Page 7 of Rent: Paid in Full
Still, I know Miller’s smiling.
I can hear it.
I don’t know how because he’s not moving or speaking, but I can hear it. Loudly.
I look up to the top right of my laptop. It’s ten forty-one a.m.
Twenty-one hours and forty-nine minutes until this hell is over.
3
Ryan
There’s a little springin my step as I push open the heavy double doors of the Student Services building. The reception area is swathed in walnut wood panels, an austere look that quickly unravels into big watery blue floor tiles, boxy cubicles with desks laden with printers and paperwork, and people who look none-too-pleased to be here. Coming here always feels like you’ve stepped into one of those country clubs with discreteGentlemen Onlysigns on the doors, only to take a few steps in and find yourself in the DMV as if you traveled by portal.
Ah, home away from home.
I corner right and then left and sit on one of the four metal chairs nearest Bev’s desk. Despite stopping on the way for an eye-wateringly expensive but scientifically proven to work red velvet cupcake, I’m nice and early. I’m about to start mentally rehearsing my complaint when a mass of long dark hair in a multicolored fringed cardigan sweeps in.
Oh shit.
It’s Emily Parker.TheEmily Parker. Easily one of the most beautiful girls on campus. Easily. I try not to look, but regardless, my ass starts to sweat.
Calm down, you dork. She’s not going to talk to you. Probably won’t even notice you.
I look straight ahead and resist the urge to give her the old surreptitious side-eye check-out because my friend, Nicole, has told me multiple times that women always know when men do that. I think her exact words were, “Every woman on Earth knows when men do it. We know, and we judge you Judily for it.”
“Excuse me.”
I look to my right, then my left. There’s no one else here.
Jesus. Sheistalking to me.
“How may I help you?” I say, adopting a very bad, very plummy British accent for some unknown reason.
Fuck!
It’s things like this that remind me that I really, really shouldn’t be allowed to people.
She smooths her hair down with both hands and tucks it behind her ears. Her cardigan falls off one shoulder. She pulls it back up, but the movement makes it fall off her other shoulder. She concedes defeat on the cardigan-shoulder situation, leaving a bared pale creamy shoulder for me to add to the list of things to try not to look at.
“Do you know if I’m where I need to be to see”—she riffles through a stack of loose papers in her lap and finds a torn-off scrap of paper, crooking her head to the side to read what’s been scrawled on it—“Beverly Washington?”
Part of me thinks it might be best to continue with the British accent because I’ve already committed, but the rest of me humbly suggests that since I fucked it up royally the first time, I nip that shit in the bud.
“Yep.” I nod elaborately, rocking my entire body back and forth. “You’re right where you need to be to see Bev.”
She seems not to notice the accent change, or if she does, she doesn’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole, and who can blame her for that. Not me, that’s for sure. “Is she…like, okay?” Her mouth dips and horizontal lines crease her forehead. “I’ve heard she’s kind of scary.”
“Well”—not to blow my own horn, but I know Bev pretty well—“she doesn’t suffer fools. I think that’s the best way to put it. So if you’re going to complain about a roommate, you better have a serious issue, you know?”
She smooths her hair again. “I-I think I do. My roommate, she, um, she likes to keep a chicken carcass in the bathroom cabinet. I don’t know why, but she’s, s-she just really likes it. The last one, it was there for a long time.” She grimaces. “It smelled so bad I thought I was going to be sick. I threw it away yesterday. I had to. I bought gloves and these tong things to grab it…and, and…she noticed right away. She went ballistic about it. She screamed at me for almost an hour. I didn’t know what to do.” Big blue eyes dampen, and she wipes at them quickly, looking away from me as she does it. “And you know how the handbook says we can’t deface the walls or the furniture?” I nod supportively. “Well, she did. She painted a weird, angry face with these big eyes with flames in them on the wall above her bed. It was red when she first painted it, but once it dried, it turned a brown color and…and—” This time, a single tear rolls down her cheek, but she doesn’t wipe it or look away. She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I think it’s blood.”
Jesus.
“I really don’t want to be one of those people who complains about everything, but, but I just don’t think I can live with her anymore. I don’t think I can.”
The blind on Bev’s cubicle window rolls up with a loud snap, saving me from having to educate Emily on the numerous reasons it’s completely fine to complain—or advocate for yourself, as I prefer to think of it.