiet bars than there are in the entirety of Tennessee. This is not a quiet bar sound.”

“Dude,” I said.

“No!” he said, running towards the bar. We stood in place, and then his exclamation was echoed, but louder, and with more rage than I thought he had in him. (Also, I was pretty confused as to why he was surprised. We’d gone through this four times before. Granted, his reaction was the same every time, but I figured there had to be a time when he’d stop being surprised.)

“Give him a minute,” said The Traveler. “This is like The Student and seeing the OUP, isn’t it?”

“Seems like it,” I said.

“We can go to Mungo’s,” said Zaf.

“Yeah,” said The Traveler.

“Let’s hope there aren’t bouncers at the place, or he might go on a rampage.”

The Drunkard slunk back towards us and said, “I hate this country.”

“We’re going to Mungo’s,” I said.

“If there are bouncers, I will go on a rampage.”

“Stop complaining,” said The Traveler.

“Or what?”

“Capoeira.”

The Drunkard nodded. “Fair call.”

Halfway to Mungo’s from Keynes, in front of the ATM machines near the campus shop, I was attacked by Laura, semi-drunk and in a dress. There was a banquet or something (I briefly caught something about “Chorus”) that a few people from the society had went to. Wine was drunk and, well, in her words: “I met a friend of Topol. I have Topol’s phone number. Look.”

She showed me the phone. There was a number with “Topol” in front of it. “Hey cool.”

“No, it’s fab,” she said, grinning madly. “Topol might come to see the show.”

I gulped. In a split second, every neurotic neuron in my brain existed for the sole function of showing me flailing on some stage while, in the audience, Topol, still reveling in the glow of a successful thirty-some odd year gig as Tevye, laughed—possibly curling his white beard in triumph as yet another amateur failed to live up to the standard of Broadway. “Woo!” I said, cleverly masking terror behind enthusiasm.

“We’re going to Mungo’s, come with us,” she said.

“Tevye!” one of the other people—a man covered in enough disturbingly thick hair to put Sasquatch to shame, named Kane—shouted. “Woo!”

“Woo!” I said. Communicating with drunks was the easiest thing in the world—all you have to do is muster up some enthusiasm. “Yeah,” I said, “we were about to head over there and—”

“Shit,” said The Traveler.

“What?” I asked, spinning around. I didn’t get to talk to pretty women in dresses that much, and, damn it, he was furthering the streak.

“I don’t have my I.D. card.”

“How can you not have your card?” asked The Drunkard. “It’s the simpl—shit.”

“You forgot yours, too?” I asked.

The Drunkard nodded.

“I can’t belie—” I remembered that I left both my bus pass and my I.D. in my room back at Woolf. “Shit.”

“Ha,” said The Drunkard.

I turned back to Laura and said, “Okay, we’ll meet you there.”

“Fab, here’s my number.” I saved it into my phone and the lot of us headed back to Woolf.

“Giannis,” I said, “you forgot your card?”

“No,” he said.

“Then why are you coming?”

He shrugged. “I can’t understand the English accent. I like the American better, too.”

“Fuckin a,” said The Drunkard. “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

So, anyway, we got the cards went back to Mungos, curved through the corridors, down some stairs, and I ran into Kane on the stairwell leading to the bar. “Tevye!” he shouted. “Woo!”

“Woo!” I said. Once again, enthusiasm. “Where are you guys going?”

“The Venue. Mungo’s is too packed. Come on, man.” He pushed past, followed by the rest of the group.

Not missing a beat, The Drunkard pushed me up the stairs, followed by The Traveler and Zaf. “Woah,” I said, “what’s with the pushing?”

“You won’t go otherwise,” he said.

“Yeah I would.”

“My ass. And you’re not sitting around the flat tonight. Especially when—Jesus you have some hotties in that society. You see that one girl with the hair up there? Fuckin hell, Narrator; I should’ve tried out for this play.”

