The Roommate Situation (35 page)

“At the Cane Club. Free shows, man. I mean, I have to work them, but still. I also get to learn how it’s done, for when I start hosting my own shows.”

“The Chuck Club,” Pete says.

“The Up-Chuck Club,” I say, meaning it to be light, but it comes out sounding a little bitter. It’s just the anxiety roiling in me. What am I going to do if my parents refuse to pay my tuition?

“The Up-Chuck Club,” Chuck says. “I’m stealing that.”

“How’d you get a job there, anyway?” I ask as we move through the other people who’d come in from the cold. Getting employment is still a mystery to me, if it doesn’t involve my mother. Pete finds us a nook with empty chairs.

“I was going around talking to different places about whether they’d be willing to rent space for a concert, and I got to talking to the owner there—Stan. He’s pretty cool. He kind of gave me a quick schooling on all the shit I don’t know. Kinda like your roommate times three. Jesus. So he offered me a part-time job, sweeping floors and stacking liquor boxes, but it’s a start. And I’ll get some experience at what it takes to run a club.”

“That’s pretty slick,” I say, unzipping my jacket. “You’re awfully quiet, Pete.”

“His girl dumped him,” Chuck says.

“What happened?”

Pete slumps down in his chair.

“The usual story,” Chuck says. “The flightiness of the female species.”

“She doesn’t want to be tied down,” Pete says to the ceiling, his hands on his stomach. “Needs more time for herself. Has to focus on her studies.”

“You know, what you’d expect,” Chuck says.

Pete hauls himself up in his chair. “I guess I wasn’t surprised. We hung out some over winter break, but she was kind of distant. I thought maybe we’d get back to school and things would go back to normal. But no.”

“Sorry, man,” I say.

“What about you?” Pete asks.

“Ha. Yeah, me. I’m gonna get kicked out of school if they don’t receive their tuition by the seventeenth.”

“What’s the holdup?” Chuck asks.

“My fucking parents. They haven’t paid it. I have to call them.”

“And you’re sitting down here instead?”

“It’s a long, fucked-up story. First they held my guitar hostage so I’d get good grades, which I didn’t. Now they’re holding their money hostage till I stop fucking my roommate.”

A silence engulfs our little area.

And stretches out endlessly.

I’m so glad when Chuck finally breaks it by leaning forward with, “Whoa. You and psycho boy?”

I put my elbows on my knees and rub my face.

“How the fuck long has that been going on? At least it explains why we never fucking see you.”

“Wait,” Pete says. “How do your parents know what you’re doing with your roommate in the privacy of your own room?”

I bury my face in my hands. “I got pissed off and told them.”

“Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” Chuck says.

Pete leans forward, closing our circle a little. “So, are you just…you know, fucking, or…?”

“We’re planning on getting a place together in the fall, off campus.”

“I thought you were getting a place with us,” Chuck says. Then, “Wait. Never mind. If you and the bondage serial killer are getting into wild, crazy stuff, maybe I don’t want to hear it through the walls.”

I laugh into my hands. “Shit. I just don’t want to have this conversation with them.” I lift my chin and set it on my knuckles. “What am I supposed to do if they refuse to pay? I don’t qualify for financial aid, thanks to their income. I can’t get a loan unless they cosign. I’m officially the only person in my group of friends without a fucking job. Oh, but I am in a band, so keep us in mind when you get some influence at that club. Unless, of course, I’m living a hundred and eighty miles away because I can’t afford to live anywhere but my parents’ Home for the Pathetically Unemployed, where my mother and Pastor Nivens will be systematically reprogramming me into a polite, straight young man who plays guitar for the church choir.”

“Man,” Chuck says. “Your life potentially sucks. I’m not sure banging a serial killer is much better, but, man.”

“Maybe I’ll end up writing a song about how the only man I love is Jesus, but I don’t love him ‘that way.’”

“All right,” Pete says. “What you need to do is call the more reasonable of your parents—”

“Assuming he has such a thing,” Chuck says.

“—and tell them you and Derek broke up; you’re broken up over it, but it’s probably for the best; you’re really excited for this coming semester; and hey, you noticed that your tuition is still owed—did their check get lost in the mail?”

