Come Tomorrow

Come Tomorrow

a short story by Jeff Minton

My last semester of college.  Mr. Copelan’s philosophy class.  I sat in the middle of the room at one of the long cascading tables that curved around the lecture hall.

Robert Durum sat to my right, a big shot on the Lacrosse team.  They called him “Rabbit.”

         He was a fast talker.  He had a girlfriend that he always bragged about.  A real life nympho, he called her.  Needed it every few hours or she’d flip.  Like that Wednesday girl in the movie with Samuel L. Jackson.

         The way he told it, his girlfriend had a heavy duty cell phone that would vibrate for two seconds every time she had an incoming text message.  Halfway through the semester they started up this thing.  Robert would hunch over in class, punch a few keys, wait, punch, smirk, then start punching and sending faster and faster until he seemed to start floating off his chair.  Then he’d stop, almost sweating, and he’d turn to me and nod and grin.  Once, he shoved his phone in my face after it was over.  It showed a picture of the aftermath.  A crotch shot, up close and personal, soggy white panties with clumps of hair popping out the sides.

         “She can’t get enough of it, man,” he said.

         The panties were white.  That’s all I could think.  Regular old cottons.  Stained a little.  Not the kind you wear out to a club.  The kind you stay home in.  The kind no one’s supposed to see.

         Rita Manchester sat to my left.  She was a poet.  She had a pink backpack and a whole collection of gel pens and glittery mechanicals and Garfield and Snoopy erasers that she never used.  Her handwriting arched just right.  Perfect cursive.  She could’ve been a calligrapher in another world.  Life was chocolate, she wrote.  It started out bitter and stayed that way unless you added just the right mixture of sweet and cream, and then it turned to heaven.

         Unless you hate chocolate.  But Rita never thought much about that.

         There was a heavy-set guy in the row down from me with greasy black hair and body odor.  He always had his laptop out on the table.  His internet buddies called him Mr. Mustard.  Most days he spent looking up spoilers for TV dramas, browsing through the news, looking at pictures of basketball players, or blogging about asexuality.

         We all sat in the same place everyday, underneath the same florescent tube that always flickered the same way.  Professor Copelan cycled through the same five plaid shirts.  His hair never grew.  He waved his arms and raised his voice and paused and looked at the class like they’d never get it and used big words that were all alike and you could count on it.

         Philosophy was the study of ideas, he said.  And that was the most sacred of all things.  That was what separated us from the beasts.  Every generation stood on the shoulders of the generation before.  And we had the opportunity to stand higher than them all.

         No one ever told Professor Copelan that Socrates had nailed all there was to nail a couple thousand years ago.  And Buddha before him.  And then Jesus nailed it again.  And Shakespeare after that.  And then Di Vinci and Beethoven and Mark Twain and Einstein and Orson Wells and Roger Waters.  That we don’t exist at all.  We’re just reruns.  That Rita and Rabbit and Mr. Mustard and the flickering light and his bumbling self had all happened before.  That it was all the same.

         “Pity is a four-letter word, Spencer,” he wrote on my midterm.  “And so is Fail.”  Because Professor Copelan knew the secret.

         Professor Copelan stood on the shoulders of giants, and he could see far.  He had figured it out too.  And so could I if I just climbed on up.  Then I could buy five plaid shirts and quote Socrates and make it sound somehow better because two-thousand years had gone by.  I could be another block in the tower.

         “Look at Rita,” he might’ve said.  “Rita’s a poet.”

         Of all the people in that class, it was Rabbit that had it figured out.

         He scored goals and cheered and hugged his teammates and went out and drank and laughed until he puked and went home and screwed his nympho girlfriend and he never thought about her white panties.

         I could’ve taught that whole class in under a minute, but I couldn’t figure out Rabbit’s secret.  I had just the wrong amount of brains.

         My Dad always told me I was a genius and that geniuses had to think different than other people.  Because he’s an idiot.  Just get through this and that will be better.  Just get through high-school and college’ll be different.  Just get through college and the real world will make more sense to you.  I held a 2.5 GPA so he would keep sending me my two-grand a semester, and I could keep stashing half of it away in a box under my bed for whenever it stopped coming.  Because if I wasn’t smart enough to die then maybe I was smart enough to live through it until I was.

