Yet a stranger, p.1
Yet a Stranger, page 1
part #2 of The First Quarto Series
YET A STRANGER
THE FIRST QUARTO: PART II
GREGORY ASHE
H&B
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Yet a Stranger
Copyright © 2020 Gregory Ashe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. For permission requests and all other inquiries, contact: contact@hodgkinandblount.com
Published by Hodgkin & Blount
https://www.hodgkinandblount.com/
contact@hodgkinandblount.com
Published 2020
Printed in the United States of America
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63621-009-4
eBook ISBN: 978-1-63621-008-7
FALL SEMESTER
SEPTEMBER 2014
1
Auggie and Fer had been driving for three days when they reached the Sigma Sigma fraternity house, which sat on Frat Row on the south side of Wroxall College’s campus. For the last hundred miles, the Civic had been chugging and croaking, and it made a shrill, despairing noise every time they went up a hill—which in this godforsaken corner of the Midwest was about every fifty yards. Auggie was pretty sure he could smell something burning. It was better than the day and a half of Fer’s cheesy-tater-tot farts, though, that he’d experienced in the middle of the trip.
“Be fast, dick drip,” Fer said as he pulled into the Sigma Sigma parking lot. “Or I’m going to miss the shuttle.”
“I know.”
“So be fast.”
“I know, Fer.”
“So don’t sit there scratching your pubic lice. Get a fucking move on.”
“I hate you so much,” Auggie said as he jumped out of the car and ran toward the move-in tables set up in front of the fraternity house. It was mid-afternoon because they’d left Amarillo later that morning than they had planned, and Auggie guessed the rush of move-ins had already happened. A couple of guys around his age—they were sophomores too, he guessed—were lugging plastic totes toward the red-brick house, and another guy was folding bedsheets while he argued with a girl—sister? girlfriend?—at the back of a station wagon. No parents. No older brothers.
Fer laid on the horn, which was actually pretty pathetic because the Civic just squeaked a few times. Then he shouted, “For fuck’s sake, imagine some dude is jackrabbiting your hole and move your ass, Augustus!”
Auggie’s face was hot as he approached the move-in tables. He found the L-R sign and felt his face get even hotter. The guy sitting there was gorgeous: big, brawny, in a tank and shorts and Adidas slides, with blond curls spilling over his forehead. He was grinning as Auggie moved forward.
“Lopez,” Auggie said.
“Hi,” the guy said, shuffling the papers. He glanced up. He had blue eyes. “Dylan.”
“No, August. But I go by Auggie.”
The guy laughed.
“Oh,” Auggie said. “Got it. Hi.”
Dylan laughed again. He had a nice laugh. He had very white teeth. When he handed over the paperwork and a key, he said, “You know everybody’s talking about you, right?”
“No, I definitely did not know that.”
“Yep,” Dylan said. “They are. I like your videos. You’re super funny.”
“Thanks. I’m always looking for people who want to be in them.”
“Nah, man,” Dylan said. “Not really my thing. It’s cool, though. I’m following you on Instagram and Snapchat. dylan_j199. Add me back.”
“Cool,” Auggie said.
“You want a tour?” Dylan glanced at the other guys manning the table, who were all trying incredibly hard to pretend they were doing something else. “Someone can cover for me.”
The Civic squeaked again, and Fer roared, “Jesus Christ’s bloody tampon, Augustus, either go down on him or don’t, but hurry it the fuck up!”
“Maybe another time,” Auggie said.
“Hit me up.”
“Do you live here?”
“No, man. Senior. Some buds and I have a place off-campus. You should come over sometime. Hang out.”
“That’d be cool.”
“Hit me up,” Dylan said again, but this time with a lazy smile that Auggie felt low in the belly.
As Auggie jogged back to the Civic, he could hear conversation buzz to life behind him. One guy said, “Jeez, Dyl, let the kid take a breath before you bend him over,” and another guy said, “Dylan, you are such a fucking perv,” and Dylan just laughed—a low, rumbling sound.
“Did you get your complimentary scissoring?” Fer asked as he got out of the car. They had different dads, and Fer was taller, darker, and bigger—muscle that was softening as Fer spent more and more time at business lunches and meetings. The taller part, that was what irked Auggie. Of course, sometimes the bigger part was pretty fucking annoying too.
“For the millionth time,” Auggie said, “I didn’t need you to drive out here with me.”
“And let you go by yourself and give blowjobs to truckers for almost two thousand miles? Yeah, right, Augustus. Great idea.”
“And for the millionth time, I didn’t want you to drive out here with me.”
“Pay for your own fucking education then.”
“Just unload the stuff in the parking lot, and I’ll get some guys to help me carry it inside.”
Fer ignored him. He was working the biggest piece of luggage out of the trunk, grunting at the weight. “What the hell do you have in here? Your stainless-steel dildo collection?”
“Oh my God,” Auggie said, covering his face.
