I show her my staff ID. “Hi,” I say. “I’m Heather Wells, and this is my friend Cooper Cartwright. I’m with the Housing Department. I just wanted to—”
“Come in,” the woman says disinterestedly. She steps out of the way so that we can enter, then closes the door behind us. We find ourselves in a spacious, well-lit loft—the old-fashioned kind, with high ceilings, crown molding, and parquet floors—in a foyer surrounded by doors on all four sides.
“They’re in there.” She nods her head toward a set of closed French doors off to the right.
“Um, well, we’re actually looking for someone in particular,” I say. “Doug Winer. Do you know which room is—”
“Look,” the woman says, not unpleasantly. “I just clean here. I don’t actually know any of them by name.”
“Thank you for your time,” Cooper says politely, and, taking me by the arm, steers me toward the closed French doors. He’s muttering something beneath his breath that I don’t quite catch… possibly because the minute his hand closed over my arm, my heart began to drum so loudly in my ears, it drowned out all other sound. Even through seven layers of material, Cooper’s touch excites me no end.
I know. I really am pathetic.
Rapping sharply on the glass panes of the double doors, Cooper calls out, “Hello, in there.”
A voice from within hollers something indistinguishable. Cooper looks down at me, and I shrug. He throws open the French doors. Through the thick gray fog of marijuana smoke, I’m able to make out the green felt of a billiard table, and, in the background, a wide-screen TV transmitting the flickering images of a football game. The room is lit by a bank of windows that let in the uneasy gray of outdoors, and by the warm glow of a brass and stained-glass lamp that hangs over the pool table. In a far corner, a spirited game of air hockey is taking place, and to my immediate left, someone opens a mini-fridge and pulls out a beer.
That’s when I realize Cooper and I must have just died—possibly on that rickety old elevator—and I’d somehow ended up in Guy Heaven by mistake.
“Hey,” says a blond kid leaning over the pool table to make a difficult shot. He has a joint pressed between his lips, the tip of which glows red. Incredibly, he’s dressed in a red satin smoking jacket and a pair of Levi’s. “Hang on.”
He draws back the cue and shoots, and the click of balls is drowned out by the sudden thunder of the football fans as they cheer on a favorite player. Straightening, the kid removes the joint from his mouth and studies Cooper and me from behind a hank of blond hair. “What can I do you for?” he inquires.
I look longingly at the beer the kid reaches for and sucks back while he waits for our response. A glance at Cooper tells me that he, too, is fondly recalling a time in his life when it was okay—even encouraged—to drink beer before lunchtime. Although I never actually lived through a time like that, never having gone to college.
“Um,” I say, “we’re looking for Doug Winer. Is he here?”
The kid laughs. “Hey, Brett,” he calls over his red satin shoulder. “This babe wants to know if Doug’s here.”
Brett, at the air hockey table, snorts. “Would we be enjoying this excellent ganja if the Dougster wasn’t here?” he inquires, raising his beer bottle in the air like that guy in that play who held up the skull and said he knew him well. “Of course the Dougster is here. The Dougster is, in fact, everywhere.”
Cooper is staring longingly at the wide-screen TV, apparently unaware that I’ve just been called a babe— which, while still sexist, is a nicer welcome than I’d have expected, based on the signage outside.
Still, with my partner apparently in a trance, I feel it’s up to me to steer the conversation in a more profitable direction.
“Well,” I say. “Could you tell me where, specifically, I might find Mr. Winer?”
One of the guys in front of the TV suddenly swivels around and barks, “Christ, Scott, it’s a cop!”
Every joint in the room, and a surprising amount of beer, disappears in a split second, crushed under Docksiders or stashed behind sofa cushions.
“Cops!” Scott, the kid at the pool table, throws down his joint disgustedly. “Aren’t you guys supposed to announce yourselves? You can’t peg me for nothing, man, ’cause you didn’t announce yourself.”
