The Boy in the Tunnel

by Gardner Linn

29.

“That dog has it in for me. I swear. It’s like every time I come home, it’s there, looking out the window, like glaring at me.”

“Dogs can’t glare.”

“Oh, it glares. And it’s like muttering under its breath too.”

“Shut up! The dog is not muttering!”

“It’s placing a hex on me, I know it. My neighbor’s from New Orleans, you know that, right?”

“It’s a voodoo dog?”

“Voodoo dog. Giving me the evil eye. It tried to bite me one time.”

“It’s a dog. Of course it tried to bite you.”

“But this was like premeditated. It was malicious.”

“Of course it was.”

“I’m just afraid it’s going to break down the window one day and jump out at me.”

“Break the window?”

“I’ve seen it happen. I used to dogsit for a friend’s pit bull.”

“And what kind of dog is this?”

“A Pomeranian.”

“Yeah, I think you’re safe.”

“You haven’t seen this dog!”

“Yes I have. I come over to your place all the time. He’s like the size of a grapefruit!”

“Then why’d you ask what kind of dog it is?”

“Comic timing.”

Dick was fascinated by the two girls in the seat next to the stairwell. He had never been able to carry on conversations in such close proximity to strangers—buses, elevators, waiting rooms, in line at restaurants or the bank, during previews at movies. A sense of decorum beyond anything required by the standards of public conduct compelled him to keep his thoughts to himself, even when friends tried to engage him in conversation. He didn’t understand how these girls could just sit there, jabbering about something of no importance to anyone.

Hold on to the sanctity of yourself. People will tell you “no man is an island,” but that is the rationalization of people who can’t bear to be alone with their thoughts because they have no thoughts of their own—they see themselves as trees in the proverbial forest, and are worried that if no one hears them fall, then they never existed. Be thankful cell phones are not yet ubiquitous.

You will be tempted here at UNWG. There will be opportunities to let yourself become part of something greater. You will want the waters to recede, to see the sandbar of yourself become larger and join a larger landmass. You will want to become a peninsula. You will want to stretch between two larger bodies, become an isthmus. You will find yourself strained as far as this metaphor.

A word about romantic entanglements: they have their advantages, to be sure. There are things to be recommended about them. It’s perfectly understandable that you will find yourself desirous of amorous contact, or even of a “relationship.” Or you may find yourself the object of such desires, no matter how far-fetched that might seem. College is when you select a future, and so many students try on new futures the way they would try on clothes, and someone may briefly consider you an element of a possible future.

You will have to make this decision at least once: do you want to merge your future with someone else’s, even if only for a night? It is a tempting idea. But know that if you do, then once your futures become disentangled (and they will, have no doubt), your future will be forever contaminated. The residue of the other’s future is a virus that will spread and grow, if you let it, until your future is no longer your own. Your future will have been hijacked by “What if?”

For some, this is not an insurmountable problem. They learn to live with it. The question is: can you? If you are unsure, perhaps it’s best not to find out.

The bus took a corner, loudly protesting the weight of so many bodies, so much flesh and water and air being carried into individual futures branching off from this one here, in the shuddering black body of the night.

********

Residents and visitors were supposed to enter Wintertree Hall by its two main doors only, both of which remained unlocked 24/7. These doors opened onto the lobby, from which residents could enter the halls proper by means of two security doors, accessible by swiping a valid student ID card. But there were other ways to enter Wintertree, some of them secret (e.g. the tunnels) and some of them not—for example, the north basement door, which was intended for use as an emergency exit, and for which only DUH staff and Wintertree RAs had keys. The door, however, was situated next to the small parking lot that food-delivery drivers and guests used, and so the door was often propped open by a fourth-floor resident who wanted his food or guests to come up the four flights to him, instead of vice versa.

And so Drew and Joanie were not surprised to find a chunk of concrete holding the north basement door open, allowing them unobserved entry into Wintertree with their prisoner.

“Always safety first around here,” said Kirkland. “I’ll have to bring this oversight to Marston’s attention.”

“Come on,” said Drew, “we’re going up to Tier Three.”

“You are such a freshmen. Don’t you know any of the shortcuts?

“What shortcuts?”

“Come on. The auditorium’s this way.”

Kirkland led Drew and Joanie down a short hall to the auditorium, a 90-seater with a small stage set a foot above the floor. “Backstage,” said Kirkland.

Maybe forty square feet of space behind the black curtain, with two doors on either side. Kirkland led them to the far door, which opened onto a narrow stairway.

At the second-floor landing was another door. “The key’s above the door,” said Kirkland. Joanie found the key on the doorframe and unlocked the door; behind it was a dressing room, a makeup counter along a mirror-covered wall, clothes racks and bewigged mannequin heads scattered about.

“Where are we going?” said Drew.

“Behind that,” Kirkland said, pointing to a rack of heavy parkas, costumes from the Wintertree Drama Society’s musical version of Fargo. “Move it away from the wall.”

Joanie slid the rack aside, revealing a blank white wall with a steel grating covering a square hole about a foot and a half on either side.

