3 Thursday, January 3, 2008

Ray stands over the dining hall table, trying to find a place to set his tray down. Bear, in his hirsute glory, is seated between Stick on his left and Lightning on his right. Bear shares the real first name of “Michael” with the former, which at the beginning of the year had earned the pair of frosh their descriptive nicknames purely on the basis of disambiguation. On the other side of the table sat Christopher, a math major who refused to go by any shorter moniker, his girlfriend Monica, who in the opposite spirit called herself “Mo”, and an Asian girl whom Ray didn’t recognize.

“Hey Ray,” Stick says. “I thought you weren’t coming to dinner.”

“Alice woke me up,” Ray says. He turned his tray sideways and wedged it between Lightning and Christopher’s trays, then turned to get a chair.

“Oh?” says Christopher. “What was Alice doing in your room?”

“Nothing,” Ray says. “She didn’t actually come in. She just dropped off an old box she wanted me to look at.”

“Oh really?” Christopher asks, a devilish curl in his lips. “For what purpose?”

“For Josh’s computer.” Ray abruptly drops his fork into his mashed potatoes. “What’s with the sudden interest? I don’t even like her. That way.”

“Just asking.” Christopher pokes at his limp vegetables.

After a moment, he continues: “It’s about time you worked on that thing, anyway. What’s it been, three weeks?”

Ray looks Christopher straight in the eyes. “It’ll be a lot longer than that if you keep pestering me. I don’t see how it concerns you, anyway.” He turns back to his mashed potatoes and forks himself a few testy mouthfuls.

There is an awkward silence.

Lightning turns to face the other corner of the table. “So, Mo, who’s your friend?”

“Oh! Her name is Kiri; she’s visiting from California…”

Ray zones out as Mo keeps explaining. His eyes drift to the wall of windows on the other side of the dining hall. Bergmann Dining Hall faces the central part of campus, which is currently lit up by the setting sun slanting across Easting Field. The field never fails to confuse prospective students: Easting is on the west side of campus, between the academic buildings and the STI dorms. Ray watches the light glint wanly off the narrow, high windows of the geology and astrophysics building, conveniently close to where all the science majors live.

Saloma College is divided into two semi-autonomous institutions. Saloma Arts College was founded first, in the 1960’s , by a group of moderately well-off local activists who were too old to be hippies, but liked the idea and wanted a place in Northern Idaho for the young ‘uns to congregate and get some higher learning. Saloma Technical Institute, the half Ray attends, was founded a decade later by a filthy rich agribusinessman who hoped to benefit his trade by having links with the science departments at the college. The SAC faculty and staff considers STI a disease that they can’t get rid of, and the attitude tends to rub off on the students.

Which is why Ray is puzzled by the appearance of a Studio Art major in Bergmann. SAC has its own dining hall in the other corner of campus, close to their dorms. She was a tall Pacific Islander, black hair down to her rear. He’d taken a digital art course with her last year as part of his one-per-semester arts requirement, but they hadn’t talked much beyond the regular pleasantries. He couldn’t even remember her name now. His eyes follow her as she moves down the salad bar, then to the cash register where she pays a ridiculous amount per ounce for her vegetarian roughage. She begins walking along the window wall.

“What are you looking at, Ray?” Lightning asks, barely audible over the conversation going on around them. Ray’s eyes don’t move off their target.

“Kiri, Kiri,” Stick is saying, sounding out the name. “Sounds familiar. Japanese, right?”

“Yeah!” the small Asian girl says, overly cheery. Lightning begins staring at the art major even more raptly than Ray is. “It means ‘fog’!”

“Which is just about the only thing that’s in her head,” says Christopher. Mo nudges him with her elbow, bumping him into Ray.

Ray, jolted out of his reverie, looks down into his mashed potatoes again.

“Ooooh baby,” says Lightning. “That piece is fine.”

Bear looks up and tries to figure out what Lightning is looking at. Stick finds it sooner, just as Lightning points her out.