“We’re not cops,” I say, holding up both gloved hands. “Relax. We’re just looking for Doug.”
Scott sneers. “Yeah? Well, you gotta be buyin’, ’cause in threads like those, you sure ain’t sellin’.” A number of snickers sound in agreement.
I look down at my jeans, then glance surreptitiously at Cooper’s anorak, which he has unzipped to reveal a Shetland sweater featuring a green reindeer leaping over a geometric design in which the color pink figures prominently, a sweater I happen to know he received for Christmas from a doting great-aunt. Cooper is quite popular with the more elderly of his relatives.
“Um,” I say, thinking fast, “yeah. What you said.”
Scott rolls his eyes and pulls his beer out from the ball socket in which he’d stashed it. “Outside and down the hall, first door on your left. And be sure to knock, okay? The Winer usually has company.”
I nod, and Cooper and I retrace our steps back to the FAT CHICKS GO HOME hallway. The maid is nowhere to be seen. Cooper looks as if someone has hit him.
“Did you,” he breathes, “smell that?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Why am I thinking they’ve got a slightly better source for their weed than Reggie?”
“Isn’t this part of the Housing Department?” Cooper wants to know. “Don’t they have an RA?”
“A GA,” I say. “Like Sarah. But in charge of the whole building, not one for each floor. He can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Especially,” Cooper says, under his breath, “when Tau Phis are obviously paying him not to be.”
I don’t know what makes him think that… but I’m willing to bet he’s right. Hey, grad assistants are students, too, and more often than not, financially insolvent ones.
The first door on the left is covered with a life-sized poster of Brooke Burke in a bikini. I knock politely on Brooke’s left breast, and hear a muffled “What?” in response. So I turn the knob and go in.
Doug Winer’s room is dark, but enough gray light spills from around the shade to reveal a very large water bed, on which two figures recline, amid a plethora of beer cans. The predominant decorating theme, in fact, seems to be beer, as there are piles of beer cans, bottles, and cases strewn about the room. On the walls are posters of beer, and on the shelves creative stacks of it. I, who like beer just as much as the next person, if not slightly more, feel a little embarrassed for Doug.
After all, drinking beer is one thing. Decorating with it is quite another.
“Uh, Doug?” I say. “Sorry to wake you up, but we need to talk to you a minute.”
One of the figures on the bed stirs, and a sleepy male voice asks, “What time is it?”
I consult Cooper’s watch—since I don’t own one—after he presses the button on it that lights up the face. “Eleven,” I say.
“Shit.” Doug stretches, then seems to become aware of the other presence in his bed. “Shit,” he says, in a different tone, and pokes the figure—rather sharply, in my opinion.
“Hey,” Doug says. “You. Get up.”
Mewling fitfully, the girl tries to roll away from him, but Doug keeps poking, and finally she sits up, blinking heavily mascaraed eyes and clutching the maroon sheets to her chest. “Where am I?” she wants to know.
“Xanadu,” Doug says. “Now get the hell out.”
The girl blinks at him. “Who are you?” she wants to know.
“Count Chocula,” Doug says. “Get your clothes and get out. Bathroom’s over there. Don’t flush any feminine hygiene products down the john or you’ll clog it.”
The girl blinks at Cooper and me in the doorway. “Who’re they?” she asks.
“How the hell should I know?” Doug says crankily. “Now get out. I got stuff to do.”
“All right, Mr. Cranky Pants.” The girl swings herself out of bed, awarding Cooper and me with a generous view of her heart-shaped backside as she struggles into a pair of panties that didn’t make it to the shrubs outside. Clutching a spangly-looking dress to her chest, she simpers as she wriggles past Cooper on her way to the bathroom, but gives me a narrow-eyed glare as she passes.
Well, same to you, sister.
“Who the hell are you?” Doug demands, leaning over and lifting the blind just enough to allow me to see that he’s built like a lightweight wrestler, small, but muscular and compact. In the odd New York College campus
