Pale Silence
Hatchet-faced and rarely participating, he slouches, arms folded in pale silence at the back of the freshman level Rhetorical Writing class you're teaching as adjunct faculty this Fall at some nowhere little midwestern community college, legs out, heavily booted feet in the aisle, a ring of empty desks surrounding him.
Despite his lack of participation in class discussions, the work he submits for each assignment is more sophisticated, downright Graduate level compared to what gets handed in weekly by the usual small town community college mix of cell phone junkie party girls, their slow-thinking football hero boyfriends who'd failed miserably at regular University, basement dwellers, and the obligatory newly divorced middle-aged housewife or six desperately reaching for something, anything that will make them more employable.
Red Ink
Problem is, though you always look forward to seeing what he has to say on paper, his essays and critiques aren't typed and sent in over the Internet, but written out in fountain pen longhand – which he hands to you, something you automatically take off for: the syllabus you passed out the first night specifically states that all assignments are to be double-spaced, in a specific font (Times New Roman), a specific font size (10) and submitted over the Internet. You point this out with numerous notes in the margins of his homework in red ink.
He persists.
You deduct. (Besides, it wouldn't be fair to the people who go to the effort of keyboarding their papers to let it slide.)
We need to talk.
At midterm, you call him aside after class, explaining that he needs to submit his work in the proper format or you'll be forced to drop him an entire letter grade despite it's overall high quality.
Arms folded, he leans close-mouthed against the door frame, eyes scanning restlessly, long black leather coat flowing down from his shoulders. Irritated by his silence, you add that if he can't afford a PC, he needs to use the computer lab down the hall and then submit it via the Internet dropbox you've set up.
You wait for a reply, an assent, anything - but get nothing, only a brief glance in your general direction accompanied by a slight shrug as he goes back to nervously watching the hallway.
Badly in need of coffee, you stand in your empty classroom waiting for his response - which you never receive.
Instead, he shoots you one more glance, before, with backpack slung on one shoulder, walking away from you, boots loud in the empty hallway as you pull on your raincoat after downing a quick cup of coffee from the thermos you keep with you at all times before starting the long, wet walk back to your studio apartment, one of many you'd lived in ever since the rug'd been yanked out from under your feet two, maybe three years ago in Southern California.
Unwelcome Guest
It wasn't until the rain-soaked following weekend that you notice while going through your class roster that the two of you share the same address.
Well, not exactly: you're B, he's C - literally right across the hall with your landlord's son taking up the entire first floor below, which is A.
Frowning, you take a long sip of coffee; you've never met the tenant of the apartment at the back of the old sub-divided Victorian house where large old trees crowd up against the close-curtained windows.
Dismissing the coincidence, you move to the next name, thinking, "So? We all have to live somewhere!" before getting up to pour yourself another cup of the never-ending river of coffee which keeps you going, intending to finish entering midterm grades before midnight on the cheap laptop that the school provided you with, trying to ignore the inevitable Friday night party down below in A that's just heating up when someone knocks on your door.
Peephole
You pause mid-entry in the little room that's your office, your kitchen, your living room, and your bedroom, thinking it's thunder or maybe the party's entering Stage 2 early, before speeding up. Tonight's rain is just getting started so you want to get as much done as you can in case the power goes out for the third evening in a row, leaving you in the dark and ready to kill while the kids downstairs whoop it up by candlelight with beer bongs, grass, and the latest hits as the cheap battery on your laptop dies a slow, irritating death.
The knock repeats itself.
"Probably some kid looking for beer!" You snarl, getting up to look out the crookedly set peephole to assess the situation before opening the door so you can chew Freddie Freshman or Susie Sophomore a new one before aiming them at the party that's raging underfoot.
Go Away
Great. You close your eyes for a second, forehead against the door. It wasn't some easily dismissed drunken party animal, it was your problem student, minus long black coat, assigned reading (Jane Eyre) and a notebook with that damned ever-present fountain pen in one black-nailed hand. "Not tonight. I have a deadline!" you moan, debating: should you should open the door or pretend you aren't in, letting him knock until he gets bored and leaves because one of the first rules you learned early as USC-Sunnydale faculty before fleeing the place jobless, was "Never let students know where you live!"
How in Hell did he figure out you live across the hall from him?