         It wasn’t that black and white, as it turned out.  Living is a strange thing.  It’s all the same.  But then you’re stupid and you think it’s different, and you think something’s new, and you sleep again, then you wake up and it’s still the same.  It tricks you every time even though you see it coming.

         But then there are things in your life that you can’t figure out even years down the road, and you have to keep wasting forward while it loops through your head.  Because you don’t realize that it doesn’t matter.  It’s all happened before.  That you don’t exist.  You don’t realize that Kurt Cobain saw it too.  He saw how the world spun in circles and no matter how many songs he wrote he couldn’t say it any different and that chicks with white panties fucked for love.  You don’t realize that he never figured it out until he scribbled it down on paper one last time and ended it with a shotgun instead of a period.  You don’t realize he’s the genius.

         I left class sometimes and sat in the bathroom and thought about these things.  Rita, and Mr. Mustard, and why the MENS sign had no apostrophe.  If it was above the rules or below.  That this was something Socrates hadn’t ever thought to figure out.

         And that’s all there was left for me.  To find those little things that didn’t fit.  Then I would realize that they don’t matter either, and I could be done.

         “It’s gonna be sick, man,” Rabbit said to me on the last day of class.  “We got three keggers.  A beer pool.  Tits everywhere.  Shirts for shots, if you get me.”

         It got me thinking about the frat-house restroom.  If they’d have an apostrophe on the bathroom door.

         The house was more of a banquet hall where the boys gave their speeches and smiled for money.  Most of the party happened in the main hall that night.  There were snacks and drinks.  A hip-hop DJ hosted a game of spin-the-bottle on stage.  The paper signs on the bathroom doors read COCKS and CUNTS with no apostrophes.  The kind of party the cops could break up and say the kids were just being kids.

The kegs were hidden in the back.  Where they ate and slept and left their pizza boxes out for the roaches.  Back with the bongs and Jello-shots.  Where the girls bought beer with their shirts.  This was VIP, and Rabbit gave me a personal escort.  Because he was a fast talker, and I always listened. 

It was there that I met Rabbit’s girlfriend.  She sat in the corner, topless, flannel pajama pants, alone, head drooped against the wall.  She had straight black hair to her shoulders and bangs cut off at the brow.  She was skinny, pale, average.  I went over to her and put my hand on her cheek.  It should’ve felt like an odd thing to do, but it didn’t.  Mostly I wondered if it was cold.  She looked like a statue.  Dead, maybe.  I didn’t know who she was at the time.  Just a girl.  She had and a plastic cup of beer and perfect teeth and a scared look just like the rest of them.  Except she wasn’t.  She wore no makeup.  She watched the wall.  She thought.  And I’d never seen her before.

Her face felt feverish instead of cold.

She asked who I was and I told her we had already met and she said I don’t think so and I said maybe you’re right.

She put her hand over mine, moved it to her breast, held it there, and stared up at me, drunk and sad.  Her lips were flat and her eyes tense.  Her chest felt as cold as her face had hot.  I knew then that the white panties were hers.  I don’t how.  I just did.

Then Rabbit confirmed it for me.  “What the fuck you think yur doin’?” he said from behind, just before locking my head in his armpit.  His cock was colored blue with permanent marker.  It slapped against his leg as he pounded on me, and it grew a little.  He hit fast and he talked faster, and I listened like I always did.  He put me in a hold that stole my air and crushed my head.  The topless girls pumped their arms in the air and their tits became muscles just like the guys.  They were all the same.  This had all happened before.

I woke up in the dark with my nose in a pile of dirty clothes and something cold and hard in my ass.  A marker, I found out later.  The metal kind.  I couldn’t reach it.  My hands were hogtied to my feet with a plastic zip-tie.  A rag gagged my mouth.  I was in a closet, I suspected.  Naked.  My face on the floor and my ass in the air with that marker sticking up like a flagpole.    There was a pulsing throb deep in my head.  Crust above my lips.  Sharp rocks in my jaw. 

