A few nights later, I told my supervisor at the library some story about needing a week off to apply to master’s programs, but really, I just didn’t want to go to work. That meant no shelving books for me. The pain in my wrist from answering too many paper finals had disappeared and the first day of classes in January was ignorably far away. Sam, my roommate, had a videography gig with the local astronomy club, filming nerds being nerds. And those tabs of acid sure had waited long enough for an evening alone in my belly.
I remember sitting in my room that cool, winter evening, enjoying the smooth, spicy rise of Nag Champa smoke in my bedroom, while the oak leaves of 37th and ½ Street whispered to one another in the language of an easternly wind. And a new moon watched it all from behind the veil of earth’s shadow. It was beautiful.
That’s when Sam’s girlfriend Loren Stephanopoulos’s name appeared on my phone. She had texted me, “Juan. Sam said he would help me move tonight?”
A pair of acid tabs were already barreling down my esophagus, with a third one receiving a Thai massage from my back molars, when I thought of what I should reply.
“Damn, that sucks.”
She replied immediately: “I can’t reach him. Where is he?”
I knew if I replied one more time, it would be considered a conversation. But I didn’t want a conversation. In fact, I wanted nothing at all except to space out at the start of this new lunar cycle. I also knew that if Sam wasn’t replying, it meant he didn’t want to be found. It wasn’t like he didn’t carry his phone with him everywhere. But just then my incense ran out, as well as my patience. What was I going to say when Loren stated her needs so clearly—“Can you help me move the TV?” It was easier to go with the flow, as the professor might have suggested.
Narcotics coursed from my gut to my heart chambers, while an imagined suntan ached the skin under my olive-green jacket, as if exposed to a summer sun, yet it was January and the dead of night. The smell of jasmine from North Campus accompanied me south, then west, into the rambunctious student neighborhood of low-rent apartments and fraternity housing on West Campus. I pulled out my phone and made sure the timer was still on. In about thirty-two minutes and fifty-five seconds something big was going to happen, should those Buddha tabs prove to activate in normal time.
“Almost there,” I messaged Loren. “TV, then I’m out. You caught me on acid.”
Loren typed something, then deleted it.
Her apartment had two floors—one for the kitchen and dining room and another for her massive bedroom upstairs. Out of the whole front façade, her unit was the only one in the complex with plants hanging from the window. But now there were no plants. Only the lights were on, and boxes piled high.
She was waiting for me at the door, under a florescent light. I saw her face scrunched like the cotton disk she must have used to clean off her makeup. Now she was tying back her blonde hair and chewing me out for showing up high.
“I’m not high yet.” I looked at my timer. “But in twenty-eight minutes.”
“Sam is an asshole.”
I tried to get inside, but she was blocking the way in. I said, “I thought girls liked assholes?”
She swung her elbow at me, still in the air from tying her hair, and then we stepped aside. It was my second time helping someone move that week, and in a sense everyone does it the same way: boxes, boxes, and more boxes. There were bankers boxes, moving boxes, clear boxes and broken boxes, piles of boxes, stacks and heaps of boxes. Another man’s treasure . . . the proverbial junk to me. I was there for one thing.
“The TV is upstairs,” she said.
“I remember,” I said. “Sam and I installed it for you.”
She faked a smile, then showed me up to her bedroom. “I would have left it for the girl moving in, but she told me she doesn’t watch TV. I bet she doesn’t shave her armpits either.”
“Where’s she from?”
“Argentina.”
“Is she pretty?”
“She’s not your type.”
“What’s my type?”
From three steps up, she looked over her shoulder, wiggled the back of her Mrs. Claus pajamas at me, then kept climbing. Maybe I’ll stick around. To meet the roommate, I mean. I made conversation to not give off the vibe I was checking her out, neither up the flight of stairs, nor at the top of the landing.
“So, LA.”
“LA or die. My agent is flying me out to redo my headshots, says they’re too artsy.”
I reminded her that Sam’s portrait of her had won an award in the student newspaper, but she replied that it’s her face on the picture that gets her on shows, not the award, “especially not from some rag.” Her mounted flat screen was the only thing in her empty room, besides us. And I could feel the timer in my pocket burn.
She handed me her electric screwdriver and offered me some water.
“Save the water for your plants,” I said. But then regurgitation surged up my throat. “Actually, I’ll take a glass.”
By the time Loren returned with the water, I was done spinning out the drywall screws manually with the drill bit, because the battery in the electric ended up being dead. I tried to wedge out the plastic anchors with my fingernails, but it hurt, so I whipped out my driver’s license and shoveled them suckers out one by one, absolutely fascinated by the way the white dust spurt out in tufts through the air, of which I took deep breaths, in order to resist lashing out at the spatter of complaints coming at me from my best friend’s girlfriend’s mouth. I didn’t interrupt Loren, though maybe I should have, instead of letting her play a set of her greatest hits: Sam preferred his to-do list over her; Sam said one thing then did another; Sam would rather be here than there, “Oh, and the least the asshole could do is answer his phone to break up with me, if that’s what’s on his mind.”
“I thought girls . . . liked assholes.”
She didn’t hear me, while I lugged the forty pounds of electronics by myself. We were down on the first level again. Wiping the sweat twinged with drugs off my forehead reminded me to get out quick. I noticed she had tears welling up.
“You good?”
“I’m telling you no, I’m not.” Loren began bawling.
“Moving sucks, huh,” I offered, resisting the urge to pull out my phone and check how many minutes or seconds I had left before my trip would really kick in. Maybe if I ducked out now, I could catch the midnight bell of the university tower on my walk back. Maybe. But Loren was drinking out of the glass meant for me, wiping her snot with her matching Mrs. Claus pajama sleeve, and asking me if Sam and her could make their relationship work long distance.
“It’s known to happen,” I said, stepping towards the door. “Pick a date, close the distance. Sam . . . he is—joining you, out west? Damn, it’s boutta hit.”
“What?” Loren snorted. “I told you he would rather stay here with you.”
My alarm went off and I almost reached for the metal of the front door’s handle, but a voice in my head told me that that would be the pinnacle of rudeness. So I dropped my arm and stood there, explaining.
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“I said I took some acid. Ths alrm ws t rmnd m t gt hm.”
Loren replied, but I didn’t catch it. She was at the door, unlocking it, talking. My body wobbled like those magnetic decision maker toys, all the options telling me to get the hell out, except for one that said to stand there swallowing vowels. And this was the option that attracted me.
Without meaning to, I put my hand on hers and she fell into my arms. She continued sobbing. And I let out mucus too. Then she looked up, her maple eyes, teary, mouth agape with lemon breath, saying things steeped in a flavor I could not name.
“You never told Sam about us, did you?”
My mouth filled with saliva and every bubble in its every drop popped. I leaned in for her, inching my lips towards hers, which I had stared at for so long and had even known. Her silver earrings glittered under the light of the doorway.
But then chimes flittered around us softly. It was the midnight song, coming from the tower. I turned towards them for the length of the melody, then turned back to Loren at the stop. Her jaw was trembling, and she reminded me of Sam. Her face actually looked like his. Peach fuzz grew into sideburns. Her teeth darkened. And she howled. I shoved her aside and darted through the numbered streets of West Campus and across real campus, in the direction of those bells which shook my every molecule.
Nearby, red and blue lights flashed. Two officers asked to see my ID. But I had left it at Loren’s.
Author, poet, translator, and doctoral student in Spanish Creative Writing at the University of Houston. Iván Brave lives in his hometown of Houston, Texas, with his wife and son. His vision is to see the next generation of Houstonians create, read more, and thrive. Humor, love, and the humanities are the themes closest to his heart.