Knock. Knock.
Go away.
He'd probably seen you coming home after work or carrying out the trash – obviously he wants help with his homework, which means you'll end up holding his hand through the rest of what's supposed to be a basic freshman course.
Knock. Knock.
Go away!
Knock. Knock.
Nobody's home!
You glare at him through the peephole.
He continues knocking, eyes rapidly flickering back and forth. Despite the cheap garish fluorescent lights in the hallway you notice they're an almost electric shade of blue and that he isn't platinum blonde like you'd originally thought, dark roots are showing- plus he's wearing a gaudy, expensive black Roy Rogers style cowboy shirt, complete with black on black cactus flowers embroidered on each shoulder and the sleeves ripped off, revealing skinny but muscular arms, and painted-on black jeans.
Knock. Knock.
I'm busy!
Knock. Knock.
Scram!
Sliding the tip of his pale tongue across his equally pale lower lip, he pulls a cigarette from behind one ear and lights it one handed, exhaling a nervous cloud of blue smoke while rapping an old-fashioned steel lighter against your door.
Knock. Knock.
Oh all right!
You open the door, catching him in mid-rap, almost, but not quite snarling when you ask. "Come in. What do you want?"
Wrestling Match
He doesn't want any help with the assignment, just a place to read where the noise of the party downstairs wont distract him. Irritating as his hovering on your threshold reeking of mentholated cigarettes, Bourbon and something else you cant quite identify beneath his cologne is, you invite him in while firmly informing him that you're busy grading papers and to bother you only if it's something to do with the assignment. Warning issued, you get back to work, curious as to how your apartment could possibly be any quieter than his because you're right over Landlord 2.0's beer orgy.
Occasionally he'll slip a hand between the faded curtains to peer out the big bay window which dominates your kitchen down at the dark rainy street below, before going back to Jane Eyre – elderly kitchen chair tipped back, booted feet on the cold radiator, laughing under his breath while shaking his head, occasionally looking at you from the corner of one eye or another, smirking around an unlit menthol.
Finally, you glare at him over the screen of the laptop, "What?"
Sneering, he gestures with one black-nailed hand, "S'all a load a 'ol crap, the whole book – l'il Miss Charlotte didn' know a soddin' thing – shoulda' had l'il Miss Jane wise up and hold a pillow over that wanker Rochester's face on their wedding night until the kickin' stopped and then run off w' the money, silly cow!"
"No, it's not, and no, she shouldn't have." You reply wanting a fresh cup of coffee mixed with what you keep in the cabinet over the percolator. "And yes, she did – know what she was talking about. Jane Eyre is a beautiful exploration of what it means for a woman, or anyone for that matter, to achieve love without sacrificing equality from a time when women in particular were more property than person." Knowing it's best he doesn't know about the contents of that cabinet, you try distracting yourself by entering another set of scores while wondering if his Brit accent's real or if he's just one more self-proclaimed Whovian you keep running into in your line of work, only better dressed and not half as fat, smelly, and greasy as most.
"How." He takes his booted feet off your radiator, the front legs of the kitchen chair he's infesting thump down on the worn 1970s linoleum before he stands up to twirl the chair so that it's backwards before flopping back down, arms folded along the back of the chair which is spilling prolapsed stuffing from it's padded back no matter how much duct tape you apply to the problem.
"Would." He leans forward, eyes narrowing, teeth bared in a tight grin around the unlit cigarette— you catch a strong blast of Bourbon, cologne, and something else, raw meat?
"You." He pauses, fingers of his right hand holding his place in the book, long enough to flick the curtain aside with his left to take another brief glance down at the wet street.
"Know?" Slouching back against the wall, he folds his arms across his chest, book dangling loosely from one hand, one eyebrow cocked, one booted foot back on the radiator.
"We'll discuss it in class." Without looking up, you take a sip at the dregs of your now cold coffee – only he's reached across the piles of essays and picked it up, sniffing appreciatively.
You stand, reaching for your cup.
Still seated, the student who sits silent at the back of your class holds it just out of reach, chair back on two legs, "Ah, ah! I asked you a question. How do you know?"
You didn't see his hand move. First it was here, now it's there.
You're tired, you need coffee; you weren't paying attention, that's all.
Still, the cup was on the table, now it's in his hand.
