A narrative blog following the adventures of a group of six people with suspiciously similar characteristics. Updates... well, it used to be three times a week, now it's sporadic.
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.
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.
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.
Now, of course, as many people are aware, flu season runs throughout the year with the exception of two weeks in July. However, in the University bubble, the most debilitating time for flu is in the winter. At that point, catching the flu is easier than sleeping through a morning class. I don’t know how Chacko caught his, but all that mattered was that now, by virtue of his brilliant decision to park himself in the middle of the foyer, I was stuck in my room feeling on the verge of death.
I’d woken up about four hours after I hit the bed—around noon. Never had I had anything catch up with me so quickly. I sat up and started hacking, turning my head every way I could in the vain hope that somewhere there was a sweet spot that, if I’d find it I would stop coughing and would feel, once again, like a normal human being. Of course, there was no such thing.
I swung myself out, fell into the chair—still coughing—and turned on my computer. If there was one good thing about owning a Mac (and there were several), then it was that they started up very, very quickly. I turned on Skype, saw that Chacko was on, and sent him the following message: “I’m coughing all over my shit, fuck you, man. What the hell? Who coughs on another person as a form of greeting?”
The response was: “lol ur sick now? I just got over mine. I have Lemsip if you want :)”
I shut off Skype, leaned out my window, turned towards Chacko’s, coughed a few times, and shouted, “Gimme the fuckin Lemsip!” Then I coughed some more and had to retreat into the fetal position.
A little bit later, Chacko knocked on my door to give me the Lemsip. I covered my face in a towel opened the door, and scowled at him as I plucked it out of his hands. Then I shut the door, filled a mug with water, and poured the stuff in.
Now, in America, we have good old NyQuil. For the Brits: NyQuil is a wonderful drug. It’s a step below absinthe in terms of potency, and it makes you better from just about any illness you might have. The drawback, of course, is that it tastes like black liquorice. However, it is a miracle drug. Once, in my freshman year of University, I took some NyQuil around ten in the evening, thinking that it would take an hour or so for it to kick in. I turned to my roommate, said, “I’m” and collapsed into a heap on the floor. My dreams that night consisted of nothing but exploding colors and, when I woke up in the morning, I was drunk. Some people might say that is a drawback, however, whatever bug I was coming down with was wiped right out of my system.
Lemsip, sadly, does not do any of that. It’s somewhat potent, but we Americans like our drugs to be overkill. Flavoring paracetamol with lemon and throwing it in a mug of steaming water doesn’t jive with the American spirit and, while I was thankful for any remedy I could hope to get, I really wished I had some NyQuil with me.
Next, I called The Student. “Hey,” I said, coughing.
There was a pause. “Now, I’m not a man trained in the deductive arts, but I would hazard a guess that you’re sick.”
I coughed once for yes.
“Okay,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”
I took a deep breath. “I want you to be my flu buddy.” I coughed more.
“I’m sorry? Your flu buddy? You want me to catch the flu with you?”
“No,” I said. “I want you to make sure I don’t die. You know, come over from time to time, get me water, orange juice. I can’t go outside. Sick.” That sentence took five minutes to get out, with coughing interspersed between and within words.
“Okay, I’ll go get you some stuff. I’m guessing you’re going to be locking yourself in your room like a good little biohazard and not coming out.”
I coughed once for yes.
“Good. The last thing this college needs is an epidemic.”
Three days later, I was coming out of the sickness, and three quarters of the college was ill. It happened like this: The Student, between hanging up the phone with me and coming over with some groceries, bought a biohazard suit from a military surplus shop in town. It was a massive green thing with a gas mask and respirator. He assumed that it was in good condition, so he didn’t check it—and because he didn’t check it, he didn’t notice the hole in the neck of the suit. So he walks into my flat after I drop him the keys and retreat back to my quarantine, starts breathing in the air, and all of the germs pour through that hole and into his respiratory system. The next day, he and Rebecca were sick.
After that, I called The Drunkard. I still needed a flu buddy. He told me to fuck off. I told him I hoped he got sick and, wouldn’t you know it, he did. Apparently, one of the French existentialists had slept with someone in The Student’s flat that night. The French existentialist, in between leaving the flat in the small hours of the morning and returning to his own flat, infected six people who were also coming back from one night stands. Being friendly, it seems, is a dangerous thing. From there, he infected half of his building by putting his hands on the guard rails as he walked up the stairs and, finally, infected his flat before going into his room and coughing. From there, seventy five percent of Woolf College had come down with the flu.
Towards the end of the second day of being sick, I was in bad straits. I had started laughing for no reason other than my fever was running and I was going mental. I tried to counter it by standing in a cold shower for long stretches at a time—a trick I’d picked up from a hippie at my job over the summer—and, while that worked temporarily, I still needed someone around to pass me drugs. There was only one person I knew who could have withstood the onslaught of viruses. One person who had been around enough to know how to avoid getting sick when everyone around him was in misery. One man who could have been my salvation.
