Howard surveyed the overflowing boxes that filled his room. It would have been feasible in a larger space to leave the boxes lying around
and unpack things as they were needed: such a strategy suited Howard's less-than-workaholic
nature. However in a room so miniscule, everything needed to be organised,
as the deep quagmire of clutter hampered movement. From a torn cardboard box
he pulled a duvet, bright blue in colour and punctuated with coloured dots
and traumatic zigzags. He tossed it onto the bed, where it lay crumpled
like a fashion victim's corpse. Desperate to cheer himself up after a lousy
day, he set up his stereo and fished out a tape at random from a box. The
album selected was
Dick Crick and the Lick Chick by the satirical band
Bogus Fungus. He slotted the cassette into his stereo and thrust down
the play button. The static hiss of white noise gave way to a detonation of
overdriven guitar.
There was a tentative knock on the door.
'Hello? I just wanted to... well,
anyway,' mumbled
Karen as she stared at the ceiling, '
if I
seemed very slightly
rude to you before and well,
you know, actually, I actually just wanted
to
say - it was all
Greg's fault!'
'You were rude? Oh I didn't notice,' said Howard, with unaccustomed
tact. 'Take a seat. If you can
find anywhere.'
Karen stepped gingerly over a two yard-obstacle course of
boxes and sat on the battered single bed, feeling it for springiness.
'You're moving in? You're here to stay, right? This room
isn't too small or anything?'
'Right. Spot on.'
'It is?'
'No.'
'It isn't?'
'Yes.'
Karen looked confused. ''Who's the group?' She wrinkled
her nose.
'
Bogus Fungus. Heard of them? No one listens to
his stuff. That's why I adore it, it's obscure.'
'Really?' said Karen dubiously. 'Actually I hear so many
songs by so many fab groups that I can't remember all of them. Anyway I have
a
very varied and
tasteful album collection. My music is my
way of really
rebelling. I had a strict upbringing, a really
Catholic
upbringing, and, you know, I'm rebelling against that. I absolutely
hate
my parents.'
He watched her listen to
Bogus Fungus. Karen epitomized
Howard's conception of the so-called arty type: for one thing she dressed
pretentiously, he surmised. He observed her baggy, yolk-coloured trousers
and jacket; a knot of saffron in her bright hair; and her intense violet makeup
and nail varnish. He disapproved as earnestly as a parent. He noted her earrings
were the size of bracelets and her necklaces intertwined like copulating cobras.
He considered them gimmicky and ostentatious. He did not question the conformity
of his own (non-arty) student uniform of jeans and a sweatshirt. (He considered
himself fashionable for spurning cords so beloved of the schools of the social
sciences.) Arty students were so irksome (to his preconceptions) because they
lived for pretence. They lived in outlandish worlds - and peculiar ones at
that. Arty students were as sincere as the government's unemployment statistics;
they were snobs of creativity who peeked down their pointy noses at those
with less flair for hypocrisy. In youthful tradition he disdained eccentricity
and showy expression and did not associate those awkward attributes with those
of a
real artist.
He watched his housemate listen to a song entitled
Blondes
Have All The Fungus. The lyrics joked about dumb blondes and male obsessions
with them.
'
They're mega-groovy rock chick blondes. They sure love
to use their tongues!'
Behind her hands Karen's pale face whitened. Her red hair
seemed to smoulder. The wide blue orbits of her earrings quivered. Her eyes
hardened. Her lungs expired a detectable huff. Her erotically carved five
feet seven frame prepared to relocate.
'
They are crazy hot dick suckers! They will give
you their love fungus!' blared the band.
'This
music is not quite
I actually!' Karen
sniffed.
'It's OK! It's meant to be artistic!' pleaded Howard.
'Actually,
I'll be the judge of that!' she snapped
with caustic haughtiness. She shot to her feet and scrambled over the boxes.
The door slammed behind her: a violent punctuation.
He was alone once again.
'Sod her!' he muttered bitterly.
'If I was Clint bloody Eastwood she wouldn't kick her little legs in a tantrum.
She would bloody well stick around and drool!'
The band played on. With more than a twang of irritation,
he reflected on the fun to be had by those that slotted neatly into the media
definition of a sex bomb. He yearned to be the subject of girls' exclamations
of
Crikey-What-a-dishy-hunk-He's-absolutely-gorgeous! He felt himself
to be more akin to
not-if-he-was-the-last-male-on-earth! Inspecting
himself in the strip mirror on the wardrobe door, he sighed at what he perceived:
a layer too many of fat shielded his under-toned muscles; the sum of his features
did not quite amount to a pleasing effect. Despondently he descended the stairs
and wandered into the kitchen to find that it had been cleaned. He boiled
a saucepan of water and made tea by means of his habitual teabag-in-the-cup
brewing technique. The lounge too was had been tidied.
