Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

“I just don’t understand why you refuse to shave or at least trim your beard, Tristan.” I stood in front of my housemate, an Abraham Lincoln look-alike.

“Do you mind, Haley? I’m in the middle of breakfast and you are fully aware that I dislike disturbances, especially when they consist of your petty remarks.” Tristan must have been addressing my reflection in his earthen mug of green tea. “Lay off the whole beard thing, why don’t you. What am I, an organism you need to observe and criticize on a strict schedule?”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Your words drowned in the bristly no man’s land between your lips and that tea.” I sat down opposite him, picked up my spoon, and shoveled it into the pink grapefruit in front of me. A house all my own would be nice. I could eat breakfast unmolested by housemates.

Tristan is one of those “special” people who latches onto an obscure ideal, much like a leach clings to your ankle after wading in Lake Superior. He believes that people should be seen and not heard in the mornings. I couldn’t believe he continued to enforce his anti-morning person sentiments on all six of us living in the house. Every morning that I had the misfortune of seeing him, I remembered the petition in my desk drawer demanding that he stay in his room until noon.

Adrian, who sat at my left, glanced up and rolled his eyes at us. He is usually quiet and likes to hide in his world of photography and beatnik poetry. I like him a lot. I asked him one morning what made him smile so often, but he didn’t answer. He just did a jig the rest of the way to his room.

I live in a house full of contradictions like Tristan and Adrian. They’re only two of the other four who live here. We do our best to act like a big family or a well-behaved and peaceful community at least. I have to remind myself at times that, by definition, utopia can’t exist.

My room is on the second floor. When I found out that Tristan, an academic rival from high school, would be living with us, I demanded first dibs on whichever floor he was not. The thought of sharing a bathroom with him revolted me. My friend Carissa lives in the room next to mine. Her boyfriend comes over every night and leaves promptly at six o’clock the next morning. She doesn’t know how or why people could disbelieve Brittney Spear’s claims of virginity. Empathy, I guess.

“Hey, are you packed for our trip yet?” Mark, another of my housemates, made me jump and poke myself in the nose with the hairpin I was about to place next to my ear. I hadn’t heard his soft footsteps behind me. “Woah, a bit jumpy. Got a secret to hide?” He inquiered, nudging my arm conspiratorially. “Following Carissa’s lead and stashing a boyfriend in there, aren’t you. Oh, by the way, what’s up with Tristan this morning? He seems entirely too disgruntled—even for him.”

“Yeah, well, to answer your rapid list of questions: I am packed. I am boyfriendless and therefore not stashing anyone in my room. And I am more than ready to leave Tristan’s bristly presence for a few days.” Mark and I walked down the rest of the hallway to my room. “The Tristan episode should fade pretty quickly,” I told him, rubbing the sore spot on my nose. “Maybe.” I added as an afterthought. One couldn’t really be sure when Tristan would decide to lighten up. “Hey, aren’t you going to be late for your name change appointment, or whatever?”

“No, it’s all under control. You’re coming to the funeral later, aren’t you?”

“The funeral? Who died?” I’m always the last to know about these important affairs. Sure, I know the size of Noah’s Ark (four hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high) and the juicy details about people’s sex lives (Mark, for instance, was guilty of hiding his “Mistress Guinevere” in his room while telling his girlfriend he “really couldn’t go to the play afterall”) or lack thereof (do I even need to mention the obvious truth about Tristan?); but major things like funerals tend to escape me. I ran through the list of all the invalids I could think of, but hadn’t heard about any of them dying recently. “Oh, right.” I said the words as if the idea had suddenly come to me and was positively grateful that Adrian stood behind Mark with the answer written in large letters on his notebook. “The funeral for your name. How could I have been so forgetful? But Mark, aren’t you taking this personal rediscovery a bit too far?”

“Of course not.” Mark was adament. “I just feel that the name Melvin suits the New Me much better. Don’t you? Plus, I want to have a sense of closure on my life as a Mark. Did you know the awful meaning to that name? It means “warlike,” and I have just joined the local pacifist organization. A name like Mark just wouldn’t do.”

“Uh-huh. And Melvin “the polished chief” sounds just like you. I can see the need for a change.” Sarcasm, isn’t it grand? “I’ve got to run, though. I’ll see you later this afternoon. Hey, could you take a look at this paper and sign it sometime? I think it should take care of the Bearded One’s morning sickness.” I handed Mark-slash-Melvin the petition before grabbing my backpack and a granola bar off my desk.

Late as usual for the first of my two classes that day, I rushed back down the hall to the stairs, passing Melvin the Polished Pacifist Chief on the way. He was humming a song I had learned in pre-school, "Where is Thumbkin," and I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was also performing the corresponding hand motions.

“Where is Thumbkin?” I sang the words to the first line. “Where is— Excuse me, can I get by?” Carissa’s boyfriend, Jeremy, had forgotten to set the alarm clock that morning and was a couple of hours late in leaving the house. He made up for his hypersomnia by kissing and groping Carissa in the middle of our narrow stairway. I had chosen a bad day to wear my stiff and clunky combat boots and so plummeted down the stairs. It didn’t help that my backpack weighed at least twenty pounds and wanted nothing other than to propel me forward. Carissa and Jeremy, or Rush as we call him, didn’t see me falling and soon joined my rapid descent to the hardwood floor. I felt like a cartoon character, so I went with the feeling and imagined tiny yellow birds circling our heads as we stood up from the pile that my typical gracefulness had created.

“I am so sorry. Are you guys alright?”

They nodded. Rush pulled Carissa up and brought her face to his, resuming their previous kissing and groping stance. They seemed unharmed and unfazed, so I ignored them, trying to laugh at my untimely bout of clumsiness. Tristan stepped around the corner and I stopped laughing. Still on the cartoon kick, I imagined a twenty-ton anvil dropping on his head.

“Everything stable over here? I knew you would kill someone with those boots sometime soon, Haley.” Concern had flickered out of his eyes as soon as he saw me tighten my bootlaces.

“Yeah, so why don’t you come over here then and I’ll get started on my killing spree.”

“Forsooth!”

“Damnit, Tristan, will you just shut up! Your obsession with the nineteenth century has seriously gone too far.”

He bowed. I swear I’ll never date a history major. I looked for an imaginery red button to open a trap door beneath his feet as he straightened his back and his tie. He began his daily recitation of the Gettysburg Address to his reflection in the window. This aggravated my annoyance, so I dropped a fifty-ton anvil on his head. Hmm, maybe next time I’ll pluck each offensive bristle from his Lincoln look-alike beard – I’ll have to narcotize him some night after he has been particularly goading and obnoxious. Too bad I couldn’t do it then; it would have set me back even later and I still needed to catch my bus.

To Be Continued