Her #2 pencil was sharpened at both ends. The others noticed right away and surreptitiously watched her to see if they could catch her flip to erase, to fuck up - so they could swallow their malicious little chuckle like a hot dog burp from their roiling acidic inner pool of one-upmanship. Ha! They didn't know she never flipped to erase, she wasn't inflicted with this propulsion. Sometimes she circled back, more than once, but she held onto her first pure thought, Henry swore it was always the most telling and true. Another thing about Paula's pencil, it was not that garish yellow, or even the more studious muted shade with the green metallic bands at the top. It was patterened with the Florenian paper makers marble swirls in Cerulean blue and gold. A mere whisper from a speeding car in the grip of a more vibrant personality. But, as Henry liked to say, "a cold cup of water in a fainted face scream", in Paula's slender hand, a florish in a field of dust.
The woman sitting next to her had asked five questions of the proctor and the exam was yet to start. Paula sensed these were questions the woman already knew the answers to, she just wanted to quickly clarify these things for the stupid people in the room while simultaneously erecting herself on a pillar of intellect, her rightful place to spew her sticky condecension all over the room.
Then there was the guy in the front row, easing up his own superior edifice while shamelessy leafing through his proximity to greatness, "When I was at Harvard Law with Barack.. " - Oh shut the fuck up already, Paula's hands went to her temples and she stretched her eyes, trying to dispel her building tension. The guy was still droning on... she half listened, "When I played piano with Tchaikovsky..., When I stood on the barren terrain of the moon with Neil Armstrong..." Paula waved her pencil in frustration- all heads turned at this shockingly loud gesture. She smiled and handed them her "shut the fuck up" eyes, which they would, no doubt, pocket and feast upon later.
Henry would know what to say to ease her mind, "Well, it's about the test and the test is everything, isn't it?" The cool calming seeped under her skin. Henry was, to Paula, the personification of a snowman; long, manipulated nose, mismatched eyes, large buttons and knicked felt hat, probably not his, most likely stolen. "I would say fuck them - but, let somebody else fuck these stupid people who clutter your mind on a day as important as this." He was right, she musn't let herself be distracted.
Finally, the papers were face down on their desks. The proctor was writing something on the chalk board, back turned to his charges, and the girl in front of Paula was peeking! Paula knew this wasn't from a desire to get a 5 second jump on the rest of the class or from a lack of confidence in her abilities, but from the center of the universe, where she of course stood, other peoples rules didn't apply.
The proctor turned and mustered a weary smile, "you may begin."
Paula reached the boarding house after 10:00p.m., the doors were already locked, she would have to use her key. She didn't look up, she knew Mrs. DelVito would be watching from her second floor window, no visiters after 9:00p.m., strictlty enforced. She could have been a nun she liked to tell her residents, as if it were up there with ballet dancer or fireman on the ladder of dream jobs. Paula didn't mind her really. Her eggs weren't watery and the building was practically vermin-free and she asked remarkably few questions about personal items unless they crossed her threshold, like a new boyfriend (out by 9), a box with a severed head or, god forbid, a non-human breathing creature (pets and aliens). The alien nod isn't a joke either, more than once Mrs. D had tried to slip the AAER Newsletter (Alien Abduction Experience and Research, for you non-believers) into Paula's mailslot. Too many nights at the window probably landed her mind at Roswell of all places.
Paula made her way down the adequate hall, neither dingy or bright, with the low murmurs and flickering lights playing under the doors. She was room "S". Mrs. D confided that she decided to use letters instead of numbers so she wouldn't be faced with the quandry of whether to skip or include the number 13. "Could anything be more stupid?" she wanted to know. "I only have 24 rooms, so it all worked out fine, didn't it?" Paula poised her pink key. Sunny, Sad, Sexy, Stoic - Henry loved this game, although he would think, in Paula's case that Sunny was a stretch. But he would never fail to laugh at the cosmicly fitting location of the woman in room "C". Mrs. D must be onto our game he joked, I knew she was full of shit with that nun story.
She flipped the switch, the murphy bed was still unfolded, taking up most of the room, blankets still in the knot she escaped from this morning. Plopping on the thin mattress and feeling the familiar metal grid beneath, Paula pulled off her combat boots without unlacing them and tossed them...somewhere. Urbane, Uppity, Uncivil, Uric (look it up, it's very mean) must be asleep, thank God for that, or that incessant chanting would be crawling in her ear. It invaded her dreams - only to be startled awake by the feet slamming into the wall above her bed. Supported headstand Paula figured, because the chanting always stopped for an interval of 10 minutes, then it began all over again. Quiet, Queer, Quaint and...and...shit, she was always forgetting this one... must be up to something, it was always too quiet on that side. Henry would remember the forth one, where the fuck was he anyway? She had followed room "Q" one day when she was bored, he walked, seemingly with some destination in mind, looking down, and stopping abruptly to pick objects from the ground. Broken earring, bottlcap, smooth stone, used straw and shoved them in his pockets. Then he circled back to the House. Paula tried to see into his room, but he slipped through the door secretly, like a banned Chinese food menu. Henry had chastised her for doing this, "Mind your own business, you really have time for this bullshit? Of course he's up to something, but he's not building the bomb for godsake." Paula wasn't so sure.
These four walls, it was so cliched, yet if she had two rooms, eight walls, would it take twice as long to go crazy? Here came Vain, Vulgar, Virile, Void tapping down the hall, she could tell by the cane which she suspected he used as a ploy to gain sympathy and lure women into bed, and that whining, puerile cologne, please, they closed Danceteria back in the 80's room "V".
"Can you beleive him Henry?" Still no answer. She looked at the poster hanging on the opposite wall. A pier leading out into the ocean, endlessly, to the beautiful sunset horizen. Henry felt it gave the room depth, well perhaps if you leaned against this one, it would give. She shuffled through the voices in her head, Henry's was always the loudest. Come on, come on.... If anyone was there to look down upon Paula's prone body on the bed, they would see the raging turmoil, ready to explode, inside her small frame, her human casing, a mere slip of a woman really.
"So, how was the big exam?"
"Henry!"
"Didn't think I'd leave you with these four walls and Mrs. D's alphabet, did you?"
"The people were ghastly! The test was simple, you were right, I had nothing to worry about."
"That's me, voice of reason"
"It's really three walls you know, that one with the horizen will give if I lean against it"
"Why don't you do it then?"
Paula never had an answer to that particular question. Then she smiled,
Questionable
By: Dottie P. R.
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