The pain was just the same as no pain, only it was there.

I could hear music thumping for a long time, and distant voices that gradually faded.  A dim blue light shined through the crack under the door next to my face.  The sounds slowly fell asleep.

I thought of what my parents would think if the cops found me like that dead in the morning, and I laughed so hard I accidently spit the rag out of my mouth.

The blue light under the door changed for a moment to yellow, then blue again.  There was a hard thud, heavy breathing, the creak of a mattress, then a headboard knocking against a nearby wall.  It became music.  The rhythm slowed and sped up but always went forward.  I heard deep caveman sounds that were never soft, and I knew it was Rabbit.  His girlfriend stayed quiet.

I wondered if his cock was still colored blue.  If it would poison her.  I wondered if her face was still hot and her breasts cold.  I wondered if she took off her white panties or just pushed them to the side.

It did not end as much as it fizzled out.  Thud.  Silence.  Thud.  Silence.  Creak.  Creak.  Nothing.  There was only the blue light and quiet for several minutes.  Then snoring.  A troubled sound.  Too fast.

I could hear her soft feet thump across the carpet.  A door squeaked.  The light turned back to yellow.  The door squeaked again.  Back to blue.  I could hear a toilet running.  Then, with the snores and the hiss of water, crying.  It didn’t last long and cut out to nothing.

I could feel her thinking.

Silence for a while.  I could smell Rabbit’s asshole in the pile of dirty clothes.  The marker was starting to bother me.  I squirmed a bit.  Tried to push it out but the thing grabbed hold.  My neck ached under the weight of my body with my cheek to the floor and my head turned sideways toward the door.

A skunky smoke smell mixed with Rabbit’s ass.  No yellow light came, but the door hinge squeaked and those feet moved again.

The marker was hurting.  I was thinking about it too hard.  I wanted the thing out.  I felt it growing.  Heating up. 

It didn’t matter.  But it did, and I couldn’t die, and I hated myself for it.

The footsteps came closer.  Then the closet door opened and the dim blue light flooded in so bright it burned my eyes.  There was a breeze almost.  Fresh and cool.

I could see her legs up to her thigh, standing there straight and still.  I felt her eyes on my back.

She squatted down.  Underwear and tits and lanky bones.  White panties and nothing else.  I wondered if she ever took those things off.  She looked at me for a long time.  Our eyes locked and swam together for a while.

She held it longer than me.  My mind started up again.  I felt the marker in my ass, hot and dry and huge and stuck to the walls.

I tried not to wince but it didn’t work.

“Does it hurt?” she whispered.

“Doesn’t matter.”

She looked at the marker, smirked, snorted in her throat, then took a hit off the joint she was holding and blew it in my face.

“I shouldn’t laugh,” she said, sticking the roach in my mouth and holding it there until I sucked in.  “Sorry.”  She snickered again.

“I’m fine,” I said back, blowing smoke, throat raw.

We were both whispering.

I wanted her to get that thing out of my ass and leave.  Or stay.  Or kill me.

She heard my thought.

She squeezed past me in the closet.  The marker tore out without trouble, but it didn’t help.

“Oh no,” she said, hiding a laugh.  “Cap’s stuck.”

“Leave it,” I said.

I felt her finger dig in.  It was a strange, hollow feeling.  All pressure.  Then a burn like my asshole was ripping.

“Just leave it,” I said, maybe yelling.

“I think they glued it.”  She giggled and apologized and giggled again. 

She spit.  Warm and gooey.  The pressure came again, and the burn.  I thought I would shit.  Her hand pushed hard against my tailbone while she twisted and pulled.  My sense of time distorted, eyes watering to blindness.

The pressure popped.  My entire body went limp with my bleeding ass to the ceiling.

Her face came down to mine.  She held the marker cap up for me to see.  “Wanna Band-Aid?” she asked, grinning with green and purple spotted teeth in the blue light.

I smiled too, I think.  I was dizzy.  I thought I might puke on her.

She clumped a wad of dirty clothes into a sort of pillow and then toppled me toward the closet door.  I fell on my side, hands still tied to my feet.  She stuffed the pillow under my head.

