The Roommate Situation (22 page)

“Did the pictures come out okay?”

“Yep.”

“Did anything else sell lately?”

“A bit gag this afternoon.”

“We should take a gag photo sometime,” I say.

“I’m not sure anyone wants to buy a gag that’s already been in someone’s mouth.” He pops the lock on my wrists.

I let my arms drop to my sides, the backs of my hands against the floor, and I just lie there, too sated to move.

He says, “But maybe one of these days I’ll get around to making one just for you to model.”

“Yeah?” Slowly I push myself over—in the opposite direction I’ve been going all evening, so that I roll against Derek. “What kind?”

“Don’t know yet. I’ll have to think about it.” He rubs the pad of his thumb over my hip.

Except for having to take a piss, I’m perfectly content lying there half on the floor, half on him. But I do have to take a piss. With a grunt, I pull myself up. “I’m gonna hit the bathroom. Then I want to see those pictures.”

“And then?”

“And then— What time is it?”

“Almost eleven,” he says.

“Oh good. I still have time to work on the presentation that’s due tomorrow.”

“Slacker,” he says with a grin.

“I’d have done it earlier, but I was tied up.” I flash him a smile as I lean over him to get my swipe card from the desk.

Chapter Twenty-One

“The apparent magnitude of a star is a measure of its…” He looks up from the pages I’ve given him, waiting for an answer.

I bounce my head against the wall behind my bed. “Brightness as seen from the earth.”

He flips the page, chooses another random question. “The sidereal month is…”

“Two days shorter than the… Shit. The other month.”

A knock turns both our heads toward the door.

Derek says, “Expecting anyone?”

“No, but I was praying for someone to save me from this.” I uncross my legs and pad across the floor.

“Hey,” Chuck says, Pete at his shoulder. “Doin’ anything exciting?”

I hold the door open. “Studying. Come save me. Hey, Pete.”

“How’ve you been?” We bump knuckles as Chuck says, “Hey,” to Derek, who’s still relaxing against the wall behind his own bed, my study sheets in his hand.

“Uh, Chuck, Pete—Derek,” I say. “Grab a seat. Here.” I move stuff off my bed and dump it on my desk so Chuck and Pete have a place to sit. And I sit on Derek’s bed, far enough away to avoid arousing any suspicions.

“How’d T-day go?” Chuck asks.

“I don’t even want to talk about it.”

Pete’s leaning over the end of the bed to fiddle with a knob on my amp. “Where’s the guitar that goes with this?”

“One hundred and seventy-three miles away,” I say.

“Well, that’s useless.”

“It’s a long story. What’s up with you guys?”

“Chuck’s got a cockamamie money-making scheme.” Pete pulls himself back up.

“Yeah, hey,” Chuck says. “I was talking with my cousin about this over Thanksgiving. He graduated from UNCC five or six years ago, and he was telling me they did this to earn some extra cash, get laid—you know, all the perks you wish you had in your life.”

If he only knew. I say, “What’s the idea?”

“Okay, see, it’s like this. We scrape all our money together and put a deposit on a hall.”

“A hall?”

“Right. And we approach a few bands to get some entertainment going. Then we put up posters—you know, ‘come see this show; we’ve got an amazing line-up; hot chicks will be there.’ Or hot dudes, whatever. We sell tickets, right? Cheaper in advance, so we can get some cash flow. We use the advance money to pay the rest on the hall; then we put on the show, collect the door proceeds, give a little to the bands, and pocket the rest.”

“Where does getting laid come into it?” I ask.

“Are you serious? We’re the guys running a concert!”

“Right. That should have been obvious to me. Sorry.”

“I don’t really need to put on a concert to get laid,” Pete says, stretching. Grinning.

“Rub it in,” Chuck says. “Rub it the fuck in.”

“That’s what
she
said.” Pete chucks him in the shoulder.

“You can be the comedian everyone throws tomatoes at before the bands come on, okay?” Chuck says. “Now, where was I?”

“Banging chicks in the back room while the bands play,” I say.

“Right.” He grins.

“So,” Derek says, “is there going to be alcohol?”

“Um…I don’t know. Can we put on a concert with alcohol when we’re underage?” Chuck looks at Pete, who gives him a don’t-look-at-me look. He says, “Let’s assume no at this point, until I find out if that’s possible.”

