Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 153871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 769(@200wpm)___ 615(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 153871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 769(@200wpm)___ 615(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
“Yeah, fine, next week, thanks,” he mumbles, and jerks his backpack over his shoulder. He pulls my office door shut behind him. Hard. It’s an old building, and, as the new kid, I clearly got stuck in the office that either: (a) was recently cleared out when some faculty member who never used it died, or (b) is a gateway to the fires of hell. As such, when Malcolm slams the door, a crack peels open in the ceiling drywall from the corner of the door to the rickety light fixture hanging precariously from the ceiling three feet away. The light fixture droops from the drywall and hangs cockeyed from a cluster of wires.
“Have a nice weekend,” I mutter.
Then, as I watch, the light fixture falls to the floor in a gunshot of dented tin, frosted glass, and plaster dust.
Great.
THANK GOD it’s the end of the week. After I call maintenance at the college and leave them a message about the disaster that my office has become, I order pizza and call Ginger. She’s always in the shop on Friday nights but only works by appointment because she doesn’t want to be implicated in people’s stupid, drunken mistakes. After some sorority girl’s mom came into the shop, dragging her daughter by the wrist, to ask why Ginger gave her daughter a tattoo of a cupcake on her ass with the words “sweet to the last lick” curling in a banner underneath, and didn’t respond well to Ginger’s assurance that the girl was very much of legal age to get a tattoo and quite insistent on this one in particular, Ginger stopped participating in Friday night walk-ins, leaving the easy cash to her employees. She answers on the first ring.
“Have you seen him again?” she says.
“Dude, come on,” I say. She’s asked me this every time we’ve spoken since I told her about running into him—well, about Marilyn running into me.
“Sorry, sweet cheeks. I’m just having a hell of a dry spell in the city of what is clearly exclusively brotherly love and I need a little pick me up.”
“I’m not holding my breath, Ginge. Like I told you, he didn’t even want my phone number. I think maybe he just saw it as a onetime thing.”
“Come on. There are, like, thirty-seven people in your town. It’s totally inevitable. Besides, he knows where you work. I think he could find you if he were trying.”
Well, she’s right about that.
“Sorry, sorry,” she says. “I just mean that he’s obviously into you, so I don’t get why he’s playing it so cool.”
“Changing the subject for the millionth time…. What’s new back home?”
“Oh, the yuzh: you’ve missed a bunch of good shows, everyone always asks where you are, everyone else in this city sucks, and SEPTA workers are on strike, so I can’t take the subway and even though I totally support their cause—go, union!—it’s basically ruining my life. Oh! And your fucking brother came into the shop yesterday.”
“Brian?” Brian is the only one of my brothers I could see getting a tattoo.
“No, Colin.”
“What? What did he want?”
“Not what did he want—what did he want covered up?”
“No!”
“Pumpkin, were you aware that your idiotic, gay-bashing, misogynist brother had a tramp stamp?”
“Impossible.”
“Of a butterfly.”
“No.”
“Swear to god! His story was that his girlfriend made him get it last year and now they broke up and he wanted me to cover it up with a vintage car.” She says “story” and “girlfriend” like they have enormous air quotes around them.
“Oh my fucking god, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“He swore me to secrecy.”
“Yeah, right. So, did you do it?”
“I told him that a tattoo of a car just above his ass would really give people the wrong idea about what kind of a lady he was. He got all offended and left. I guess I forgot what a total misogynist he is for, like, five seconds.” I laugh. “Oops!” she says in a baby voice that is not at all sorry.
I GET up early the next morning, eager to get to my office and get my course prep for the next few weeks done so that I don’t have to work tomorrow. I hate Sundays. They’re depressing enough without having to work on them. Besides, structural issues aside, I’ve grown to really like my office. I’ve never had one before. In grad school I’d work at the library or in a coffee shop. And I was always trying to get reading done behind the bar at work. Consequently, I’d have to air out the books before I returned them to the library because they always ended up dotted with booze. Even in my apartment in Philly, I just worked at the kitchen table. The place was really only a couch, a bed, a bathroom, and a kitchenette anyway. It’s nice to have a place to work that’s just mine (and isn’t two feet from a toilet). And, interesting as it always was to read Emily Brontë or Schopenhauer against a backdrop of tipsy concertgoers, it was pretty hard to concentrate.