“Yello,” The Traveler answered when I called.
I coughed three times for “Hello.”
“What?” he asked.
I managed to tell him who I was.
“Ah, you got sick, too, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You need someone to help you out, I’m guessing.”
I coughed once for yes.
“Okay, I’ll be over in a bit. I’ve got some stuff my parents sent me that you’ll be very glad to see.”
I would have been glad to see a faith healer at this point, but I said thanks and hung up the phone. Now, somehow, my keys had been floating around our group since The Student fell ill. I didn’t know who he got them from, but, somehow, The Traveler had my keys. (I was very glad I didn’t see The Stalker in my flat—in fact, I hadn’t heard from him in a while, and was wondering just what the hell he had been doing, when I realized that I probably didn’t want to know after all.) There was a knock on my door and I heaved myself out of bed to answer it.
I pulled it open and instead of the biohazard suit I expected to see, I saw The Traveler standing there as if there wasn’t anything wrong. As if Woolf College weren’t a diseased zone on par with Europe during the bubonic plague. “Yo,” he said. “You drinking water?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He nodded. “Good. Keep doing that.” He reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a little purple bottle I’d been yearning to see for three days. “The Medication Fairy sends her regards.”
I grasped the bottle like it was the One Ring and I was Gollum. “NyQuil! My precious.”
“Yeah,” said The Traveler. He checked his watch. “Look, I’ve got a date in town in a bit and—”
“You have a date in the morning?”
His right eyebrow raised up. “It’s six in the evening.”
“What?” I waved him inside my room and went to open the curtains to my window. Indeed, it was dark outside. “What have I been doing all day?”
“If I had to guess, judging by the puddle forming in your bed, I’d guess that you were laying around all day with your body trying to sweat out the fever. Hey, look, Hanukkah’s next week, and if everyone’s alive, I’d like to have a latke fry-up and get tanked. You in?”
I unscrewed the cap and took a swig from the bottle. “Yep.” I took another swig. “I’m betting that everyone’ll be okay.” I took yet another swig. I glanced at the bottle from the outside and saw that I’d drank a quarter of the thing in one go. “Especially if—”
I pitched forward on the ground and slept for two days.
I woke up curled in the fetal position next to one of the Dumpsters outside of Darwin. This is not one of my favorite positions, and one that I shall do all in my power to avoid in the future.
I stood up and looked at the sky. It was pale. The sort of pale that said that the time was almost dawn. I looked around and shivered. There were no cars in the car park and the first of the morning commuters sped by in the road behind the building. I took out my mobile, looked at the time, and saw it was five in the morning.
Next, I checked the back of my neck and felt what seemed like a minor scar. I prayed that whoever kept slipping me hallucinogens would stop sometime soon. As interesting as being threatened by a minotaur was, there were other things I’d rather to do with my time.
I stood up and groaned and made my way back to the flat. When I arrived, Chacko stood at the opposite end of the hallway, staring out of the window facing the flat block opposite us. “Hey, Chacko,” I said. “What’s up?”
He turned around, holding a mug of steaming tea. He let loose a horrible stream of coughs. “Hi. I’m sick.” He walked up to me and coughed again. “How are you?”
I blinked and sighed. “Well, I’m sick now.”
“That is too bad. I am going to go drink Lemsip and watch a film.” He walked into his room, I did the same, got undressed, laid down, and started coughing.
The entrance lobby of an asylum. SQUIDJEW, wearing his typical uniform and squid hand puppet/hat, and KILLMAN 5000, also wearing his day-to-day uniform, sit on a couch and read magazines. Above the puke-green colored bit of furniture, there is a mostly white sheet of paper in a frame. The only drawing on the piece of paper is a bright yellow circle in the middle of the page.
SquidJew looks up at the camera.
SQUIDJEW
Ah, hello. I did not see you come in. You know, when
Killman and I have to deal with problems in Houston,
we don’t get mad or upset. Do we, Killman?
Killman continues looking at the sheet of paper in front of him.
KILLMAN
You do, SquidJew. That’s kind of your thing.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
Cut. I am sick and fucking tired of you fucking
superheroes. When will you learn that you have to
memorize the script?
Killman looks up, just to the left of the camera.
KILLMAN
Oh, I’m sorry, Herr Kubrick. I didn’t know this was a
work of cinematic brilliance. Perhaps we should shoot
in black and white to get some fucking ambience.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
I will not tolerate being insulted by a God-damned
actor. Especially one who can—
Killman leaps up from the couch, throws the magazine to the left of the camera—SMACKING a boom mic in the process—and points his finger towards where the magazine went.
KILLMAN
One more word and I swear to God I will touch you.
Wanna be boiled alive from the inside, motherfucker?
A very uncomfortable silence follows. A crew member (O.S.) COUGHS. Killman nods and sits back down.
SquidJew, shocked, stares at Killman.
SQUIDJEW
Dude.
KILLMAN
What?
SQUIDJEW
That was fuckin intense.
