Breakfast Served Anytime Page 7

  “Almost,” Meghan said, and before she shut the door, locking it with an ominous click, she cocked her head at Mason, raised a sly eyebrow, and winked. “Nice hat.”

  “Fabulous,” Chloe announced. “Just fabulous. Mason, do you know every single person in this town?”

  “I went out with her freshman year,” Mason balked, as if anything that happened back in the dark ages shouldn’t be held against him. “And it was only because she was a junior and had a license.”

  Calvin began a calm scan of the room, running his fingers along the walls, where brave legions of McGrath Fives had left makeshift cave art: RUTH ’85; ALL HALLOWS’ EVE 1993; I AM HUNGRY; THOMAS McGRATH IS A PUSSY. It was entertaining reading, and added to the thrill I felt at getting trapped in a room with a ghost. It was like I had known from the second she produced that loop of keys that Meghan the Administrative Assistant was going to lock us in. It was almost like I was secretly willing her to do it. In my mind I forgave her for going out with Mason and applauded her bold move.

  “Hey, Gloria. Look at this.” Calvin pointed to an elaborate chalk drawing of a girl with flowing hair and a smile with a secret in it. In an eerie sort of way, she looked like me. “Do you come here often?”

  “You know what they say — everyone’s got a doppelgänger somewhere.” The more I stared at the chalk girl, the more she seemed like an image staring back at me from a mirror. Wild.

  “Yeah, well, I hope my doppelgänger is out somewhere enjoying some fresh air, lucky bastard,” came Mason’s muffled voice. He was sitting on the floor with his head sandwiched between his knees. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Nobody panic,” Chloe commanded. “I’ve got a ton of supplies.” From the depths of her bag she produced a handful of fortune cookies. “Hungry?”

  Mason groaned. “Get me out of here. I’m serious.”

  Calvin the Unflappable reminded all of us that Meghan had mentioned something about a tour at eleven, which meant that our stay in Chez McGrath would be brief. This was buzzkill news to me, but Mason relaxed visibly and launched into that inevitable morbid discussion that everyone seems to have at some point or another — the great debate about What’s the Worst Way to Die.

  “Man, buried alive. No question. Or stuck in an elevator while everyone sucks up all the air!” Mason shuddered and stuck his head back between his knees. “Can’t handle it, man.”

  Chloe shook her head. “No way. Drowning’s way worse than that. Way.”

  “I’m not into stampedes,” I offered. “Did you hear about those people who died at Wal-Mart when the store opened on Black Friday? God, what a way to go out — trampled underneath a bunch of freaks in pursuit of a Wii.”

  “Yes!” Calvin chimed in. “That was in New York, right? Couple of years ago? And my aunt was actually at that Who concert in Cincinnati when the same thing happened. December third, 1979.”

  After a pause during which I was (a) almost paralyzed by my vivid imagining of being trampled to death at a rock concert and (b) completely mindfreaked by Calvin’s encyclopedic recollection of such horrors, Calvin went on. “That’s not the worst, though. The worst is dying in some scenario where you have absolutely zero control. Airplanes. Helicopters. They’re the worst. You couldn’t pay me to get on an airplane.”

  “Calvin,” Chloe said, squinting with appreciation. “You have categorical knowledge of the absolute weirdest shit. I bet right now you could give me at least four more famous examples of death by smooshing. Go.”

  Calvin blushed. “It’s called ‘crowd crush,’ actually. You’d think that people would die from the trampling, right? But really it’s asphyxiation.”

  “Asphyxiation, as in what’s happening to me right now while yall’re just standing around chatting,” Mason complained from his station on the floor.

  Chloe ignored him. “Seriously, Calvin. Death by smooshing. Gimme what you got.”

  “Okay, it’s not exactly categorical recall, but there was that Pearl Jam concert in Denmark where a bunch of people got crushed. Can we talk about something else?”

  “No, this is fascinating,” Chloe said. “Now. When, exactly, did these Danish Pearl Jam fans get smooshed to death?”

  “I don’t remember. Can we open that letter?”

  “Cal-vin.”

  Calvin sighed. “June thirtieth, 2000.”

  “I knew it!” Chloe shrieked. “Oh my God, Calvin, you have a photographic memory, don’t you?”