Now, The Drunkard wasn’t that far off. Given the choice of staying in or going to a club, I would have chosen to stay in. It is a wonder that generations of genes have resulted in someone like me, who would rather stay in at ngiht than go out with peers of my own age to a place where getting laid is as easy as going to sleep in a comfortable bed. But, hey, moving on:

We walked up to the outside of The Venue—which, until now, I have not had occasion to describe. The Venue was in a building made up of the main club and a bar on the top level called The Lighthouse. The Lighthouse almost reminded me of a cafeteria in an office building: It had one long glass wall facing out to some trees. The chairs in the place were of a shoddy plastic material with equally flimsy metal chairs around them. A couple black leather sofas were in the middle of the lounge, but, judging from the rips in them, they had seen better days. By far, the best-kept pieces of furniture in the place were the pool tables. Those, of course, were in constant use. The bar, about twenty feet long, was painted a shiny black, and the taps were a highly-polished silver color. To one side of the lounge was the creatively named eatery, The Kitchen. There, they served disgusting amounts of chips and half-decent burgers.

The Venue itself was made up of two levels. On the entrance-level floor was the sign-in desk and the place where you were searched if you looked at all suspicious. I’ve gone to that place about four or five times and, without fail, I’ve been searched every time—despite repeatedly being told from anyone between the ages of five and seventy that I am the least intimidating man they’ve ever met. (Once, a sixty-eight year old man in khaki shorts, a sweater-vest, and an Astros baseball cap told me that he could kick my ass.) In fact, at The Venue, I have seen some people who looked like they were on the prowl to start a fight; yet they were not stopped at the door. The last time I went, I took it for granted that I was going to be searched and just walked over to the security guy inside and assumed the position. I guess it’s the beard.

Anyway, also on that level is a small bar with a few taps. Mostly, though that level is used for collecting the cover charge, searching, and providing an entrance and exit from the place. If you go through a set of double doors, you come upon the bar and a very small landing overlooking the main dance floor downstairs. I kind of like this area, because, when you stand on it and look down at the people below you, entranced by whatever it is that makes them interested in electronic music, drum and bass, club rap, gan—you know the fare, you get a brief wave of power. Or maybe it’s just me who stands there and feels like they’re Lex Luthor or Dr. Doom. Probably just me.

The dance floor is massive. Of course, I don’t go to clubs, so my frame of reference might be a bit skewed—and then there’s the problem of judging distance and size when inebriated, so really, it might be tiny. At any rate: It’s big enough to comfortably fit a lot of people. There is a main bar which, generally, has a three-deep line and a shot bar tucked away to the side which, not particularly surprisingly, also usually has a three-deep line. At the front of the dance floor is a stage.

We walked in the Venue, I grumbled about having to pay five quid, and The Drunkard told me to shut up and that he’d buy me a shot for my trouble. I duly shut up, we all walked downstairs to the main floor, and I proceeded to get absolutely hammered. It was one of the rare nights where there wasn’t much of a line for drinks, so The Drunkard and I essentially set up shop at a part of the bar and refused to leave until we were appropriately drunk. Six shots of Jack and two of SoCo later, The Drunkard shot off into the dance floor to hunt down, “that girl with the hair.” I don’t know who he was talking about, as all the girls in the society have hair. I didn’t see him again for the rest of the night, so I’m assuming he had fun. The Traveler and Giannis went off to the side, where there were some chairs, sofas, and some people chilling out and milling around, and found some Italian and Turkish friends of his. I saw The Traveler from time to time, mostly flirting with some dark-haired, dark-skinned girls, and he looked like he was having fun.

Now, what did I do, you may be wondering? I did what I usually do in that sort of situation where I’m at a loud environment with music I hate, a lot of alcohol in my system, and the idea that maybe, just maybe, I could impress some girls: I flailed on the dance floor with reckless abandon. I mean that. I flail. I do not dance. I was talking to the choreographer of the play recently, and he told me that, at the first dance rehearsal, when I couldn’t step in time to the music, he was filled with mortal fear. For some reason, I lack all self-awareness and move in ways that... well, I’m good for a laugh, but I won’t be attracting any women with it.

And, as could be expected, I didn’t attract any women with my moves that night. Eventually, I broke off from the Musical Theatre people, who were off in their own world really feeling “Wonderwall,” and found The Traveler and Zaf. That may be the best thing about a club atmosphere: There are so many people around that, if it transpires that you want to hang around other people, it’s profoundly easy.

Anywho, the night came to a close, we headed back to Woolf, and I slept.

Flaming Latkes

When I woke up feeling fantastic a couple days later, I went to a couple seminars, did some work, and, before I knew it, it was Hanukkah.

