Indian Hill (9 page)

I had to take a Greyhound bus out to
Colorado
because my mother was too pissed to spring for the airplane flight. It didn’t really bother me, three days on a bus was still better than the three days extra I would have had to spend with her. That final summer with her was a nightmare. She harangued me from the moment I got accepted till the day I left. “How could you do this to me?” “Why would you want to leave me all alone?” “Your father’s never here, why should you be!” Three days on a bus far outweighed
more of
the
same
. I guess the only thing that really began to bother me during that trip was the constant smell of urine. I don’t know do bus riders just pee wherever they are? They truly are a different class of passenger. Too cheap, poor, stupid or possibly a combination of all three to take alternate means of transportation. But that also has very little to do with the tale I’m telling. I got off the bus in
Boulder
,
Colorado
. Is it me or does the air in
Colorado
just smell better? Even the urine-bleach odor of the bus depot smelled a little sweeter.

I stepped out from the front of the depot and actually hailed a cab, I thought that only happened in movies, and directed the driver to the
University
of
Colorado
,
Boulder
. Apparently he was very familiar with college students, he hurumphed and grunted and I think actually passed a little gas before proceeding to take me on the exclusive city wide tour of
Boulder
, so forty-five minutes later and fifty-two dollars poorer I stepped out of the cab and right into the arms of Beth. No, literally, I stumbled on the damn curb and fell into the assistant  R.A.’s arms. Maybe the oxygen
wa
s a little thinner, but I don’t know if that could even begin to explain the swoon I felt when she touched me. Her fingers were electric, I don’t know if she felt it too or she was just reacting to the goofy look on my face, but she held on to me just a little longer than she had to before she propped me back up on my semi-stable legs. She was 5’2” of pure female perfection, her auburn hair trailed down her back just to the point of caressing one of the finest sculpted buttocks (okay asses) I had ever seen. Her almost oval face was dominated by a radiant smile and eyes as blue as the sea, but not your average sea, more like the sea off the coast of
Hawaii
. I felt from that one look she directed at me that she could and had read my soul. (But I actually found out later that she had felt bad for me, thinking that I was part of the Special Ed class. Oh well, not every fantasy can be perfect.)

“Whoa, you alright?” she said with a gleaming smile

“Uh, yeah, I don’t think I twisted anything,” I murmured sheepishly.

“Are you part of the…?”

“Yeah, I’m in the freshman class of 1988.”

“Oh,” she said, “Do you know which dorm you’re in?”

“Yeah, uh Baker’s Hall, room 312.”

“Oh, that’s great, I’m the assistant R.A. for that floor”

“That’s awesome!” I said a little too energetically, hope and desire surging through me.

“Alright, you should probably get your stuff and get to your room so that you can get acquainted with your new roommate. Oh, and there’s a floor meeting at
seven o’clock
tonight in the third floor lounge.”

“Thanks, I’ll be there!” Man, could I be more lame. The girl of my dreams is standing before me and I sound like a kid at Toys R Us, even my mom knew it was better to remain silent and be thought dumb than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I proceeded up to the  third floor, I was able to circumvent the elevators because everything I was bringing to college was either in the backpack I was wearing or the duffle bag I was carrying. Mother felt that I had no need to bring my stereo or any other personal belongings to school. “You need to just concentrate on your grades so that you can graduate and get back here as soon as possible.” As if I was going anywhere near the East Coast when I graduated. I guess I better get down to the registrar’s office and see which degree would take the longest amount of time to acquire. Maybe I could just stay and go for my doctorate. Deep in thought, I had my second near collision of the day, good thing I wasn’t driving.

“Whoa dude, what’s your rush?” a voice drifted into my daydream

“Sorry
no rush
, just deep in thought,” I replied, obviously without even considering my words.

“Are you stoned?” the voice came back.

“No I’m not stoned,” I said indignantly as I finally looked up at the voice ahead of me.

“Do you want to be?” he said.

“Paulie, how you doin’ my friend? How long have you been up here?”

“
A
t least long enough to deseed half an ounce and roll a fattie.”

“Awesome, bud.”

“Yeah it is awesome - bud,” and we both laughed at that. And then we both stopped to admire the fine looking brunette striding on by. Man she was hot and we both knew she wouldn’t give us types the time of day unless we asked it from the posh interior of a Porsche. But it didn’t stop us from admiring the view.

So that’s how I ran into my best friend at CU. Paulie and I had planned this from the get go. We had applied for CU in secret hoping to get as far away from our parents as humanly possible and still stay in the country. I was truly glad Paul had decided to take his acceptance here. My self-esteem and confidence were shaky at the best of times. But Paul always seemed to be one of those people that you just felt good to be around. He brought out the best in the people around him. When we both decided that we were going to college we figured what the hell, let’s apply to the same school, maybe we’ll get lucky. Whereas my mother couldn’t believe I was leaving her, Paul’s pa
rents couldn’t wait for him to go
. He had just taken his final bags out of the room and his dad started stripping the wallpaper. Something about a hot tub or an office. Paul didn’t know and he didn’t care. For him also, two thousand miles might not be far enough away. He was a couple of inches taller than me, and definitely the type of guy that ladies approve
d
of, dirty blond hair with piercing blue eyes. He was always quick with a smile and a joint. His laid back manner seemed to attract the ladies like a magnet. He was the kind of guy I had always strived to become, but I guess I just had too much of my mother’s uptightness in me.

“It’s good to see you my friend, step in to our palace.” He motioned with the wave of a hand. And unless I was already stoned I could swear he had somehow already produced the joint we were about to partake from.

“This is our room?” I asked

“What do you think man?”

“It looks like you’ve been here a lot longer than a couple of days.”

