Where is the professor?

His name is Graye. Wonder what the ‘e’ is doing on the end. Did it wander away from another word and get lost? Is it some vestigial appendage of a vowel, left dormant over the centuries of linguistic evolution? Wonder if normal people’s thoughts are as pedantic.

“Wow, I literally ran out of bed to get here on time, and now this guy is late,” says the guy next to you.

Delayed response. Dredge yourself out of introvert land. Say, “Yeah, I’m kind of surprised, you’d think he’d want to make a good impression on the first day.”

“Hah. I doubt any of them care that much.” He pulls a cell phone out of his pocket and pretends to text someone to avoid social awkwardness, because he has run out of things to say. You know how it is. Pull out your phone and check the time. Ten past nine. Still not that late, is it? Maybe Professor Graye was photocopying the syllabus, and the paper jammed, and now he’s on his way. Or he is standing outside his office, wherever that is, having a pedagogic argument with a colleague. Maybe he’s snorting coke off the dashboard of his car. Who knows?

Shift in your seat. The orange plastic creaks and cracks. Kind of like your back, after last night’s fitful sleep on a dorm bed with no mattress pad. The guy next to you runs a hand through his hair, revealing a tattoo of pi to at least twenty digits snaking across his inner arm. Hardcore. You can’t match that.

Rifle through your backpack for some gum to prevent even more social awkwardness. It’s not in the front pocket. It’s not in the side pocket. It’s not in the top pocket, but a condom is, and it falls out of the zippered opening onto the floor. It’s one of those strange, neon-colored condoms with a foreign brand-name that you picked out of the basket hanging on your RA’s door.

“Whoa whoa, not so fast, I don’t even know your name!” says the guy.

Feel your ears get warm. Blush. “Uh, I don’t know how that got in there.”

“That’s what she said.” He laughs like it’s the first time anyone has ever said that.

Say, “Isn’t that kind of a bad thing? I mean, shouldn’t she know? When it’s in there?”

“I guess,” he says. He twists his wrist to look at the watch, hiding a few decimal points. “Well, I’m not going to wait around here any longer. All you do on the first day of class is read the syllabus anyway.”

Twenty past. After the guy shuffles past you, a trickling exodus of other guys follow him to the exit, muttering to themselves about wasted time. The din of the outer hall bursts through the doorway as they leave.

Your stomach growls like Grendel in his cave; it demands a snack, or at least something other than coffee.

Study the equipment in the front of the classroom. A VCR sits next to an overhead projector, coated in a film of dust and anachronism. To your left, the last remaining student gets up and leaves. Remain in the empty classroom, in uncomfortable stillness, but only for another five minutes.

or, The Implausible Adventures of Bill Butler, part II

Bill stood in front of the house, wondering if he had written down the wrong address, or even the wrong town. He had driven the whole way from the train station out to his aunt’s place in Rhode Island in a rental car, rather than risking another run-in with insane security guards or men with beanies. The rest of his journey north to Maine could wait. He was sleep-deprived and sore.

This house was practically a mansion, sprawling out in various directions across the scraggly yard. Bill was shocked that anyone in his family would have enough money to own it.

The welcome mat squished when Bill stepped onto it to ring the doorbell. There was a small stream of water leaking from under the door and trailing down the steps onto the lawn. He wondered if Aunt Gilbertina was having some sort of plumbing emergency, and rang the doorbell again.

He heard the muffled yip of a dog, followed by heavy footsteps. Bill hoped it wasn’t a poodle. He feared poodles.

Wiping his hands on the front of his flannel shirt, he prepared for what would probably be an awkward reunion. He had only a vague recollection of his aunt, from family holidays back when he was a kid. She had given him weird Christmas presents, like a make-your-own-rootbeer kit, and a beige flannel union suit that was two sizes too small.

The dog scratched at the door. Bill waited. He had the creepy feeling that he was being watched. The door cracked open, and his aunt surveyed him through thick horn-rimmed spectacles.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” she said. “If it isn’t little Willy, all grown up!” Her voice was hoarse and low-pitched, like a chain-smoking drag queen’s.