I’m going to assume that you, Infinitely Wise Reader, know about the holiday: the historical basis and how it’s Judaism’s attempt at competing with Christmas. What you may not know is that, while we do have eight nights of presents, the first seven presents are tremendous letdowns. Like everything else, there’s a practical reason to this. Imagine, if you will, eight nights of stupendous presents—gifts that would only result in amazement, bewilderment, and speechlessness.

The family would be bankrupt if the kid were past the age of two.

So, necessarily, the first seven gifts are things like socks and trapper-keepers, while the last one is the shock-and-awe gift.

In my experience, it didn’t matter, as we celebrated both Christmas and Hanukkah. What mattered was that it was because of this holiday that I got into my first fight. See, when I lived in Ohio, most of my friends were Greek. The content of this fight was based on, verbatim, “Israel has better rockets than Greece and could beat Greece even better now than we did back then.” Yes, my first—and only—fight was because of that bizarre dual nationality that every Jewish-American feels at some point in their lives.

Anyway:

The Musical Theatre Society has a habit of monopolizing karaoke nights on campus. During term times, the entire society would swing into Rutherford Bar at eightish, pull tables together, and put in for songs. When I went, I thought of it as Jack Daniel’s Nights and generally got too drunk for my own good. At this point late in the semester, I was in a funk because of a girl in Woolf, and I started drinking late in the afternoon with The Drunkard, and the two of us staggered over to karaoke. I growled my way through “Boy Named Sue” and then The Drunkard started chatting up a girl at the other end of the table. I decided I’d follow suit.

I’ve never been smooth. I’d describe my looks as decent—everything’s where it should be and I don’t have an eye that bulges out or a horn growing out of my head or anything. But I’m well aware that my best quality is my sense of humor. At some point, I started screaming about how people who don’t like baseball can fuck right off, and generally infuriated most people in Rutherford. At any rate, I did manage to start talking to someone, but made the mistake of inviting her over for the Hanukkah party to “eat disgustingly greasy potato pancakes and get abso-fucking-lutely shithoused.” It sounded good at the time.

Anyway, cut to the night of the Hanukkah party and, aside from one Jewish girl from a block down, Rebecca, Giggles, and Giannis, it was made up of we Thes. The Drunkard sprawled out on the couch clutching a bottle of wine. The Student, Rebecca, Natasha (the girl from the block down), and The Writer were trying to explain the game of dreidle to Giggles and Giannis. The Traveler stood over the stove, one hand in a mixing bowl of latke batter, the other pouring olive oil onto a frying pan. The Stalker sat cross-legged on our large ottoman placed by the radiator. I leaned up against the sink, a bottle of wine in my hand, watching everyone and, occasionally, glancing over at my phone—perched perilously on the window sill, the only place it would get reception—seeing if anyone was calling to be let in.

“You know,” said The Traveler, “inviting a girl to a Hanukkah party probably isn’t the best way to go about it.”

“Fuck off, I know that,” I said.

“Wait,” said The Drunkard from the couch. He tried to sit up, failed, and plopped back down. “Goddamnit,” he said. He successfully sat up this time and scooted back so that his back was against the armrest on the couch. “You tried that?”

“I was drunk.”

“Drunk and stupid,” said The Drunkard. He tipped the bottle back and pointed at me. “I mean, hey, points for thinking outside of the box, but look at this gathering.”

I did. At the table, Giannis asked which squiggly line meant what for the twelfth time, Giggles was suggesting that the entire game could be streamlined, and Rebecca and Natasha were trying to guilt The Student into taking Rebecca to a very expensive restaurant in town before she left for the holiday. Judging by the way The Student was constantly readjusting the cuffs on his sleeves, it was working. The Stalker sat quietly, eyes darting from person to person in the room, drinking from his cider. “Okay, I’ll admit that it doesn’t have the largest appeal across vast swaths of the population, but—”

“Jesus Christ!” shouted The Traveler.

I looked over and saw that one of the latkes on the frying pan had erupted into flames. “Jesus Christ, throw it out of the window!”

In a flash, The Drunkard was up off the couch. He dashed to where I kept my utensils, grabbed a spatula, took up the flaming latke, and threw it out of the window. We all rushed to the windows to see where it had landed and saw that it had sailed through the air two feet in front of someone walking around with headphones on. They looked up at us with fear in their eyes and Natasha waved at them. “Happy Hanukkah!” she shouted.

