Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere 3)

The only problem was that the job was only part-time and wasn’t for credit, so I didn’t qualify for campus housing.

The next night, we all went to see Milton in his drama class’ production of Pippin. I’d never heard of it, but Milton assured me it was a classic.

“What… what is this?” Charles whispered to me, horrified, about ten minutes in. I had no answer at all. Milton was great, though. He sang, he danced, he had a few lines, and he looked thrilled the whole time. After we’d gathered our bags and the tatters of our sanity, we went backstage and found him in close conversation with a wildly gesticulating, intensely staring Jason, so we just waved and gestured that we’d see him later.

The real surprise of the night came when we got back to the dorm to find Thomas waiting for us. Only it wasn’t Thomas because Thomas had been with us.

“Oh wow, they really look alike,” I said stupidly.

“Identical twins,” Charles said, nodding once.

Thomas and his brother hugged like one of them was returning from war. They were all over each other like puppies, with no bubble of personal space. They really did look startlingly alike, but unlike Thomas, Andy was quiet, often looking over at his twin when someone addressed a question to him. I wondered if they had always been this way and, if so, how hard it must’ve been for Andy, away at school without Thomas there to speak for him.

Andy’s school was on a different schedule so he’d taken the train down as soon as the semester ended. I got the sense that he wouldn’t mind just hanging out in Thomas’ room and playing video games while Thomas studied. I told him he could come by Mug Shots the next day if he wanted a free coffee and a place to hang out, but though he nodded politely, Andy didn’t seem to like me. I guessed I couldn’t blame him if Thomas had mentioned anything about me not returning his feelings. I wouldn’t like me either.

I SAT bolt upright in the dark, confused for a second at when I had finally remembered to change my alarm sound and why of all things I’d chosen something that sounded like screaming, until I realized it was the fire alarm. Charles had clearly already been awake, though from the looks of him he’d been about to go to bed, and he was sitting at his desk shaking his head.

“Someone pulled it,” he said. “I heard them run away, giggling. But we all have to leave anyway. It’s illogical.”

“I’ll add it to the list of dorm laws: someone always pulls the fire alarm on the one fucking night I was gonna get the doctor’s recommended eight hours,” I grumbled.

“Or on the night before a big test,” Charles said. “Might have to be two different laws.”

We trooped into the hall and down the seven flights of stairs, joining the stream of people from our hall. Some were manic, clearly having been awake and studying, some were irate and ranting at being woken up when there was clearly no fire, but the majority were, like me, shambling zombie-like down the hall in an attempt to preserve something of the sleep that had been interrupted.

It was about four in the morning, but outside the city was ticking along like always. In Holiday, one of the things I’d loved was the way there were times of the night and early morning when there was actually no one else around. When I couldn’t sleep, sometimes I’d slide out of bed and dress in silence, in the dark, and walk down the streets that would, in a few hours, be full of people, each of them with their own plans and their own desires.

I’d watched them my whole life, like they were a drama playing out before me on the television screen of Holiday, but I’d rarely seen myself as part of it. In the late night and early morning emptiness, the town seemed like a movie set for that drama. And in those moments I would feel a bit sad for it, emptied out and waiting for the people who would make it less lonely.

Here, there was never total emptiness. There was no waiting, no reset where the city breathed in relief for a few hours after the people were gone. There was only a constant readiness. A kind of low-level hum beneath the bones of the city itself, like the cranking, coiled machinery of a roller coaster being pulled uphill.

A true perpetual-motion machine is an impossibility, we learned in physics, since it violates the laws of thermodynamics. “Even the sun, as a source of energy, will eventually burn out,” Professor Ekwensi had said, matter-of-factly and as if that weren’t basically the most terrifying sentence ever to be uttered in a college classroom. Still, if there was ever something that felt like it came close, this city was it.