In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(19)
Well, she’s right about that.
“Sorry, sorry,” she says. “I just mean that he’s obviously into you, so I don’t get why he’s playing it so cool.”
“Changing the subject for the millionth time…. What’s new back home?”
“Oh, the yuzh: you’ve missed a bunch of good shows, everyone always asks where you are, everyone else in this city sucks, and SEPTA workers are on strike, so I can’t take the subway and even though I totally support their cause—go, union!—it’s basically ruining my life. Oh! And your f*cking brother came into the shop yesterday.”
“Brian?” Brian is the only one of my brothers I could see getting a tattoo.
“No, Colin.”
“What? What did he want?”
“Not what did he want—what did he want covered up?”
“No!”
“Pumpkin, were you aware that your idiotic, gay-bashing, misogynist brother had a tramp stamp?”
“Impossible.”
“Of a butterfly.”
“No.”
“Swear to god! His story was that his girlfriend made him get it last year and now they broke up and he wanted me to cover it up with a vintage car.” She says “story” and “girlfriend” like they have enormous air quotes around them.
“Oh my f*cking god, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“He swore me to secrecy.”
“Yeah, right. So, did you do it?”
“I told him that a tattoo of a car just above his ass would really give people the wrong idea about what kind of a lady he was. He got all offended and left. I guess I forgot what a total misogynist he is for, like, five seconds.” I laugh. “Oops!” she says in a baby voice that is not at all sorry.
I GET up early the next morning, eager to get to my office and get my course prep for the next few weeks done so that I don’t have to work tomorrow. I hate Sundays. They’re depressing enough without having to work on them. Besides, structural issues aside, I’ve grown to really like my office. I’ve never had one before. In grad school I’d work at the library or in a coffee shop. And I was always trying to get reading done behind the bar at work. Consequently, I’d have to air out the books before I returned them to the library because they always ended up dotted with booze. Even in my apartment in Philly, I just worked at the kitchen table. The place was really only a couch, a bed, a bathroom, and a kitchenette anyway. It’s nice to have a place to work that’s just mine (and isn’t two feet from a toilet). And, interesting as it always was to read Emily Bront? or Schopenhauer against a backdrop of tipsy concertgoers, it was pretty hard to concentrate.
As I walk to Sludge to get a coffee, the early morning air has a bit of a chill. It’ll be hot again by noon, but for now I can almost pretend I’m home, walking out to the middle of the Ben Franklin Bridge and watching the sunlight crest the crisp wavelets of the Delaware. Everything’s still in bloom, so the early morning sun filters through the trees lining the streets.
I like Sludge’s brown and white striped awning and its photographs of used coffee grounds on the brick walls. It’s early enough that Marjorie—the owner of Sludge, as I learned the first time I stumbled in fiending for coffee and was treated to a twenty-minute introduction in addition—is behind the counter. She smiles broadly at me, but her smile fades when she looks down to my arms.
“Hmm, Daniel, honey, I don’t understand why you kids do that to yourselves.” She’s looking at my tattoos. I guess I’ve only seen her when I was dressed to teach, wearing long sleeves. I don’t get some people’s assumption that you want to hear their opinion of your personal choices. And they say it like it’s not rude. I would never say, “Hey, Marjorie, I hate the way you dress,” or, “Oh, Marjorie, you should really have plastic surgery, because your nose would be so much better another way.”
“You’re such a handsome boy. Why would you want to look like a hoodlum?”
“Well, I actually am a hoodlum, Marjorie, so I was required to get them,” I say with what I hope isn’t too annoyed of a smile. “Can I have an egg sandwich and a triple shot in a large coffee to go?” I add, before she can comment.
“How on earth can you drink that much caffeine?” Marjorie asks.
“It’s what all the hoodlums drink,” I say, shrugging, and she turns away to make my drink, shaking her head.
The walk to campus only takes about fifteen minutes. Sleeping Bear College is a hodgepodge of old and new buildings. It was built on land that originally had a large estate and a smaller farmhouse. When they opened the college, they built a number of new brick buildings to house the math and science departments, one that looks kind of like a greenhouse for the art department, and, at the very back of campus, farthest from my apartment, a blocky brick monstrosity to house the library. The sidewalks connecting the buildings are clean and they must pay someone a hell of a lot of money to landscape, because there are flowers everywhere. During the week, students congregate on wooden benches around campus and eat lunch under the trees that dot the grass, which must have been original to the property because they look too old to have been planted when the college opened.
The estate was turned into the student center and the farmhouse into Snyder Hall, where the humanities classrooms are on the first and second floors and our offices are on the third. It’s a cool building from the outside—weathered wood and a huge front porch where students hang out between classes. In fact, it reminds me more of a Cracker Barrel restaurant than any academic building I’ve ever seen. Still, it’s got a relaxed vibe that I like. Inside, though, it’s rickety and worn, especially the offices.