Circular Motion Part 13

"He gave me a riddle. He said, 'look at this watch, what time does it say?' And I looked at it and said five eleven. Then he said, 'what time will it be tomorrow?' and I just looked at him dumb and woke up."

"What did he mean?"

"I don't know. Look, I'd better get going." He had finished his sandwich. He stood up and put the dish he had used in the sink. "Oh, I was supposed to tell you there was a party at Lam Sig Delt tonight."

"Ya? Who's going?" Most of the other frats just go by two letters.

"Job gave me an invite at the beginning of the week and told me to tell you about it. I might stop by later. Adieu."

"Later." I thought he kinda rushed out prematurely.

When he walked out my phone rang. I picked it up. "h.e.l.lo?"

No one answered. I said h.e.l.lo again.

"Ya, hey, it's Job."

"Oh, how are ya?"

"Pretty good. I was wondering if you had eaten yet."

"Ya. They had spegetti."

"Really? Ok." He paused. "Would you wanna go down to Taco Bell with me fer a little bit anyway?"

"Sure." There was Wawa with a Taco Bell and a Pizza Hut in it down the street from me. Once when I was heading to McDonald's with these two other people we found this park hidden in the middle of a bunch of buildings on campus. It had trees and a pond. We got lost after leaving the park and couldn't find the McDonald's and went to the Taco Bell instead. This other time I went to the Pizza Hut and ate one of their pizzas and walked out without paying for it.

"Can you meet in the lobby?" Job didn't live in the same place I did.

"Sure."

"Ok, I'm down here right now. Hurry up."

"Bye."

I hung up the phone. Job's a good kid. Although sometimes he can get mental.

I had to go downstairs and meet Job. That's the one good thing about being social; you walk around a lot and don't have much time to think. And then you start to forget what's there to think about. I hit the down b.u.t.ton on the elevator. A door opened and I went in and the door closed. It started moving up though. I got off on the next stop and hit the down b.u.t.ton again. This time the elevator I got on was going down. It stopped on the 7th floor but there was no one there which was strange so it just closed and went down some more. Then it stopped on the 3rd floor and a cleaning lady got on. She stayed on the other side of the elevator. Then it stopped on the 2nd floor and the cleaning lady got off. When I got to the lobby Job wasn't there.

Job does that sometimes. Disappearing on you. A lot actually. I didn't feel like standing around waiting for him. It wasn't that I was annoyed at him or anything but I wanted to be around people. I figured I might as well go to that party. There's always one somewhere on campus. That's all there really is. Beer and s.e.x I mean. Someone once told me that being alone is what makes us human but then I read somewhere that only the Dark Side of the force requires you to be alone and I wanna be Princess Liea. Or Leia.

I didn't feel very poetic.

Job was there at the party. He was with Anne. They were standing against a wall. "Hey Job."

"Oh hi. You remember Anne, don't you?" Anne smiled with her lips but her face didn't really change. Very pretty people intimidate me sometimes. I keep on thinking that I'm not good enough. That's wrong though. I'm not good enough for anyone is what Lot would say. It's not hard to think when yer depressed. Everything spirals easily, ya know?

"h.e.l.lo," I said. Job neglected to mention the missed appointment but I didn't bring it up either. I guess I was kinda mad at him. Actually I don't think I ever liked him very much. I remember he had dumped this girl and cheated on her but that was a long time ago. (get thee to a nunnery) "What's going on?"

"Not much. Get some beer man." He pointed to the back where I guess there was a keg. Anne wouldn't look at me.

I started walking away but then Job asked me about Lot. "Hey, how's Lot?"

"He's ok. Don't worry about it."

I went to the rear and got some beer and started drinking. Sometimes I feel like I'm living a charade to keep everyone else around me sane.

I saw Lot again. He was holding a plastic cup half filled with beer. I think Marie was next to him talking to someone. She said something like 'but some guys won't even go out with me because' but I couldn't make out the rest. I walked up to Lot and starting talking to him. He wasn't really part of their conversation; he was just watching. "h.e.l.lo again Lot. Is the beer any good?"

"Ya you know I remember more of the dream. About the library." Lot didn't look so good. Like his hair a mess and his face gaunt.

"The library? What?" I meant 'what did you remember?'

"I remember leaving the library. I just walked out but it was strange... everyone was speaking the language I had just come up with. The Chinese stuff I mean. I heard two people talking about whether or not they should sleep together. And then I was talking to this professor and telling him how strange it was that the p.r.o.nunciation I made up for the Chinese was what everyone was speaking right now.

"I remember he had a major problem with the etymology for the language. No one had ever figured out where the word for death had come from.

"Do you have a pen?" he asked me.

"No." I had a pen and a notebook in my bookbag. But I didn't have my bookbag with me. My bookbag is pink and has the Tristero horn drawn on it in black marker.

"The character for death looked like this." He traced something on his hand. I couldn't really make it out though. "I knew where it was from and was explaining it to him."

"What does it mean?"

"I don't remember now. But I told him what I knew and he was amazed. I was amazed too. Although my logic kind of got messed up here. I was contemplating how amazing it was that in my time in the library the language of the outside world had progressed to the exact same point as my own made-up language had evolved into. It was like flipping channels and seeing the same commercial at the exact same time on two different stations."

I was really trying to pay attention to Lot. Something about time and coincidences reminded me of the picture of the strange attractor I had in my head back in the woods.

