He was watching the television. “Huh? Oh… Well there’s this old legend of a Yamato prince. You see the people of the Yamato region were under constant threat of attack from emishi, which were barbarian tribes. This prince goes out to defeat the emishi. It’s pretty interesting. He has a mistress named Princess Orange-blossom who sacrifices herself for him. I basically tried to extrapolate an idea of what the culture of the region was like from the legend. Cuz he’s a prince and it’s all symbolic.”
“Sounds interesting.” I didn’t know much about Japan. I heard the door open and turned and saw it was my other roommate. I never really talk to him besides to tell him to pick up the phone when he has a call. He had a girl with him. He’s always in like Flynn. “Lot, I’m sorry about what happened last night.”
Lot took a bite. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I mean, Job didn’t really mean anything he said.” I really did feel bad about what happened. It wasn’t very nice. “He was acting kinda funny.”
Lot didn’t answer for a second. The news was over and he was watching one of the Coke commercials with the polar bears. “Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Penn Station?”
“No. I don’t think so.” I didn’t remember anything about it. He was still watching the television. “What happened?”
“Not much really.” He looked at me real quick and I was watching TV but I saw him out of the corner of my eye. “I was going home and I wanted to make a phone call and tell my parents when I’d get back. I didn’t have any change though. I needed some change to make the phone call. So I went to one store in down in Penn Station and the guy was like ‘can I help you?’ and I was like ‘can I get change for a dollar?’ and the guy puts his hands against the cash register like he’s afraid drawer will fly out or I would fly in and looks at me and says he has no change.”
“Ya?”
“So anyway I go to another store and the same thing happens except the girl didn’t even look at me after I asked her like I was I beggar. And the person behind me in line wouldn’t look me in the face either.”
“I hate people like that.” I remember one time I was trying to get registered for some classes and the lady behind the desk that had to sign my form was rude to me cuz she didn’t think I was anything special and wouldn’t let me register. Well I guess it’s a pretty pathetic antidote.
“That’s the thing; I didn’t feel hate. I didn’t hate anybody. I realized I needed that. Ya see… I believed that I deserved better than to be treated like a beggar. Which is wrong. Do you know how stuck up that is?” He looked over at me again. “It reminded me of who I am and who I will always will be.”
I didn’t know what to say after that. Sometimes I think that Lot understands people a lot better than I do. Like he’s Pynchon and I’m Camus, ya know? I think there are different kinds of intelligences.
But then again maybe he should have just bought some gum. Lot got up and started flipping through the channels. I sat down with my socks on.
“I was talking to Marie for a while after you guys left last night.”
“Really?”
“Ya.” He kinda had this gazed look. Like I get when I sit and stare at a pencil in class except he was watching TV. “Ya.”
I kinda didn’t know what to say here again but I didn’t think ‘I’m sorry’ would fit this time. But then I came up with something. “She seemed like a nice girl.”
Lot sometimes gets serious but it’s ok because you know he is going to say something important. He sat back down on the couch. “Something was misaligned with her.”
Don’t worry; I had no clue what he meant either. I still don’t really; Lot is a little above me.
“But she wasn’t like me.”
I didn’t know Marie well at all. Maybe I said that already. “What do you mean?”
“I just realized why now.”
I was sitting on his left side. When I looked at him I could see the lampposts in the dark through the window behind him.
“It’s still hard to explain though. I believe it’s because of religion.” It was hard to concentrate with the TV on. I used to study with the radio on in high school but I thought I was ok back then.
“Hmm?”
“She… I don’t classify myself as religious; I never practice anything or claim to be anything, but sometimes…”
I think by then we were already watching King of the Hill. Conan O’Brian’s college roommate works on that show.
“But I had strange dreams last night.”
“About what?” He was jumping around again. With the topics I mean. He does it every now and then. Of course maybe it made sense to him though.
“I had a dream a where I was in the future or past or something. No, I was in a library for just a really long time. It’s hard to remember. I was sitting on a red 60’s style couch that had a hole in it so you could see the yellow foam cushion inside the seat. I felt like I just woke up and was sleeping with my mouth open. I believe someone was walking around and I felt embarrassed about drooling on the couch. I had this book in hand. It was shut but my finger was inside between pages 56 and 57. I believe it was The English Patient by M.O. I remember reading about peeling plums and being reminded of scenes in the movie. I remember that but I’m not sure if it was The English Patient that was in my hand. Anyway the scene stopped and then I was standing up facing this rack of Chinese books. They were numbered. I took book 967.
“There wasn’t any English in the book at all. I mean the inside cover said ‘University of Pennsylvania’ but that was it. I remembered you had to read the book back to front. There was this big red hanko on one of the first pages. I could recognize some of the symbols from Japanese but I couldn’t understand what any of it was saying. I knew some basic ones but that was it.
“Then there was another shift and I felt like I was locked in the library. I don’t remember running around trying to get out; I just stood their holding volume 967 believing I couldn’t get out. It was what I wanted though. I wanted to translate the writing, to understand it rather than sit around all day drooling and reading books. You know, all that adding purpose and meaning to life crap.
