by Sarah Bird
The yelling, then hammering rouse me enough to notice that my fingers and toes have acquired the kind of wide-wale pruning that only hours of soaking can produce.
“Could you, please, give me a minute?”
“I’ve already given you a freaking hour and a half!”
“Well, then, maybe you shouldn’t complain so much when I try to accommodate your schedule.”
“Accommodate my schedule? Is that what you call it when you’re splashing around in the middle of the night? Get your ass out of there!”
I bristle at the unfairness of it all. As if it were my fault that the turn-of-the-century plumbing sounds like a pod of whales groaning their songs across the interstellar reaches of the deep blue. I am not entirely unsympathetic. Who wants to be awakened at three in the morning by a pod of whales? Still, can’t they make this point without hurling invectives?
Can’t they see I’m just trying to make the best of a very, very bad situation?
Did I collapse when my hair turned to straw? Chew my frayed cuticles even further when my face became a dried riverbed? No, I summoned up the pioneer spirit of the Lone Star State and I made do. And what is my reward? More hurled invectives. Churlish complaints about using all of the house’s hot water. Splenetic grumbling about the ants and cockroaches allegedly drawn by the sugar scrub applied as an emergency remedy to elbows, heels, and knees. Peevish whining about the mayonnaise deep-conditioning treatment clogging the drain.
I think longingly of the entire La Prairie product line moldering on the bathroom shelf back in the carriage house. Though Bamsie has probably confiscated that as well. No doubt, her skin is all plump and dewy.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
“I’m coming! I’m coming!”
Juniper bugs her eyes out at me in telegraphed fury as I walk past. My reception from Millie is no more cordial when I enter our room. She is awake and on her bed reading the Bhagavad Gita but says nothing to me when I come in. Ever since our visit to Pee Heights, Millie has frozen me out to the point that she barely looks my way anymore. In fact, I am starting to worry about how long I can hang on at Seneca House. Well, actually, given the house rules, I know I can stay on as a guest indefinitely. What I am not sure of is how long I can stand the waves of disapproval pouring off of Millie.
There is so much you don’t, can’t, understand. That’s what I want to tell Millie. She has been sheltered. She went from living with her parents to living at Seneca House, then a few years in seminary, then back here. She has the best heart in the world. No question about that. But she just doesn’t understand how the world works. She couldn’t. I’ll just have to lie low until Millie’s grumpy spell passes.
Then, with a heavy sigh, Millie puts her book aside. “Blythe, we have to talk.”
I sit up, fully alert to the breakup/firing/legal action trajectory signaled by the “We have to talk” preamble.
“Some of the residents have voiced concerns.”
Ew, “concerns.”
“What do you mean? All I’ve been doing is trying as best I can to recover from the trauma of being targeted by the IRS for my anti-war activities.”
“Hmm, yes, well.”
A “Hmm, yes, well” from Millie is tantamount to a You are a lying sack of shit from anyone else. Time to retire the anti-war scenario.
“In any case, there have been comments.”
I try to look contrite as Millie lists the infractions: 3:00 a.m. baths using all the hot water in the house, olive oil cuticle soaks, stockpiling drinking glasses, unproved charges that I am eating residents’ personal food and taking their magazines. I slide the copy of Vogue borrowed from Olga’s mail slot and the empty cup of Doug’s yogurt—both of which I fully intend to replace—under the covers and try to appear concerned. It is an acting challenge, since it is virtually impossible to throw an official guest out once he or she is ensconced. I recall Woo Yung, the thoroughly detestable boyfriend of an anthropology major, who lived in the house during the final semester of my first tenure.
Everyone despised Woo Yung. He lay on the couch all day, strewed dirty dishes everywhere, smoked, and stole the money we left for the paperboy. But no one would throw him out. Tolerance. That was and always has been the very cornerstone of this little liberal bastion. I know that I have not even begun to test the limits of that sacred belief. Besides, since Millie is such a moral icon, as long as I shelter beneath her angel wing, I am golden.
“So,” I joke-pout. “Are you going to throw me out?”
