Chapter 13: Time Passes

Suddenly, the clock started to belt out a little classic rock. Through the blurs of morning vision, I made out the time formed by the glowing red numbers on the clock’s face.

I did a little quick math (the best kind). Coming up with a number I liked, I reached for the snooze bar.

Inches away from the button, my hand hovered for a moment as something by Fleetwood Mac flowed from the small cheap speaker. It ended soon enough to be followed by something perky by the Byrds. I swatted the clock bringing silence to the room. I gave Charlie the needed strokes to start his internal engine going. Glad for the late snap of unseasonable cold that kept him more interested in warmth than food, I listened to him purr.

As always, I failed to snooze through the snooze cycle and did likewise through the next dozen ten minute intervals. After that, however, Charlie remembered that the food dish was in need of filling. He crawled from under the blanket and began to lick my face, paw at me, and cry like the starvin’ chile he was.

I got out of bed and in order, fed annoying cat, made coffee, shaved, showered, drank coffee, went out door, went in door, turned coffee pot off, went out door, entered and started car, swore about forgetting article on calculating the rate of subsidence, and decide to just forget it because I got more than enough sleep the night before and this sentence will make the grammar check in Word (r) puke already.

(The reader for the talking-book version of this story may feel free to insert a deep sigh here)

(PS you didn’t need to read that part)

(PSS you didn’t need to read that last part either)

(PSSS sigh! I give up!)

I got to the lab and dropped my bookbag sans the aforementioned article on my desk. A radio belonging to one of my half-dozen office partners issued forth the final notes of one of Queen’s better whines, before moving to the chatter of the DJ. As I pulled out the readings, Fleetwood Mac again began to sing. I stared at the pile of creased, stained photocopies. I picked up a stapled stack of sheets. My eyes floated lightly over the quarter-memorized words on them.

I spent the morning thus reading. The words in the articles entered into a dialogue with ideas half-formed in the back corner of my mind. A trance fell deep over me through lunch and into the early afternoon as, occasionally, I quietly sang a line or two of something mellow on the radio to myself. Looking at the clock, I broke and grabbed a tattered notebook and a folder into which I crammed a few of the photocopies that I felt were of some importance.

One of my office partners looked up from the map he was trying to explain to a recovering high-school genius and asked, “taking off?”

His student shifted in her seat to give herself a better view of the map. She also pulled her hair away from her face and draped the long, brown locks over her stooped shoulder. Her hair flowed down the gray of her baggy sweatshirt.

“Just going to grab some coffee.”

Her sweatshirt rode up her back and away from the top of her denim cutoffs, exposing a patch of lightly tanned skin and the regular bumps of her spine. The cutoffs had pulled away from her body a little with her stooped posture as well; the little hills of her vertebrae continue further. Their visible path ended beneath the thin elastic band of her baby blue underpants.

“Drink some for me.”

She shifted again in her seat and brought a long, thin leg up to the chair. She lifted herself slightly and pulled her ankle under her buttock, which she rested over it. Her tanned calves curved gently from her thighs to the point her ankles disappeared beneath her.

“You paying for it,” I asked.

She leaned closer to the center of the map; her finger traced a contour line along the surface. Her top teeth bit lightly into her red, unmade lips as her soft brown eyes moved across the map, following the feature that her finger traveled along.

“Nope,” he answered.

“I don’t get it,” the student said in a plaintive voice. “What am I looking for?”

My colleague and I sighed in unison. He rolled his eyes heavenward. I spread my open palms from my body.

“I’ll get going. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” he answered before turning back to the matters of glacial landforms.

I walked the short distance out of campus and across the main drag. Entering campus town with only the beeping of one horn and no screeching of tires, I made my way along the strip of bars, tee-shirt shops, and tattoo places that passed itself of as a downtown until I reached a small cafe converted from some ancient drive-in.

I took my place in the long line as the pony-tailed bartista tried to keep up with the burst of mocha-raspberry-caramel swirls and other such specialty drinks.

When she got to mine, I made the normal awkward small talk as her short, thin fingers wrapped around the chrome milk pitcher and moved it beneath the steamer.

Her arms were covered with a fine downy covering of hair that ended just below the sleeve of her oversized t-shirt. The opening of her sleeve and her movements as she assembled my drink allowed glimpses of a white bra strap and maybe the hint of a bra cup. She handed me my drink with a smile. I looked into her dark brown eyes and smiled back.

I took my cup, wrapping my mitts around its near scalding hot, paper sides. Fate chose a seat for me at a counter that ran along the floor to ceiling windows and face out to the traffic and outside patio. Only one spot had the requisite number of empty seats that would allow for both personal space and the spreading of classwork. To one side was a blonde and to the other was an Asian girl.

The Asian looked at me with brown eyes through the bangs of her brown hair. I said hi, and she smiled shyly before a quick retreat to her books.

I dropped the folder next to her and laid the notebook down. Taking my stool, I opened it to the appropriate spot. As I turned my current muddled thoughts into an outline, I would glance up. The Asian girl each time was busily ignoring me, her eyes fixed to a book of anatomy.

The patio outside the window would normally have been filled with students reading up for coming exams or professional folk of various strips taking a lunch break to chat. The day’s weather didn’t allow for it, however. A brisk wind blew a chill that made it unpleasant for even a hardy Midwesterner, and the sun hid behind a solid sky of gray fluff. Here and there a dark patch moved eastward with the wind.

I stared out the window at the patio abandoned to just a few stray birds. They were drab and small and bounced across the concrete pad looking for crumbs from some brave soul’s morning scone. Cars drove past on the street.

Pedestrians, some with umbrellas but all with slightly heavy spring jackets, walked along the sidewalk.

I returned to my now cool coffee and my pad. The Asian girl had left, being replaced by some loud, busty sorority bitch. I wrote a few sentences about the once rocks, now powders that made up my study. I stared at the letters.

Turning my pencil over, I quickly did away with them.

I closed my notebook. I place a dull article that I had spent the last several minutes paging through in the folder and pull the paper cup of coffee towards me. Held tightly in both of my hands, the heat in it escaped into my body.

I stared into the plastic top.

I sighed and allowed the cup to sit freely on the counter top. Sliding off the stool, I slipped one arm and then the other into the sleeves of my jacket and cleared my stuff from the counter. With only the briefest of looks back at the brunette that I passed on the way out the door, I started my way back onto campus and to the library.