"I remember there was one word I got wrong though."

"What?"

"It was... I don't know. It had something to do with... I remember what it looked like though." He traced another symbol on his hand. "When I was translating I thought it looked like j.a.panese but it wasn't quite right. It had to do something with death and the conversation I overheard from the couple. Time... I wish I remembered. I asked the professor in my dream to help me with it though."

"Ya? What did he say?" I hadn't a clue as to what he was talking about. But Lot's mind seemed to be racing.

"He looked at me with his mouth shut and then averted his eyes. He said he couldn't help me and then I woke up."

"Weird. Why didn't he help you? I don't understand."

"What? I don't know. I don't feel so well. I'm gonna go back in the other room."

"Ok."

"I'll talk to you later." He walked away from me and b.u.mped into someone and spilled some beer on the guy's jacket but I think I was the only one that noticed.

Lot doesn't usually act this weird to tell you the truth. Before I left he was just kinda a quiet kid that gave people homework solutions when they asked him for it.

I took some beer from the keg but my cup was pretty foamy. I think I should have tilted more during the extraction process. I tasted it and it wasn't very good but I don't usually like the taste of beer very much. I never got used to it. What I really wanted was a root beer vanilla float.

Death

When I came back to the other room Lot was with Job. They were talking.

"You know, Lot's the smartest kid on campus." He told Anne.

"Really?" She looked impressed.

Lot just kinda smiled goofy. It wasn't very flattering. Once after reading a paper of his I told him I was really impressed and then he yelled at me for complimenting him. He said, 'It doesn't mean anything to me. It alienates me; makes me feel like I owe you something.'

"Ya, he got like a 1600 on the SAT's." Job had his arm around Anne. His fingers rode her hip.

"Really?" Then Anne had an idea. "If you're so smart, how did you end up at this school?"

Maybe she wasn't so impressed. Job laughed. Lot looked away from them both. He looked at me.

"The sun has set on this one. Learn from him," someone near me said like a fly in my right ear. I twitched my head to the side but I missed the fly. Instead there was a girl leaning against a bricked in fireplace. Her skirt was silver and short and her legs were long and white.

switch(future) { case self_det: _CS+=0x0090; break; case pre_det: _DS+=0x0132; break; default: _CS=_DS; }.

I had my eyes closed and her arms moved down my waist. I felt the skin through her clothes and her body through her skin. My tongue entered her mouth. I extended in and pressed against her. Her lips closed in around me; I pressed against her tongue and we contracted in opposite directions. My hand reached down to her skirt and slid it higher.

"h.e.l.lo." (time--;) "I like your shirt." I was wearing this metallic shirt that was black on the inside but turned red as you got farther away.

"Thanks." It was that girl I saw after Lot.

I don't know where I am anymore. "Have you ever seen static?"

"What do you mean?" I think I was the second voice but things are blurry at certain times in your life. "Like TV?"

"No, like pure static, like you open your eyes you the shapes don't fit any of your paradigms." But a third voice...

"What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"

I'm not sure exactly what happened next but later I was on a roof staring at the sky. The roof was slanted downwards made of asphalt shingle and there was a girl sitting next to me. It was night but the sky was like summer. Blue and comfortable.

"I wanna fly," she said. She was curled up with her hands wrapped around her knees and her eyes staring out across the other rooftops.

"What?" I didn't register what she said the first time. I was looking at the roof. The roof had these rocks placed in a pattern I couldn't recognize. It reminded me of this time I climbed a mountain and there were these huts on the way up that had stones on top so the wind wouldn't blow their roofs off.

"I wanna fly." Actually there were a lot of stars out. Like we were in New Mexico or a planetarium or something. She looked up and I think it was Pisces.

I had a T-shirt on and I looked down at my arm and could see the veins. "Why?"

I was thinking about that Doors movie where Morrison was on the rooftop with that Catholic girl except I didn't have any poetry to read her. The Catholic property is irrelevant. Sloppy coding.

She was humming a tune. I think it went something like 'Dat-dat-datta-dat-dat-da'. Her hair hung long over her head and she looked at me and her entire face lit up. "Flying is fun."

This one time a friend of mine went with me to a party. In the kitchen there was a keg and a stove. My friend was drunk and he turned on the stove and put this rag on fire. I watched the fire crawl over the fabric.

Maybe I said that out loud and I should put quotes around it.

From one of the windows under us I heard hip-hop. I think the party was still going on. The music was completely wrong. Asynchronous reset. I miss... what do I miss?

"HEY, I'M TALKING TO YOU!" It was that girl next to me. I think she was drunk. "I'M f.u.c.kING DRUNK!"

She sat with one leg stretched out and one bent Indian style. Her arms kept her propped up and she was looking at me expecting me to say something. "Sorry."

The girl slid down the rooftop and looked over the edge. "I'm gonna fly."

"Oh." She sat there and I could see her head bob back and forth. I think she wanted me to stop her so I moved farther down the roof.

"Hey you." She grabbed my arm and pulled me towards her. "Come here."

Stop. "Stop it."

She hummed 'Dat-dat-datta-dat-dat-da' again and then stopped. She was curled up with her head against her knees and started rocking back and forth. I think she might have been crying. I put my arm around her and she was very soft and small and frail. She started humming but quietly now. "Dat-dat-datta-dat-dat-da"

"Don't," I said. I didn't want her to get hurt. "Stay here with me."

"What's wrong with me?"