Envy(20)

On game days, the campus was drenched in crimson. If the school color wasn’t worn, it was waved. Brass and drums from the marching band echoed across campus for hours prior to kickoff. The campus was energized, hopping, festive.

But today it was practically deserted. The weather was rainy and dreary, incompatible with any sort of outdoor activity. Students were using the day to catch up on sleep, study, or laundry—things they didn’t have time to do during the week.

The halls of the fraternity house, smelling dankly of beer and boys, were dim and hushed. A few members were gathered around the large-screen TV that a prosperous alum had donated to the house the year before. It was tuned to an NCAA football game on which money was riding. Occasionally either a cheer or a groan filtered up the staircases to the resident rooms on the second and third floors, but these sounds did little to compromise the sleepy quiet of the corridors.

A quiet that was punctured by, “Roark! You *!” followed immediately by a slamming door.

Roark dodged the wet towel hurled at his head and started laughing. “You found it?”

“Whose is it?” Todd Grayson brandished a Styrofoam cup that contained his toothbrush. Which wouldn’t have been remarkable except that the cup had been used as a spittoon. The bristles of Todd’s toothbrush were steeping in the viscous brown fluid in the bottom of the cup.

Roark was reclined on the three-legged sofa beneath their sleeping lofts, which were suspended from the ceiling by short chains. To maximize the small room’s floor space, the lofts had been designed and constructed by the two young men in direct violation and defiance of fraternity house rules against any alteration to the structure of the building.

A couple of stacked bricks served as the sofa’s fourth leg, but the eyesore was the focal point of their habitat, the “nucleus of our cell,” Todd had intoned one night when he was particularly drunk. When furnishing their room, they’d found the atrocity in a junk store and bought it for ten bucks apiece. The upholstery was ripped and ratty and stained by substances that remained unidentified. The sofa had become so integral to the overall ugliness of their room, they had decided to leave it there upon their graduation as a legacy for the room’s next occupants.

But Todd, who had once waxed poetic about the sofa, was so angry now that every muscle in his body was quivering. “Tell me. Whose spit cup is this?”

Roark was clutching his middle, laughing. “You don’t want to know.”

“Brady? If it’s Brady’s, swear to God I’ll kill you.” Brady lived down the hall. He was a terrific guy, an ideal fraternity brother, the type who, on a moment’s notice and without any complaint, would come out and get you if your car broke down on a snowy night. Brady had a heart of gold. Personal hygiene, however, wasn’t one of his strong suits.

“Not Brady.”

“Castro? Jesus, please tell me it’s not Castro’s,” Todd groaned. “That f*cker’s diseased!” The second man under consideration wasn’t Cuban. His real name was Ernie Campello. He’d been dubbed Castro because of his talent for growing curly black hair, not only on his head and the lower half of his face, but all over his body. “God only knows what’s crawling around in that pelt of his.”

Roark laughed at that, then said, “Lisa somebody called.”

The casual statement instantly doused Todd’s anger. “Lisa Knowles?”

“Sounds right.”

“When?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“Did she leave a message?”

“Do I look like a secretary?”

“You look like an * with teeth. What’d she say?”

“She said you had a pencil-dick. Or did she say needle-dick? Gee, Todd, I can’t remember. Sorry. But I did write down her number. It’s on your desk.”

“I’ll call her later.”

“Who is she? Is she hot?”

“Yeah, but she’s seeing some Delt. She’s in my North American history class and she needs notes.”

“Too bad.”

Todd shot his grinning roommate a dirty look, then tossed the offensive cup into their trash can. He’d been showering in the communal bathroom down the hall when Roark sneaked in and put his toothbrush in tobacco-laced sputum.

“Don’t be pissed,” Roark said as Todd rummaged in a bureau drawer for a pair of boxers. “It was a damn good joke and worth the expense of a new toothbrush. It was worth twice the expense.”

“Are you going to tell me whose it was?”

“Don’t know. Found it on a windowsill on the third floor.”

“Jesus. It could be anybody’s.”

“That was the general idea.”

“I’ll get you back,” Todd threatened as he pulled on a T-shirt. “I mean it. You’ve just screwed yourself but good, buddy.”

Roark merely laughed.

“Didn’t you have anything better to do? You’ve been lying on your ass all day.”

“Gotta finish this over the weekend.” Roark held up a paperback copy of The Great Gatsby.

Todd snorted scornfully. “The most *-whipped character in the history of American fiction. Want to go get something to eat?”

“Sure.” Roark rolled off the sofa and shoved his feet into a pair of sneakers. As they went through the door, he and Todd ritualistically kissed their fingers and slapped them against the Playmate of the Month on their calendar. “Later, sweetheart.”