“Hi, Auntie,” Bill said, wincing at the nickname. “It’s nice to see you again.”

The dog, which was indeed a poodle, sprang at him, its tiny eyes obscured by clouds of fluffy white fur. It jumped his pants-leg. Bill recoiled and tried to shake the creature off.

“Down, Budweiser!” said Gilbertina. “What’s the occasion?” she asked Bill.

Bill glared at the poodle—which pranced out to the front yard, much to his relief—and explained that he’d missed his train. He didn’t go into any detail, for fear of sounding like a complete lunatic.

His aunt smiled. “Come on in. I was just about to make supper.”

Bill sighed with relief. He followed her inside, sore and limping, yet thankful that the vending machine hadn’t killed him.

Aunt Gilbertina trundled down the hall to an arched doorway, paying no attention to her nephew struggling to keep up behind her. “See this?” she called out to him. “Brand new Jacuzzi. But they don’t build anything to last these days. It sprang a leak this morning.”

Bill caught up to her, and peered over her shoulder into the room. The Jacuzzi was about eight feet square. It was a real monster of a thing, with the words “TurboJet SuperMassage 3000” emblazoned on its side.

“I bet I could fix this when I’m more awake,” said Bill. “You can see where it’s leaking out, right there in the corner. Looks like faulty caulking.”

“Ah, don’t trouble yourself over it. I called the pool boy this morning; he’ll be here in a little bit.”

Bill nodded, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. His aunt continued chattering about the pool boy, but his attention was focused on the psychedelic wallpaper plastering the room. A troll was gazing out from underneath a technicolored mushroom, smoking a pipe. There were hundreds of them repeating across the walls, so that the room became a seething mass of neon and rainbow. The steam from the Jacuzzi had created air pockets under the paper, distorting some of the mushrooms. Bill felt as though he were being forced to look through someone else’s glasses, like his depth perception was being tampered with.

“…He does as he’s told, though he isn’t all that keen on the uniform. He still insists on remaining fully clothed,” Aunt Gilbertina continued.

“Wait,” said Bill. “What?”

“Pool boys are supposed to wear swimming trunks. They do get wet on the job.”

Bill looked away from the wallpaper. “Oh, yeah. I guess they would.”

His aunt smiled. She still had all her teeth; pointy, yellow teeth. They clashed with her grainy pink lipstick and her orange cardigan, which was covered in pompoms.

“Anyway,” she said, “you’ll meet him soon enough. Let’s have a bite to eat in the parlor, and then I’ll show you the upstairs where you’ll be sleeping.”

“Sure, that sounds good,” Bill said. He braced the wall with one hand to keep his balance. The musty smell of the house was choking him—or maybe he was still feeling the lingering effects of fainting earlier.

Aunt Gilbertina led the way to the parlor. The pompoms dangling from her sweater swung to and fro with every step she took. She stopped in front of a doorway and turned around, as if revealing the grand prize on a game show.

Bill stopped too. He imagined delicious food and drinks – any drink but soda. The house was silent except for the soft bubbling of the Jacuzzi two rooms away, and his aunt was looking at him wide-eyed, anticipating a reaction.

Gilbertina stepped inside and tugged the light pull, filling the room with a grayish, buzzing fluorescence. Bill swallowed.

They grew out of the floor and covered every surface in a thick throng, like cave-dwelling mushrooms. Garden gnomes. There were thousands of them, and their demented faces all seemed to be staring up at Bill. A few of them had fallen off the glass coffee table, and they lay on their backs with arms outstretched, half-buried in the mahogany shag carpeting.

Bill opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. Aunt Gilbertina and the gnomes stared at him.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Bill.

“I made them all,” his aunt said. “No two garden gnomes are alike. Just like no two children are alike.”

This was too strange. “Uh, sculpting is a wonderful hobby, Auntie. You’ve got a real talent with—with gnomes.” Every word that came out of his mouth sounded stupid. This wasn’t unusual for Bill, but he suspected that he sounded even dumber than he normally did.

“It’s not just a hobby,” said Gilbertina. “The gnomes bought me this house.”

