She is no dumb lady. You have to stand in a little box of an entryway waiting for her to answer your knock. The box works on the same principle as a rat cage, except that she’s added her own little touch. Three big mirrors that probably cost her a year’s salary to cart up from earth. Never mind—as a weapon, they were a real bargain. Because, Jesus jiggin’ Mary, you stand there and sweat and the mirrors tell you your skirt isn’t straight and your hair looks scutty and that bead of sweat on your upper lip is going to give it away immediately that you are scared scutless. By the time she answers the door—five minutes if she’s feeling kindly—you’re either edge or you’re not there. No dumb lady.
I was not on the defensive, and my skirts are never straight, so the mirrors didn’t have any effect on me, but the five minutes took their toll. That box didn’t have any ventilation and I was way too close to those sheets. But I had my speech all ready. No need to remind her who I was. The admin had probably filled her in but good. And I’d get nowhere telling her they were my sheets. Let her think they were the virgies.
When she opened the door I gave her a brilliant smile and said, “My roommate’s had a little problem. She’s a new freshman, and I think she got a little excited coming up on the shuttle and—”
I expected her to launch into the “supplies are precious, everything must be recycled, cleanliness is next to godliness” speech you get for everything you do on this godspit campus. Instead she said, “What did you do to her?”
“What did I—look, she’s the one who tossed up. What do you think I did, stuck my fingers down her throat?”
“Did you give her something? Samurai? Float? Alcohol?”
“Jiggin’ Jesus, she just got here. She walked in, she said she was from Mary’s Prick or something, she tossed up.”
“And?”
“And what? I may look depraved, but I don’t think freshmen vomit at the sight of me.”
From her expression, I figured Mumsy might. I stuck the smelly wad of sheets at her. “Look,” I said, “I don’t care what you do. It’s not my problem. The kid needs clean sheets.”
Her expression for the mucky mess was kinder than the one she had for me. “Recycling is not until Wednesday. She will have to sleep on her mattress until then.”
Mary Masting, she could knit a sheet by Wednesday, especially with all the cotton flying around this fucked campus. I grabbed the sheets back.
“Jig you, scut,” I said.
I got two months’ dorm restricks and a date with the admin.
I went down to third level and did the sheets myself. It cost a fortune. They want you to have an
The realtor must have talked hard and fast to make him think Hell could ever look like Ames, Iowa. At least there’d been some technical advances since it was first built or we’d all be
Jesus Bonin’ Mary; cottonwoods! I mean, so what if we’re a hundred years out of date. I can take the freshman beanies and the pep rallies. Dorm curfews didn’t stop anybody a hundred years ago either. And face it, pleated skirts and cardigans make for easy access. But those godspit trees!
At first they tried the nature-dupe stuff. Freeze your vaj in winter, suffocate in summer, just like good old Iowa. The trees were at least bearable then. Everybody choked in cotton for a month, they baled the stuff up like Mississippi slaves and shipped it down to earth and that was it. But finally something was too expensive even for Daddy Moulton and we went on even-clime like all the other Hell-Fives. Nobody bothered to tell the trees, of course, so now they just spit and drop leaves whenever they feel like it, which is all the time. You can hardly make it to class without choking to death.
The trees do their dirty work down under, too, rooting happily away through the plumbing and the buried cables so that nothing works. Ever. I think the whole outer shell could blow away and nobody would ever know. The fucked root system would hold us together. And the admin wonders why we call it Hell. I’d like to upset this delicate balance once and for all.
I ran the sheets through on disinfect and put them in the spin. While I was sitting there, thinking evil thoughts about freshmen and figuring how to get off restricks, Arabel came wandering in.
“Tavvy, hi! When did you get back?” She is always too sweet for words. We played lezzies as freshmen, and sometimes I think she’s sorry it’s over. “There’s a great party,” she said.
“I’m on restricks,” I said. Arabel’s not the world’s greatest authority on parties. I mean, herself and a plastic bone would be a great party. “Where is it?”
“My room. Brown’s there,” she said languidly. This was calculated to make me rush out of my pants and up the stairs, no doubt. I watched my sheets spin.
“So what are you doing down here?” I said.
“I came down for some float. Our machine’s out. Why don’t you come on over? Restricks never stopped you before.”
“I’ve been to your parties, Arabel. Washing my sheets might be more exciting.”
“You’re right,” she said, “it might.” She fiddled with the machine. This was not like her at all.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing’s up.” She sounded puzzled. “It’s samurai-party time without the samurai. Not a bone in sight and no hope of any. That’s why I came down here.”
“Brown, too?” I asked. He was into a lot of edge stuff, but I couldn’t quite imagine celibacy.
“Brown, too. They all just sit there.”
“They’re on something, then. Something new they brought back from vacation.” I couldn’t see what she was so upset about.
“No,” she said. “They’re not on anything. This is different. Come see. Please.”
Well, maybe this was all a trick to get me to one of Arabel’s scutty parties and maybe not. But I didn’t want Mumsy to think she’d hurt my feelings by putting me on restricks. I threw the lock on the spin so nobody’d steal the sheets and went with her.
For once Arabel hadn’t exaggerated. It was a godspit party, even by her low standards. You could tell that the minute you walked in. The girls looked unhappy the boys looked uninterested. It couldn’t be all bad, though. At least Brown was back. I walked over to where he was standing.
“Tavvy,” he said, smiling, “how was your summer? Learn anything new from the natives?”
“More than my fucked father intended.” I smiled back at him.
“I’m sure he had your best interests at heart,” he said. I started to say something clever to that, then realized he wasn’t kidding. Brown was trust just like I was. He had to be kidding. Only he wasn’t. He wasn’t smiling anymore either.
“He just wanted to protect you, for your own good.”
Jiggin’ Jesus, he had to be on something. “I don’t need any protecting,” I said. “As you well know.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding disappointed. “Yeah.” He moved away.
What in the scut was going on? Brown leaned against the wall, watching Sept and Arabel. She had her sweater off and was shimmying out of her skirt, which I have seen before, sometimes even helped with. What I had never seen before was the look of absolute desperation on her face. Something was very wrong. Sept stripped, and his bone was as big as Arabel could have wanted, but the look on her face didn’t change. Sept shook his head