“
M
y parents were so stoked I was leaving they would have put my ass on a Concorde if it had been an option. I’m telling you I’ve only been here for a couple of days.”

I stepped into my new abode and into an alternate universe. He had the place decked out. There was a black light on, three different black light posters, one each of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Cream. There was a strobe light going off in the far corner, and painted in glow-in-the-dark paint were stars on the ceiling. I sort of had the feeling I sometimes got when I was
younger and
building models and I left the glue open a little too long. The room was laid out in the shape of two squares that offset each other, giving the room the appearance of a Z shape. Of course being the last into the room I got the half that opened up to the doorway. Paul half-heartedly asked if it was okay if he got the half that faced the windows. It looked like he had been prepping his side for the last twenty-four hours with the posters and the lights and the glow in the dark nightline. I acquiesced, with the only condition being that he help me get my side to look like his. His smile spread from ear to ear. Well, I thought to myself, if being stoned could make you that happy, bring it on.

We smoked, laughed and ate; he had a box of Devil Dogs, which we devoured in record time, in four minutes if my watch was working correctly. I learned a new card game called 45’s but I wasn’t sure if I’d even remember it when we came down.

“Dude, its
ten past seven
, we gotta go the floor meeting,” Paul said, half smiling.

“Oh man, I have no desire to be out in public right now,” I said, slurring or at least it felt that way when it came out of my mouth.

“
Y
ou’ll be fine, but you might want to wear some sunglasses.”

“Whattaya mean sunglasses, it’s
seven o’clock
and we’re inside.

“I know that,” he laughed “but your eyes are glowing.”

I looked in the mirror and could hardly believe the image that reflected back at me. I really did now look like a kid from Special Ed; the Devil Dog crumbs on my chin only amplified the effect. My eyes glowed like embers in a fire, and my lids drooped so low it looked like I was asleep on my feet.

“
U
se this, you’ll be fine,” Paul said as he threw a small bottle at me, which proceeded to bounce off of my arm and onto the floor. “Gets the red out.”

“Thanks man, I definitely appreciate this, I wish I had something that would take the buzz out, I really don’t want to act like an idiot in front of the assistant R.A.”

“You mean Beth?”

“Yeah,” I said with a sheepish grin.

“
S
he’s out of your league, she was a counselor at
a
camp I used to go to during the summer. She’s a great person but she’s got more ambition and drive in her than anybody I’ve ever met. I tried to go out with her for two years, and she was having none of it.”

“Oh, so you figure if you couldn’t get her nobody could, huh?” I said nonchalantly, but in reality I was thinking to myself, if he couldn’t get her there was no way on God’s green earth that I would be able to. “How come you never told me about her?”

“There’s nothing to tell. She was a girl, alright a hot girl, that I never went out with. Not the kind of thing I like to spread around,” he said mockingly, “Naw, it’s just that she was always looking ahead. If I remember correctly, in high school she was going out with some football player in college, a big dude. She showed me his picture.”

My hopes had been dashed. They felt as if they had been literally smashed against the rocks. Paul, seeing the change in my expression, spoke hastily. “
D
on’t sweat it, for every girl you can’t get, there are two you can.” It was small solace but it would have to do for now. So off to the third floor lounge we went.

“So glad you could make it,” Beth said sarcastically as she glanced up at us. To me it appeared as a knowing glance at Paul and a disapproving one at me. Or maybe it was just the marijuana-induced paranoia. The only thing I remembered about the next hour was that I didn’t drool, which is a good thing, and how mesmerized I was with the way that Beth would flip her hair away from her face from time to time. I hoped it wasn’t too apparent that I was staring, but Paul noticed and would nudge me from time to time as if to awaken me from my stupor. So began my college career.

The first few weeks of college flew by at a surprisingly fast pace. I even made it to some of my classes when Paul and I hadn’t partied too much the night before. But I had perfect attendance at my English lit class.  Yeah, you guessed it. It wasn’t the subject matter that did it, Beth had the class also, although we never talked in class. She was too busy taking copious notes (which I gladly used for study material before classes). We always talked after class, she had an hour and half break before her next mod, and I gladly pretended that I did also. Calculus, as far as I was concerned, could wait. At first we would be courteous to each other, say our pleasantries and then head in opposite directions, but after the first week or two we would begin to talk a little more, then eventually we would walk together and then on occasion we would get lunch together. After another week of beating around the bush, I finally asked her out on a date. The let down was almost more than I could bear.

“Beth, I feel like we’ve really been getting to know each other and I was wondering if you might want to go out to a movie or something,” I half stammered.
Damn
, it’s not supposed to be this hard.

“Mike, I like you, I like you a lot, more than I actually should.”

‘
H
ere it comes, nothing good can come from this,’ I thought to myself. The BUT should be coming at any moment now.

“But…”

Bingo, I was right

She continued, “I’m in a serious relationship with someone.”

“I know,” I said “With that football player from
Penn
State
, I just figured we could try like the song, and love the one you’re with.” Oh no, I didn’t really just say that, why can’t life be like the movies so that we could cut out a bad scene and have a redo. But she actually did laugh at that. Unfortunately, lunch after that conversation had an awkward quietude to it. I excused myself a little early so that I could attend the last half of my Calculus class. I must have been upset. So for the first time in two weeks I attended all of my classes, more so that I could think through this new development with a clear mind. If I went back to the dorm I would end up in some drug induced stupor. I attended every class, but only in the physical sense, I could not help but wonder if I had done the wrong thing. ‘Was it to
o
soon to ask her out?’ ‘Did I mess up a budding friendship?’ I mulled over those problems all day long until eventually I ran out of classes and had to return to my dorm, no more the wiser for my musings. Paul had heard about a huge party off-campus that night and asked if I wanted to go. I declined, I told him I was going to try and study.