Alone Again Or | Page 9

the room.
"Want a hit?" the girl said. She had Jennifer's voice.
Jennifer turned around and reached under the boy's bed for her shoes.
She sat on the floor and began to tie her sneakers up. The girl stood in
the center of the room, and began to pirouette. Jennifer ignored her;
whatever the girl's legs looked like under the dress, Jennifer had no
desire to see them.
Behind her on the bed she could hear the boy mumbling in his sleep
and she began to hurry.
Water flushed into the dormitory and soaked the few inches of Jennifer
closest to the floor. The water came up out of the floor with lily pads
and an earthy smell. She felt the water slip up past her asshole and the
cold was unpleasant.
She stood up and began to look through the boy's drawers. She could
hear the girl, or someone, sloshing in the water behind her. In one
drawer she found a bottle of whiskey. She picked up his wet pants from
the floor and took his little brown wallet from the back pocket. In a
corner she saw a backpack crumpled on the floor; she put both the
whiskey and soaked wallet inside the bag and left the room.
Now that kid had fucked up dreams, she thought.
The dorm hallway was carpeted. As she walked by one door, the carpet
turned into grass and the hallways expanded into a field of soft green
blades. Children ran with Frisbees, throwing them at garbage cans.
Jennifer stretched her left hand out and felt for the wall. She used its

invisible existence to guide her until the hallway faded back in again.
She decided to risk a drink and stopped to take a long drink from the
bottle of whiskey in the hallway.
No one bothered her. She heard no alarm.
She stood waiting for the drink to take hold of her brain, breathing
quietly in case anyone moved or awoke on the floor. She knew that no
student was supposed to be in the hallways after dark. The student had
used a ceramic rope ladder to get into his room; he pressed conduction
card in his wallet and it lowered from his window. Most of the
University kids she had slept with used a make of rope ladder to get in
and out of their rooms at night. She sipped her vodka and remembered
one occasion; the mark had lived on the thirtieth floor and they were
both drunk. She'd been wearing a skirt and the wind had whipped up
the side of the building. She climbed the distance ass in the wind,
trying to concentrate on not falling off.
She tried not to laugh at the memory. After an estimated ten minutes,
when the back of her head began to tingle, she walked on.
No more visions of other people's thoughts and dreams troubled her as
she made her way out of the building.
Outside she walked quickly knowing a girl her age, just too old to look
like college age but with a backpack, would be suspicious to the
mayor's police at four in the morning.
I got that kid to sleep, she thought. I wonder if he's ever slept before.
She decided her probably never had and laughed. She considered the
possibility he'd find his dreams more psychedelic than his drugs and
smiled again.
She walked to her apartment building through the silent oil scented city
streets.

Her landlord was a thin man from South America, near the Gulf of
Mexico, where a single large government was the only government. No
city leaders with any power were part of the system. He'd moved to
America but got in trouble for having foc. It was still legal in his
country and as he'd told Jennifer one night he hadn't understood. But he
had enough money saved to buy a building in one of the outer circles
and outfit it with utilities. People with records could buy property in the
outer area of the city.
He was awake and outside when Jennifer approached the building on
the sidewalk.
He's always fucking awake, she thought. Until I get back home.
The landlord, Jacob, wore nothing but black pants and a white t-shirt
everyday. He leaned backwards with his hands pressed in his lower
back. Jennifer could see his ribs through the shirt and heard his back
pop.
"Hey, hey you, Jenny," he said in his raspy voice when she neared. He
was the only one that called her Jenny. "You have the rent? Or we
going to go at it? Huh?"
She fished in the backpack and handed him fifty dollars out of the boy's
wallet.
He gyrated his hips lightly