“I’m not going to throw you out, but the house is another story. According to the Woo Yung Rule instituted after you moved out, any guest who stays longer than ten days has to be voted on. The question will be put to the entire house at the next meeting. We will all vote on whether you can stay. Or not. The question will be decided by a simple majority vote with a tie going to the guest. House meetings start at seven o’clock, right after dinner.”
“Seven o’clock when?”
“Seven o’clock tomorrow evening. You should probably be there.”
An Ocean of Nectar
THE INSTANT the door closes behind Millie, I start calculating my odds. Of the house’s fourteen residents, four will definitely vote against me: Juniper, Olga, Sergio, and Doug. My former employees are champing to vote me off not just the island but out of the galaxy as well. Millie wouldn’t kick anyone out, so I have her vote. That leaves nine votes that I might be able to sway in my favor. I suddenly regret those cuticle soaks and 3:00 a.m. baths.
From the nine, I eliminate house phantoms Elmootazbellah Kamolvilassitian and Choi Soon Yong. They’ll never come to the meeting, since neither one ever gets home before the experimental computer science lab closes at midnight.
I am focus-grouping the remaining seven voters when Yay Bombah and Nazarite drift onto the porch downstairs for their nightly smoke-out. In their blond, white-girl dreadlocks topped with red, gold, and green knit caps and Bob Marley T-shirts, they are the house’s official Trustafarians. Yay Bombah’s and Nazarite’s real names are Ariel and Rachel Saperstein of River Oaks in Houston, rebel daughters of the owner of the insanely lucrative Rent You Some Stuff furniture rental franchise. Though the young heiresses could afford to live anywhere, only Seneca House’s utter decrepitude allows them to pretend that they are barely surviving in a Kingston slum.
I am able to complete surveillance on the ganja twins simply by opening Millie’s window, directly above the porch. As is their wont of an evening, the rude girls sit in the dark on the porch and Hoover down the elephantine quantities of sinsemilla that only rich parents who love their offspring no matter what can buy. Over the past ten evenings, I have overheard enough of Yay Bombah and Nazarite’s conversation to know that they would consider a house meeting so antithetical to their splifforic consciousnesses that they will never attend.
That leaves five voters I have to scrutinize: Lute, Jerome, Presto, Clancy, and Sanjeev. I need to find out everything I can about them in order to slant my plea to the jury to fit their exact demographic.
Lute proves the easiest to decipher. A deliriously handsome boy from Australia with a sleepy toddler’s headful of blond ringlets, Lute favors snap-button Western shirts several sizes too small and vintage cowboy boots. I am able to gather an extensive dossier on him without ever leaving Millie’s room. Sitting on my bed, I can hear quite clearly every lyric of every song Lute sings. For the first time since my arrival, I actually listen to them and learn how he feels about Operation Iraqi Freedom (against), honesty (for), girls who suck his soul dry (against), understanding the pain that a pretty face hides (for). Sincerity, the kind of sincerity that only the really good-looking have the luxury of maintaining, is the key to Lute.
Next on my list is Lute’s buddy, twitchy, cantankerous Jerome, a perpetual graduate student currently writing a thesis based on a semiotic analysis of the jewelry sported by the rap singer Li’l CheeZ with the working title “Blinging It to Light.” I knock on his door.
&nb
sp; “Go away!” Jerome bellows.
I jot down “peevish” in my notes. “Jerome, hey, it’s me, Blythe.”
“Who?”
“Blythe Young.”
“Never heard of her.”
I note “No preconceptions. Good!” then use the magic name. “I’m Millie’s friend.”
“Oh you. The freeloading bitch who uses all the hot water?”
“The same!”
The door opens just a crack, but a crack is all I need.
“Yeah?” Jerome snarls. He is a shaggy, baggy sort of guy with a muffler wound around his neck and bagel crumbs sprinkled in his beard and across the front of his Goodwill, polyester disco shirt.
I scan the room behind him for clues. A quick peek reveals that Jerome is a collector. Stacks of old 33s everywhere, the walls a quilt of album covers with a special fondness for blaxploitation: Isaac Hayes; George Clinton; Earth, Wind & Fire. Every horizontal surface is covered with Burger King bobblehead giveaways, Scooby Doo lunch boxes, Mexican wrestling masks, and coffee mugs with dopey sayings on them like YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO WORK HERE. BUT IT HELPS!
