Chapter 1 - The Roomates #The Memoric

CHAPTER 1

“In a second,” she said under the brimming doorframe a large cardboard box hiding her face from view.

“We’ll get these through the door frame but how in a beaver’s dream will we chew through this box before classes start? School starts next week!”

I felt the cool pressure of senior year imposing on my writing a novel by graduation, and a world of words and language ready to be uncovered. Here I was, shuffling boxes into my new apartment building - over the porch, through the pastiche entryway - molded and repainted a glorious color of creamy slate that piqued the interested upon entrance like a sculpted quail that was lost from it’s flock: too humble to be recognized, too pretty to be ignored.

Up the two flights of winding stairs, the cumbersome box of notebooks sweltering like my head in the heat. In the moment the box had nearly fallen. A sweat bead dropped from my forehead. The rug seemed immediately to slurp it up - or maybe the droplets never reached the floor but evaporated upon descent in the heat.

As soon as I settled the box in the place where my bed frame would soon be, it occupied the space and I realized more would too.

The day is drifting towards nighttime but seems lighter in my bedroom than the rest of the flat. There seems to be more light cascading through the window glass - fanning out through the room is the sunlight from over the lake, out past the train yard, where the sun dips low over the lake and bright pink. Mom and Dad left and I have not seen or heard from my roommates in ages.

Suddenly a voice was heard.

“I will love this empire of an outpost. I will sense a seamless comedy with divine mother Earth.”

I checked backwards though the open door to my bedroom for the source of the voice.

“This sun is just beautiful,” the voice chimed again.

From the subject of the sentence and the harmony of the swell of it's sound I configured it was coming from outside - or, maybe on the roof? Or, at least the balcony wrapping around the third floor which I had yet to explore.

“Hi! Is somebody there?” I said. I was not sure if someone would answer.

I crept to the window-sill like a kid on christmas when suddenly through the window, a right leg jutted suddenly through the window: left open for that very purpose.

“My roommate!” Came a voice ushering though the window, followed by the body of someone I had only met briefly, the week before this last summer.

That was the source alot of the times. I always seemed to hear from the top-floor sky watchers: a mixture of down to earth and divine directness.

I shrugged off unpacking my box for the moment - and the rest of the boxes I had left downstairs.

Instead of introducing myself - I quickly got into the swing of things.

“I’m Andy, I’m writing a novel this year!”

No time for pleasantries.

“No way!” Responded Rocket.

I began.

“It could be called - Something that produces results - or the value of living and writing on the treatise of knowing something.

Rocket stood back, nonplussed with what I said.

He spoke softly as to not offend.

“That sounds ridiculously ontological,” and adjusted himself. He was now well-within the room.

I already knew I could trust Rocket for his emergent ability to give great advice.

“Here,” he said, picking a sheet of paper with notation on it from his bed, already freshly pressed on his side of the room and handed it to me.

I took it in my outstretched hand and quickly poured over it.

“Iceberg,” it read in bold, black writing atop of what appeared to be music notes. I had seen this notation a few times before this in a quiet and empty classroom in my high school designated for musicians. It was a melody - free to carry around - like a tune, but in my hand if also in my head.

Rocket spoke again.

“I found it in that corner, over there.”

“Hm…,” I mustered.

It was right where my desk would be.

Right where I plan to pull off a semester of important writing and some, - well, some homework too. And here I find a bit of inspiration waiting for me.

In, suddenly, a white box being toted by another roommate, a spindly-armed Nemo - whom I easily recognized, practically tipping over the entire box, tilting it to the the side only losing a small containers which escaped from the boxes contents and rolled on the floor - it's final destination near my left foot.

I proffered a thought deep within my mind about a girl I had met before summer.

“She entered my life like a roll of film on the rack of so many rolls whose canisters at which I refused to even glimpse. I knew that meeting this person would open up a path for a new future. But what is a good way to start a conversation with her. Under what guise will I end up speaking.“

Nero rushed assuredly to settle down his container and brushed off my prophecy with a quick, “yeah, whatever.”