  “Okay, okay. Look, I do not have a photographic memory. Sometimes my mind hangs on to dates, that’s all. I know the Who concert because it happened on my aunt’s birthday — my aunt who was there — and I know about the Pearl Jam in Denmark thing because it happened on my birthday. Okay? Where’s X’s letter?” Calvin gave Chloe a pleading look and held out his hand for the envelope. “Can I see it? Please?”

  Chloe gave Calvin another long, appraising look and tipped the envelope into his hand. “Okay, but I’m onto you, Mr. Little.”

  Before Calvin opened the envelope, he checked to make sure Mason hadn’t asphyxiated yet. “Can you hear me? Are you ready?” Mason bobbed his lowered head, so Calvin cleared his throat and read aloud: “Wait here.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “Wait here,” Calvin repeated. “That’s what it says.”

  Chloe and I peered over Calvin’s shoulder for confirmation. Wait here? Are you kidding? Weren’t we supposed to have solved this part of the puzzle yesterday? We could be waiting for the rest of our lives. We could just be hanging out underground with some dead botanist for the rest of our freaking lives! Suddenly I wanted nothing more to do with X. I was so over X it wasn’t even funny.

  “Well. X sucks,” I said.

  “I’m hurt,” Mason replied, lifting his face from his knees. He looked bleary, drained of his usual electricity. “I’m really hurt that you would talk about me that way.”

  Cartoon-style, two more heads turned in unison to stare at him. There we were again: Mason Atkinson’s three-member Rapt Audience. Nobody said a word.

  “You mean you haven’t figured it out yet?” Mason grinned. Still there was silence. I felt sucker punched, afraid that if I opened my mouth I would throw up.

  “Nice,” Chloe muttered between set teeth. “Real nice.” In the dim, her eyes glistened.

  “Yep,” Mason said, rising from the floor and dusting himself off. “I’m the teacher. Second-year English lit major here at Morlan. I picked up this Geek Camp gig for extra cash. You, my friends, are the extra cash.” Mason winked at us and waited. The room tunneled into silence, thick and accusatory.

  “You’re not a teacher,” Chloe said, icy cool. “You’re a liar.”

  Once again, Mason — or whoever he was — scanned our faces for signs of life. I stole a glance at Calvin, who was watching Mason carefully, his face arranged in an expression of benign amusement. I lowered my eyes, afraid that my own face would betray the betrayal I felt, the sick feeling at having actually allowed the Mad Hatter to appear behind my eyes before I fell asleep the night before. Willing myself not to scream, I turned to study the cave-writing on the wall behind me: RAGE, RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT. Good God, was the whole entire world just crawling with self-absorbed English majors exploiting Dylan Thomas? I hated them all. I wanted out. Out out out out out.

  “Kidding,” Mason said, breaking into a self-conscious guffaw. His laugh bounced off the walls as the air in the room rearranged itself. “I’m kidding, okay? Of course I’m not X. I’m not a liar, I’m an actor.”

  “Same thing,” Chloe ranted. “You’re also an asshole.” Clawing violently through her bag, she came up with a cigarette and actually lit it this time. “I don’t care how claustrophobic you are,” she said on the exhale. “I’m going to sit here and smoke in your claustrophobic face.”

  “Chloe,” I said, “put that out.” It seemed important that Mason Atkinson not be completely in control of everybody’s emotions and behavior.

  “Fine, fi
ne.” Chloe stomped over to Mason and snatched the top hat from his head. “Have I mentioned that I hate this stupid hat?” She tossed it to the floor, flicked the cigarette on top, and ground them both into a charred mess beneath her boot.

  Mason seemed only slightly subdued. “Are you done?”

  “Yes,” Chloe conceded. “Conflict is not my forte. Just give me — give us — an apology and then we’re done.”

  “I’m sorry, but —”

  “No, uh-uuh.” Chloe shook her head. “It’s not an apology if there’s a ‘but’ in it. Try again.”

  “I’m sorry. Calvin, Gloria, Chloe, I’m sorry. There. Okay?”

  “I didn’t think you were X,” Calvin said, just so we’d know.

  “I’m glad you’re not X,” I said, which was the truth.

  “God, get me out of here,” Chloe moaned, and, as if on cue, the door opened in a great whoosh of suction and light. I was not at all prepared for what came bounding down the stone steps: a puppy. A puppy! It yipped itself into a blur of brown and white as it spun in circles, chasing its own leash.