Clearly, the key to Jerome is irony, the favorite luxury of the impoverished young intellectual.
“What?” Jerome demands.
“Uh, wrong room. Sorry.” He slams the door in my face. This is fine, since I have already gotten a pretty good read on him. I gather the rest of my research on Jerome and Lute sitting in Millie’s room, where I can clearly hear the two argue about what to call the theoretical band that they theoretically are starting. For reasons known only to males in college, they have chosen to name the group in honor of a certain IHOP breakfast special that somehow figures prominently in their personal mythologies.
“It has to be the Fresh and Fruities,” Lute insists.
“I am not fucking going to be one of those ‘the’ bands just because your mother had a crush on the Beatles.”
“You are such a colossal wanker. Front your own fucking band.”
At the thought of depending on his own personal stock of charisma and good looks, Jerome caves. “Okay, but it has to be singular and there have to be two apostrophes. The Fresh ’n’ Fruity. Apostrophes,” Jerome insists, “it’s all about the apostrophes.”
I pray that this will be enough data to allow me to play Jerome and Lute like the ancient instrument one of them was named for. Enough anyway to get their votes, which, counting Millie’s, will bring my total up to three. Presto and Clancy are next. They will be slightly tougher nuts to crack. No time to lose. Back to work.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, Millie, hey.” I yank my deactivated AmEx card out of the doorjamb and stick it deep into my pocket. Breaking into Presto and Clancy’s room to gather intel does not seem the canny reply. Instead I try “I was just going to say hi to P. and C., but apparently, they’re not home.”
Lucky for me, Millie is riddled by guilt for wishing that I would be consumed by flesh-eating bacteria. Like most good people, she can only handle hate in small doses before she is driven to overcompensate with niceness. “Oh pish posh,” she says, laughing gently as she raps smartly on the door. “They’re just quiet.”
The door opens a crack. “Howdy, neighbors,” Millie says.
I peer through the door at Presto, who has answered, and Clancy, who is lounging on the queen-size futon. Both have carefully tended just-got-out-of-bed hair that stands up in cute licks and swirls. Both wear black-rimmed glasses and Puma running shoes. Presto’s are green and gold; Clancy’s are red and white. Clancy wears an old bowling shirt with LADONNA stitched on the pocket, a 1970s Casio watch with a giant, black plastic strap, sexy, smudged eyeliner, and spring’s new lighter shades for lips. Presto has on a Power Rangers T-shirt, which hugs a broad pair of shoulders, and a Hello Kitty pink vinyl belt. Again, like Jerome, irony. I get that. I get that Clancy and Presto are a couple. What I can’t draw a bead on is the sex of either one. This is a handicap, but one I am pretty certain I can work with.
“Would y’all like a little company?” Millie asks.
Presto glances back at Clancy, who gives the tiniest quirk of a plucked eyebrow. “Naw, we’re both fried.”
“Hard day at work?” I ask. “Or school?”
“Both. Clancy is coordinating an event at Whole Foods tomorrow and I’ve got a huge one at BookPeople because Irvine Welsh—”
“You’re event coordinators?” I exclaim. “You’re both event coordinators!”
Presto, taken aback by my unaccountable enthusiasm, nods uncertainly.
Event coordinators! Sex is immaterial; Presto and Clancy are my kind of people. I have no doubt I can work them. “I’ve done some event coordination in my day,” I coo to Presto. “Nothing as big as what y’all must do. But enough to know that no one really appreciates how hard it is and what’s involved.” Both Presto and Clancy turn their full and undivided attention on me.
I certainly do not have to fake admiration when I tell Clancy, “If you are part of the Whole Foods miracle, I worship you. I am in total awe of the team that convinced shoppers that they were saving the planet and their own souls by paying two hundred dollars for a bottle of olive oil.”
Clancy looks away modestly and I encourage Presto to tell me everything.
“As I was saying, Irvine Welsh is coming—”
“The Trainspotting guy,” Clancy explains.
“—so, of course, I want to get a big fishbowl and fill it with syringes.”
