glasses from the blue velvet bag—on which JOHNNIE WALKER was stitched in yellow thread—and picked up a mushroom from her plate. When the song ended, I noticed Marta wasn’t eating the mushroom, but was scrutinizing it with one eye closed, like a jeweler examining a fine diamond.
“Marta?” I reached up to pull my glasses forward on my nose so that I could focus on the mushroom. But I wasn’t wearing glasses, I was wearing contacts; I could feel them in my eyes.
“Yes, dude.” Her open eye glanced up and fixed on my hand, then moved back to the mushroom she was examining. She looked at it, put that mushroom down and picked up another one.
Space cadet.
I looked down at the burnt-bacon-yellow-tomato-wilted-lettuce sandwich, and took a timid nibble, assuming that it was going to taste revolting, even with the mayonnaise I had slathered all over it. Instead, I experienced a big surprise.
“Man, this is the best BLT I’ve ever eaten….ever!” I exclaimed.
By now, Marta was examining her 5th mushroom and gave me a quick smile. I gulped down the sandwich and the fries and looked greedily at Marta’s plate.
“Are you going to eat those mushrooms, or dry them out and smoke them?” I said.
Marta sat up with a jolt. “Man, I never thought of that!” Then her eyes glazed over, and she appeared to have slid into a deeper level of concentration as she mechanically reached for an errant french fry on my tray.
I stood up and went to the serving counter. When I came back, I once again sat down with a grimace, again forgetting that I had nothing to grimace about. Marta’s eye moved away from her current mushroom and focused on me again.
“Got some pain there, dude? Hurt yourself running or something?”
“No…just some arthritis,” I said without thinking.
“You have arthritis?” Now both lazy eyes were on me.
“I used to…I mean, no, well…maybe in the future. I…never mind.”
Marta nodded, but something else was going on behind those hooded eyes.
Returning to the table after my third trip to the serving line, I noticed that she had dissected my french fry, the mushrooms apparently forgotten.
“Why aren’t you eating any of your mushrooms?”
“They’re not for eating, man,” said Marta. She glanced up and closed her mouth with a click.
As I was about to ask another question, her mouth snapped open.
“They all are really round and look the same, but they’re all different, and that’s like the universe. I mean, man, it’s all the same: air, animal, mineral, vegetable. Really, the mushrooms are the same as your french fry, even though they look different. Ya just have to be in the right reality. Like, I’m in my reality and you’re in your reality, dude, and you see mushrooms and french fries and I see…atoms and molecules. Deh ya understand?”
“No...” I started scratching my head, and noticed that I had no bald spot on the crown. “Man! This is great!”
With an amused expression, Marta watched me feel the top of my head.
“Hey pilgrim, don’t worry. You don’t have to search for it. Your head’s still there.”
“Yah, but the bald spot is gone.”
For an instant, Marta’s lazy eyes tightened.
“I never noticed that you had a bald spot.” She giggled. “Now tell me the truth: Were you speaking from personal experience when you said to dry out the mushrooms and smoke them?”
“Hell no! It’ll be ten more years before I do anything like that.”
Marta chuckled, but again I thought I saw those eyes squint a little. She lazily reached for an old-fashioned watch, the kind that women clipped to their blouses a hundred years ago. She glanced at the upside-down dial and jumped up with a start.
“Shit! I’m late for class.”
Probably, Incense For the Soul 101.
She lopped out of the cafeteria, leaving in her wake the odor of saffron.
I decided right then to avoid Marta the next time I was in the dining hall. I was trying with all of my soul to maintain my sanity, and sitting across from me was a person who was going out of her way to lose hers. Yet, even if she was late for class, at least she knew what class she was late for. I, on the other hand, had no memory of what classes I took during the spring of 1971. I also had very little memory of talking with Marta, because I’d always tried to avoid her in the cafeteria. She was too skinny to be attractive to me, and it was hard for me to translate her hip talk into 20th century English.
With the reflexes of a cat, I jumped up from the table, placed the tray on the dishwashing conveyer belt, strode through the turnstiles to the entrance hall, and walked back to the dorm.
The 108 Bailey was still hazy with whiskey-flavored smoke, and Harry was still hunched over his desk in a circle of light from his desk lamp.
“How ya doin’, Harry,” I said quietly, still afraid that he would dissolve into pixie dust.
Harry barely nodded and went back to his calculus book, and I went to my mess of a desk in search of my class schedule. It wasn’t until I got on my knees among the dust bunnies on the floor that I found the schedule, but it was of no use to me unless I knew what day it was. The month would be helpful too.
“Harry, what’s today?” I yelled across the room.
“Saturday,” said Harry without looking up.
“Thanks, and what month is it?”
This time Harry looked up.
“You gotta be kidding, Federson.” He looked down again.
“It’s March,” I guessed.
“Federson, would ya quit screwin’ around?”
“April? Is it April?”
Harry grabbed his pipe and matches and started to light up.
“Well shit, Federson, I guess if ya forgot steak night last month, walked into the wrong dorm room last week, and lost your class schedule again—that’s what you’re still lookin’ for, isn’t it?—then maybe you really don’t know what month it is. Okay, it’s May…May 1st …May 1st, 1971….1971 A.D.”
“Thank you, Harry,” I said as if I were a game show host ready to introduce the next contestant. At that moment I realized I was feeling something that had eluded me for decades: I was actually enjoying myself. For a few minutes, I was once again perfectly comfortable living in 108 Bailey Hall. Counting the “In the Summertime” earlier, that made two good moments in one day. A ten-year record!
Harry went back to writing equations in a notebook, while I looked at my schedule. The good moment ended with a crash when I saw that I had
