On/Off - A Jekyll and Hyde Story Page 6

“Cool man.”

  Jamie glanced around, wondering where that girl had gone. Ah well, he’d see her in class on Monday. He and Fritz made their way through the line, then headed to a long table by the windows, where the rest of their floor was seated. They found room at the end. The table was in a debate regarding the merits of the Matt Groening television canon. Everyone seemed to agree that between The Simpsons and Futurama, Homer and company had the upper hand, but the real issue was whether or not Futurama was “for shit,” as Steve put it, or whether it was a sometimes funny show, but just lacking when compared to its predecessor, as Nick seemed to think. Jamie looked at Nick for a moment, and decided he was most definitely the target audience for Futurama. The guy was a monochromatic double for Martin Scorcese. Everything, from his flannel shirt to his khakis to his Vans sneakers, was a medium beige. Not too bright, not too dark, sort of a sandstone chameleon outfit. Jamie glanced down at the kid’s tray, noting that every food item he had selected matched his clothing ensemble. Even the tray matched. He spoke in a sort of high-pitched voice that sounded, well, exactly like Martin Scorsese. Jamie wasn’t an expert on the two shows under discussion, but he was curious to hear this guy’s viewpoint, as it promised to be an illuminating look at more than just his perspective on a mainstream TV program, but also a glimpse into the mind of a man whose brain seemed to process only one color. Yet before Nick could complete his argument, Steve began bellowing over him, growing louder and louder.

  “What the hell are you talking about?! That show is terrible!”

  “All I’m saying,” Nick started, “is that it has some funny moments.”

  “It sucks!”

  “It isn’t supposed to be compared to the other show, it’s just trying to exist on it’s own-”

  “It’s terrible. If you have to try to enjoy something, then that means it sucks. IT. SUCKS.”

  Nick made a move as if to speak again, then sat there with his mouth partially open. He turned his head, picked up a brown sandwich, and began eating quietly.

  “Steve’s a real asshole.” Fritz said to Jamie out of the corner of his mouth.

  “So I gather.”

  Fritz sighed heavily. “Next they’ll start up the great Mac vs. PC argument. They haven’t jumped into that one in a while now.”

  Jamie looked around the table. Gabe and Will were deep in discussion next to Nick. Vicky was talking with Teresa a few seats away. Arlin and Vanessa were carrying on their mix of fighting and foreplay as they tussled over the remainder of a Belgian waffle, then began feeding it to each other in sticky finger-fulls, their faces becoming dripping masks of maple syrup.

  Sickening.

  “Any questions about the rest of the floor?” Fritz asked.

  “Anything else I should know?” Jamie responded.

  “Well, I can give you a one or two sentence profile of each if you like.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Will and Gabe are roommates, both film majors. Arlin and Vanessa are sexaholics-”

  “Yep, heard that from Gabe on the way over.”

  “Word gets around fast. I hope you have thick walls.” Fritz muttered. “Vicky wants to be Oprah. Nick is a software engine. Nuff said. Oh, and Teresa is a nymphomaniac. She’s screwed around with most guys on the floor.”

  “Oh really? “Jamie perked up. “ Have you slept with her?”

  Fritz smiled and picked up his Jello-O cup. “No comment.”

  Jamie glanced down the table, seeing Will look away from the conversation. Jamie turned to follow Will’s gaze. The girl from Media and the Mind was taking her tray to the exit. Will shot his hand up, waving to her. She turned at the last moment, giving him an absentminded wave in return and started to turn away, only, at the last minute she saw Jamie. Their eyes locked for a millisecond, and she stopped, turned around, and came back to the table

  ***

  She wasn’t going to talk to him. She felt bad about it, but hanging out with a guy for two nights in a row, when she had no desire to date him, well, it was starting to take its toll, especially when she could hear her roommate having mind-blowing, tantric, Kama Sutra sex in the next room. Kelli prided herself on not being the girl who ditches decent guys in search of something better, but tonight, she really needed more than a 50s comedy and several hours of uncomfortable silence and pleading eyes. She still didn’t know how to finagle her way out of this situation, so she was just gonna absentmindedly wave to him on her way out, then not answer her phone or come to the door if he stopped by later. You know, be grown up and mature about the situation. Then Kelli noticed the guy from class sitting at Will’s table. What’s more, he was watching her with obvious fascination. It might cost her another night, but the time could pay off in heavy dividends in the near future. She walked over to the table, feeling Jamie’s eyes on her. She had to make this quick. Just go over, exchange a few words, and get out of there. Keep that air of mystery, but establish some approachability with the mystery guy at the table.