The front door slammed, but Bill was too tired to be startled. He craned his neck to see who it was, but the figure was clothed in a hooded yellow rain suit. Who would wear a rain suit on a day like this?

Gilbertina placed one hand on her chest. Her false eyelashes were aflutter. “Oh, Manfred!” she said.

Bill’s heart lurched. Manfred?! It wasn’t exactly a common name.

The man in the rain suit giggled. He pushed the hood back from his face and flashed a blinding grin at Bill and his aunt.

“No,” said Bill. “Not you!”

Gilbertina glared at him, the same way she had glared at Bud the poodle. “You know Manfred?”

“You could say that,” Bill replied. His palms were sweating. He had to get out of here; family obligations be damned. However, his sense of balance was still compromised from the lingering effects of the psychedelic wallpaper, and in his attempt to flee, Bill tripped on the shag carpeting. One of the garden gnomes was crushed underneath the weight of his paunchy torso.

“Just leave him there,” Manfred called. “He needs his rest.”

Aunt Gilbertina glanced at him anxiously. “You’ll be okay for a minute, won’t you?”

“No,” said Bill.

“I’ll come back for you in a couple minutes,” she said, and closed the door.

The room was shrouded in complete darkness. Bill tried to stand up, and found that it was impossible given his weakened state.

There was a very faint whispering noise at first, which grew into a frenzied chattering, as the gnomes rose from their nests. It was the last thing Bill heard, as they descended upon him with poisonous fangs bared, and he conveniently perished for the sake of a Fiction Writing class.

or, The Implausible Adventures of Bill Butler, part I

Bill stood in front of the soda machine. He had a train to catch in ten minutes, but he really needed a drink. His throat was parched, and he was gasping for breath after hauling his suitcases across the station. He slipped some quarters into the coin slot and pressed a button.

Bill watched with mild interest as the brand new vending machine clanged and whirred. Behind its display window, a small mechanical arm grasped a can of Coke. The can descended inch by inch down a chute, getting closer to the little trapdoor at the bottom. Bill licked his lips. He could almost taste the prickly, sugary liquid coursing down his throat.

The machine grumbled. Everything stopped. The coke can was jammed diagonally in the entrance to the door.

Bill rolled his eyes. If he wanted, he could just leave it there and get a soda on board the train, but he had just spent two whole dollars on this drink. He refused to let a vending machine take advantage of him.

He squatted down and rolled back his sleeves, then reached through the door flap into the machine’s innards. The corner of the can was within reach. If he could just knock it to the right a little bit, it would fall out.

The opening was about three and a half inches wide, just big enough to accommodate his hand. Bill stretched his fingers upward and stroked the cold metal of his quarry.

Bill felt a slight breeze on his lower back. It seemed that his pants were slipping down his backside, and his work shirt had come untucked. He ignored the sensation for the moment and flicked his fingers underneath the trapped soda. But the sliding pants had distracted him, and he managed to flick the can further back into the machine.

“Dammit,” said Bill.

“HAVE A NICE DAY,” flashed the machine’s LCD display.

The can was just inches from his face, visible through the bottom of the display window. It rested on its side. It would probably explode when he opened it, but he had to retrieve this soda. If he gave up now, the entire struggle would have been in vain. Besides, he still had seven minutes before the train arrived.

Now the soda was just beyond a second little door that connected the outer chamber with the high-tech conveyor chute. This door was halfway shut, but he still had a little leeway to move his fingers around.

Bill thrust his hand upward into the machine as if reaching into a monstrous womb. Now his entire forearm was inside the machine’s depths. His elbow knocked against the outermost door, which sported a smiley face sticker.

He closed his hand around the cool, moist prize. He felt the water droplets that coated its aluminum shell. Again he fantasized about the sweet soda which would soon quench his thirst.

The small passageway constricted Bill’s blood flow, so that his heartbeat throbbed through the small arteries in his hand. He swiveled his wrist and tried to pull the soda out of the opening, and met with resistance. He couldn’t budge an inch. His hand – no, his entire arm – was trapped inside the vending machine!