“Who is that?” Bear says. He catches Ray trying to disappear into his now-cold entree out of the corner of his eye.

“Temptation,” Lightning observes, “thy name is Penelope.”

2 Wednesday, January 2, 2008

“Ray.” Alice’s soft voice barely penetrates Ray’s door.

His eyes fly open, trying to figure out why he’d stopped dreaming. “…Alice,” he says, finally placing the voice to a name. The small, quiet girl with small, quiet ambitions to study electrical engineering and make large, noisy robots is the last person he’d expect to wake him from a nap.

“Ray, would you open the door please? This is heavy.” Her voice is strained, but not any louder than usual.

“Oh.” He shifts under the covers, feeling himself with sleep-clumsy hands. He couldn’t remember if he’d fallen asleep in anything.

“Uh,” he says. “I haven’t got any clothes on.”

“Oh! Oh dear. I don’t mean to disturb you!” The voice gets fainter, as though she’s turning away from the door.

“Unh.” Ray massages his face with his hand. “You’re not. Put whatever it is down while I get some shorts on.”

“I’ll wait.” He hears a solid thonk on the carpet. Ray takes a moment to pull at his forehead more before rolling out of bed. He grabs the nearest pair of boxer-briefs off the floor; sniffs them. They aren’t too musty. He puts them on; gropes for the doorknob.

Alice looks vaguely disgusted, and moves a hand to cover her nose.

“Ah, god, sorry, Alice. I haven’t showered in a few days.” Ray slumps against the narrow edge of the door. “Been busy.” Midterms week always was. Her brow furrows at him from behind her dinnerplate spectacles.

Ray looks down at the floor.

“Whatcha got there?” he asks.

Alice coughs lightly. “It’s a tower.”

He nudges it with his toe.

“My da got it from a telephone company. Said it had voice recognition software on it.”

“Oh,” Ray says.

“I wanted you to take a look at it before I took it apart. Thought maybe…” Alice looks off down the hall.

“Maybe…?” Ray prompts.

“Maybe it would help you with that computer you promised Joshua? I thought since it’s been so long since you said you’d do it–more than three weeks–that you were having problems with the programming part, and this would help…” Alice frowns at herself. She’d said too much.

“Oh.” Ray squats down to look at the machine, face to face.

Alice clears her throat. Ray looks up at her, his eyes still red from the take-home test the night before.

She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Ray turns back to the computer and starts dragging it into his dark hole.

“I can… I can take it back with me, if you… don’t need it,” she finally says.

Ray only has a noncommital “Mmm” for that. He continues to inch the thing back into his room. She was right about it being heavy. The case feels like a section of an iron girder. He gets it under his desk with a painful amount of scraping across the floor tiles.

He takes a moment to sit on his black chair. It’s a long enough moment that Alice turns and scuffs down the hall in her stocking feet.

Ray hops up and leans his torso out the door. “Alice!”

Her pale ale chin-length hair flips out as her head whips around.

His eyes lock with hers. “Thank you.” He nods.

She nods back, slowly.

“You’re welcome.”

Ray watches her slim form retreat into the stairwell, small voices of wonder and confusion murmuring in his head.

1 Tuesday, January 1, 2008

It starts with a crash. A very loud and protracted crash.

To be technical, it begins with a rather serious crunch. Then it moves on to a series of “ow”s and bangs, then a surprised “ack!” and another crunch combined with some plastic tinkling, then the sound of a large metal can being toppled over and rolling over bumpy stone pavement. That stops, and then there is another “ooh!” and “ack!”, and then the large metal can gives a deep “tonk”.

And then there is a sucking in of breath, shortly followed by a stream of “fuck”s.

Four stories above, Ray looks up from his problem set, wondering what the hell is going on.

“Ah, fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!” The cursing bounces up the dorm walls surrounding Fountain Court and into Ray’s window.