Angry, you advance; there's more than cold coffee in that cup. The last thing you need is for one of your students to find out what it is, "This isn't my office it's my apartment. Get out, and leave my cup behind when you do."
"Temper temper," he pauses, lowers your cup, sniffing thoughtfully, "Bourbon? Think I'll keep it!" The look he gives you over the rim of the cup is like your grandmother's Siamese cat whenever it got a mouse long ago and far away in sunny California.
You make another grab.
Adam's apple bobbing, he quickly swallows the whole thing before drawling with a grin, "Seems we've got something in common, 'ere. I'll take a cuppa myself. Only, hold the java, pet." He hands you the empty cup with a nasty smirk.
Tossing it into the sink of dirty dishes you keep meaning to do one of these days in a crash of breaking pottery you point at the door, "Out. Now."
"Well, well, teacher's got fire in her after all." He slides his lighter out of his hip pocket and lights up before placing it absently on the table among the essays and dirty coffee cups, "Never woulda' thought! Well, well, well, well wellllllll." Smoke curls out of his nose as the two of you circle each other in the small, cluttered space, "Seein' as you're the teacher here, how d'ya know 'bout love, and that love without sacrificing who you are, is possible? How would you and all your books, your papers, your nouns, your verbs, and adverbs, know? Go ahead - make it a good one - because I know more than you ever will - love was a crock of old shit back then and it's a crock of even older shit now - love never changes!"
Furious, you advance, thinking, "He can't be more than twenty, maybe twenty-three, but he talks like a man of forty, fifty – this isn't right!"
The two of you circle some more. Frightened, you stammer out that love between equals is possible, you just have to...
Loudly, your problem student interrupts, snarling into your face, breath a weird mixture of mentholated tobacco, Bourbon, and raw meat, yes, raw meat, "'Cause, pet, t'ain't so! There's always one what's on top, what uses you up, tossin' you aside like so much garbage, with you taking it dry up the arse no matter how much it hurts, because love with someone who won't love back is one of the most painful things in the world – but goin' wit'out, is worse! To try and try and try and still wake up every evening alone even when they're laying there right beside you– someone's always got to be the bottom - and that, pet, is love – equality's a lie - man or woman, you're dead before you even begin!"
You want a drink, right now, a big one, minus the coffee, coffee is alertness, Bourbon is anger, Bourbon is numbness, which was why you fled UCLA Sunnydale which the earth swallowed not long after, a barely functional alcoholic who'd been told no matter how hard she worked, she wasn't good enough, wasn't worth the risk of tenuring.
"You're wrong..." you start, but he interrupts, slamming Jane Eyre to the floor, where it lands atop of your Doctoral thesis on the origins of modern feminist literature in the Victorian era, spine broken, pages spilling out.
"Long time ago I got myself locked up in a place where I didn't understand half of what was done to me - they cut me up like a piece of meat - they played with the inside of my head like so many marbles – but it taught me the truth: the strong exploit the weak, and that the only winners are the ones who take and take and take all they can grab… to Hell with love or anything else!" He all but screams in your face;
The music from the party below spews up through the floor of into your small apartment like a broken sewer main in the silence that is your apartment.
"Get out." You reach for the cell phone beside your laptop. "I'm giving you five seconds and then I'm calling the police, GET OUT!"
He looks at you, startled, as his feet back him out on their own volition – you slam the door behind him, locking it before taking down one of the bottles of Bourbon you keep in the cabinet above your coffee machine, draining it and then another, inch by inch into a dirty coffee cup, looking out of the same window at the same street he'd been looking at earlier, trying not to cry because you've lied to yourself that if you only drink a little Bourbon at a time mixed with coffee, you aren't the barely functional alcoholic the administration back at Sunnydale USC said you were when they slammed the door in your face as downstairs, someone cranks up the tunes, drowning out the roaring in your head.
Hangover
His lighter gleams balefully in front of you on your table/desk at you as you slowly come out of your Bourbon daze sometime around noon the next day. Should you move? Should you stay, should you complain to the landlord about your neighbor/student, maybe call the police and make a complaint? It's not like he actually threatened you… is he some sort of escapee? If he is, is he dangerous? What happened last night, really? At least that goddamned party petered out around three a.m. when the cops broke it up.