“Of course you do, my darling! What a perfect way to say, ‘This author wrote a book about shooting heroin.’ How incredibly creative.” Presto melts in the warm glow of my admiration. “I have to witness this. When does this paradigm-shifting event take place?”
“That’s the problem,” Presto wails, slumping into a beleaguered mass. “It’s tomorrow.”
I pivot smoothly and walk away. My work is done. There is no way that either Clancy or Presto will be at the house meeting tomorrow. Not with two events to coordinate. Time is short, and I don’t have any to waste on nonvoters. I have one person left to research: Sanjeev.
Safe in Millie’s company, I go downstairs. We settle on the flophouse sofa and Millie says, “I’m so happy you’re finally taking a real interest in the house, in the residents.”
“I have always been very interested in the residents.”
“That’s good, because there’s been some talk that you, well, that you aren’t really interested in being part of the house. Part of the Seneca community.”
“So not true. I am totally interested in being a part of the Seneca community. That’s why I want to know everything about everyone. Especially Sanjeev. Tell me all about Sanjeev.”
At the mention of his name Millie’s cheeks flame scarlet red. She touches them. “This damn blushing. When will I stop blushing like some English maiden from the seventeenth century? It’s like having an aquarium for a head with all your thoughts swimming around for the whole world to see.”
“So you’ve got the hots for Sanjeev.”
“No!”
“That’s the thought I see swimming around.”
“Blythe, no, really. What you see is admiration, shared interests. Absolutely nothing more. Ever.”
“Okay, fine. No hots, not even a few lukewarms. So tell me about him.”
Millie gazes off, and a little smile plays across her lips as she considers how to describe Sanjeev. “I suppose, if I had to choose just one word, it would be ‘principled.’ But not in a preachy, self-righteous way. More a way of understanding what he believes to be right and doing that whether anyone else ever knows or cares. Like, last night, Sanjeev and I were talking about various House Love assignments and—”
“That new name, House Love, that does not sound wholesome.”
“Anyway, since Sanjeev is the labor czar, he makes all the work assignments. But he’s so conscientious he’s always consulting with me about where I think different people would fit best. So we were talking ab
out putting Lute on recycling even though we both know that Lute is”—Millie whispers—“lazy and won’t do any assignment no matter how well fitted it is to his nature. He usually gets one of his girlfriends to do his House Love for him.”
“I guess we all use whatever talents we have to serve in our own ways. You were describing Sanjeev.”
“Yes, Sanjeev.” Millie caresses the name, then goes into tedious detail about her last conversation with him, and I lose track of my mission. Instead of building a dossier so I can sway his vote, I find myself consumed with irritation for Bindi Boy.
This adoration, it used to be mine.
When Millie and I were roommates the first time, I would come home late from dates and she would be waiting up to hear every word. Whenever I had a wild new enthusiasm, Millie would be there dying to get on the bandwagon. If a class critique of my work hadn’t been overwhelmingly positive, Millie would be there ready to impugn the professor’s sanity and hold my head while I threw up tequila shots. I force myself to tune back in to the over-long recounting of her last conversation with Sanjeev.
“And then he says, ‘You Christians seem to outsource your faith. We Hindus don’t simply hire someone to perform our good works, then feel as if we’ve done our part when we toss something in the collection plate every Sunday.’ Then I told him that Christians don’t feel that way either. Not real ones. And then…”
Millie giggles. “And then Sanjeev says, ‘Ah, the mythical “real Christians” I’m always hearing about but never meeting.’ Kind of an insult, I guess, but pretty funny. So I reminded him that I’m a Christian and you know what he says?”
“No clue.”
“He says, ‘Yes, but you don’t count. You’re not like anyone else.’ What do you think he meant by that? ‘You’re not like anyone else, you’re a freak’? Or ‘You’re not like anyone else…’”
I know I’m supposed to fill in the blanks with subtle, nuanced interpretations of what Sanjeev might have meant just the way Millie did for me when she spent hours reading the tea leaves on my various heartthrobs, but I can’t fake interest. Fortunately, I don’t have to. Sanjeev bounds into the living room, and I completely lose Millie’s attention.
