CALVIN

three: the good sofa

"Kann ich eine kleine cappuccino haben bitte?"

"Your German gets worse every day," Patrick said at my side. 

"Like you could do better," I mumbled, fishing for coins in my coat pocket.

"I am literally German, Elias. Like, both of my parents are German. I grew up in Hamburg. It's my mother tongue."

"Yeah, and, Helen Keller's mother tongue was English, and she could barely speak that, so."

Patrick shook his head in disbelief. "Helen Keller was deaf and blind, you prick! To be honest, Elias, it's sort of insensitive for you to be saying things like this. You said the F-word last night. Now you're making fun of a disabled feminist hero. These antics are going to lead you straight to working at a car dealership for a sleazy man named Josh."

"That was, like, way too specific." I popped the plastic cap onto my coffee and me and Patrick started to walk out of the cafe. 

"Elias?"

I looked around. Calvin was coming up from behind the indoor tree that protected all the wine in the cafe. I sipped my coffee awkwardly then coughed, because it was way too hot and it burned my tongue. "Hi, that's me," I said. 

"What do you think about Otis?"

"Otis?" I said. "Otis Brossard?"

"There's only one Otis we know, Elias," said Patrick.

"Yeah," Calvin said. "I'm thinking about joining theatre, because I'm dropping out of the newspaper and I need a creative. But I heard Otis is sort of stressed out all the time."

"Well, yeah," I said. "But he has a heart of gold, that man does."

"I heard he threw a chair at the window once and it broke and he refused to pay for it."

"That... did happen."

My tongue was still in a lot of pain.

"Didn't a prostitute once knock on a student's dorm room door asking for him?"

"That was in 1998," I said. "And no one found out it was Otis, anyways."

"So you have no problem with him."

"Me and him are lads," I said. 

"Cool," he said. "I think I'll join."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Cool."

"You guys meet on Tuesday, right?"

"Yep. In the Aula."

"Awesome." He almost pulled away, but he faced me at the last second. "Is it hard?"

I nearly dropped my coffee. "What?"

"Theatre. Is it hard to do? Like, is there lots of acting we have to do? I'm not a good actor."

"Oh. Nah, not really. It's pretty chill."

"Okay. See ya."

"Byeeee," I said, turning away and walking out the door.

When we were out in the steely afternoon, Patrick said, "What the hell was that? 'Byeeee'. Really?"

"What was wrong with that? I just said bye to him. That's a normal thing to do. That's what normal people do."

"Yeah, but they don't say it like that."

"What was wrong with it? I said it how I normally say it. Bye."

"No, you see, now you said it normally. But twenty seconds ago you said it like a valley girl who was trying to seem nonchalant around the cute thirty-something retail worker at Urban Planet."

"I'm not even sure what that means, to be quite honest, Patrick."

We were walking down the peaceful, mid-autumn sidewalk. Then we sat on our favourite bench, which faced the local Edeka.

"It's like you think this is a German boarding school until you realize it's just a tiny exclusive country of its own. It's bullshit."

"Such bullshit," I agreed, blowing into my coffee.

"Did you hear Jesus fart last night?"

"No, not really."

"I did. It was really loud. You know that vibrating feeling you get in your chest when there's drums playing nearby? That's what Jesus's fart did."

"That's lovely. Lovely to know."

"How's your gay thing going?"

"It's not going anywhere," I said. "I have no gay thing."

Patrick sipped his coffee. "Okay."

"What do you mean, 'okay'?"

He shrugged. "Okay. You said it yourself. You're not gay. I respect your boundaries."

"Thank you."

"But you, like, actually want to suck Calvin Taylor's dick."

I stood from the bench and started walking back to the school. "Okay. This conversation is over. I'm leaving you."

"For good, dear?"

"Yes," I said loudly, still walking. "And I'm taking the kids, too! And the good sofa!"

"Not the good sofa!" Patrick yelled from his spot on the bench. "I bought that with my own money!"

I flipped him the middle finger.