“Is lying the way to go?” I ask.

“Is moving back home and living in the Dark Ages the way to go?” Chuck asks.

* * * *

Back in my room, I say, “Hey,” to Derek and strip out of my coat.

“Did you call them?” Derek asks.

“Not yet.” My phone’s still plugged into its charging cord on my desk. I check the screen: no messages. I lean over my computer to check my account with the school, just in case the money showed up while I was gone.

No luck.

“I’ll be back.” I walk out of the room with the phone. If I wind up going the lying route—and I’m not sure yet that’s how I’m going to play it—I’m not about to do it with Derek four feet away.

I let myself into the stairwell and walk over to a corner, where I sit with my back to the wall. If I’m lucky, my dad’s just getting ready to leave work, or he’s in his car. If I’m unlucky, Dad will pick up at home, with Mom not too far out of earshot. I pick at a loose thread in the seam of my jeans while I listen to the line ring.

Just when I get ready for voice mail to pick up, Dad says, “Hello.”

“Hey, Dad.”

“Shane. How are you?”

“I’m good. I’m at school. Classes started today.”

“It’s good to know you made it back,” he says.

“Yeah. How are things at home?”

“Things are a little…out of sorts right now.”

I swallow, careful not to swallow the words I need to say. The silence stretches on. Shit. There’s nothing to do but come right out with it. “Um, the school sent me a notice today. My tuition is late. Do you—”

“You’ll need to call your mother.”

“Oh. But do you know if—”

“Please just call your mother, Shane. You’ve been ignoring her for a week and a half, and it’s not fair.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, pressing my fingertips to my eyelids. Choice words about fairness crowd my chest, but I keep them tamped down. Whining isn’t going to do me any good.

“Grow up and talk to your mother,” he says. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Okay. Just—” Too late. The connection’s been cut off.

Damn.

Before I lose my nerve, I pull her cell number up and send the call.

I wait through the rings. Eventually her voice mail picks up. I don’t know what to say, and I probably fumble the fuck out of it. “Hi, it’s Shane. Um. Returning your calls. Uh, call me when you get a chance.” I click the screen off and sit there, the phone dangling between my knees.

Shit.

When I let myself into the room, Derek swivels from his desk and says, “Well?” His face is strained, his eyes concerned.

“My dad won’t talk to me. I have to talk to my mom.”

“He won’t talk to you?”

“Not like that. Well, a little like that.” I sit on my bed and slump against the wall. “What do I do if they won’t pay? Or if they won’t pay unless I transfer to another school and swear on a Bible I’ll never have anything to do with you again?”

“I don’t know,” he says. He comes and sits next to me, slumping down to the same level. He leans his shoulder against me, and then his head. I clasp his hand. Squeeze it. Hold on.

“They’re always running my fucking life,” I say. “It’s like, whatever track I want to be on, they come around and throw the switch to move me back to where they want me. You know, the guitar was their fucking idea to get me away from thinking about motorcycles once I got my license.”

“I guess that one kind of backfired.”

I smile a little. “I guess sending me to college did too.”

He slips his hand free and lifts his arm so he can put it around me and I can lean against him.

“It’s just gonna be all bullshit,” I say, “listening to what she has to say. I’m not gonna put up with it if she starts with that
homosexual agenda
bullshit again.”

“Just say ‘uh-huh’ and try not to sprain anything rolling your eyes.”

I smile again. “
‘Derek’s not gay,’
I’m going to tell her.
‘But I am. I’m the homosexual you raised.’
”

“Is that what you are now?”

“For the purposes of that conversation, yes. For the purposes of life, I still have no idea. I like you. More than any girl I’ve met, definitely. But then there’s your uncle, who pretty much always knew what he was, and here I am, eighteen and sleeping with a guy, and I still don’t—” My phone rings. “Shit.” I flip it over, see it’s my mom, and climb off the bed, heading for the door as it continues to ring.

I press the Answer button as I pull the door shut behind me.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Shane! Where are you? Did you make it back to school?”

“Yeah, I got here Sunday when the dorms opened.”

“Oh good. I was worried. It’s a long way to the school. Where did you stay in the meantime?”

