The Boy in the Tunnel

Fall 1997, Chapter 40: Chet, Pt. 1

They sat there in Alex's turd of a Ford ("Fix Or Repair Daily," Dick used to say every time he saw an F-150 or a Crown Vic in the Wintertree parking lot, until Chet told him he was going to hit him if he said it one more fucking time) for like four hours, in the parking lot of some crappy off-campus apartment complex, staring at the beige siding that got more cosmically sad with every passing minute – Chet never understood why any student would choose to live in one of these depressing boxes, these rehearsal rooms for the boring adulthoods they, as yet, still had time to avoid. Even worse than the Tower, and that was saying something.

He couldn't decide if it was more or less sad that the person whose apartment they were staking out was an actual adult. A professor even. Students shouldn't have lived in those apartments, but they were also the only people who could have. It would have been beyond humiliating for an adult to live there. That's what houses were for, even if you could only afford one of the death traps in the Litterbox. It gave Chet a chill just thinking about it. How could you look at a professor and believe that he had any wisdom to share if you knew that he was going home to some off-white shoebox, eating frozen pizza at the kitchen counter under the flat white glare of a Walmart halogen lamp, listening to the muffled thumps of the neighbors through the walls and hoping they're the sounds of passion and not something worse?

"Dude how long do we have to do this?" Alex had been picking at the seam of the faux leather on the Taurus' steering wheel with a single-minded intensity for like the past hour. He was fiending – for what, exactly, Chet didn't know. For his own part, Chet would have chewed off his own arm to get out of the car and go see Kenya.

"Until it's done," said Roger.

Alex's fingernail found purchase on a corner of the faux leather and started to pull, slowly. "That's not an answer." The leatherette strip broke, not even as long as Alex's fingernail. He rolled down the window and tossed it out. It bounced off the side of the black Jetta parked next to the Taurus. Alex did a weird double-take and rolled the window back up.

Chet wondered what he would say to Ron Marston about this night. "We hung out in a parking lot with a filthy townie for-fucking-ever. Alex Whateverhislastnameis saw a Jetta and got spooked. Still no idea what Taylor Hollister does with his free time, besides probably Alex's girlfriend."

Roger straightened in his seat. "Here we go." A man was descending the stairs in front of their parking spot, a bulging canvas messenger bag slung over one shoulder. He looked to be in his thirties, slight but fit, his hair long enough to suggest he still identified as young, but not so long that the olds wouldn't recognize him as one of their own. Chet saw it all the time: like half the adults on this campus, in this town, this guy was trying to prolong his own youth via proximity to the young. Even Roger, in his own way, was guilty.

Roger looked at Alex, then back at Chet, sizing them up. "You," he said to Chet. "Come on. You're more threatening."

"Are you kidding?" said Alex.

"What do you weigh, ninety pounds? Eat a cheeseburger, rock star." Roger turned back to Chet. "Just stand there and try to look menacing. Let me do the talking."

Roger opened his door and got out. Chet did the same. The guy was walking toward them. He pointed a key fob at the Jetta, and its lights flashed as the doors unlocked.

"Dr. Burton," said Roger. The guy halted, his hair in mid-flop. He looked up at Roger, then Chet, an animal weighing its options. He slid the messenger bag in front of his belly, to protect his soft parts. "Relax, Doc," said Roger. "We're students. He is, anyway. I'm more of an alum, I guess you'd say. We're looking for a friend of ours."

Burton straightened up, pushed his hair back behind his ear. He tried to protect professorial authority. "Gentlemen, it's late. I have posted office hours. I don't know why you'd think—"