The Roommate Situation (4 page)

“And it became a business because?”

He shrugs. “I saw some stuff on eBay and thought, shit, I can do that. I was working after school at the factory my dad works at, so I saved up to buy supplies and went into business. Beat working in a fucking factory.”

I close our room door behind us. “And you sell belts and wallets and stuff?” Feeling him out. Wondering if Chuck’s chem tutor had been pulling a fast one on him.

“On one of my accounts.” He empties his pockets onto a corner of his desk.

I lean against the door. “And the other?”

“Belts and wallets don’t sell as well as some other things.” The toothpick moves to the other corner of his mouth. He stands with his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans.

I push off the door. “Can I see what you make?”

“Okay.” He strips off his jacket as he crosses to the bed.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to follow him all the way into his side of the room, so I stop between the lockers, my fingertips resting on one. Derek drops a box on the bed and unfolds the flaps.

From where I stand, all I see are lumps of white tissue paper with black Sharpie scribbled across them.

Derek takes one out and carefully unwraps it, revealing a black wallet with an iron cross stamped on the front. A chain hangs from the corner. He passes it to me. It’s smooth in my hands. Heavy. The smell of leather rises up as I open it to look inside. I lift it to my nose. “Nice.”

He hands me a belt next, brown with dark Xs burned along the length of it. The buckle’s old, nicked. One of those flea market finds.

Next I find myself with a handful of key fobs, butterflies and skulls burned into them.

“They don’t sell badly,” Derek says. “I mean, I wouldn’t drop doing this stuff completely. But for what I can get for them, the other stuff comes out more profitable.”

“Let me see the other stuff.” I drop the fobs into his palm, and I’m thinking, it’s true, that eBay account. He really sells that other stuff.

Because why else would he not just
say
what else he sells?

He wraps the items back in their tissue paper.

My heart’s beating a little faster, like in the cafeteria. I rub my neck, waiting. I’m not sure how weird this is going to be.

He crouches beside the bed and drags a box from underneath. The packages in this one are wrapped in black tissue, yellow Post-it notes labeling what’s inside.

“You sure?” he asks, raising his eyebrows at me.

“Yeah.” I move closer. If Chuck’s intel is right, I’ve already seen what’s in those packages, just not in person. I kind of really want to see them in person. See that these things actually exist.

The first thing he unwraps is a set of black wrist restraints, their buckles jingling as he lifts them from the paper.

As I take them in my hands, the blood rushes from my head. For something to say, I stumble over, “Different kind of buckle than a belt.” There’s a loop of metal at the end of the buckle’s pin.

“So you can lock them,” he says.

I jerk my chin, nodding.

He steps closer so he can show me how the buckle works. “After you fasten it”—his fingers touch mine as he takes one of the cuffs and puts its tongue through the buckle—“you slip a padlock through the loop. Then you can’t undo the buckle until you take the lock off.”

My throat is dry, but I manage to say, “It must be a small lock.” It’s a small hole.

“Luggage locks. You know, the little ones.” He slides open a drawer in his desk and fishes one out, holds it forward in his palm.

“Right,” I say.

“These are the base model. Hold on.” He takes the other cuff from me and sets them on their tissue paper before riffling through his box for another package. “These,” he says as he peels back the paper, “cost a little more.” They have iron crosses on them, like the wallet, and they’re heavier than the first pair. As I push the tongue through the buckle on one, my fingertips thrum, like the vibration of a guitar string stretched tight and plucked.

“I have different stamps I can use for different designs,” he says, “but that’s a pretty popular one. Now these—” He doesn’t bother taking the latest cuffs from me. He digs another set out of the box, still careful with the tissue paper but not as careful as before. He’s enjoying showing these off. I haven’t seen him so animated. It’s kind of endearing.

“I like this style the best,” he says. “Those others pretty much work like belts: you wrap one around a wrist, buckle it up, done. Pretty basic. I don’t even need to finish the leather on the inside.” The cuff he holds up now has an extension added, a narrower strip of leather riveted to the end. “These essentially go around your wrist twice, once with the wide part and then again with the narrow part.” He holds it out like he wants to put it on my wrist to show me.

