"Jeez. Are you okay? Did you have a bad experience?" "Don't put me on the defensive. Casimir, our friendship has been just fine as it is. Why should I fantasize about what a friendship might turn into, when the friendship is fine as is? You've got to live in the real world, Casimir."
"What's wrong with me?"
The poor guy just did not understand at all. There was no way to help him; Sarah went ahead and spoke her lines.
"Nothing's wrong with you. You're fine."
"Then what is the problem?"
"Look. I sleep with people because there's nothing wrong with them. I don't fantasize about relationships that will never exist. We're fine as we are. Sex would just mess it up. We have a good friendship, Casimir. Don't screw it up by thinking unrealistically."
They sat in the dark for a while. Casimir was being open-minded, which was
good, but still had trouble catching on. "It's none of my business, but just
out of curiosity, do you like sex?"
"Definitely. It's a blast with the right person."
"I'm just not the right person, huh?"
"I've already answered that six times." She considered telling him about herself and Dex Fresser in high school. In ways– especially in appearance– Casimir was similar to Dex. The thing with Dex was a perfect example of what happened when a man got completely divorced from reality. But Sarah didn't want the Dex story to get around, and she supposed that Casimir would be horrified by this high school saga of sex and drugs.
"I think I'll do my laundry now, since I'm up," she said.
"I'll walk you home."
A few minutes later they emerged into a hall as bright as the interior of a small sun. The dregs of a party in the Social Lounge examined them as they awaited an elevator, and Sarah was bothered by what they were assuming. Maybe it would boost Casimir's rep among his neighbors.
An elevator opened and fifty gallons of water poured into the lobby. Someone had filled a garbage can with water, tilted it up on one corner just inside the elevator, held it in place as the doors closed, and pulled his hand out at the last minute so that it leaned against the inside of the doors. Not greatly surprised, Sarah and Casimir stepped back to let the water swirl around their feet, then threw the garbage can into the lobby and boarded the elevator.
"That's the nice thing about this time of day," said Casimir. "Easy to get elevators."
As they made their way toward the Castle in the Air, they spoke mostly of Casimir's mass driver. With the new funding and with the assistance of Virgil, it was moving along quite well. Casimir repeatedly acknowledged his debt to Ephraim for having done the talking.
They took an E Tower elevator up to the Castle in the Air. A nine-leaved marijuana frond was scotch-taped over the number 13 on the elevator panel so that it would light up symbolically when that floor was passed. In the corridors of the Castle the Terrorists were still running wild and hurling their custom Big Wheel Frisbees with great violence.
Casimir had never seen Sarah's room. He stood shyly outside as she walked into the darkness. "The light?" he said. She switched on her table lamp.
"Oh." He entered uncertainly, swiveling his bottle-bottom glasses toward the wall. Conscious of being in an illegally painted room, he shut the door, then removed his glasses and let them hang around his neck on their safety cord. Without them, Sarah thought he looked rather old, sensitive, and human. He rubbed his stubble and blinked at the forest with a sort of awed amusement. By now it was very detailed.
"Isotropic."
"You saw what?"
"Isotropic. This forest is isotropic It s the same in all directions. It doesn't tend in any way. A real forest is anisotropic thicker on the bottom thinner on the top. This doesn't grow in any direction it just is."
She sighed. "Whatever you like."
"Why? What's it for?"
"Well– what's your mass driver for?"
"Sanity."
"You've got your mass driver. I've got this."
He looked at her in the same way he had been staring at the forest. "Wow," he said, "I think I get it."
"Don't go overboard on this," she said, "but how would you like to attend something dreadful called Fantasy Island Nite?"
So nervous was Ephraim Klein, so primed for flight or combat, that he barely felt his suitcases in his hands as he carried them toward his room. What awaited him? He had left a week ago for Thanksgiving vacation. He had waited as long as he could– but not long enough to outwait John Wesley Fenrick and three of his ugly punker friends, who leered hungrily at him as he walked out. The question was not whether a prank had been played, but how bad it was going to be. Hyperventilating with anticipation, he stopped before the door. The cracks all the way around its edges had been sealed with heavy grey duct tape. This prank did not rely on surprise. He pressed his ear to the door, but all he could hear was a familiar chunka-chunka-chunk. With great care he peeled back a bit of tape.
Nothing poured out. Standing to the side, he unlocked the door with surgical care. There was a cracking sound as the tape peeled away under his impetus. Finally he kicked it fully open, waited for a moment, then stepped around to look inside.
He could see nothing. He took another step and then, only then, was enveloped in a cloud of rancid cheap cigar smoke that oozed out the doorway like a moribund genie under the propulsion of the Go Big Red Fan.
Incandescently furious, he retreated to the bathroom and wet a T-shirt to put over his face. Thus protected he strode squinting down the foggy hallway into the lifeless room.
The only remaining possessions of John Wesley Fenrick's were the Go Big Red Fan and most of a jumbo roll of foil. He had moved out of the room and then covered his half of the room with the foil, then spread out on it what must have been several hundred generic cigars– it must have taken half an hour just to light them. The cigars had all burned away to ash, which had been whipped into a blizzard by the Go Big Red Fan on its slow creep across the floor to Ephraim's side. The room now looked like Yakima after Mount Saint Helens. The Fan had ground to a halt against a large potted plant of Ephraim's and for the rest of the week had sat there chunk-ing mindlessly.
He checked a record. To his relief, the ash had not penetrated to the grooves. It had penetrated everything else, though, and even the Rules had taken on a brown parchmentlike tinge. Ephraim Klein took little comfort in the fact that his ex-roommate had not broken any of them.
He cranked open the vent window, set the Go Big Red Fan into it, cleared ash from his chair, and sat down to think.
Klein preferred to live a controlled life. He never liked to pull out all the stops until the final chord. But Fenrick had forced him to turn revenge into a major project and Klein did not plan to fail. He began to tidy his room, and to unleash his imagination on John Wesley Fenrick.
"Sarah?"
"Huh?"
"Did I wake you up?"
"No. Hi."
"Let's talk."
"Sure." Sarah rolled over on her stomach and propped ~ herself up on her elbows.
"I hope you're comfortable sleeping down there."
"Listen. Anyplace is more comfortable than my room when a party's going on above it."
"I don't mind if you want to share a bed with me Hyacinth. My sister and I slept together until I was eleven and she was twelve."
"Thanks. But I didn't decide to sleep down here because I don't like you, Sarah."
"Well, that's nice. I guess it's a little small for two." There was a long silence. Hyacinth sat up on her sleeping bag, her crossed legs stretching out her nightgown to make a faint white diamond in the darkness of the room. Then, soundlessly, she got up and climbed into bed with Sarah. Sarah slid back against the wall to make room, and after much giggling, rolling around, rearrangement of covers and careful placement of limbs they managed to find comfortable positions.