I drop into my spot in the corner of the stairwell landing. “Derek’s house. Well, his dad’s.”

“I thought it might be something like that.”

“So,” I say. “How are you?”

“Holding up, I guess,” she says with a sigh.

“Look, I’m sorry I—”

“But I suppose you know, then,” she says, and I hear a sniffle, but it’s not allergy season anymore.

“Know what? Are you crying?”

“Oh, honey, this has just been such an awful time. It’s like I’m losing you both!”

I sit up straighter. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought you spoke to your father.”

“I did.”

“What did he say?”

“That I needed to call you.”

“Doesn’t that just figure,” she mutters. It’s capped off by another sniffle.

My mind is going everywhere and nowhere at once. My pulse is racing, and I’m worried, and I don’t even know why. What the fuck is wrong?

“Your father,” she says, “has moved to a hotel.”

“What? Is it becau—”

“He’s been seeing this…this girl. Barely older than you. Twenty-four! This was her first real job out of school. If this is how she plans to conduct her career, I can tell you—”

“Wait. What?” I think circuits just blew in my brain. My father is running around with a younger woman? “Are you getting divorced?” I ask.

“Your father is ruminating on how he would like to spend the rest of his life—with a fresh-faced young woman whose college debt is probably worth more than our house and who will realize in a few short years that your father’s an old man and not getting any younger, or with the old bag he’s spent the past twenty-eight years with.”

“Mom, you’re not an old bag.”

“Apparently I’m worth about as much.” She sniffs again. I can picture her dabbing under her eyes with a tissue.

“He’s not the only guy in the world, you know. After twenty-eight years, you should get to go have some fun too. I’m sure there are plenty of guys—”

“Shane Alexander. I don’t really like who you’ve become since you left for college. Just because your father is willing to throw everything away for a piece of—”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I should have pushed harder to get you into a good Christian school. If your grades had been just a little bit better, you could have made it into—”

“Mom.”

“Yes, Shane.”

“Everything’s going to be fine. I’m going to work hard, get a good degree. Dad will come to his senses.” Because I can’t even imagine how he got away from his senses. I think there must be some sort of miscommunication somewhere, one that got so out of hand he wound up living in a hotel somehow. “Everything’s going to be okay,” I say.

“Oh, Shane.” She sounds weary. Defeated. “You’re too young to understand the implications the choices you make will have later on in life.”

“What? I’m not going to put my boyfriend on my résumé. Well, not unless I think it’ll help somehow.”

“It will not.”

“This isn’t 1963 anymore.”

“And don’t I know it.”

“I’m sorry about Dad,” I say. “And I apologize for not calling you back sooner.”

“I really could have used hearing your voice last week. I worried about you, you know. It was so cold out there. I had no idea where you were or how you got there. Tell me you didn’t hitchhike to that boy’s house.”

I rub the bridge of my nose. “He drove out and picked me up.”

“Did you meet that uncle of his?” she says.

“Yes.” I figure I don’t need to go as far as confessing that we got drunk together. Or at least
I’d
gotten drunk; I was in no condition at the time to judge anybody else’s level of sobriety.

“I apologize for what I said about your friend,” my mother says.

I look toward the stairwell wall, wishing for a window so I can watch the skies crack open in amazement.

“Thank you,” I say quietly.

“He’s as much a victim as you are, really. I should have thought that at the time, growing up as he did under that kind of influence.”

“Oh, for the love of God, Mom. Derek’s uncle did not make him gay. He’s not gay. He likes girls.”

“And yet?”

“And yet he likes me too,” I say. “And I like him.”

“And do you like girls?”

“All I know is I like Derek.” After a pause, I add, “A lot.” I slide my sneakers across the concrete floor, straightening my legs. “I made the move on him, actually. He didn’t— He didn’t do anything to trick me into that. I kissed him. I wanted to…” I sigh. “I wanted to know what he was like.”

“I guess your father and I should consider ourselves lucky you haven’t wanted to know what jumping off a building would be like.”

“You’re veering into absurdity,” I say, a thing they have repeatedly accused me of doing in discussions with them.

“You’re so young, Shane. You’re at that age where you think you know everything. When the scales fall of your eyes—and they will, sweetheart—you’ll see.”