Before I knew it, Nemo had set down the box and started on what he rolled up into a suggestive story involving what appeared to be camera film.

“See the piney, bristly eyelashes of the photo department workers made me wonder if nature photography was a good interes for me to pursue. The one-eye open clause that I managed, seemed a round-about way of missing something else in the shot. Or in the world.”

“Actually you keep both of your eyes open when you photograph,” Stated Nemo.

And suddenly I realized I was thinking out loud, again. This problem had just recently been an advent in my life which I noticed I was doing more and more often as the days went by.

Here, no one seemed to care.

“Do you sell it to newspapers at all?” I asked.

"I’d write with one hand. Even that novel I’m undertaking is being written with a pencil.”

“Oh, the one-handed pencil trick,” chimed in Nemo who laughed slightly to himself.

“Just like a newspaper journalist,” I said.

“On the run like stockbrokers: juggling ticker-tapes on the stockroom floor in these new times - for profits.”

“I think you’re on to the mystery,” I returned with some hesitation.

There was an instant camaraderie between us, the roommates, but this was not the first time we had met.

We had encountered each other, if ever so briefly, during the last semester at Farmingham State, our college, where we had all decided that we would get an apartment together once the summer was over and the following semester began.

This was a bit of a reunion, in a sense, with the exception of Luke, who was not present, yet.

Rocket enjoyed describing nature and was exceptional with his descriptions of everyday life, like his mind was a magnifying glass that blew up the image to superliminal view.

And this seemes to excite Nemo, who was interested in nature and philosophy - to the point wehre he seemed to think everyone's head was a box of rocks - other than him.

Lighting up the conversation, as well, Nemo seemed focused on his box of nick-nacks. He spoke as he pulled items out of the box. He was in the hallway, near Rocket and my’s door, just out of our field of vision. All we heard were the items dropping to the floor.

Out of the box came lenses and a camera equipment which he produced, if at all slightly dusty, from the assorted accouterment, of course, still crammed in the box.

“I wonder if there’s any shots worth taking down the road,” said Nemo, twisting a lens off of his dusty camera.

“I had seen a large train yard. Some trees breaking through the concrete, maybe?”

His eyes were fixed on the robust camera which he angled slightly on its axis and while inspecting the trueness of its housing.

Rocket piped up.

“There is always something we can view on our Earth. Like an environment is truly beautiful if you can find the right angle,” He stated precociously,

“Thats just what a photograph is for…reflection,” responded Nemo. “Most every photograph is taken that way.”

He was now holding in his hands what looked like an old strip of film which he had produced from his box.

Nemo unraveled it in front of us - all three peering through the minuscule windows which appeared like stained paintings in a church. A place none of us went anymore, but of which we sometimes thought to go.

The first floor was glimpsed.

“The film strip…,” said Nemo astutely.

“…Is an example of just how special each moment is to the world. To everyone.”

Nemo was holding the strip to the light with one hand with his other simultaneously adjusting his spectacles, his eyes like marbles fixed, doctorly, on the photograph like a radiologist inspecting a healed femur. From a distance he appeared mesmerized by the beautiful panes, through in further experience it was clear that his ability to take a photograph informed his experience. He viewed the panels with gusto and wisdom.

“These are from Mount Rushmore...from them early seventies...in summer. You can tell because the sky is so blue, the shadows are so short and the clothing everyone is wearing.”

“That is some inspection your putting to them,” purported Rocket pointing to the bottom rung of shots.

Nemo rejoined.

“You can always see the point where the film, or the photographer, rather, took account of the number of shots left on the roll,” he said, pointing to the bottom few panes of the film roll and shuffled them to the top of the roll near his eye line.

“You can take a photograph of anything, you know,” said Rocket.

“Even if it unseeable by the naked eye - it still reflects light - and has color…

well at least that’s what they say.”

“Is that true?” said Nemo.

“Like angels and ghostly phenomena?”

Nemo unfurled the film some more between his hands and looked as if he was peering into the photograph for information. Angels or Ghosts or a winking Mount Rushmore president.

We were quietly searching for the supernatural.

I never went down to get the rest of my boxes on the curb.