“And I’ll tell you exactly how a woman like that sleeps.” I’m pacing now, hands going. “Standing up in a chest freezer, hanging off a hook by the collar of that thousand-dollar coat, eyes open, plugged into the wall — charging. Like a phone. At four percent. All night.”
I stop and look around the room.
No one is furious about this. Blue says nothing. Benson is listening with no intent to comment. Percy doesn’t even look at me. I don’t know where Rowan is, but he’s also not responding.
“That was a good one,” I tell the room, wounded. “That was genuinely elite material, and you are all corpses.”
Still nothing. A cold crowd is a professional challenge, so I do the only thing a man can do with a cold crowd. I climb onto the arm of the couch, because altitude helps, and I open my mouth to go bigger.
Rowan walks through the middle of it with a glass of water and doesn’t slow down. “I want it on the record,” he says to the room, “that I am not the cook anymore, and I will also not be the referee of whatever this is. Whatever this becomes. I’m out. I’m a civilian.”
“You can’t be a civilian, you took an oath—”
“There was no oath, Stan.”
“The Hawthorne House oath—”
“There’s no oath.” He’s already walking out the door. “I need to leave.”
And that’s when Percy, who has been silent this whole time, says, “You sure you’re mad she almost hit you?”
I stop.
“Or that she didn’t see you?”
Benson’s mouth does the thing where it’s not a smile, but it’s thinking about being one. Blue, the traitor, snorts.
I point at Percy with my whole hand. “Step out to cut the shooter’s angle, Pers. You’re hugging your post.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about.”
“It is now. I changed it.” I head for the stairs. “I’m out, deviants. Enjoy your little romances. I’ll be the only one in this house with any dignity.”
I take the stairs two at a time, so nobody gets the last word, and then the guys disperse to their Wednesday classes.
What’s it called when you can’t take it anymore, but you keep taking it?
The email is waiting for me that afternoon, sandwiched between a fantasy hockey notification and a coupon for a protein I don’t take.
Mr. Ermington — please come by the Academic Success Center today between 9 and 11 to discuss your standing in PHIL 1100.
Standing. Cute word for it.
I go, because if I don’t, they email Fuller, and if they email Fuller, it gets to be a whole thing, and I would rather chew the desk. So I sit in a little gray room across from a nice woman named Diane who has a folder with my name on it and the gentle, doomed thought that maybe I might fall in love with my tutor.
The quiz I tanked Tuesday, it turns out, was not a fluke. I am, in fact, failing Introduction to Philosophy, a class I chose specifically because the name made it sound like a nap. Turns out you have to read things and then write down what you think they mean. And I don’t have thoughts about what a dead Greek meant, I have thoughts about zone entries and the perfect omelet and whether Percy could beat a goose in a fight.
Diane is so concerned. She wants to talk about a plan.
“It’s handled,” I tell her, leaning back. “Coach has eyes on it.” (Coach does not have eyes on it. Coach does not know itexists. I would sooner die than tell him.) “And I’ve got a tutor lined up.” (I do not have a tutor. The word tutor entered my mind two minutes ago.) “But this is great, Diane, this is really useful, thank you for the heads-up.” (I mean none of this. I would not recognize Diane on the street in twenty minutes.)
I shake her hand and tell her she’s the best thing about this whole university, and I almost mean it, because she’s kind, and I’m grinning so wide my face hurts.
On the walk back across the quad, for about four seconds, the grin slips.
Because if hockey doesn’t work, there is nothing else. There’s no backup Stanley. There’s no version of me who’s good at the gray room and the folder and the dead Greeks. There’s a guy who can put a puck through a keyhole at fifty feet and absolutely nothing under that, and if the puck thing ever stops, I’m just a loud man with a famous last name.
The thought lasts about four seconds.