“Jesus Christ, Lightning, I’m sorry…”

“Fucking hell, Bear, you bowled me completely fucking over. I skinned my goddamned elbow, you dick. What the hell are you doing with that fucking can of liquid nitrogen, anyway? You can’t see around it to watch where the hell you’re going. Get a fucking cart next time! My parts are fucking ruined now, smashed all over the goddamned cobblestones –” Ray hears the sound of a sneaker being scuffed across stone, with some skittering plastic thrown in for fun.

“I said I’m sorry –”

“Do you even know how much these parts cost me? Look at this shit, you clumsy asshole –”

Ray looks out his window. Lightning is still laying into the frosh, kicking or crushing a piece of circuit-laden plastic every few seconds to punctuate his swearing. The much bigger boy is holding the metal can in front of his head, ready to block blows. White Lightning got his nickname not only for his prematurely white jewfro, but for striking hard and fast once his electrons were excited. Still, Bear most likely had nothing to worry about from the hyperactive junior. Even if the frosh wasn’t a well-known practiser of aikido, his bulk alone would give him the advantage in a fistfight.

“Lightning!” Ray shouts, leaning out his window.

The raving boy can’t hear Ray over his own voice.

Ray tries again, louder. “Joshua Graham Bell Rasjiemucek!”

This time Lightning stops. He turns sharply to the wall of windows, grinding a PCI card under his heel in the process. He searches the wall of windows for the source of the shout, and when he finds it, scowls before his face can light up with glee. “Fuck you, Ray! Only my grandma calls me that!”

Ray leans further out the window, enjoying himself. “Fuck your grandma, Lightning! You only got the nickname because nobody but me could pronounce your last name and there were two other Josh R.’s in our year! I’ll call you whatever the hell I please!”

Josh has to keep his lips in a tight line to prevent himself from smiling. “You panda-loving cunt!” He shouts. Ray grins. “What the fuck do you want?!”

“Leave off verbally abusing the frosh, Josh.”

“Dammit, Janet! He owes me a new fucking computer!” Lightning pulls at his hair. He has so much of it that he probably doesn’t miss the frizzy chunks he rips out. “And some pizza for the goddamned inconvenience!”

With Josh’s attention drawn away, Bear has casually put the can down near the fountain and taken a seat on it. “I’m not buying you any pizza,” he says.

Josh stomps on a power supply in response.

Ray crosses his arms on the windowsill, leaning on them. He sighs. Anything to get Lightning’s notorious temper to calm down.

“Josh…” he says. “I’ll build you a new computer. Just let Bear go do… whatever it was he needs liquid nitrogen for.”

Lightning and Ray both look at the first-year.

“Dudes, I was sworn to secrecy.” Bear is wearing an innocent expression on his darkly bearded face.

Josh grunts and turns back to the fourth-story window. “It had better be a fucking good one. No crap parts.”

Ray deflates a bit. Partially out of relief, but he feels dread seeping in. “I’ll scavenge all the best for you, my fuzzy fiend. Now bid your playmate good-day.” Ray starts to turn back from the window.

“And it should order pizza for me!” Josh demands.

Ray sticks his head back out the window, gazing at Lightning to see if he’s kidding. Unfortunately for Ray, he isn’t.

There is silence in the courtyard for a few rare moments while Ray considers.

“That it shall do,” he pronounces.

Lightning is shocked. “Seriously? Fucking sweet!” He pumps his fists in the air, then brings them down to do a tap step on the pieces of his former machine.

Ray turns back into his room and shuts the window behind him. “Fucking sweet indeed,” he mutters, sitting down on a black swivel chair. He reopens the graphics set he was working on. Thanks to the altercation just now, he was an additional five minutes late turning it in on top of the thirty-three already accumulated. He grumbles as he thumbs through the pages. He shouldn’t have promised the new computer, but — for everything except turning in assignments — his word was gold. He would have to do it now, crazy course load or not.

“Fucking–” page flick– “sweet–” page flick– “my ass.”