  “Holyfield!” came a voice. “Holyfield, get back up here!”

  The owner of the voice appeared next: a guy with a beard and glasses, wearing what appeared to be a baby in one of those contraptions on his chest. A puppy? A baby? I thought life on a college campus was supposed to guarantee the absence of such things. I’ve never been a huge fan of dogs — all that slobbery loyalty, the basis for which is nothing. Babies? Don’t even get me started.

  The bearded guy was out of breath. “Sorry I’m late,” he wheezed — I detected asthma and vague cluelessness, a recipe for dorkdom — “but I’m not as late as you are, right? Holyfield, get down.” He adjusted his glasses and stuck out his hand to Calvin, who, of the four of us, must have appeared the friendliest. “Wesley Xavier,” he grinned. “And this” — he indicated the vapid passenger on his chest — “is Juliet. You’ve already met Holyfield.”

  At the sound of his name, Holyfield — who had revealed himself to be a boxer puppy, and irresistibly cute — perked up his ears. They were floppy ears, not the pointy kind I’d seen on boxers before. One of them, the right, looked a little mangled, a flaw that only added to his appeal.

  “Runt of the litter,” Wesley Xavier said. “One of his brothers got his ear there, poor guy. My wife’s the one who came up with Holyfield.”

  Weston A. Xavier. Wesley Xavier. Just a simple little switch and suddenly you’re a fascinating enigma. Why hadn’t I thought of that myself?

  “So here we are,” X said. “I hope I’ve given yall ample time to get to know each other on your own terms.” He looked around the tomb and beamed. Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was Chloe’s recently extinguished cigarette, but as X raised both his arms in a goofy gesture of triumph, I swear I thought I caught a whiff of pot. “Welcome to Secrets of the Written Word.”

  24 June

  Dear Carol,

  Girl. I’m writing you from the laundry room in the basement of the dorm and it’s about 4,000 degrees in here so I hope I don’t sweat all over the page. How’s New York? I want to hear all about it. So far Geek Camp is good. X isn’t a perv but I think he might be stoned about 99% of the time. Also he’s one of those completely dorky guys with a really hot wife. How does that happen? Anyway the wife’s name is Kathryn and she showed up today (we were in a tomb with a couple of dead guys, more on that later) to pick up their dog and their baby, whose name is Juliet and who has our same birthday!!! My new friend Calvin says that statistically speaking if you walk into a room full of 20 people at least 2 of them are more than likely to share a birthday, but still I think it’s cool even if the baby just sits around and drools or whatever. The dog is cuter than the baby which I know is a mean thing to say but I can’t help it. They carry her around in one of those strap-on things (the kid, not the dog).

  Anyway, this afternoon there was a camp-wide field trip and they dragged us to a horse farm where we actually got to watch the actual BREEDING PROCESS. I know, right? Gross but fascinating in a train wreck sort of way. Anyway the farm was beautiful and the trip out there looked like a postcard of Kentucky, all these white fences and rolling hills and whatnot. It was like I knew exactly where I was, you know? Our Louisville is great but there’s nothing really Kentucky about it. A week ago I would have told you that’s a GOOD thing but now I’m not so sure. My roommate Jessica lives in the actual mountains. At first I thought I’d hate her but she’s actually great. Then there’s Sonya, who is from Muhlenberg County, like the song. I hadn’t heard the song until she played it for me and it made me realize what I was missing, just like it makes me wonder that Kentucky has 120 (!!!) counties and I’ve spent my entire life in exactly ONE of them. There should be some kind of law against bitching about the place you’re from until you’ve actually SEEN some of it.

  Okay it really is so hot in here that I can’t breathe and the bottom of the page is looming so this is it for now. There’s a boy here. It’s like I hate him so much I almost like him. I would not admit this to anyone but you. No diagnosis yet, please.

  I miss you and love you and wish we could go get a Blizzard. Write me soon, okay?