Killman shrugs and picks up another magazine from a side table. He opens it and starts reading.
KILLMAN
I hate doing these PSAs. This one’s got to be
the worst we’ve done.
SQUIDJEW
Just wait until the next one.
KILLMAN
What’s it going to be?
SQUIDJEW
I don’t know, but it’s going to be bad, I can
tell you that.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
Okay.
SHUFFLING (o.s.) as the two superheros sit on the couch. SquidJew twiddles his thumbs.
DIRECTOR (O.S.) (CONT’D)
Okay. Can we get the cue cards up here? Let’s
start again.
Camera jiggles a second. Crew member with clapper steps in front of SquidJew and Killman. Chalk words on the front, which read
JUSTICE TRIO PSA #3 – TAKE VI
CREW MEMBER
Justice Trio PSA number 3. Take six.
He SMACKS the top of the clapper and walks out of the shot.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
Action.
SquidJew looks up and smiles.
SQUIDJEW
Oh, hello. I didn’t see you come in. Y’know, when
Killman 5000 and I have to save the day down here
deep in the heart of Texas, we don’t get upset. Do
we, Killman?
KILLMAN
Nope.
SQUIDJEW
And why would that be?
KILLMAN
It’d be stupid.
SQUIDJEW
That’s right, children and adults. When
you get upset, then you can’t think as
well as you normally do.
KILLMAN
(under his breath)
Kind of like when you’re being screched
at by a wannabe Hitchcock.
SquidJew LAUGHS stiltedly.
SQUIDJEW
When you’re upset, bad things happen. Say,
Killman, what do you think would have
happened if I had been upset when we had to
go up against The Land Salmon?
KILLMAN
What, the fish that you talked to before Demo
crushed it with a construction crane?
Killman tosses the magazine aside and props his feet up on the table in front of them.
KILLMAN
I reckon we would have actually had to have
fought Herr Shark instead of waiting for a
school of fish to rip him to shreds, why?
SquidJew squints at a point just below the camera.
SQUIDJEW
That wasn’t in the script.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
Cut. Neither was anything about a land salmon.
SQUIDJEW
I felt the script needed a little fresh air.
You know, it needed to be brought to life a
little bit.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
You’re mixing your metaphors.
The director SIGHS.
CREW MEMBER (O.S.)
We need a union break. It’s getting to eleven
o’clock. Union regs state we get a break then.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
Of course, union regs. Fine. Everyone break for
twenty. Can we get a couple scripts for these
two, please?
CREW MEMBER (O.S.)
Nope, we’re on break.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
Jesus Christ.
Killman picks up yet another magazine.
KILLMAN
This magazine’s four years old. How about a
new one?
SQUIDJEW
And hey, let’s forego the script. Killman and I
used to do improv in college. We got this. Theme’s
easy enough.
KILLMAN
I never did improv in college.
SQUIDJEW
But you know what it is.
KILLMAN
Yeah.
SQUIDJEW
Good enough. You know more than most people
doing improv at a college level.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
Fine, after the break you can improv. Just hit
the tagline: “Don’t get upset, that’d be insane.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER.
SquidJew is asleep on the couch, SNORING. Killman pokes him awake
KILLMAN
Hey, check it out. Four years ago, they didn’t
know the only thing the Large Hadron Collider
would do would be to turn all of the orangutans
in the world black.
SQUIDJEW
Wh? What? Where is this place? Oh. Fuck, we’re
not done, are we?
KILLMAN
Nope.
SHUFFLING (o.s.) as crew members get ready out of shot.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
Okay, quiet on the set. Let’s do this.
CAMERA MAN (O.S.)
Camera roll.
SOUND ENGINEER (O.S.)
Sound roll.
Crew member steps in front of Killman and SquidJew with the clapper, which reads
JUSTICE TRIO PSA #3 – TAKE VII
CREW MEMBER
Justice Trio PSA number 3. Take seven.
He smacks the clapper and moves out of shot.
DIRECTOR (O.S.)
Action.
SquidJew looks up at the camera.
SQUIDJEW
Oh, hi thar. I didn’t see you come in, so wrapped
up in deep, sexy thoughts was I. Ladies, I’m
single. But that’s not what I wanted to talk
about. I wanted to talk about not getting upset.
Right, Killman?
KILLMAN
Yup.
He flips a page in the magazine.
SQUIDJEW
Cause, getting upset? That’s just meshuggene.
After all, Killman, did we get upset when Archie
was eaten by the kraken?
KILLMAN
I was more terrified when Herr Shark ripped off
Steve’s head like it was a leaf from a branch.
SQUIDJEW
Er, right. Well. Um, so yeah, kids, and adults,
the thing you should remember is that when you
are upset, then you’re not thinking right good.
No kidding, you get all stupid and whatnot.
KILLMAN
You must be downright livid right now.
SQUIDJEW
Shut the fuck up, hippie.
Killman puts the magazine on the side table, adjusts his gloves, and taps SquidJew on the head.
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