I move both of the other cuffs to one hand, then lift my wrist. He puts the cuff against the underside of it and wraps it around, twice, just like he said. The narrow strap feeds through a slot in the wider one. He snugs the wide one down on my skin before bringing the narrow strip around. It’s like a hug on my wrist, a firm grip. It feels nice in a way. Comforting. Which is weird, because it’s a kinky sex toy.

My face gets warm at that realization.

“After you snug it down, you slide this strap through the D-ring, like it’s a belt loop.” He works as he talks, buckling my wrist in. I’m clutching the other cuffs still. “Comforting” is starting to move into different territory, aided by the edge of his hand pressing my skin.

He says, “With the other design, there’s a lot of play where the buckle is, where the ends come together.” He tugs on the D-ring. “But this design solves that.”

I don’t know what to say exactly. “Cool,” I try. It gets half-caught up in my throat. When I say, “What do you make besides cuffs?” it comes out like it’s riding over grit.

“Collars, harnesses, a couple different types of gags.” He unbuckles the cuff, his fingers expert at the hardware. “I’ve been trying to do a hood, but I haven’t been happy with it yet. There’s more to take into consideration, pressure points you have to avoid.”

I nod, like I know what he means, and let my now bare wrist drop to my side, resisting the urge to rub it with my other hand.

Derek tucks the cuffs back into their tissue paper.

“So, like…are you into this stuff, or do you just make it?”

“I just make it.”

This is a relief somehow. Not that it matters to me what he does, but at least I won’t be lying in my bed when he brings a chick home, listening to him strap her up. I say, “And it sells pretty well?”

“Yeah. I mean, there’s tough competition from China. eBay is flooded with it. Cheap knockoffs that smell like ass when you take them out of the box. I have listings on Etsy now, where people are more willing to pay for handcrafted pieces. I do custom stuff too, if it’s something I can figure out how to make a pattern for.”

“What’s the weirdest custom request you’ve gotten?”

He laughs around his toothpick. “You don’t even want to know, man. You don’t want to know.” He takes the other set of cuffs from me and wraps them back in their paper.

Chapter Four

As I take the cardboard box from my mother’s arms in front of the steps of Quaid, she says, “We parked over at your old residence hall and got directions to your new one.”

“I gave you directions to the new dorm.” I’d sent an e-mail so I wouldn’t have to answer a million questions about the room change.

“We knew our way to the old one,” she says.

“How are things, Dad?” I ask as we climb the stairs. He’s carrying a larger box—the winter clothes, probably. His head swivels as he evaluates the new surroundings.

I balance the box on one arm so I can open the building’s door.

My mother holds her pocketbook in two hands, exuding friendly inquisitiveness as she gets her first look inside.

“Things are well,” my dad says.

“It’s quite a walk,” my mother says. “You don’t have to walk that now, do you?”

“To Johnson? I still have friends there.”

“How far is it to the library from here?” she wants to know.

“Not far.”

“A little walking won’t kill him, Margaret,” my dad says.

I juggle the box again to open the stairwell door, then again to open the door to my floor.

“At least you’re not right up against the stairwell anymore,” my mother says as we stop midway down the hall. When I get the door to room 217 open, she says, “It’s dim in here.”

I flip on the ceiling light. “Just put it on the bed,” I say to my dad, who shifts my econ text aside to set the box on my desk. At least he
saw
the econ text, dutifully open beside a pad of notes from my last lecture.

He says, “Dark in here.”

My mom’s nose wrinkles. “Is that cigarettes I smell?”

If the floor of my room were to open up and drop me into hell, it would be a relief—as long as they didn’t fall in too. “My roommate smokes. Not in the room. Outside. Off campus. It’s probably in his clothes.”

“I wish you could have roomed with a nonsmoker. Your last roommate didn’t smoke, did he? I wish they could have kept you with him.”

I bite my tongue.

“I don’t understand why they had to move you in the first place.”

“I told you—black mold.”

“Will they move you back when they’ve cleared it up?”

“No.”