The unloading and moving-in process went relatively smoothly. The Sigma Sigma house was a massive, three-story Colonial with red brick and gleaming white pillars. It was relatively new construction, with high ceilings and big windows. Auggie’s room was on the third floor. The walls were a grayish brown, and someone had clearly patched and painted over the summer because there were no nail holes or broken plaster. Twin beds took up one side of the room, and matching desks occupied the rest of the space. One wall had been given over to two closets, which was where Auggie was going to have to store all his clothes—apparently, a dresser was not part of the standard package.
“This is worse than your last place,” Fer said on their third trip upstairs.
“No, it’s way better.”
“Do you have a roommate?”
“I don’t know; if I do, he hasn’t moved anything in yet.”
“He’d better not be a fucking psycho like your last one.”
“I think that’s everything, Fer.”
Fer grunted, hands on hips, still studying the room.
“I guess you can go now,” Auggie said.
“I want to see the bathroom. Your last place, you had that private bathroom.”
“You can’t just wander around the bathroom.”
“I’m going to take a leak.”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t take a leak? Jesus, Augustus, I don’t even know if you hear yourself sometimes.”
Fer left, and Auggie considered whether or not it would be better just to die right now rather than dragging it out for the rest of the time Fer insisted on staying. Instead, he rearranged some of his luggage and the moving boxes, snapped a selfie, and pushed it out on Instagram with the caption: The eagle has landed at Bro Central. Wish me luck! He repeated the process with Snapchat—he was still feeling out the relatively new platform, but he thought it had a lot of possibility. Almost immediately, he got a snap back: it showed a quarter of Dylan’s face and his mop of blond curls, and then grass, trees, and a swatch of asphalt. Dylan was grinning, and he’d scrawled a message on top of the picture: welcome to Bro Central, little bro!
Auggie added him as a friend so fast that he almost sprained his finger.
“Private showers,” Fer reported, adjusting his junk as he came back into the room. “But it’s just curtains, so you could still get ass raped.”
“Go home, Fer. Go catch your shuttle. Go stand in the middle of the street until someone runs you over.”
Instead, Fer shut the door. “You and I are going to have a talk right now, Augustus.”
“Oh God. Hold on. I should probably record this.”
Fer pushed Auggie’s phone down and shook his head. Then he said, “Condoms.”
“What?”
Taking a foil-wrapped condom from his pocket, Fer said, “Condoms.” He pronounced each syllable distinctly, wagging the packet for emphasis. “Your fuck-up father isn’t around to give you the talk—”
“Fer, no. Please. No. Please. You already gave me the talk. You gave me the talk when I was thirteen. You used a cucumber. Please don’t make me go through this again. I’ll never earn enough money to be able to pay for the therapy I need to get over this.”
“That was the straight-Auggie talk. This is the flaming-homo-Auggie talk. I’ve been doing some research because I wanted to get this right.”
Auggie groaned.
“You’re young. You’re an ugly little fucker, but you’re still probably going to ge
“I will use a condom. I will be safe. End of discussion.”
With his free hand, Fer jabbed a finger into Auggie’s chest to punctuate each word. “Every. Dick. That. Goes. In. Your. Ass. Suits. Up. Do you understand me?”
“Suits up?”
“Rubbers up. Learn the fucking lingo, Augustus. And I’m not fucking kidding with you right now. I don’t care if he’s your little fancy man and you think you’re head over heels in love. Rubbers. Rubbers. Rubbers. I will buy you a lifetime supply if you want, but you use a rubber every fucking time. Same goes for you if you decide to stick your Vienna sausage somewhere.”
“What do I have to say so that you will leave? What do I have to do? Is it money? Do you want money?”
“Save it for your fancy boys,” Fer said. Then he wrapped Auggie in a huge hug, squeezing him tighter and tighter until Auggie grunted.
“I can’t breathe.”
“I love you. You’re basically just one really fucking annoying snipping of ball hairs, but I love you, and I want this year to be better for you. I want you to be safe, and I want you to find some stud who can cornhole you all night long.”
Black specks danced in front of Auggie’s eyes, which was probably why he had such a hard time fighting off Fer when Fer started kissing him all over the face like a lunatic.
“Go home,” Auggie said, shoving Fer away, laughing and wiping his face. “God, you are so weird sometimes.”
“Fine. I’m going. Now you can hunt down that guy you were throwing a bone for and deepthroat him or however you gay guys say hello to each other.”
Auggie found a sneaker and pitched it; it caught Fer in the shoulder, and Fer stumbled back, laughing.
2
Theo sat in Dr. Wagner’s office, flip phone at his side, trying to look like he was paying attention to whatever Dr. Wagner was saying. The office was cramped, and it felt even smaller because the walls were lined with books. They made the space smell like moldering cloth and old paper. Dr. Wagner currently had his red, bulbous nose buried in the Riverside Shakespeare; he was looking for a specific passage that he had suddenly decided to add to the lesson plans.
Tell him you’ve got a sister you want to set him up with.