Maybe you were too busy having a conversation with your old friend, Bourbon to really notice what was going on outside your head. It's always like this when you forget to add coffee to your Bourbon or Bourbon to your coffee— it's times like these you can't tell what came out of your head and what came out of the bottle.
You lean forward, head resting on the cool plastic of the laptop. This is what happens when students figure out where you live.
Serve you right, stupid bitch!
Porcelain Gods
You try ignoring his lighter as you make yourself a very, very late breakfast that you only eat half of – too hung over to even taste what goes into your mouth coming or, as you think to yourself head down in the toilet tossing up what you'd just eaten, going.
You try ignoring it as you shower in the tiny bathroom where you have to open the shower door just to brush your teeth.
You try ignoring it as you look out the big bay window in your kitchen, discovering last night's rain has turned to snow; there's already a foot on the ground.
You give up ignoring it around three when the streetlight outside your window flickers to life and there's now two feet of snow on the ground and guess what, the power finally goes out, leaving you in the dark with grades submitted and a lot of empty bottles for company.
So, in the dim light filtering through your kitchen/living/bedroom window, you pick up it's solid steel presence and walk across the hall, intending to return it because it's mere presence keeps reminding you that you aren't as strong as you like to think you are, not when there's stress and a bottle in the same room.
Or that you'd been denied tenure again and got yourself fired the same day because you'd been too honest about how you felt about it, sending you from small nameless school to small nameless school in small nameless towns, semester by semester, whoever would have you as adjunct faculty, an academic gypsy and about as welcome as a real one— so what if you'd worked your ass off to get your doctorate and were well on your way towards a second one, and taught twice as many Freshman-level classes as your colleagues and all you have to show for it is a thesis nobody reads and a trail of empty bottles...
Lion's Den
...his door swings open when you knock on it.
The place feels like a cave, the floor in front of you a bottomless pit in the permanent chill that comes with all old houses during a midwestern winter no matter how high you turn up the thermostat. "Hello?"
Maybe he was at work, not that you remember a work number listed in his student file.
"Hello?"
All you have to do is put the lighter down where he can see it - you're a drunk, not a thief - turn around, close the door behind you, go back into your apartment, lock the door, and better yet, slide a chair, no, your dresser, in front of it.
'Anybody here?"
There's a long silence as you make your way into the darkness, eyes adjusting to the thick gloom. The place stinks of raw meat, mentholated cigarettes, and Bourbon, the last making your dry mouth water and your hands shake.
Brushing against something that almost feels alive, you scream, dropping the lighter to the floor, knocking over what sounds like a stack of DVDs in plastic cases, then another, and then another in a long, drawn out rattling clatter before an arm slides around your shoulders.
There's a rasp, the smell of butane and a small flame flares up so that the first thing your dazzled eyes make out is his face in yours.
"Boo."
You scream, pitching forward into darkness.
Mirror
You come to beneath what feels like a cold, ratty electric blanket on a lumpy mattress on the floor in the corner. He sits beside you, leaning against the old water stain tattooed wall, shirtless in black jeans, pale glints of hair, skin, and teeth showing as he lights up another cigarette.
The blanket is stale, the mattress is stale, the air is stale, and the room itself with its stacks of DVDs piled high around a metal folding chair, empty bottles, and a coffee can full of butts facing a large flat screen television which glints in what little light there is coming in through the heavy curtains– is even staler.
"Don't you know it's rude for a lady to enter a gentleman's room uninvited?" He inhales, face lit orange for a second.
Wordlessly you shake your head. You sense a shrug before he gets up, padding barefoot through the darkness followed by what sounds like a refrigerator door opening and shutting. Something is set on a counter, there's a ripping noise, there's a gurgle, "I'd share the this, pet, but I doubt you'd like it." There's a crash of broken glass as a bottle hits the floor in a blast of cologne. "Damn."
Terrified, you remain silent as his voice floats around the shadowy room, "Had you warned me, I might have tided up, maybe washed the dishes. You'll have to settle for a folding chair an' telly – I don't need much after takin' all I could from them as what took me."