Beads of sweat collected on Bill’s receding hairline and dripped into his eyes. Five minutes left. He began to struggle in earnest, abandoning the soda in favor of simply trying to free himself from the vending machine’s clutches. Just then, he became even more aware of the breeze wafting over his gluteus maximus, which really was quite maximus.

Bill hiked up his pants.

“Can somebody please help me?” he called. Travelers whisked past the vending machines and Bill, too preoccupied to notice his plight.

He flailed and yelled and tugged at his arm.

A man in a propeller hat walked tantalizingly close to the vending machines. Bill stuck out his free hand as if hailing a taxi.

“Hey,” said the guy, “I’m in grave need of a ginger ale, so could you please move out of the way, temporarily? You can go back to what you’re doing after I finish.”

“I’m stuck,” said Bill. “Can’t you see that?”

The propeller twirled around slowly. “What did you say? I can’t pick out your voice above the din of the station. What shoddy acoustic design!”

“If you could just find a security guard or janitor or someone–”

The man pulled out his cell phone, and Bill sighed with relief.

“I got a text message!” Propeller-head said. “Hold on a second, will you?”

Bill cursed. He looked out at the passersby and flailed some more. They apparently assumed that this insane man was calling for help, and therefore kept moving.

Chk-chk-chk. Chk-chk, chk, chk-chk-chk. He was pressing the buttons on his cell phone at a rabid pace.

“Wait, she doesn’t like Thai food,” the man mumbled. “I hope she likes me…”

Chk, chk-chk-chk, chk. Chk-chk-beep.

“What’s wrong with you?” said Bill. “Stop playing with your phone and help me out!”

“It’s not polite to ask a favor of a stranger without a proper introduction,” the man replied. “What you should have said was, ‘What’s wrong with you, Manfred.’ But you didn’t bother to ask me for my name, did you?”

“I just missed my train!”

“Wrong answer!”

Small froths of spit leapt from Manfred’s mouth as he spoke. He sidled up to the vending machine and put quarters into the slot.

“What the – just what do you think – NO!” Bill reached over his useless arm and thwacked Manfred in the side. It was the weakest of punches, diluted by utter exhaustion.

Manfred pressed the ginger ale button. The mechanical arm dropped the soda onto the conveyor. It raced down the slope and smooshed Bill’s hand.

“Auugh!”

“Well hello! You have to move your hand so I can get my soda, Mister…” Manfred bent down to read the company nametag on Bill’s shirt. “…Bill Butler? Ahaha! So aptly named!”

Bill twitched in futile rage. He braced himself and gave his arm one last ferocious yank.

Creeeeeak–

The vending machine teetered forward. Bill hoped it would liquefy Manfred and shut him up. The machine wobbled on the brink of life or death, while hundreds of people strolled by.

Creeeeeeak – CRASH. It spared them and creaked backward to its original position. Bill’s heart pounded. His vision was fading to white. He fell forward onto the machine, knocking his head on the viewing pane.

- – - – -

“I think he’s okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, he’s coming to. Look.”

Bill opened his eyes. Two security guards stood nearby.

“Trying to steal a soda, weren’t you?” one of them asked.

It took a moment for Bill to remember just where he was. He stared at them groggily. “What are you talking about?”

“Looks like you got caught by our new anti-theft device,” said the bigger security guard. “I think your soda-shoplifting days are over, eh buddy?” He took a notepad from his pocket. “That’ll be a hundred dollar fine.”

“This can’t be happening,” said Bill. “My entire arm is numb. For God’s sake, help me out here!”

“I guess we can do that. As long as you promise to pay the fee. Promise?”

“Whatever you say.” This wasn’t reality. Bill would not accept it.

“Okay, buddy,” said the guard. He went around to the back of the machine and pressed a button. The machine’s womb relaxed its crushing grip.

Bill pulled his arm out and slumped to the floor. “This is madness. You can be sure my lawyer’s going to hear about this.”

“Suuuuure,” said the security guard. “Here’s your ticket. I wouldn’t hang around here much longer if I were you. We could charge you with vagrancy.”

