night.”
“Okay.”
I stepped out into the hallway and he closed the door. I walked toward the stairwell, desperately craving a shower.
Darren called late the next morning.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “That was totally uncool. I’d had way too much to drink and I just got out of hand. It’ll never happen again, I promise.”
“All right,” I said, not convinced.
“I didn’t even sleep with her. I sent the skank home. You were right, who knows what kind of filthy diseases she could’ve been carrying? She could’ve melted the condom right off me.”
“Yeah.”
“Aw, c’mon, you’re still pissed off. Don’t be pissed. Let me make it up to you.”
“Nah, it’s fine.”
“Things are working out with that library girl, huh?”
“Melanie, yeah.”
“Good to hear. You gonna be around?”
“For a bit.”
“Cool. I’m on my way.”
When Darren showed up at my dorm room, he was holding a piece of red licorice. “Peace offering,” he said, handing it to me.
“Thanks.”
“I apologize again for last night. I will never mix Jack Daniel’s and Snapple ever again. I’m glad you turned me down…if both of us stud muffins had gone at her, she would’ve been paralyzed from the lips down.”
“You just wanted me to observe your penis.”
“Yeah, well, there was that, too.” He sat down at Will’s desk. “So when are you getting together with Melanie again?”
“Friday for a movie. Maybe before that for lunch or something. I don’t know.”
“You bringing her back here?”
“Not with you in the room.”
“No, seriously, are you bringing her back here?”
“I haven’t planned that far. I doubt it.”
“If you do, do you want her to see all this crap?” Darren gestured to Will’s decorations.
“Not really.”
“So get rid of it.”
“I was going to ask Will about that later.”
“Why haven’t you asked him already?”
“I just haven’t gotten around to it.”
“You’re not going to get any action if you’ve got all this serial killer stuff up on your walls,” said Darren, standing up. “That is, unless Melanie’s a necrophile, and necrophiles are hard to come by in a college setting. Let’s make this stuff go bye-bye.”
“I said I was going to ask him about it.”
“Why ask him? It’s your room, too, right?”
“Half of it.”
Darren reached over and plucked a color photograph of a decapitated head off the wall. “See, why does he need this? It’s not like he severed the head himself.” He crumpled up the picture in his fist and tossed it onto the floor.
“Hey, whoa!”
“Whoa what? What’s he going to do to you? Beat you up? You can take him.” Darren yanked a newspaper article off the wall and crumpled it up as well.
“Seriously, don’t do that,” I said, picking the photo off the floor and straightening it out the best I could. “It’s not my stuff.”
“But you have to look at it.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll take care of it tonight.”
“Let’s take care of it now.” Darren ripped a second newspaper article off the wall.
“Damn it, knock it off!” I said. “I have to live with him!”
“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t let him push you around.”
“He’s not pushing me around! I never asked him to take them down! I said I’ll ask him tonight. Quit wrecking his stuff.”
“Wow,” said Darren. “I’ve never seen you pissed.”
“Yes you have, you just don’t remember. Now quit it. I mean it.”
“You need to control your life. Let Will know that you’re in charge of this room. Let that morbid little freak know that it’s your room, and you’re just being nice enough to let him hang out here. C’mon, let’s rip all this shit down and show him that there’s not a thing he can do about it.”
“He can sure go tell the resident advisor.”
“Yeah, and…?”
“And get me in trouble.”
Darren rolled his eyes. “He’s not gonna tattle on you. If he does, you say you asked him over and over to take these pictures down because they made you sick and he refused. Say you were in fear for your life. Worst-case scenario, you get switched to a new roommate. You’d be better off.”
“The pictures don’t even bug me.”
“Bullshit. Okay, look, I’ll make you a deal. Tear one down. Just one. You’ll feel better, I promise.”
“I’ll feel better when you let this drop.”
“I’ll let it drop when you tear one down.”
“Fine.” I glanced around the wall and located a picture of a woman’s body lying on a mortuary slab. I removed the pushpins and took down the picture. “Are you happy?”
“Crumple it up.”
“No.”
“Just that one. Crumple it up.”
“He’s been collecting this stuff for years.”
“And you have the power to take it