A laugh, another cigarette, he gestures towards you with it, a tiny orange star in the gloom, before wiping the back of one hand across his mouth – "Soddin' power's out, gotta drink it cold, all the cups are dirty, outta booze – spilled the cologne, Tabasco wont do the trick, and I'm outta soddin' Wheatabix – gotta make do with aftershave t' kill th' taste!" He laughs again, a titter that almost sounds like he's bordering on crying, interrupting his own complaint. "As if anyone in this arsehole of a town would know what Wheatabix is!"
Needing coffee, Bourbon, anything, you try edging away along the wall behind you… only he's beside you again, breath meaty, reeking of aftershave, restraining you with one hand which feels a lot colder than it should, "You woke me up, pet – I likes me sleep, but I got lonely last night, too much noise - stupid book, the Bronte sisters always set me off - thought I saw one a' THEM outside in the street last night in th' rain – got bored, got lonely, signed up for a night class, only so much telly one can take – maybe one a' THEM saw me, one a' THEM barstards from W&H wantin' their pound a' flesh after we tried our best t' stop 'em. Me robbin' the till on me way outta L.A. was icin' on th' cake!"
Again that tittering laugh, an odd mixture of accents… his hand starts wandering through your hair, a short, sensible cut, one that you chose because it looked more professorial – "You should really let it grow out, makes you look old, tired, maybe a red rinse..." there's a long slurping noise, followed by a gulping sound. "Ahhhh… disgustin'! Why don't more oinkers donate? Plenny a' them around these days! Cholesterol, sugar... still, this one... male... fruity with a slight oaken aftertaste, age around, 35?" His hand toys with your ear, before wandering down the side of your neck…
…you want to scream.
"Gay as a tree full a monkeys on laughin' gas, that one – not that I'd know..." His hand pauses, another laugh almost sob – "Big lie there! I gave him, her, them, everything, even me life, once upon a time and a town died, and what'd it get me? Rug burns, a corporate till, and eyes on the back a' me head!"
There's more sorrow than anger now; his hand continues caressing the side of your neck where you lie trapped on a stale mattress gritty with what you hope are cigarette ashes. "I knew one like you – once. She was the mum, bout your age, but no drunk."
"Hey!" insulted, you briefly forget the predicament you're in before his hand, which is cold, presses you down, reminds you to be frightened.
"Shhh, lie still. You hit your head on the floor during our tango - might have a concussion – and kind, very kind – but I was too stupid, too busy obeyin' me uglies whenever the daughter was around - that one ate me alive and left me for dead – I'd do it all over again, bloody Hell, but it hurt! They brought me back and I fell for it again, with me on the bottom and him on the top and it's all over but the crying when the hammer fell!"
Indigestion
The silence is almost thick enough to cut with a knife until another slurping sound with its companion gagging sound followed by a cough – "Ugh. Shoulda' took those bottles away from you last night, Bourbon kills the taste - forgot to pick up more before the snow started... his batshit crazy daughter was almost as bad –that one knew where I lived and moved in: shovin' me t' th' bottom 'til she didn't need me any more."
Slurp.
Belch.
Another throat caress, his cold mouth covers yours - you struggle, he shushes you, face strange against yours, hard, dry, cold, not human, before softening, stale, meaty aftershave-soaked breath making you gag, "Sorry. Sorry. I forget what I'm like when I'm hungry – though I don't do that any more – not much left to me now, is there? God, it's cold in here – never could take the cold..."
Electric Blanket
You shudder as he wraps himself around you in the dark, old house chill, as the snow falls and the wind blows outside in the darkness, face pressed into the side of your neck, drinking in your warmth as you lie there too terrified to move until somewhere in the gloom of dawn you fall asleep despite your terror, the cold waking you later that morning – snow blows in through the window, melting on the ragged but now warm electric blanket you'd fallen asleep beneath with odd dreams of him standing over you fully dressed in that long black coat of his, window open, pillow in both hands, staring down at you in the weak light filtering through the curtains from the back security light, filling your aching head. He eventually drops the pillow to the bottle-strewn floor, before walking away, trailing cologne, menthol cigarettes, Bourbon, and raw meat.
Empty
You get up, close the window, walk past the yammering television with its surrounding piles of DVDs, empty bottles, and coffee can of cigarette butts, and shut the door of his apartment behind you before moving into a hotel on the other side of town with double locks on the doors.
That, and you've quit drinking coffee cold turkey, because Bourbon lets you sleep nights.