Parts of her body grazed against mine.  Skin on skin.  An arm.  A knee.  A sharp elbow digging into my ribs as she lifted my head.

She opened the door and a cold interior breeze blew in from the other room.  The blue light reflected off the back wall of the closet and burned my eyes.  I heard her feet thumping away.  Then back again.  The closet door shut.  The blue light faded to a thin strip that I could no longer see.

I could hear her breathing.

She knelt next to me and lay flat.  Her breasts pushed up against my back.  They were warm now.  Her hand went to her side, never touching me.  Her chin rested on my shoulder, her mouth just above my ear.  Her breath smelled like beer and weed and sex.

“He’s not a bad guy, you know,” she said.  “Just a goof.  Like Jackass kinda shit or whatever.”

Silence stole in.  The warmth against my back spread through me.

“My name’s Janna,” she whispered.

I was sinking.  Falling through the floor. 

“You can call me Jay if you want.”

My mind went empty.  Finally.  This was my time to die.  It all made sense.  She was the angel to see me off.

Then it was morning and Janna was gone and Rabbit was dragging me out of the closet by the zip-tie around my hands and feet.

The sunlight blinded me.  Everything pale and flushed out.  Rabbit’s blue cock hid behind a crisp denim zipper.  He wore tan Doc Martin’s and a button-up shirt with a thousand blue lines.  Gel in his hair.  Hemp necklace around his neck.  Short sleeves folded back and buttoned over chiseled upper triceps begging for razor-wire tattoos.  He could’ve been a Tommy or a Davin or a Jordan or a Brock.  The only thing that made him Robert was the kid in his eyes.

He was scared of me somehow.

I couldn’t see it then.  I just saw a bunch of faces that all looked the same.  He slid me across the floor and hard into the wall.  Then he cut me loose and pulled me up by my hair.  I was still naked.  Now I saw the blue marker all over me.  The words “Rabbit Food” across my chest.  A penis on my stomach.  A smiley face on the tip of my penis.  There was an arrow pointing to my ass, I later discovered, with the caption, “Par 3.”

Rabbit gave me a big smile and slapped his hand on my shoulder and looked me hard in the eyes and tried not to look scared.  “We’re just shittin’ you.  You know that, right?”  He leaned in and whispered, “But you tell anyone about this you’re gonna wish you were back in that fuckin’ closet.  You get me?  This is fuckin’ nothin’.”

I stared at him.

He slapped my face.  “I asked you a question, fuckhead.  Do. you. get me?”

I think I started to smile because his face went dumb for a second, and then started tensing up like he was trying to touch his chin to his nose.  That made my smile crack open into a grin.  I imagine he would have knocked me through the wall if I hadn’t have kissed him.

I pecked my head forward and kissed him on the lips.  I wasn’t thinking much about why or what would happen.  I just did.

His face went through a series of changes.  A moment of dead silence.  Then it settled and he grinned big and laughed and turned to his buddies behind him and said, “I always did like this little fucker.”  And he hooked his arm around my neck and led me around for half that summer until he got busted driving drunk with 172 open cans of beer in an RV full of intoxicated minors.

It was his grandfathers RV.  The plan was to circle the states.  Texas to Florida to New York City to Seattle to Vegas and back.  I was one of the five invites.  Me and Rabbit and Janna, and two other guys and a girl that were all the same.

I found that most of the restroom signs in the world just say MEN and avoid the apostrophe altogether.  I gave Rabbit’s life a real shot.  I drank and puked and screwed Janna once when we were both too drunk to remember.  But mostly I stayed sober and just looked out the window, or at her. 

The road kept moving.  I watched the pavement blur by.  The inconsistencies of the white lines.  You could never see what you were seeing because by the time you did you were seeing something else.  I thought of that flickering light back in Copelan’s class and how each flicker had its own miniature life that lived and died in an instant.  I wondered what Mr. Mustard and Rita Manchester were up to.  I thought of Janna’s white panties and how they were always white but they weren’t always the same pair.

We made it as far as Vegas before Rabbit went to jail and Janna’s rich parents sent her home on a plane and I found the cheapest motel I could find and sat and thought about those little things.