Bill stood in front of the microphone. He held the sheet music in his shaking hands, soaking the edges of the paper with his dank, sweaty fingertips. Standing up straighter, he tried to stretch his face into a debonair grin, but failed. Then he wondered if he had something stuck in his front teeth. The grin-grimace drooped to a frown just as the jazz band started up.

Of course they started playing before he was ready. It seemed like they were playing at an even faster tempo than usual. It also seemed like maybe the two guitar players forgot to tune to each other.

The eight-bar intro was mercilessly short for Bill. (Mercifully short for the audience, whose antsy expressions matched Bill’s as the guitars plinked and wailed vaguely behind swaths of reverb pedal.)

His first note was wispy. Flimsy, like a piece of tissue paper, or a used dryer sheet. Bill shifted his feet and almost tripped over the patch cord attached to his microphone.

When did he forget how to breathe?

He looked at the xeroxed lyrics on the soggy piece of paper. Wait, when did he forget how to read?

Bill sang, “Keeps rainin’ aaaallll”—that blue note was more of a grayish-brown—“the time, the time . . .”

Then he hit the bridge, where he was supposed to sing “girl” instead of “man,” adjusting the original lyrics for the sake of avoiding an awkward guy-singing-about-a-guy moment. For the first time, he looked away from his lyrics sheet into the crowd.

A trio of silver-haired ladies smiled blankly at him, holding their hearing aids in their hands. A teenage boy with a fauxhawk surreptitiously turned up the volume on his iPod. Two wizened hippies clapped their hands and sang the words to a different song altogether.

And then there was a slimy creature clad in a beanie-hat and one of those glasses/nose/mustache disguises . . .

Admit it. You could have left the five-dollar bill there on the sidewalk. Could have walked off with just a wistful glance, letting someone with flexible morals pick it up. Instead, you pocketed it, walked to the Dunkin Donuts and bought the most obscenely huge, sugar-filled cappuchino concoction possible. Added a bunch of crusty, slimy doughnuts for some extra clogging of the arteries.

And now you’re here, sharing a pink plastic table with none other than your old high school prom date, Ronnie Leavitt. So go ahead, find something to say. Make the best of an awkward situation. Or you can just take a particularly ambitious bite of the last doughnut, which is a convenient impediment to talking. Put it off.

“Kara! How’s life treating you?” asks Ronnie. His sideburns have been carefully manscaped but still, to the trained eye, appear crooked. Cheeks permanently flushed, as if he’s just come in from the cold, or just had an orgasm.

Get your mind out of the gutter. Swallow the morsel of donut and slurp the scalding coffee-flavored drink, smile apologetically. Pray that you don’t have donut-bits lodged in your teeth.

“Good,” you say. What else are you supposed to say? When life decides to treat you like shit, you’re not supposed to talk about it. ‘Yeah, I’m actually back in town because my dad’s cancer came back. I’ve also gained at least fifty pounds since high school, and you just saw me eat the last of six doughnuts.’ That would go over really well.

But you can see by his expectant look that he’s waiting for you to elaborate. “Good” isn’t a satisfying answer when you’re summarizing the entirety of your existence to a stranger.

“Just working, going to school, you know. Nothing too exciting. And yourself?” Great response, Kara. Is anything too exciting?

“Oh, you know. Working a lot. Got married a few months ago, in case you didn’t hear.” He smiles. His teeth are bright white. They’re probably fake.

Wonder at the fact that Ronnie, former Nerd Extraordinaire, has achieved the American Dream. “That’s great,” you say. That’s good. That’s great.

Your dad’s dying and a part of you is dying too as you see him wince with every breath, but everything’s good and great.

-

* To my few and precious readers: Can someone come up with a suitably nerdy name for this guy? Preferably a name that doesn’t currently belong to a person you know.

Tuesday morning. A small, oily hand scratched the date on the blackboard, chalk spewing in its wake like exhaust from a tailpipe.

Cleveland looked up from his desk at the back of the classroom. Picked at a hangnail on his thumb. The son of a long-haul truck driver and a bank teller, he majored in English, against all advice. Two semesters from graduating and the folks still said it wasn’t too late to switch to Business.