No one was present. He walked up to the television and
turned the dial: the tube flicked into life. Its image - though flecked with
snow-like noise and cursed by ghosting, was adequate to bear watching. The
Miami Vice theme tune signalled the beginning of the cop show. By
the end detectives Crocket and Tubbs had liberally subjected a dozen or so
ugsome drug dealers to hails of high-velocity metal. Curious was the saintly
ability of cops and drug dealers to resist the urge to swear under the most
stressed of circumstances.
The man who now entered the front door of the house obviously
was not from Miami.
'Fuck it! Bleeding door!' The said object slammed. '
Sodom
and Gomorrah! Gallie! I tell ya, if I had a face like Karen's fella I'd
teach my frigging arse to talk! When he was a babby his mother fed him with
a bleeding
digger.'
Howard heard Gallie giggle in the hallway. The living room
door opened and she entered and sat down. Greg went into the kitchen and
emerged with a can of lager in hand.
Gallie smiled delightfully. 'Ahhh! Hiiiii Howard!'
'Hello,' Howard grunted. His depression was deep. 'Goodnight,'
he added and headed for the stairs, easing past Greg's body in the doorway.
'What's up with droopy-jaws?' boomed Greg.
As he climbed the stairs Howard heard Greg say something
else but he could not tell what. The sound was muffled. He also thought
that he heard Gallie giggle again. He wondered if she was going out with
anyone. Surely she was not Greg's girlfriend. Surely they were only pals.
Weren't they?
No bed sheets. No pillows. He always forgot to pack
something.
He flicked through NME magazine, gazing wistfully at the pictures of rock
stars. He did not sleep well. His coat made a lousy pillow. Finally he
was drifting off when he was roused by a heavy stomping ascending the stairs.
Onwards it thudded, past his door and upwards to the attic. Stomp, stomp,
stomp! The thumping in the attic directly overhead put him in the mood to
kill. Then the heavy metal started...
***
*****
***
Howard rose at ten and washed. As he emerged from the bathroom
he saw Marlon's door close. He did not see the occupier. Back upstairs he
threw on a pair of blue jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt, over which he pulled
on a sweatshirt. The front and back of the latter article of clothing was
divided into four quarters, each of a different colour. It was a popular design,
so he felt at ease in it. Wandering into the kitchen he helped himself to
someone's bread, made toast and spread marmalade on it. He grabbed the toast,
a pen, a piece of paper and his coat. Eating his toast as he drove, he turned
out of Napoleon Terrace into the main Chillington Road and, stranded in slow
traffic, he edged towards Redater University, a place situated a mere ten
minutes walk away.
The street pavements were accumulating a soggy blanket of
autumn leaves trodden and mashed by sundry students. Large Edwardian houses,
many of which were occupied by students judging by the empty alcohol receptacles,
campaign posters and gaudy paraphernalia adorning the windows, lined both
sides of the street. On the left the houses gave way to tennis courts that
reposed at the bottom of a fenced-off bank. The other side of the street hosted
a Children's hospital with a peculiar metallic corkscrew sculpture bolted
to its exterior. Further along the hospital stood a tall sign depicting a
thermometer. A red line rose up a logarithmic monitory scale of charitable
donations. The target sum beamed at the apex of the thermometer, well beyond
of reach.
Further along, the Chillington Road passed through the middle
of campus. On the left were the Bursar's office, accommodation office and
other buildings dedicated to student administration. Past those were the sundry
stone schools of
this science and
that art. On the right loomed
the Student's Union building: a modern example of architecture that managed
to resemble a futuristic wedding cake.
The physics and astronomy building loomed into view. It
was large and oppressive building constructed from glass and concrete with
all the interest and flair of an accountant's career.
Howard had chosen to study astrophysics because he was curious
about how the cosmos worked, but in reality he had not paid much thought to
his academic career. He had always considered the future to be a blurry entity
that was not to be planned or mapped. Astrophysics sounded cool. He had vague
notion that the degree would automatically lead to a decent job of some kind.
There was not the slightest point of planning so far into the future as
finding
a job.
Finding a job was three years away! And it may as well have
been three light years away for all he cared. The death rattle of the nineteen-eighties
would be underway before the awful spectre of paid employment loomed large.
By the time he finally found a parking space he was already
five minutes late for his lecture. He entered the building and impatiently
searched for clues to tell him which lecture theatre to attend. He found
a timetable pinned to a notice board that indicated a Dr. Hardwick was teaching
in lecture theatre number one. A porter gave him directions. Luckily it
was close by. At the end of the corridor he found the lecture theatre door.
It was closed. He peered through a tiny window in the door and beheld a large,
semicircular amphitheatre filled with note-jotting students.
Taking a deep breath, he entered the room.
The lecturer ceased lecturing. There was silence. Seventy
pairs of laser eyes seared into him. One of those eyes was glass. This was
the property of the lecturer himself. Howard instantly recognised the lecturer
as the man who had landed on the bonnet of his Maxi at the pedestrian crossing.