  It was quick and painless. Yes, they would hang out again, Will had a DVD with a “real nice print” of One, Two, Three, he’d stop by around ten. She thought she’d handled it nicely. Short and sweet, with just enough detachment to keep herself interesting. Maybe a tad too theatrical with her departure, flipping her hair to one side with a bit too much force, but she’d recovered with a nice sway in her step, and a knowing glance over her shoulder.

  She replayed the scene in her mind. The feeling of his gaze, the eye contact as she walked away. Damn. He was hot. Muscular and compact, but with a funny glimmer in his brown eyes. A buff guy who still understood all the jokes. But, what was the deal with that hat?

  ***

  The girl rounded the corner by the exit, and Jamie dropped his fork on his plate. There was no mistaking that look she’d given him. He grabbed his tray and stood up.

  “ What do you say we get going?”

  Fritz looked up at him as Jamie started up the aisle. By the time he’d tossed his tray onto the conveyor belt at the exit and run down the stairs, the girl was gone. Jamie stood in the lobby, looking from side to side, then headed for the door. The courtyard in front of the building was empty. She had disappeared.

  Fritz came out the door a moment later, looking irritated.

  “What was that all about?”

  Jamie looked from side to side desperately, then threw his hands in the air. “Just getting ready to party, man. Just getting ready to party.”

  “That’s what I like to hear, kid!”

  ***

  They’d arrived at the location of Fritz’s “beer hookup” around 8:30. The guy’s home was essentially a small, well-rotted shack behind the liquor store on Jefferson Avenue, the four-lane street which ran past the RIT entrance. The building was a white cinderblock structure, with a well worn, moss-striated roof. The eaves sagged from years of snow and neglect. The windows were filled with signs for Labatt Blue, Saranac, and Bud. Sun-faded cardboard cutouts of volley ball models stood pressed against the glass, happily hoisting foamy mugs of bleached-out brew. Fritz drove around the side of the building, parking his enormous ’74 Cutless in the back to “keep the cops from seeing us.”

  “I thought you were twenty one,” Jamie asked.

  “I am. I just don’t want someone to see us loading up a couple of kegs and driving back to campus.”

  After several bangs on the shack’s door, they were greeted by an enormously obese man in a skin tight undershirt. At first, Jamie had mistaken the t-shirt for a severe farmer’s tan, before realizing it was a garment so form-fitting it had become a sort of a fish belly-colored second skin. The fact that the man answered the door brandishing a Sherlock Holmes pipe and a glass of red wine momentarily threw him for a loop. Jamie blinked, struggling to reconcile the dapper accoutrements with their slovenly owner.

  What Fritz had described as a “couple kegs” proved to be four, and since their dealer was three sheets to the wind, they had no help moving the enormous metal cylind
ers to Fritz’s car. After several false starts, they managed to maneuver two of the kegs into the trunk, and the other two in the back seat, strapping them in like passengers, and setting a paper bag full of plastic cups on top of each. Fritz thought the bags made the kegs look like people seated in the back, Jamie felt they made them extremely conspicuous as they turned out onto Jefferson and took back roads on their way back to campus.

  “Is there a law about an underage driver transporting this much booze?”

  “Probably, but it’s leftover from pilgrim days. Besides, any cop we pass will just think we have a couple of fat asses in the back seat.”

  “And a couple of dumbasses in the front.”

  Jamie glanced in the rear view mirror, eyeing the tall, square “heads” on each keg. What on earth was this guy talking about? Unless Danny Devito was cast as Frankenstein’s monster, these short, rotund little passengers with tall, square heads looked like nothing more than beer kegs they had no business transporting onto a dry campus.