“Good morning, boys and girls,” said the professor. “As you can see on the syllabus, which you ought to have picked up on your way in, I’m Dr. Francine Stein and this is Advanced Creative Writing.”

Cleveland noticed the stack of papers on the table at the front of the room. Felt stupid. He pushed his chair back and stood, heard the woman clear her throat.

“You may pick one up after I have concluded my lecture, Mister…”

“Cobb. Cleveland.”

Dr. Stein smiled, her smooth face carved and stretched beyond human proportion, like a Picasso painting. The result of many botched plastic surgeries. Her neck wrinkled as a turkey’s wattle. The waistband of her pleated pants crept over her ribcage, adjoining the vague plateau of her bosom. Eyes so small they seemed to be mere slits in her anthropomorphic face, like tiny black holes, absorbing light but reflecting nothing back.

* * *

Cleveland at his mother’s house, sitting on the couch, a pile of books and papers on his lap. TV blaring news, flashing lights and maps and Expert Panels shouting about the upcoming election.

He glanced at Stein’s assignment sheet. Looked twice. A ten page essay about what he did over summer vacation due in 48 hours.

“I can’t remember what I did over summer vacation,” he said.

“What about vacation?” Cleveland’s mother Virginia, a news junkie, turning from the screen to look at him. The wrinkles on the map of her face were roads, the freckles small towns. Glasses perched on top of a nose comically small for her face, a shallow hill in the stead of a mountain.

“It’s an assignment for school. The teacher’s insane,” Cleveland said.

Virginia’s eyes didn’t waver from the television. “This election is insane.”

“Maybe you’ve met her. Francine Stein?”

She snickered. “No, seriously. What’s her name?”

“That is her name. I swear.” Cleveland pointed at the syllabus. “Look at this. ‘Write a sonnet about either (A.) kittens, (B.) puppies, or (C.) rainbows. Due Friday, along with final draft of ten-page essay.’”

“Now that’s just crazy. See, I told you the educational system was going downhill. You should go into politics.”

Although the heavy rain of April had lifted, leaving warmer weather in its wake, a thick, grey mesh of sea mist persisted in blocking out all traces of horizon and sea. From the generous bay window of her sitting room, Mildred Mae Brinkley gazed out at a monochrome, one-dimensional mass of grey which obliterated any signs of life outside. The rocky beach and mudflats directly in front of her country cottage simply disappeared in a smudge about thirty meters away, as if someone had begun a sentence and then abruptly stopped in the middle of a word, forgetting what remained to be said.

The average person, subjected to the same isolated existence (alone, in a rickety old cottage at the end of a deserted peninsula off the coast of New Brunswick) might have become lonely. Mildred, however, was not at all an average or ordinary sort of person. She was a writer. If reality were exciting enough to distract her from the springy, lush world of imagination and dreaming, she would be out of a job. Thus, the monotony of the grey house with its grey shingles, grey fog, and grey wallpaper was necessary.

A sharp knock on the front door punctured the silence. Mildred could not fathom the source of this intruding noise. It was far too early for the daily mail to arrive, and she was not expecting a package or delivery.

She preferred to know exactly when visitors would be arriving at her cottage, so as to allow her time to think of clever conversation topics. Unexpected social dalliances were likely to be awkward, for there were few things more meaningless than trading platitudes about the weather for five minutes with a stranger. She was already starting to dislike this unknown person without having laid eyes upon him. (The sharp impatience of the knock, she thought, could only mean that the caller was a him.)

The grey cat, Coriolanus, yawned and rose from his spot on the braided rug to follow her to the front door. Mildred paused, her hand on the doorknob. She took a moment to compose herself, and breathed in deeply. She’d read in a book somewhere that one was supposed to take deep breaths when faced with stressful situations. The advice was proving to be utterly unhelpful in her case, as she quickly became lightheaded.¹

¹ At this point, the author realized that her story was about as exciting as a software user manual, and thus left Mildred permanently frozen in time with her hand on the doorknob.