The lecturer's good eye was looking a little on the glassy side too. Late
middle-aged, with strict lines scoring his face, he bore a fierce demeanour.
He eyeballed Howard much like a camel might regard the last straw. The lecturer
studied him quizzically. With acute anxiety Howard expected him to remember
the car incident at any moment.
'It's nine point three minutes past the eleventh hour Greenwich
Mean Time!' intoned the lecturer tapping his watch, 'Approximately twenty
percent of the lecture has already come to pass!' The lecturer spoke in a
forced, yet excited, timbre, as if he was struggling to make his point strike
home. 'How many times must I remind attendees to arrive in a
timely manner?
Attendees that arrive late disrupt the flow of the lecture! Don't just stand
there! Find a seat! Next time someone is late, I advise him or her not to
pitch up at all! If I am to convey just how much we do
not know about
the cosmos, I must not be
constantly interrupted!'
Howard quickly seated himself on the nearest end of the
front row. He meekly nodded his assent.
'Now,' said the lecturer, 'as I was
trying to say,
we do not know what the universe is made of, for the most part. Many of you
might object, but
surely we do: for it consists of energy such as gravity,
light and other radiation and matter in the form of stars, planets, black
holes, dust, gas as so forth. Our Universe, or what little of it we can observe,
contains roughly one hundred thousand million galaxies that each consist of
the order of tens of thousands of millions of stars. The answer is that all
of the known energy and mass in the universe, the stars, the clouds of gas,
the dust, everything, accounts for only one to ten percent of the measured
mass of the Universe. We see the tip of the iceberg! We know this because
we can indirectly measure gravitational effects in galaxies. For example...'
Howard was taking down some notes but he was not concentrating
on the astronomy. His mind was elsewhere. It was focused on the female sat
beside him.
'So
what is the Universe
really made of? Rather
embarrassingly, we simply do not know! Most of the missing mass is not thought
to be ordinary matter: atoms or molecules or quarks or electrons. Current
theories suggest very exotic forms of matter are suspects:
hot dark
matter,
cold dark matter and cracks in the fabric of space-time called
cosmic strings.'
Her writing, Howard observed, was insanely neat. So
graceful.
He peered at his own scrawl. The first few words were passable but the jottings
soon relapsed into a horrible, dishevelled scribble.
Her writing was
charismatic calligraphy. It was pleasing to the eye: not flowery but intricate
and decorated with a charming accuracy.
His mind returned to the lecture.
'Firstly let us consider
hot dark matter. If it
exists,
hot dark matter consists of lightweight, weakly interacting
subatomic particles that hurtle through the cosmos, and through our bodies,
at close to the speed of light. Take the enigmatic neutrino, if it has a tiny
mass then... Ahem, could I please have the privilege of your undivided attention.
I may have the benefit of only one operational eye, but I am not oblivious
of the back rows, believe me...'
Deep in internal debate, Howard sighed. Her hair! Her face!
Oval and perfect. Oh forget her! Pretty women have personalities that are
precarious. They are gorgeous and they
know it: they piss on more
guys than they care to remember. Forget her! Having sex with her would be
the worst curse on your life. Once her claws dig in it would signal the death
of the soul. Get a grip! She is probably a nun or something. A highly attractive
nun who needs a good... She is probably unavailable and that is that! Ask
her for her
notes! Yes! Brilliant!
The lecturer drew proceedings to a close.
'Um, excuse me,' ventured Howard to the attractive female,
'but I missed all of the previous lectures. It wasn't my fault. It was this
car smash I was caught up in.'
'Oh? I hope you're OK,' said the girl with a hint of a smile
that fleetingly transformed her face from statuesque to angelic.
'Yes, yes. I'm fine. Its just that I need to copy someone's,
er your, erm...' he thought he was taking too much of a liberty.
'Notes?' she said. 'No.'
He shuddered.
The attractive woman sighed softly. '
OK, here, take
these, but would you let me have them back in tomorrow's lectures please?'
Howard was handed a flawless red folder. 'Thanks! What's
your name?'
'Jacintha.'
'Oh. Thanks again... Jacintha. For your notes.'
He attempted to stroll out of the lecture theatre in a casually
confident manner. He stumbled twice. But it did not matter. His attractive
female benefactor was not watching him anyway. He had been unable to resist
a furtive glance over his shoulder. The students drifted towards the next
lecture theatre. Heartened, Howard strode away in the opposite direction.
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| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2001-04-12 13:21:41 |
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| From: |
MadPole | Subject: | 2001-04-12 20:34:03 |
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| From: |
Knorr | Subject: | 2001-04-16 12:56:34 |
| | | | |
| From: |
Hsingi | Subject: | 2001-10-13 03:14:30 |
| | | | |
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