  After a tense back-road drive, during which they passed two campus security cars, they made it to the Phi Psi house. They pulled into the parking lot for the Perkins Student Apartments and Fritz flipped off the headlights, letting the Cutless coast to a stop beside a footpath that disappeared around the side of one building. He gave the horn a long honk and two quick blasts, then they sat in the silence for a moment, until several guys in football jerseys came running around the side.

  Fritz got out of the car, and Jamie followed suit. The frat guys were all built, and all seemed to tower over Jamie. He glanced around uncomfortably, eyeing the pack of guys that walked toward them through the dark. As they came closer, he noticed that each had a nicknamed emblazoned across his jersey. A thin, red haired guy named “Big Red,” pushed a hand truck in front of him. Fritz gave the guy a high five.

  “Hey, what’s up man?” Fritz turned to Jamie. “This is Chris, Doug’s roommate from the floor.”

  “Hey,” Jamie said.

  “What’s up?” Chris replied with a head nod.

  Two other guys, “Ron Jeremy” and “Slick Willy,” appeared. Jamie didn’t ponder the origins of the monikers.

  “These guys are Joe and and Matt.” Fritz continued.

  The brothers grunted their hellos and shook Jamie’s hand. He fumbled with their complicated handshake maneuvers, but no one seemed to notice. In a few minutes “Ron” and “Willy” had unloaded the kegs and rolled them around the side of the building. Music poured from the back windows of one of the apartments, growing consistently louder. Fritz handed Jamie the keys and pointed him to a spot at the end of the lot.

  “You sure you want me driving your car, man?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Fritz said. “Just lock it up, we’ll be walking back tonight, trust me.”

  With that, Fritz turned and headed off with the rest of the guys. Jamie started the car and slowly shifted it into gear. The car bucked backward with a screech. Jamie stomped on the brakes, then ever so slowly backed out into the parking lot. A few more jolting turns and gear changes and the car drifted to a stop at the end of the lot. He rolled up the windows, locked the doors, and jogged back to the apartments, feeling more self-conscious by the minute. A group of girls walked out in front of him as he started down the pathway. He watched them as they continued up ahead. One of them was a tall blond. Jamie’s eye wandered to her tiny, sashaying waist. She was gorgeous. The other two were equally attractive, one with Asian features, the other a curly-haired redhead. They were dressed to party, in form-fitting jeans, tank tops, and heavy eye makeup. Jamie focused on the blond, feeling a shiver of excitement. This was his first college party. Let the games begin.

  The girls continued on up ahead, and he realized they were headed for the same party. The music from the apartment drowned out their laughter. They got to the steps at the entrance of the building, where a group of frat guys stood, leaning against the railing, some of them smoking cigarettes, all of them holding plastic beer cups. The girls approached the steps, instantly greeted with smiles. One guy reached out, grabbing the blond girl around the waist and pulling her toward him. She turned and lunged at him eagerly, grabbing his shoulders as the two of them fell back into the bushes. So much for that one, Jamie thought to himself. The other girls, seeing their friend disappear, headed into the apartment. The frat brothers turned, watching admiringly as the girls walked away. Jamie approached the steps quietly, barely noticed as he headed inside.

  There were apartments on either side of the lobby, and a stairway straight ahead that led up to two additional units. Partygoers were wandering in and out of the open doors. The place was hot from the closely packed bodies. Jamie headed into the first door on the right, shoving past a line of revelers as they held their plastic beer cups overhead. He made it through the living room and into the kitchen, where he saw Fritz standing at a table, a keg tap in one hand, filling cups. Jamie worked his way against the tide and stopped at the keg. The music was deafening, the cigarette smoke thick. Fritz shouted something to him as he approached, but Jamie couldn’t hear a word he said. Fritz slapped him on the back, handed him a beer overflowing with foam. Jamie nodded and stepped back. He leaned against a wall and took a sip of his drink. He was gonna have to get drunk. Very drunk.

  Fritz leaned forward, screaming into Jamie’s ear. “There are some fucking hotties here tonight!!”

  “Oh yeah!” Jamie agreed.

  Fritz bobbed his head, his body language making it clear that he couldn’t hear a word Jamie was saying, and it wasn’t important either way.