The text was from Howard Cartwright. Cart was a police officer, and he had been partnered with Theo’s husband, Ian, before Ian died in a car accident. In the year since that accident, a lot had changed between Theo and Cart—some of it good, some of it . . . well, Theo couldn’t quite tell. One thing that hadn’t changed was that Cart was a redneck pain in Theo’s ass.
Aren’t you supposed to be working? Theo had gotten pretty good at texting on the flip phone. He still didn’t understand the rush to get a smart phone; he was just barely getting the hang of this one.
I am working.
Really working.
I am really working, dumbass.
“Mr. Stratford,” Dr. Wagner said, lifting himself up from the pages of the Riverside Shakespeare with what looked like a great deal of effort. The booze on his breath when he faced Theo directly was strong enough to overpower the smell of the old books. “It’s lost to me now. I suppose I’ll have to find it later.”
Then he stared at Theo, his head bobbling on his neck, his eyes cloudy with cataracts and drink. Theo wouldn’t be surprised if the horrifying old fossil just dropped dead—the female grad students would probably have a parade out of pure relief.
Wagner was still staring.
“We were going to talk about grading expectations,” Theo said.
“Well,” Dr. Wagner said, his jaw working soundlessly for a moment. “I don’t know if that’s really necessary.”
Tell him you’ve got an eighteen-year-old cousin who will do things to his limp little lizard that Shakespeare never dreamed of.
Theo fought to hold back a smile.
“It was your idea, sir.”
Last year, at this time, Theo had been planning his own class. Last year, Theo had worked out an entire semester’s worth of material exploring adaptations and versions of Lear. Last year, he’d gotten some major work done on his thesis, and he’d also had the highest instructor evaluations in the department—for graduate students and professors. He’d turned some of his course materials into an article that was in the second-round review at Shakespeare Quarterly. This year, though, Theo was a teacher’s assistant. He was going to shuffle papers, sit in on discussion groups, make copies, and scratch his balls. He’d be lucky if he didn’t have to carry Dr. Wagner’s briefcase and mop up his drool every time a co-ed bent over.
“I believe I do have a rubric,” Dr. Wagner said, hoisting himself out of the seat and tottering toward the filing cabinet.
Stop a crime. Shoot up a bank robber. Get in a car chase. Rescue a kitten from a tree if you’ve got nothing better to do than bother me.
Gotta leave the kittens up there or the FD won’t have anything to do.
Theo smiled in spite of himself.
“Here it is,” Dr. Wagner said, holding a yellowed sheet of paper between two fingers. He waved it around and then blew dust off it. “Yes, I remember this. ’59 was an excellent year for rubrics.”
Kill me.
Not until you buy me that burger you owe me.
Mother. Fucker. You are one miserable son of a bitch. I was joking. It wasn’t a real bet.
A bet’s a bet.
“You can take a look at it for yourself, but I think you’ll find it’s perfectly up to snuff. I don’t understand why there’s all this rush to innovate these days. I really don’t. Edwin Markle developed the six-point rubric in 1959, and it’s just as good in 2009.”
“Or 2014,” Theo said.
“I’m very well aware of what year it is, Mr. Stratford. I was waxing poetic.”
That wasn’t all he was waxing.
Ok, I kind of cheated, Cart texted. I already knew you were ticklish.
Bastard.
Can’t help it. You’re just too cute when you laugh.
That one sentence was evidence of how very far things had shifted between them.
“Mr. Stratford, there is something that I think we need to discuss.”
“Yes?”
“I understand that in the past you were found to be having inappropriate relationships with students.”
Theo tried as hard as he could to keep his face smooth. His first year as a graduate student at Wroxall, the evening of the department’s welcoming social, he had watched Dr. Wagner pursue Grace round and round the cheese table. Finally Grace had retreated to the bathroom. Dr. Wagner had followed. Theo had pushed open the door, rapping loudly, asking if anyone was in there. Dr. Wagner had stumbled out, his cheeks almost as red as his nose, smelling like he’d been swimming in a distillery. He’d mumbled something about getting turned around. Grace had been holding a can of pepper gel, so she would have been fine, but Theo hadn’t forgotten.
Now, looking at those cloudy eyes, the glint in them, he realized Dr. Wagner hadn’t forgotten either.
“No,” Theo said.
“Excuse me?”
“I said no. That’s not true. I had a relationship with an undergraduate student who had been my student previously. There was never any suggestion that the relationship had taken place while we were teacher and student.” Theo struggled for a smile. “And relationship is really too strong of a word. We tried something, and it didn’t work.”
Wagner huffed. “Well, that’s certainly not how I heard it.”
“You’re hearing it right now. From me.”
“Yes. Well.”
“And I’m sure you understand how appearances can be misleading.”
Wagner huffed some more. “I certainly hope there won’t be any further misunderstandings, Mr. Stratford. No more misleading appearances. As instructors, we have a sacred trust to shape young minds. We are responsible for their wellbeing. I hope I make myself perfectly clear when I say that nothing less will be tolerated.”
Gin, Theo thought. He couldn’t be sure, because all he was getting was the reek of alcohol, but Theo would have put money on gin being the drink of choice.
“Of course,” Theo said.