  Love,

  Glo

  So the laundry room in the basement of Reynolds Hall quickly became my Thinking and Letter-Writing Place. I liked it down there — most of the time it was hot as hell, but aside from the excellent white noise of the HVAC unit and the washers and dryers, it was quiet and cavernous and largely unoccupied. In addition to an ancient TV with actual bunny ears that tuned to exactly one channel (sort of), it also featured a purple plastic CD player with a cracked but functional lid. My first pang of missing my laptop came with the realization that I wouldn’t be able to immediately transfer the songs from Alex’s CD onto Indigo, so discovering the CD player was an excellent lark. Alex’s CD? Be still, my beating heart. I tried to see how long I could make myself wait to open the package and I held out for roughly twelve hours, which is not bad if you’re me. Totally worth the wait: a collection of sixteen songs, eight with my name in the title (in chronological order and spanning four decades!) and eight by some band I’d never heard of and quickly fell in love with called the Gloria Record. Inside, a note:

  Dear G-L-O-R-I-A,

  Maybe you’re not entirely out of my system after all. At the last minute I decided to accept my uncle’s summer job offer so I’m leaving Thurs. to help out at his roadhouse in Talkeetna. I’ll be there until Aug., then it’s on to Anchorage and UAA and the wild beyond, which would be cooler if you were in it. Hope you like the songs. Take care and have fun at Geek Camp.

  Love,

  Alex

  P.S. The U2 song is my favorite live version and it is EPIC!!

  If I loved Alex before, I loved him ten times more now that he was no longer in the Lower Forty-Eight. Completely backasswards, but also completely true. His absence, the distance, the mysterious business of a roadhouse (I imagined a log cabin, taxidermy, bizarre people drinking absinthe in some seedy saloon) in a town whose name I couldn’t pronounce — it was thoroughly enchanting, every bit of it. He wouldn’t be back until Thanksgiving — ah, the beautiful, aching agony of it! My life was taking on the soft glow of a movie; now this was the kind of romance I was destined for: the kind where you don’t have to actually show up with frizzy hair. After all, my handwriting is so much more appealing than my face. If you could have looked inside my head, here’s what you would have seen: Love Alex Love Alex Love Alex Love Alex Love Alex. What a lovely refrain. I listened to the songs over and over, mining them for hidden meaning.

  The lyrics paraded around in my head all night and into Wednesday, which turned out to be Community Service Day. Assignments were distributed by dorm floor, and Reynolds 3 was handed the unfortunate task of entertaining a bunch of three-year-olds at a local day-care center. Suck! Chloe and the rest of Reynolds 2 got to clean up a highway, which sounded marvelous in comparison. Calvin and Mason were in charge of helpi
ng local farmers get their stuff ready for market — thrilling! I would have eagerly volunteered to clean bus station toilets if it meant I could escape the torturous sentence that was Dealing with Kids.

  Anyway. That’s how I came to be standing in front of a little girl named Brayden, whose mouth was still ringed with a violent shade of green from the Popsicle she’d had for a snack. We were on this playground behind the preschool. Brayden was on a swing, and I was standing behind her, contemplating the best way to give her an effective push. I reached out and put my hands on her back, which seemed impossibly tiny — a delicate architecture of bird bones fluttering beneath my fingers. I was scared to death.

  “No, yank back real hard on the chains, up here,” Brayden ordered, slapping the metal links with gusto. Nothing delicate about her. “Give a big push, like Daddy!”

  Like any good lemming, I followed orders. I yanked the chains back as far as they would go and released Brayden, who sailed forward with a gleeful shriek and then — “Watch this, Miss Gloria!” — leaped from the swing and landed hard on the ground. My mind went straight to the dangerous territory of blood and broken bones, but Brayden rose from the mulch unscathed. She dusted herself off, squinted at me, and, apropos of nothing, asked, “Hey Miss Gloria, do you like pineapple?”

  “I do,” I answered, and the questions continued, rapid-fire non sequiturs that ranged from tornadoes to velociraptors to the very hot topic of Disney princesses.

  “Which one’s your favorite?” Brayden wanted to know.

  “Ariel?” I guessed.

  Brayden frowned. Wrong answer. “Why Ariel?”

  God, this was tedious. “Well,” I said, “first of all, I can appreciate that Ariel is a rebellious soul.”

  Brayden squinted.

  “She doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do, you know? Also, it’s cool that she shares a name with a character in a play written by this very famous guy named William Shakespeare. The play’s called The Tempest. You’d like it.”

  “The Tempest,” Brayden repeated. She was the kind of kid whose brain locked on to things, I could tell.