“Say, Traveler,” said The Student. “How about using a little less oil with the next batch?”

The Traveler, pale, nodded. “Yeah.”

The Drunkard heaved himself back onto the couch as we dissipated back to the table. He drank from his wine and started humming a song. “Narrator.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Sing.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Sing us a song, Tevye.”

Natasha punched me in the arm. Hard. I rubbed it and winced. “You didn’t tell me you got the part.”

“Slipped my mind.”

She punched me again. I winced. There would definitely be a bruise.

“What?” asked Giannis.

“The play I’m in.”

“You are in a play?” he asked, eyebrow raised as if I hadn’t explained to him what was going on five times before.

“Yes,” I said. “The play I’m in. I told you last night and the night before that. Fiddler on the Roof. The Jew play.”

“Oh, the Jew play.” He spun the dreidle and knocked the table in front of The Student. “You and me will play for a while together, okay? Five pounds to start.” He put down five pounds on the table.

The Student said, “Fuck. Five quid to start with? That’s a bit much, don—”

“Just throw down,” said Rebecca.

The Student did.

“Hey, Narrator. Traveler,” said The Drunkard. “What’re we doing once we’re out of latkes?”

I shrugged. The Traveler said, “You mean aside from feeling disgusting from eating about a pound of latkes each? I don’t know.”

“I humbly posit that we go drinking. Like, heavily drinking. Such a bender that would put whatever we have done on Purim in the past to shame.” (A commandment for Purim states that one should get so drunk that it is hard to tell one person from the next.) “We shall build up to such a blackout that London during the Blitz will look like modern-day Tokyo at night. What do you say?”

“I’ve never met anyone so eager to black out,” said The Traveler.

“I like to think of it as time travel, and what red-blooded American doesn’t want to travel through time?”

“Your logic is flawless. Batch up,” said The Traveler.

I went over to the table, got the plate with the slowly-building mounds of latkes, and put the next four on top. Rivulets of grease trickled down the cakes and pooled on the bottom and, just for a moment, I was about to throw up, because I realized that, at this rate, I’d be the one eating all of these for the next week and a half. “Well,” I said, “what the hell? I don’t have class tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” said The Traveler.

“Exactly,” I said. “I don’t have class tomorrow.”

“Traveler?” asked The Drunkard. “Wanna go? We’ll paint campus red. We’ll have such fun that people will refer to us as ‘Those guys who had a whole hell of a lot of fun.’ Whaddya say?”

The Traveler shrugged. “Yeah, sure, why not? Mind you, we still have about a quarter pound of latke mix to go through and—”

The Drunkard stood up, picked up the mixing bowl and dumped it out of the window. I heard someone below shout, “Malacka!”

“Drunkard, please don’t do that,” I said. “There are people in this college who know where I live and can kick my ass pretty easily. And, really, you don’t know who you’re dumping latke mix on.”

“Ah,” he said, “but neither do you. Assuming that you know the person who I dumped latke mix on is nothing more tha—”

“Fine,” I said, “shut up.”

“Okay,” The Drunkard said, clapping his hands and wobbling as he stood up. “Yo. Check it. We’re going to go get blitzed.”

“Where?” asked The Stalker.

The Drunkard whirled on him. “No. You can fuck right off. You’re terrifying and will do nothing but make us have a negative amount of fun. This is a fun night, God damn it.”

The Stalker shrugged. “I’ll find you. I can always find you.”

“See? That? That’s what I’m talking about. Fuck off, damn it. The rest of you. I don’t know where we’re going. Who wants to join us in a wander through campus until we find somewhere worth going to?”

“Eh.” Natasha said. “I like to get up in the morning.”

“The morning is for undergrads,” reasoned The Drunkard. “We are postgrads. The night is ours!”

“Dear God,” said The Student. “What have you already had to drink?”

“Never mind that,” said The Writer, “what matters is the quantities. Neanderthal here is so immune to the effects of alcohol that he must have had—”

“And you,” said The Drunkard. “You’re a downer. You can fuck right off, as well.”

“Hmm,” said The Student. He spun the dreidle and lost another two quid. “I don’t think I’ll be joining you guys. I’ve got some more research to gather for my damned Conrad essay.”