“That’s going to cut into your sales,” Derek says. “How much were you thinking of charging?”

“I haven’t done the math yet, but—”

“Because you’ll need to knock that in half if there’s no alcohol. Also.” Derek straightens and takes the toothpick from his mouth. “You’ll be responsible for any damage to whatever place you manage to rent, so if someone punches a wall or rips out the paper towel dispenser in the bathroom, there goes a big chunk of your profits, assuming you have enough profit to cover it and don’t have to reach into your own pocket to pay it off. How old are you?” He’s rolling the toothpick between his fingers as he talks, and I’m trying not to stare at his fingers, the squared-off nails, the ragged edge of a hangnail on his thumb.

“Eighteen,” Chuck says.

Derek points the toothpick at Pete, who says, “Eighteen.”

“So then you have the problem of finding a place willing to rent to eighteen-year-olds. And we’re talking a concert at night—loud, late, lots of obnoxious college kids who probably got wasted before they showed up. You’re going to have to find someone willing to rent to eighteen-year-olds under those conditions.”

“No offense, bro, but you’re a major fucking downer,” Chuck says.

“I’m not saying it couldn’t be done. I’m just saying it might take a lot of work, and you might not make anything off it. But if you want to do it, you should look into it. Get some real numbers, talk to places that might be able to rent you space. Fuck, talk to students living off campus and see if you can find anyone who, A, has a basement and, B, might be willing to rent it out to you for a night on the QT. But remember—anyone underage gets caught with alcohol, or anyone gets busted with drugs at your show, it’s the people in the house that the shit’s going to come down on the hardest. So you’ve gotta have some respect, and you’ve gotta manage the event, right up through the end, no big-manning it to get in with the ladies till the show’s over.”

“Dude,” Chuck says. “That is an amazing fucking idea. Rent a basement! We can probably get that for way less than a hall.”

“There you go.” Derek puts the toothpick in his mouth and leans back.

“So…” Pete says. “Do you…you know, really make bondage gear and sell it online?”

Derek hooks a thumb toward the boxes piled by his desk. “Right over there.”

“No shit?” Chuck says.

Derek answers with a lift of his eyebrows.

“What got you into that?” Chuck asks. “I mean, like…you don’t just wake up one morning all, ‘I’m gonna make a leather dildo today and put it on eBay!’ Or do you?”

Derek laughs. “I never thought about making a leather dildo.”

“So what got you into it?”

“My grandmother.”

Chuck holds up his hand, his cheeks pinkening. “No. No. I don’t want to hear the rest. You can save that story for Jerry Springer or some shit.”

Derek just smiles, reclining against the wall.

“Do you use it or just sell it?” Pete asks.

Derek’s answer is a little tilt of his head. He tongues the toothpick to the other side of his mouth.

And I have an unbelievably quick and uncomfortable hard-on watching all of this, my secret enigma of a boyfriend sitting there talking bondage gear.

Chuck says to me, “Do you have to bury your head under the pillow a lot, drown out the moans and the cracks of the whip?”

Now I’m probably the one turning red. I just laugh. “It’s not like that.”

“Well,” Derek says. “I’m gonna go have a smoke while you tycoons work out your partnership arrangements.”

“You don’t happen to want in on an entertainment venture, do you?” Chuck asks. “It’d be handy if we did need someone older when we go to rent a place.”

“Tell you what. Do your research. Put a business plan together. Leave out the section where you plan on how to get laid out of this. I’ll take a look and see if it makes sense.” He shrugs on his jacket. I enjoy watching him shrug on his jacket—and talk with my friends and see them all getting along. I could get used to this sort of thing…as long as my friends knew when to leave, because, goddamn, I want to pin Derek to a bed and rub my crotch all over him.

“Hey, sounds good, man,” Chuck says, offering his hand. Pete gives him a nod. And Derek heads out the door.

When it shuts, Chuck says, “Shit. I’m glad we came to talk to you about this. Fucking basements! Are you interested?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any money to contribute anyway.” Because I’m apparently saving for a guitar again. At this point, I don’t even want my guitar back. They can fucking keep it. It’s all tainted with their fucking bullshit.

“Well, get your guitar from a hundred seventy whatever fucking miles away it is, and get some other guys together, and you can be one of the bands.”