“You got a screwdriver?” asked Kirkland. Drew fished his Leatherman out of his pocket and pried off the grating. “I think we can all fit through that, right?”

“Joanie, you go first,” said Drew. “Then this guy.” Joanie crouched down and peered into the hole—the tunnel it provided access to looked tall enough for the two guys, but she’d have to hunch. She squeezed through the hole arms first, to minimize her broad shoulders, and disappeared from the dressing room.

“All right,” Drew said to Kirkland. “Now you.”

Kirkland knelt down to the hole, but as he did, something appeared in the doorway, blocking the light from the stairwell.

“Yo! What hell is goings on, bros?

*********

The cool thing about the Purple Pages was that they weren’t arranged like a normal phone book. None of that alphabetizing that was only useful if you knew who you were trying to call. No, Julian had discovered, it was like the Purple Pages were designed specifically for him. “The Girl Who Just Started Working at Weston Hall, Maybe Her Nametag said ‘Dinah’”: campus extension 1479. She had laughed at Julian’s weak joke about someone named “Dinah” working in a dining hall. She was a student, obviously, but she had to be at least nineteen, and Julian was only 34. That wasn’t weird or anything.

The voice on the phone said it would call back with another task, but the phone had remained silent for at least an hour now. No reason he couldn’t do a little telephonic exploration. “Remember That Guy Who Tried to Start a Fight with You in the Bathroom in Fifth Grade? Wonder What He’s Doing Now”: 701-264-8673. “The Girl Who Was Hiding in the JFK Room—Her Name’s Kenya Cassidy”: campus extension 2386. “Where She Is Right Now”: campus extension 4267.

Julian took another bite of pepperoni Hot Pocket, then dialed.

**********

“Chet, it’s...this is Kenya. Chet, if you’re there, pick up...if uh—if you’re Chet’s roommate, please pick up. I’m trying to find Chet....Anyway, Chet, if you get this, call me at...hold on...4267. Or just come down to the Student Activities Office at the Union. Something’s going on, and I just...okay. Call me when you get this.”

Kenya hung up the phone. Then it rang again, before she could regret what she had done.

She checked the LCD caller ID screen; it was blank. The red message light started blinking purple. Kenya answered the phone.

“Is this Kenya Cassidy?” a deep, melodic voice asked.

“Is this Chet’s roommate?” It didn’t sound like the way she remembered him, but she had only heard him say “Hello?” a few times, after all.

“Yes,” the voice said. “Is this Kenya?”

“Yeah. Do you know where Chet is?”

The sound of flipping pages. “Um, yeah, he’s at extension 9999.”

“Where’s that?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think you’re supposed to call him. He, uh...he said he didn’t want to be bothered.”

“He didn’t tell you where he was going?”

A pause. Then:

“Are you Chet’s girlfriend?”

“I guess.”

“Okay.”

“Why?

“No reason. Just...nice to talk to you.”

“Yeah, same here.”

“Chet talks about you a lot.”

“Really?”

“He said he wanted to know why you were in the JFK Room a few weeks ago.”

Every telephone on campus is connected to the University network, which means that any phone can be reached by simply dialing its four-digit extension from any other phone on campus. Those of you who aren’t fuzzy-headed West Campus denizens will realize that there are therefore ten thousand possible extensions; currently approximately 8,700 of these are in use. Of those, around 4,500 are residential rooms in the Family Delmonico and the Meadows Tower; the rest are various administrative and educational offices. Most of these numbers are listed in your Handbook (see pg. 124), but there are ten that are considered secret, and are only listed in the Purple Pages, of which only a handful of copies exist, and none are in the possession of students, so forget you ever heard about them. Of course, a student with far too much time on his or her hands could probably figure out the ten secret numbers, though calling any of the numbers might set in motion security measures to which most students would not want to be party.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t either, really. I’m just telling you what he said.”

“Well even if I was, how would he know?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Okay. So that’s 9999?”

“Yeah, but you probably shouldn’t call him.”

“Okay. By the way, what’s your name?”

The voice paused. Kenya heard more page-flipping. Chet had mentioned his roommate’s name once, but she couldn’t remember it. It was something short and blunt and vaguely embarrassing, like “Chet,” but it wasn’t coming to her.

“Dick,” the voice said. That was it.

“Okay. Thanks for your help, Dick. If you see Chet, tell him to call me at this number.”

“No problem.”

Kenya replaced the receiver, and the purple light stopped flashing. Out in the Union lobby, Everybody members kept filing into the Suttledge Room with their little white boxes. They looked happy, Kenya thought, because they were still pretending. Kenya had thought the Living Creatures were about pretending at first; she thought it was a slightly more sophisticated version of the “secret club” she and her three best friends had formed in third grade, a club that met in Amanda Masterson’s treehouse and whose activities consisted mainly of reading old Cosmos Amanda had stolen from her big sister and trying to emulate the models therein with similarly purloined makeup. But though for all she knew Dragan’s warning was part of some elaborate prank, things seemed real now.

Charlie was still locked in her office, doing god knows what.

Kenya uncradled the receiver and hit 9 four times.

© 2006 Gardner Linn