Episode 1 #4
Collin reached out one hand and rang the bell.
It felt as ridiculous as he thought it would.
And waiting for Mr. Reevesworth to come at a summons made his belly tighten and his throat feel like he was about to be sick.
Mothers and teachers always described feeling nauseous as being in the stomach, but Collin felt like it always started in the throat. It was there now.
Footsteps echoed through a wider space and then into the room. Collin rubbed his face and pushed himself up on his elbows. That made his skull slosh. He held still for a moment, eyes squeezed shut, until the trapped-in-the-middle-of-an-ocean sensation settled.
“As calm as Artemis is today, I clearly should have hired you for the position of human bed to her royal highness and not allowed Ellisandre to poach you.”
“Sir?” Collin turned his head carefully to the side and squinted up at Mr. Reevesworth.
“Time for sustenance and hydration. Even cat beds require those when they come in the form of a human. Can you sit up?”
“Yes, sir. Give me a moment?”
Mr. Reevesworth hummed in his throat. “This will be a combined effort. Close your eyes.”
Together they got Collin upright with pillows behind him. Mr. Reevesworth drew the first layer of curtains, a sort of sheer drape layer, across the windows and then and only then was Collin able to fully take in the room.
“How long will my eyesight be like this, sir?”
“Anywhere from another day or two to a week.”
Collin fingered the blanket on his lap. “I’m not finishing the semester on time, am I?”
“Still unknown, but possibly.” Mr. Reevesworth stepped out of the room and returned with a tray, which he placed on a long low dresser. There were several bottles of drinks, including hydration-repletion-type mixes and plain water. On a plate was a simple sandwich.
“Drink. Then eat. And when you’re finished, if you can stay awake, we’ll talk.”
Collin did not manage to stay awake. He woke about an hour after eating to the sound of turning pages and Mr. Moreau out in a distant room, speaking into a phone.
“I’m awake, sir.”
“Collin.” Mr. Reevesworth slotted a bookmark into his place and shut the book. “You’re looking better.”
Collin shrugged. “I think so, sir. Keep falling asleep.”
“That’s your body healing. Most likely it will continue all week.”
“I—” Collin looked away. He was not going to panic.
There was no point to doing it again. He had a tiny bit of savings.
He could tell his roommates to find someone else to take over his spot.
It wasn’t like his name was on the lease; they’d find someone.
He could sleep outside in a park, try to stay in train stations when it rained.
It wasn’t snowing yet. And he could shower at the gym at his school.
There were ways. And if Ellisandre did let him stay on, he’d get another place, somehow.
“Yes, sir. I need…I need to make a phone call, sir. I won’t look at the screen if you’d just open it for me.”
“Who are you going to call?”
“My roommates, sir.”
“Why?”
“If I tell you sir, you won’t like it. And I won’t like it. Could we not discuss it, I mean? Could we just, may I just make the call, sir?”
“Tell me, Collin.”
“I can’t, sir. If I tell you it will sound like manipulation. And I’m not going to do that, sir.”
“Consider it an order, Collin. You can’t manipulate me if I’m ordering you to do it.”
“I could, sir. There are a lot of ways to manipulate. I’m a bartender, remember. I hear it all.”
“You’re going to tell your roommates to find someone to replace you.”
Collin kept his head low, but he nodded.
“I need a verbal answer, Collin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’re planning to be homeless.”
Collin nodded again.
“Verbal answers, boy.”
“Yes, sir. But, it’s not that bad, sir. I’m a student. I have lots of spaces I can be and a gym for showers. And it’s not like I spend much time in the apartment anyway. If anything, it will save me the commute.”
“What’s the passcode to your phone?”
“Four-four-nine-one-eight-six.”
“Name of your roommate to call?”
“She’s under Jinx.”
“Here.” Mr. Reevesworth handed Collin the phone.
Collin swallowed and accepted it. Jinx answered on the fourth ring. “Yo, Collin, dude, what’s up?”
“Hey, um, I wanted to let you know that I’m going to stay closer to my school. So, yeah, you should get someone to replace me. I’m not going to be able to cover any more rent. Like the last payment is going to be my last payment.”
“Dude, that only gives me like ten days to find someone. You sure you can’t stay on a little longer?”
“I got to do this, Jinx.”
“Fine. Fine. I’ll find someone. When are you moving out?”