“So I translated it. After a while I was able to understand the books and come up with a way to speak it as well somehow. I believe I used numbers or something but I don’t remember."
"I think I had a dream like that once. I went outside and everyone looked like Frogger, I mean the Q-Bert guy, and I think the stop signs were ovular instead of hexigonular for some reason." I said it so I'm writing it but don't ask me what I was thinking when I said it.
"Uh… no." I guess Lot's dream was different. "The library changed and I was in some kind of spaceship. Maybe it was a different dream. It was all weird cuz I never dream like this. I'm usually one of those black and white dreamers, no Q-Bert people anywhere. Anyway the ship was really huge and I believe I'd been living there for a while without seeing anyone else. And then I ran into this bunch of kids near the outer hull of the ship.
“They were into this 'old technology' stuff. I believe there was some kind of apocalypse in the past and everyone forgot how to build spaceships. The kids were like hackers and would try figure out how to use the old technology. They were all pretty smart and stuck up and treated me like a zero but they let me hang around so I did."
I kept on wanting to interrupt him when he was talking but I stopped myself from doing it. I guess I was getting fidgety.
"Then they had a meeting of some sort. I don’t remember everything but at the end the speaker said their logs were still showing an unexplained resource drain. They were lower on power or air than they thought they should be I believe.
“And then I went down some corridor in the ship. There was a cube on the ground and I moved it and a hatched opened up beneath me. I'm not sure what I did or how I knew what to do but it might be because of the Chinese I studied earlier.
“I entered the hatch and climbed down a shaft and then there
was a room with people inside. They looked at me like I opened a garbage can to throw my trash away and saw a bunch of squirrels. Like they were the squirrels.
“I pulled some lever near me. I don't know why; I just did. And then the room the people were in started to collapse. Like the walls would shrink. The people scrambled to the center of the room and then tried to come up at me, to escape. I told them not to, that it was dangerous. I don’t know if I knew it was really dangerous or not but I was afraid of them coming after me.
“The shaft then split apart between the room and where I was. You could see stars in the crack. One of the people tried to reach me but his arm hit some kind of field which I believe stung him."
"It stung him?" I couldn't stay quiet any longer.
"Ya. He pulled away and there was a red blister on his skin. And then the room started to distort. I don't know what else. The room looked like one of those simulations of light speed travel.
“And then when I turned around to go back up the shaft the hacker kids were all there amazed at what I just did. Like it was some kind of miracle."
"Ya?" I guess I wasn't adding too much to the conversation. King of the Hill or whatever we were watching was over and I put on some local news. "That's pretty strange."
"But this one kid, he didn't fall for it. He knew I had no clue what I was doing."
The news talked about a bomb that went off in Ireland and killed some kids. There were all these women crying. "Ya?"
"He gave me a riddle. He said, 'look at this watch, what time does it say?' And I looked at it and said five eleven. Then he said, 'what time will it be tomorrow?' and I just looked at him dumb and woke up."
"What did he mean?"
“I don't know. Look, I’d better get going.” He had finished his sandwich. He stood up and put the dish he had used in the sink. “Oh, I was supposed to tell you there was a party at Lam Sig Delt tonight.”
“Ya? Who’s going?” Most of the other frats just go by two letters.
“Job gave me an invite at the beginning of the week and told me to tell you about it. I might stop by later. Adieu.”
“Later.” I thought he kinda rushed out prematurely.
When he walked out my phone rang. I picked it up. “Hello?”
No one answered. I said hello again.
“Ya, hey, it’s Job.”
“Oh, how are ya?”
“Pretty good. I was wondering if you had eaten yet.”
“Ya. They had spegetti.”
“Really? Ok.” He paused. “Would you wanna go down to Taco Bell with me fer a little bit anyway?”
“Sure.” There was Wawa with a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut in it down the street from me. Once when I was heading to McDonald’s with these two other people we found this park hidden in the middle of a bunch of buildings on campus. It had trees and a pond. We got lost after leaving the park and couldn’t find the McDonald’s and went to the Taco Bell instead. This other time I went to the Pizza Hut and ate one of their pizzas and walked out without paying for it.
“Can you meet in the lobby?” Job didn’t live in the same place I did.
“Sure.”
“Ok, I’m down here right now. Hurry up.”
“Bye.”
I hung up the phone. Job’s a good kid. Although sometimes he can get mental.
#
I had to go downstairs and meet Job. That’s the one good thing about being social; you walk around a lot and don’t have much time to think. And then you start to forget what’s there to think about. I hit the down button on the elevator. A door opened and I went in and the door closed. It started moving up though. I got off on the next stop and hit the down button again. This time the elevator I got on was going down. It stopped on the 7th floor but there was no one there which was strange so it just closed and went down some more. Then it stopped on the 3rd floor and a cleaning lady got on. She stayed on the other side of the elevator. Then it stopped on the 2nd floor and the cleaning lady got off. When I got to the lobby Job wasn’t there.