“Good. No wonder you were sick.” She’s standing in front of the curtain, looking it up and down as if she’s never seen a curtain not in front of a window before in her life. “You can never be sure they got it all, or the cause of it. It comes right back if you don’t take care of the cause of it. I hate to think of those three weeks you spent breathing it in. Is this your roommate’s?” Her fingernails touch the curtain.

Behind us, the door swings open. Thank fucking God. We all turn.

“Uh, sorry,” Derek says, half through the door, taken aback by all the eyes on him. “I forgot you were having company.”

I make a quick introduction, and he says, “Nice to meet you,” shifting his toothpick. “I’m just gonna—” He points toward his end of the room.

“Sure,” I say.

“Nice to meet you, Derek,” my mother says.

I close my eyes and hold my breath.

“Are you a freshman too?” she asks.

“Uh, no. I’m in my third year.”

“Oh, how nice. What are you studying?”

I clasp the door handle. “Um—if you want to get a table before it gets crowded… Saturdays at Tito’s can be kind of hectic.”

“Chemistry,” Derek says, holding the curtain like he’s ready to escape behind it.

“Chemistry! That must be interesting.”

“Margaret,” my dad says. “Let’s go eat.”

Derek and I trade a look of relief. I feel him—I don’t want to be interrogated by my mother either. She’s like a runaway train when she gets going, oblivious to all the flashing lights and people waving their arms.

I suggest walking. It’s not any farther away than their car, but my mom wants to ride there, so we hike back to Johnson and drive the quarter mile to Tito’s. With traffic, it takes us at least as long as it would have to walk.

“How are your grades?” my dad asks as he parks.

“Fine. Astronomy’s tougher than I expected. Public Speaking’s easier.”

“What do you give speeches on?” My mother turns in her seat.

Foosball, I tell them. I’m giving an informative speech on foosball.

“What ball?” she says.

“Table soccer,” my dad says as he gets out of the car.

“So you just talk about how to play it?” she asks.

“How to play it better.”

“And this is something,” my father says as we head to the restaurant, “that you have particular knowledge of?”

Chuck introduced me to it—and took ten bucks off me the first time I’d played it. The day Skip offed himself, I’d been thinking about nothing but the chance of winning that money back. “They have a table in the student lounge,” I say. “But for the speech, I interviewed some of the guys who play it well.” That’s a lie. I’d watched some of the guys who play it well, looking for what they did and how I could use it against Chuck. If it involves dexterity and timing, it’s something I can pick up pretty easily. Unlike, say, astronomy.

“That’s a good skill to develop,” my mom says. “Interviewing people.”

When we’re seated, I leave my menu lying on the table. I just want a burger. My mother studies hers with her forehead creased. My dad takes a cursory look before setting it aside.

“The interesting classes,” he says, with the sunlight coming through the window catching in the lenses of his glasses, making him look like there’s no one behind them, “will come later.”

“I know.”

“It’s just introductory stuff now, and getting your general education requirements out of the way. But pay attention to the introductory stuff. It builds a foundation.”

“I know.”

My mother orders a grilled chicken salad with iced tea, my father a sandwich.

The question of my guitar sits at the top of my throat, ready to leap out, but I need the right moment. The one where their guards are down. The food comes. They clasp hands and reach for mine. Right. I’d forgotten about this already. I bow my head, thinking about how to ask for my guitar. What’s the path of least resistance?

As my mother picks at her salad, she says, “Why does your roommate get all the windows? It can’t be healthy to live in a cave like that. You need sunshine.”

“I’m usually in class or at the library during the day.” Or the student lounge or holed up in Chuck and Pete’s room playing
DOA5
. “Anyway, I don’t mind. I kind of like the cave feeling. It makes it easy to sleep.”

“If you’re sleeping when it’s dark out,” she says, “windows don’t make it difficult to sleep.”

“The security lights shine in. Even with the blinds, it’s kind of bright.”

She forks her salad again. “Do you want me to send you some thermal curtains?”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“That’s my job, Shane. To worry about it. You can smell the cigarette smoke on that roommate of yours. What did you say his name was?”

“Derek. Mostly I just smell leather.”

Her nose wrinkles. “I smelled that too. He looks like one of those thugs in an old movie.
Rebel Without a Cause
. All he needs is a motorcycle.”