“I’m a little busy but as soon as I can get back. I’m staying somewhere else right now. Lots going on.”
“Did you find someone, like, a smexy someone? Dude, don’t tell me you’re leaving me in a lurch for pussy.”
“Jinx, yuck, no. And you know I don’t like girls that way. Sheesh. Seriously. I’ll be back to get my things in…a week.”
“Fine. If I’m not there when you are, leave the key under the ugly cookie jar on the counter.”
“Gotcha. What about my security deposit?”
“Dude, you’re leaving me in a lurch here. I don’t have that kind of cash on me. I’ll need the next person who takes your place to cough that up before I could give it to you. And that’s if they have it. I have ten days to make rent, I’ll take whoever I can get.”
Collin pressed his fingers between his eyebrows. The headache he’d already had was getting worse. Jinx’s rough voice grated on his ears.
“Fine. Whatever. But I do need it back, Jinx. We have a contract.”
“I’ll try. That’s all I can say, dude.” Jinx hung up.
Collin’s shoulders slumped. He held out the phone to Mr. Reevesworth. “Thanks.”
“That’s ‘sir’, Collin. And ‘thanks’ is not the standard of language in The Residency.”
“I apologize, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Mr. Reevesworth took the phone and moved the white chair by the door to the side of the bed, facing Collin.
Artemis meowed at the door and jumped on the bed, making her way up Collin’s leg and into his lap.
Mr. Reevesworth sat down and smoothed the legs of his pants. Then he folded his hands on his thigh and sat back. “Collin, we need to have a conversation, one that is going to strongly highlight the disparity of power between us. Especially now that you are homeless.”
Collin lifted his chin. Verbal answers. He was supposed to answer out loud in this house.
“I’m listening, sir.”
“You will have to do more than listen because this is going to be a conversation, as in there will be speaking and communicating in dual directions. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Collin stroked Artemis’s back and held one of her paws in his other hand.
“When I first approached you, I asked you if you had ever submitted to someone before. You struggled with that question. Do you have more of an idea now what that means?”
“I submitted to you. Yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“And you told me to submit to Damian. Or maybe that was showing him respect. I’m not clear on that, sir.”
“That was showing him respect. Damian submits to me. He was my instrument to care for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When I first approached you, I did so with the consideration that you might end up here, in this residence. Usually, I take longer than this.”
“But I slipped and fell.”
“Yes.”
“I apologize, sir.”
“We’ll discuss your apology or lack of apology later.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There are two kinds of people I approach, Collin. By the time you received that email from me asking you to interview for an internship with my company, I had already run a background check on you, your closest living relatives, your roommates, your boss, and your most regularly appearing friends on your social profiles. I myself, or someone close to me, had already interviewed all of your professors in the last two years, as well as your last three employers and several of your coworkers. Some of these interviews were clandestine. They did not realize they were being interviewed. Damian, especially, is skilled in these matters. I know more about the information to be had about you than perhaps you do yourself.”
“You never intended to just interview me for an internship. I kinda figured that out on day one.”
“You are correct.”
“You want me to submit to you. Like Damian.”
“Yes.”
“Physical things. Sex things. And life things.”
“Yes.”
“How did you even know I existed?”
“I was in the back of the room last August when you delivered your summer research defense on the economics of intra-city aquatic farming. Someone had informed me that there was a student with an idea of adapting some of the old factory buildings in some of the southern neighborhoods into aquatic fish and lettuce farming with solar power. Your numbers were good. The political will isn’t quite there to make it happen. But that could possibly be changed.”
“That was over a year ago, last August.”
“Yes. I put your name down on my list of interesting people, but I didn’t have room in my schedule at the time to take on your idea. And you still needed to graduate. I put a note in my calendar to reach out to you three months before your graduation date.”
“What changed?”
“You parked my car three months ago during an event at the hotel, the bank party. You looked sick, but you were professional and you handled the mess with the lady’s handbag with decorum.”
“I was sick. And she was just a little confused and stressed.”
“Not everyone saw that. But you did. I had one of my people check to see if you were still enrolled. You were, and you were working too many hours. A quick call to the person who invited me to see your talk confirmed that they were concerned about you. So I went down to the bar where you work, and I watched you.”
“And I didn’t notice?”
“I can be unnoticeable when I want to be.”
“That’s hard to imagine, sir.” Collin flushed. Mr. Reevesworth being unnoticeable was preposterous. But also likely true.