  Jamie threw his head back and chugged his beer, then he went back for another. He started to rock on his feet, waiting for the alcohol to kick in, needing to loosen up. Fritz motioned towards the door and led Jamie through the crowd, laughing and joking with his fraternity brothers as they went along. Jamie chugged his second beer, slowly feeling the dizzy, numb sensation he was looking for. He recognized a girl walking past them into the apartment as they stepped out onto the front steps. It was the girl he’d seen the first night at the Commons, the Courtney Cox lookalike.

  Fritz spotted her and smiled. “Yo, Erica!”

  She flashed him a sexy smile as she continued into the apartment. “Hey, Fritz.”

  Jamie spun around, the room swirling in his peripheral vision. “You know that girl?”

  “We all know that girl, dude.”

  “I was checking her out at the Commons the other night,” Jamie shouted, sounding a bit too shrill for his own comfort.

  Fritz smiled. “Yeah. I know. You like her.”

  “Hell, yeah I do.”

  “You wanna get with her?”

  Jamie looked at him, taking a pensive sip from his beer. “Yeah, of course I would. Why?”

  “Say no more man.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Fritz just laughed and bummed a smoke off of one of his fraternity brothers. He took a drag and again made the round of introductions. The guys nodded their heads at Jamie and continued talking amongst themselves. Jamie leaned back against the door, downing his drink, and trying his best to look casual. He gazed up at the moon through the bare branches overhead and thought of that girl Erica, his blood pumping with nervous excitement.

  The night drifted by. Fritz made the rounds, leaving Jamie standing alone to start awkward conversations with whoever was nearby. He eyed the girls filing past, giggling in groups or shrieking with laughter as they were carried off by fraternity brothers, who hoisted them over the crowds and disappeared into back bedrooms. Jamie watched two girls who stood alone, looking uncomfortable as they brushed hair out of their eyes and sipped their drinks, all the while scanning the crowd. Fritz appeared, handed them freshly filled cups off brew and patted Jamie on the back.

  “You having fun yet?” Fritz asked Jamie as he floated past.

  “Oh yeah,” Jamie said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Time was passing in that manner unique to college pa
rties, and Jamie found himself in a happy, drunken state, in which talking becomes fast and loose, and coherence is not an issue. He stood outside the building with Fritz and his friends, rattling off jokes, and, judging from the laughter, successfully cracking up the other brothers.

  Fritz slapped him on the back. “Is this the guy or what?”

  Jamie laughed along with them, but he couldn’t remember what he had just said. Then he turned, and saw Erica walking past. She peeked over her shoulder at him as she slipped inside. Jamie looked over at Fritz, who was watching with a smirk. He hoisted his cup, downed the rest of his beer, and handed it to Jamie.

  “Why don’t you go get us a couple more beers man?”

  “Okay…” Jamie said curiously.

  He headed into the apartment, stumbling around the crowd, whose ranks were thinning now as the people that weren’t making out in the shadows began to pair up and head off to their private destinations. Jamie staggered into the kitchen and refilled Fritz’s glass. The keg was running out. He was just starting to fill his own cup when the spigot started burping foam. Just as well, he was wasted. He turned for the door, but got caught behind a group of guys who were doing tequila shots off their girlfriends’ chests. As he stood behind the other onlookers, watching the guys lick salt from the girls’ sweaty skin, he felt a pair of hands sliding down his shoulders. He spun around, startled, and found himself face to face with Erica, who pushed him against the wall. Beer sloshed onto his pants and down his shirt. She glanced down, smiling deviously.

  “Is that for me?” she asked, already wrapping her fingers around the cup.

  “Sure,” Jamie replied.

  She took the beer with an impish smile, chugged it, and threw the cup against the wall as she lunged at him. She kissed him roughly, her tongue in his mouth, her teeth on his lips. Jamie struggled to keep up. The room was spinning, the music drowning out the sounds of everyone around them. He felt himself getting aroused. Then, just as suddenly, he felt Erica’s fingers running over the bulge in his jeans. Next thing he knew she was whispering in his ear, and leading him into the bathroom.