“I’ll just snap my fingers and make it so,” I say.

“What about your parents?” he asks. “Can you fleece them for some cash?”

I laugh sharply. “Yeah, that’s not happening right now. I should get some money for Christmas, but I don’t know if I’m going to need it for something else yet.”

“While it’d be boss to pull something off before break, there’s no way that’s fucking happening,” Chuck says. “So that’d probably work out. I’d like to make something happen in January, the beginning of February at the latest. That’s a good time—the middle of the fucking winter, everyone’s miserable. Maybe we can make it a surf theme—wear your board shorts and Hawaiian prints for a dollar off the door price. You know any Beach Boys songs?”

“Dick Dale’s more my thing,” I say.

“No clue what you’re talking about.”

“What about you, Pete?” I ask. “Has he talked you into this?”

“He hadn’t, but I’m starting to come around. A little. Maybe. We’ll see how the research pans out.”

“Runnin’ a business like a boss.” Chuck grins. Then he’s on his feet in one move. “All right. Lots of research to do. I’m gonna get on it. Pete?”

“Yeah, I’m coming.” He slides off the bed.

I get up to show them to the door—not that they couldn’t see it, sitting right there in the wall. As he leaves, Chuck says, “We’ll have a meeting about this. Friday.”

“Gotta work,” Pete says.

“Saturday.”

“I get off at five.”

“Saturday at five thirty,” Chuck says. “Our room. All interested potential investors should attend.”

“I’ll let Derek know,” I say, one hand in my back pocket, the other on the door.

And then I’m alone. I pick up my study notes from Derek’s bed and stick them in my textbook. I strip off my shirt and toss it in my locker. I turn on a desk lamp and turn off the overhead light.

When I hear the keycard in the door, I yank it open, catch Derek by the jacket collar, and haul him inside.

* * * *

Lying with his head on my arm in our doubled beds, with the glow of the security light coming through windows, I say, “What do you think of Chuck’s idea? Could it work?”

“They wouldn’t be the first people to put on DIY shows,” he says. “The trick will be finding a place or places to do it. And if it’s a residential area, he’s not going to want to put up posters—there are noise ordinances, zoning laws. You don’t want to give cops—or neighbors—a heads-up so they can shut it down before it even starts. But.”

“But?”

“But we’re probably not talking much money anyway,” he says as I trace circles on his stomach. “Say you can fit forty, fifty people in someone’s basement—say you can get forty, fifty people to even come. They each pay five bucks to get in; that’s two hundred fifty dollars. You’re renting the place—peel off a hundred for that, minimum. You’ve gotta give the bands something. Let’s say you’ve got two bands, fifty bucks each. That leaves you with fifty to cover any other expenses you’ve incurred, then split the rest between all the partners. You could make more money off a game of foosball, right?”

“If you could find someone willing to put money on foosball, instead of just Mountain Dews. You weren’t thinking through all this while we were having sex, were you?”

“Nah, while I was out smoking.”

“So what if they go with the hall rental instead?” I say. “A place that holds a hundred, two hundred people.”

“Just because it holds that many doesn’t mean that many will come. And you’re looking at higher rental costs. But at least you can put posters up, market the hell out of it. But that costs money too.”

“Okay, back to the basement. What if we just charged more money?”

“Yeah, I just threw five bucks out there because, as a poor college student, that’s low enough that I might consider paying it.” He rolls onto his side, props himself on an elbow. “Maybe. If you were going.” He smiles at me. I smile back.

“How much does it cost to go see a local band around here?” he asks. “The kind of bands Chuck would be trying to get?”

“I don’t know. We should go to a concert sometime.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah?” I say.

“Sure.”

“Sweet!”

Chapter Twenty-Two

While a classmate gives a persuasive talk on increasing the minimum wage, I take a quick look at my phone. There’s an e-mail notification from the mail center saying I’ve received a package.

I sure hadn’t ordered anything; maybe it’s a peace offering from my parents.

Maybe it’s my guitar.

After class, I swing by the counter with my ID, just before they close up. The student I give my info to goes into the back room, leaving me reading the notices posted on the wall.

I’m growing more certain by the minute that it’s my guitar. My parents have caved before. It’s actually happened. Like, my stereo?

My fingertips tingle as if they’ve just brushed the strings.