One night when I was in my room working on the book, I heard a noise at the door—not a knock but a trip and a bang and the door shivered open, squeaking on the hinges. I turned and there stood in my room one of the new students, who had transferred from a junior college in Missouri. I knew him by sight as an anemic creature promenading around campus in a fedora and black scarf, by hearsay as a product of New Jersey’s fetid shores, and by name as Isaac Allen. We had several classes together. The semester was two months old and I had never spoken to him.
But here he was at my door, a grinning, pale-wet apparition.
“Hello,” he said, “just dropping in as your neighbor, since our rooms are next to each other I thought I should pop in—you see, I was in the caf just now, speaking with your girlfriend and she said you’re a writer…are you writing now?”
He entered the room and inadvertently kicked the doorstop across the floor. He laughed, and sat down in the ratty blue armchair next to the desk, craning his neck to look over my shoulder.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m just trying to finish something.”
“What is it,” he said.
“Well, it’s a book. Maybe it sounds ambitious, but I’d like to finish it—well…
By the end of college?
Well, yes. That’s the idea anyway. It’s difficult, I said, it’s a slog.
Oh yes yes yes, he agreed, and then he became very serious. I write poetry myself, he said.
Yeah? I said.
Oh yes, he said, rather impressively.
I read poetry sometimes, I said. I wrote some once. They were pretty bad poems.
What poets do you read?
Well, I thought, I guess I like Hart Crane—
He looked at the mildewed ceiling and quoted:
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult.
I blinked. I really like White Buildings, I said.
I have not read White Buildings, he said, just The Bridge. My ambition is to memorize it in its entirety. But I really prefer Wallace Stevens.
Stevens, I said, …he did the Jar in Tennessee, right? And the Ice-Cream King.
He giggled. You mean the “Emperor of Ice-Cream”, he said. Then he became serious again, and said, Wait a minute and left. He returned with a thick paperback and commenced to read the “Emperor of Ice-Cream”. While he read, I listened politely and wondered why he had come into my room in the first place.
When he finished, I said, That’s pretty good. He smiled and nodded enthusiastically. Mr. Stevens is a superior poet, he said.
I’ll have to read him, I said. I had read Wallace Stevens and did not like his poems at all.
Do you ever read stories, I said, like novels or stuff?
Well, he said, there is one writer. Do you know David Eliot Foster? He wrote a good story called, “The Glowing Pyre of a Newborn Babe”. He giggled again. It is a good story. It is only two paragraphs long, he said.
Well, that’s certainly an accomplishment to write a good story in two paragraphs, I said. Hemingway has some good vignette-type things like that.
Yes yes, he said. He surveyed my room for the first time. I was embarrassed. My desk was a mess of papers and books. I did not own a hamper and my dirty clothes made a rather prominent pile. My bed was unmade. Well, he said, rising, I must go. I would certainly like to read your work if you would ever allow it.
He looked at me. I thought it was a strange look.
Well, sure, I said, as soon as I write something I think is good. But I doubt that’ll happen. I’m sure you know how it is.
He giggled very hard, saying, oh yes, you write something and think it is very impressive and the next day when you read it, you realize it’s shit, hahahahaha, don’t I know it!
He wiped his eyes and became calm. He inspected my shelves. I would’ve thought you’d have your books on your shelves, he said. He saw an orange plastic medicine bottle containing an antibiotic for a bacterial infection I had contracted. The infection was in my stomach and I had been vomiting daily.
You’re on the med train too? he said.
Um, yes.
I am as well, he said. I take stuff. Well, goodnight, and he left, the door squeaking shut.
I sat motionless. I reread the chapter I was writing. I wrote two sentences, scratched out one, and put down my pen. I got up and put on my shoes. Outside it was dark and drizzling—a black liquid night. The stars were hidden by the clouds. I walked from the dorm across the dirt parking lot, passing anonymous figures. Sometimes you thought you recognized a shape, but you never said the name because you might be wrong. I walked down the stone steps to the brightly-lighted cafeteria.
It was loud inside, with the dishwasher going and the kid scrubbing, banging around pots and pans, and a radio playing and a few kids at a table drinking tea and talking. Natalie sat at a long table in the back. I sat down beside her.
I thought you went to bed, she said.
I was going to, I said. Were you talking to Isaac?
That new kid? Yeah. He came over and talked to me. He asked me if we were together and how long we’d been together. It was a little weird.
He just came into my room, I said. It was very strange. He just came in and talked and left.
Well, I told him you wrote stories and things and he got very interested. He said, that makes sense, he has all those books on his desk. I thought that was weird: how does he know about your desk?
I prop my door open usually. Anyone walking by could see my desk. It’s so hot in the dorm. He made a remark about the medicine I’m taking. Apparently, he takes something. That’s what he said. He called it the “med train”.
Something for psychotics probably, she said. He was kind of shaking. He frightened me, actually.
Well, I think he went back to his room. It was just so strange.
I think he was high, she said, his eyes were crazy.
Something was wrong, I said. I don’t know. I felt like something wasn’t right. I can’t describe it.
We sat for a bit. She said, Do you feel okay?
I feel bothered by it. I don’t know why. I just do. I feel almost violated.
Well, maybe you should go to bed and actually sleep this time, she said.
In my room I read the chapter again. The book was about the people in my town, and life and trying to succeed and failing always. I liked the people in my town and thought they should be remembered in a story. I tried to write, but I kept having visions of Isaac. There was something about the look he gave me. I changed into my pajamas, and brushed my teeth. Still, I thought about him. I could see his face grinning, the skin pulled tauter and tighter until it ripped bloodlessly open, and there was the skull grinning with lidless eyeballs and curved teeth. I closed the door and turned off the light. I stood a moment in the darkness and then locked the door. Then I tried to sleep.