“Why are you doing an essay on Conrad?” asked The Traveler, now at the sink and cleaning out some of the stuff he’d used to make the latkes. “Haven’t you gone on about ten rants about how you hate the man and his entire body of work?”

“Yes,” said The Student. “Yes, I have. However, I have no other option. My choices are either Conrad or a novel by a self-aggrandizing woman who owned a coffee plantation and was shocked when the native workers left to join revolutionary movements. It’s a choice between two evils, and sadly, I can’t come up with a valid essay topic on Kipling other than: Kipling was totes awesome. Don’t think that would fly. Damn it!” He put another two quid in the pot.

Giannis smiled and said, “I like playing with you.”

“You, Greek,” said The Drunkard. “You want to come with us? Drinky drinky?”

“Would you like to go to K-Bar?”

The Drunkard shrugged. “They’ve got booze there. I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”

“In that case,” Natasha said, “I’m going to head out.” She stood up and gathered the remaining bags of gelt that she’d brought. “You boys have fun killing your livers tonight.”

“M’lady,” The Drunkard said, “we always do.”

She left and The Student, now out somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve pounds, ran his hands through his hair. “Okay, I’m broke now, so I couldn’t go out anyway. Thanks, Zaf.”

“No,” he said, “thank you.”

The Writer stood up, put on his jacket, and slung his bag over his shoulder. “Yeah, I have to get going. Must get up in the morning to do my writing, after all.”

“Yes,” said The Stalker. “Eight in the morning with a raisin ba—”

“Stop it,” everyone else in the room said.

The Stalker stood, smiled, and walked out of my flat without another word.

“He’s going to kill us all before the year is out,” The Traveler said.

“Probably,” I said. “I’ve had a good run, though.”

The Student checked his phone. “I’ve made friends with rugby players. I could get them to be my entourage. No death for me. C’mon Becca, let’s head out.”

We said bye and helped The Traveler scrape the congealed grease off of the pan and finished cleaning. Giannis clapped his hands and said, “So, now I will get ready, okay?” He left the kitchen and went into his room.

I’d gone out for drinks with Giannis before, and I knew that when he said he was going to get ready, it meant that there was a wait of at least half an hour coming up. This, of course, was the perfect amount of time to get a nap in, so I went over to the sofa, kicked The Drunkard off, and sprawled.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“Zaf’s getting ready. We’ve got about half an hour.”

The Drunkard snorted. “You’re kidding. There’s no way he’ll take that long to get ready.”

“Oh? Just watch. You and The Traveler will be standing there, engrossed in an awkward, while I’m here, enjoying my power nap on a sofa more comfortable than my bed.”

And, sure enough, I was right—except for the power nap. Whenever I started breathing deeply the sign of sleep—The Drunkard threw a balled-up napkin at me. Anyway, Giannis walked back in after half an hour, looking to all the world as if he’d just splashed some water on his hair and said, “Okay, we go.”

“What the hell?” asked The Drunkard. He was getting antsy. This was cutting into his drinking time. “You spent half an hour to do nothing?”

“I did hair and brushed my teeth,” said Zaf.

“You did your hair?” he sputtered. “Your hair? Are we going into a beauty contest? Are we go—”

“Yep,” I said, “we’re going. Aren’t we, Traveler?”

He was seated on the large Ottoman, reading a copy of The Daily Mail. (For some reason, editions of this paper kept turning up in my flat. It was highly ironic, as Zaf, Chacko, and I were not British and, for all I could tell, we were all relatively liberal.) “What?” The Traveler asked.

“We’re going drinking before The Drunkard tries to start a fight with Zaf.”

“I could kick his ass,” said The Drunkard.

“Eh. Giannis was in the Army.”

“Yes,” Giannis said. “I killed seven men when they fired at me. It was not good. I do not like talking about it. Let’s go drinking.”

The Drunkard stood, confused, looking at Giannis. The Traveler folded up the paper and said, “That’s a shame. I was really getting into this article. Apparently America is a Britain-hating cesspool.” He tossed it onto the sofa and said, “Narrator, who buys this paper?”

“I do,” said Zaf. “I run out of toilet paper sometimes.”

“I like this man,” said The Traveler.

We walked out of the kitchen and made our way towards K Bar.