Job does that sometimes. Disappearing on you. A lot actually. I didn’t feel like standing around waiting for him. It wasn’t that I was annoyed at him or anything but I wanted to be around people. I figured I might as well go to that party. There’s always one somewhere on campus. That’s all there really is. Beer and sex I mean. Someone once told me that being alone is what makes us human but then I read somewhere that only the Dark Side of the force requires you to be alone and I wanna be Princess Liea. Or Leia.
I didn’t feel very poetic.
Job was there at the party. He was with Anne. They were standing against a wall. “Hey Job.”
“Oh hi. You remember Anne, don’t you?” Anne smiled with her lips but her face didn’t really change. Very pretty people intimidate me sometimes. I keep on thinking that I’m not good enough. That’s wrong though. I’m not good enough for anyone is what Lot would say. It’s not hard to think when yer depressed. Everything spirals easily, ya know?
“Hello,” I said. Job neglected to mention the missed appointment but I didn’t bring it up either. I guess I was kinda mad at him. Actually I don’t think I ever liked him very much. I remember he had dumped this girl and cheated on her but that was a long time ago. (get thee to a nunnery) “What’s going on?”
“Not much. Get some beer man.” He pointed to the back where I guess there was a keg. Anne wouldn’t look at me.
I started walking away but then Job asked me about Lot. "Hey, how's Lot?"
“He's ok. Don't worry about it.”
#
I went to the rear and got some beer and started drinking. Sometimes I feel like I’m living a charade to keep everyone else around me sane.
I saw Lot again. He was holding a plastic cup half filled with beer. I think Marie was next to him talking to someone. She said something like ‘but some guys won’t even go out with me because’ but I couldn’t make out the rest. I walked up to Lot and starting talking to him. He wasn’t really part of their conversation; he was just watching. "Hello again Lot. Is the beer any good?"
"Ya you know I remember more of the dream. About the library." Lot didn't look so good. Like his hair a mess and his face gaunt.
"The library? What?" I meant ‘what did you remember?’
"I remember leaving the library. I just walked out but it was strange… everyone was speaking the language I had just come up with. The Chinese stuff I mean. I heard two people talking about whether or not they should sleep together. And then I was talking to this professor and telling him how strange it was that the pronunciation I made up for the Chinese was what everyone was speaking right now.
“I remember he had a major problem with the etymology for the language. No one had ever figured out where the word for death had come from.
“Do you have a pen?” he asked me.
“No.” I had a pen and a notebook in my bookbag. But I didn't have my bookbag with me. My bookbag is pink and has the Tristero horn drawn on it in black marker.
“The character for death looked like this." He traced something on his hand. I couldn't really make it out though. "I knew where it was from and was explaining it to him."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't remember now. But I told him what I knew and he was amazed. I was amazed too. Although my logic kind of got messed up here. I was contemplating how amazing it was that in my time in the library the language of the outside world had progressed to the exact same point as my own made-up language had evolved into. It was like flipping channels and seeing the same commercial at the exact same time on two different stations.”
I was really trying to pay attention to Lot. Something about time and coincidences reminded me of the picture of the strange attractor I had in my head back in the woods.
“I remember there was one word I got wrong though.”
“What?”
“It was… I don’t know. It had something to do with… I remember what it looked like though." He tra
ced another symbol on his hand. "When I was translating I thought it looked like Japanese but it wasn’t quite right. It had to do something with death and the conversation I overheard from the couple. Time… I wish I remembered. I asked the professor in my dream to help me with it though.”
"Ya? What did he say?" I hadn't a clue as to what he was talking about. But Lot's mind seemed to be racing.
“He looked at me with his mouth shut and then averted his eyes. He said he couldn't help me and then I woke up.”
"Weird. Why didn’t he help you? I don't understand."
"What? I don't know. I don't feel so well. I'm gonna go back in the other room."
"Ok."
"I'll talk to you later." He walked away from me and bumped into someone and spilled some beer on the guy’s jacket but I think I was the only one that noticed.
Lot doesn't usually act this weird to tell you the truth. Before I left he was just kinda a quiet kid that gave people homework solutions when they asked him for it.
I took some beer from the keg but my cup was pretty foamy. I think I should have tilted more during the extraction process. I tasted it and it wasn't very good but I don't usually like the taste of beer very much. I never got used to it. What I really wanted was a root beer vanilla float.
Death
When I came back to the other room Lot was with Job. They were talking.
“You know, Lot’s the smartest kid on campus.” He told Anne.
“Really?” She looked impressed.
Lot just kinda smiled goofy. It wasn’t very flattering. Once after reading a paper of his I told him I was really impressed and then he yelled at me for complimenting him. He said, ‘It doesn’t mean anything to me. It alienates me; makes me feel like I owe you something.’
“Ya, he got like a 1600 on the SAT’s.” Job had his arm around Anne. His fingers rode her hip.
“Really?” Then Anne had an idea. “If you’re so smart, how did you end up at this school?”
Maybe she wasn’t so impressed. Job laughed. Lot looked away from them both. He looked at me.
“The sun has set on this one. Learn from him,” someone near me said like a fly in my right ear. I twitched my head to the side but I missed the fly. Instead there was a girl leaning against a bricked in fireplace. Her skirt was silver and short and her legs were long and white.
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