Grip - Drip (chapter 2) by Kelsey Schur

Kassandra

Some mornings, I get to the lab early. It's not generally a choice, but if I'm awake at five in the morning, I may as well get up and do something. At least then I have a few hours before he drags his disorganized self in. Those mornings, it's actually convenient that my boss could be a subject in abnormal psych himself.
This is one of those mornings. Just me and the hum of the fluorescent lights for three hours. Suddenly, I hear the sound of a key being shoved into the door handle, and jump, quickly looking over my shoulder. He couldn't possibly be here this early. With the pop of a swollen door in a painted frame, the door to the tiny lab swings open. A thin, blonde boy in a mauve t-shirt and khakis is standing in the doorway, still holding the knob with one hand, a keyring in the other, and staring at me staring at him.
“Oh, uh, hi, sorry, didn't mean to scare you. I thought I would be here first. I would've knocked-” he stutters from the threshold.
“No, no, it's okay. Can I help you?”
“Uhm, I'm looking for the lab where Professor Greye is doing his work this summer.”
“You found it,” I reply. “You can't be a subject if you have key. What do you need?”
“Uh, I guess I don't need anything. I was told to come here this morning. I'm Professor Greye's summer research assistant.”
“Oh. I didn't know we were getting an undergrad. Have a seat.” I push the other rolling office chair towards him with my foot.
He catches the chair awkwardly and lowers himself into it, reaching out to shake my hand once we're level. “I'm Christian Snowe, and you are?”
I give him a quick handshake and lean back in my chair. “Kassandra Rine. I'm Al's graduate servant and TA. Did he give you anything specific to do today?”
“Uh, no, just told me to come in and wait for him.”
I shouldn't have asked. Al would never be organized enough to give this kid a task ahead of time. “Get comfortable. You're going to be waiting for a while.”
“Did Prof- I mean, Al, say he would be late?”
I laugh a little. “Christian, your professor is, well, not to be unprofessional, a wreck. He'll be here around two.”
“Oh. It's eight in the morning... What should I do?”
I sigh. “There're things to be set up, but they're hard for me to explain on your first day... Here, I'll give you a tour. This,” I gesture at the tiny, windowless room around us. Three desks with ancient desktop computers are positioned around the room so that two are on one side with my desk on the left, furthest from the door. Al's desk is on the other side of the room, a half-empty bottle of whiskey standing beside the sagging stacks of paper and a mountain of crumpled coffee cups. I like this arrangement because we sit back to back. “This is our lovely lab. You can see Al is a real stickler about neatness.” I reach behind me and open the door to the adjoining room, which is about the size of a walk-in closet and currently contains a mess of equipment, a nest of wires, and an easy chair. I still hold that its claustrophobic effect probably skews our results, but it is what it is. “This is the controlled room where we lock up the patients and interrogate them. There, that ends the tour. The bathroom is down the hall to your left.” I return to my computer screen, hoping I won't have to entertain this kid for the next six hours.
It turns out that Chris is more perceptive and self-directed than I initially thought, in that he knows when someone doesn't want to be bothered and can entertain himself with a computer screen for several hours. He even goes out and retrieves soda and sandwiches for us around lunchtime. Cute, he hasn't learned to be an asshole yet. I sincerely hope Al doesn't rub off on him.
Once a sandwich has been offered to me, I feel more inclined to make small talk. “So when did you meet Al?”
“Er, yesterday.”
I snort and swallow my Coke with difficulty. “Typical. Did he give you any information at all?”
“Not really,” Chris replies hesitantly. “He gave me a page detailing the project, but we ran into... bad weather I guess.”
I raise an eyebrow and take another bite of ham sandwich. Experience tells me I already know what he means, but I wait for Chris to go on. He tells me Al's windows were blown open twice in yesterday's storm, and Al was extremely flustered by the whole thing. After the second time, Al tersely told Chris to leave and come here this morning.
“...Al does some strange things. I wouldn't worry about it. He's always more difficult to deal with when the weather's bad, so anticipate it, and avoid dealing with him more than necessary.”
“Do you think he's seasonal affective or something like that?”
I laugh. “No, at some point we have to stop being undergrads and quit diagnosing all of our acquaintances.”

Al arrives at ten minutes after two, blundering in with his brown ponytail still wet from the shower and a day's stubble spread along his jaw. He looks particularly bad today. Dark circles are weighing into his cheeks underneath his bloodshot eyes, and he's mismatched the buttons and the buttonholes of his shirt. Al walks stiffly over to his desk and slams down his briefcase, which he's forgotten to latch. It spills across the desk and onto the floor. He groans and slumps into his chair. I wonder if he's even noticed that Christian and I are in the office with him.
Christian is looking at me questioningly. I catch his eye and shake my head. Al takes a deep breath, drags his face through his hands, and leans back in his chair. He pauses meditatively until Chris clears his throat. Al looks slowly over his shoulder. Straining his gaze more than three feet from his face seems to cause him excruciating pain.
“Oh,” Al turns the chair towards us. “Sorry. Blame my morning tunnel vision...” Deep breath. “Glad to see you here, Christian. I assume you've met Kassie?”
“Kassandra.” I mutter, even though I know that at this point it's useless.
He doesn't even look over at me. “She keeps the office from looking so grim all of time, yeah?”
Oh God, please, kill me. So much for being somewhat subdued by his hangover and insomnia today.
Christian smiles nervously. “Yeah, she gave me the tour.”
“Great.” He finally points his gaze my way, and I cringe as I see some life come into his face. “Kassie, what did I email you last night? I know I asked you to do something.”
“You mean the three sentence email I received from you at three in the morning?”
His expression dims again. Good. Back off, creep. “Yeah, that would be it.”
“You asked me to start setting up for the project. I did the best I could based on what we discussed earlier.”
“Okay, wonderful.” He puts his face in his hands again and talks into his palms. “Ah, jeez, Christian, what do I want you to do? Uhm... I want you to post want ads for subjects around campus, all right?”
Chris nods, and turns around to start putting something together on his computer. Al wheels his chair next to mine, irritatingly invading my personal space, as he always does.
“You look cute in summer clothes,” he attempts to compliment me in a tone of voice that tells me he's more interested in seeing what's underneath them. I had hoped he would act professional for once with a new assistant in the office. I should have known better.
“So here's what I'm working on...” I pull up the schematic of the set-up. He doesn't look at it.
“Want to go to the beach this weekend? I was going to take Hound.”
“I started with the patient interface,” I plow along.
Al leans over to look at what I'm working on, getting deeper into my breathing space, and my left hand suddenly feels wet. I see that some of his wet hair has escaped from his short ponytail and is dripping onto my hand.
“Jesus Christ!” I don't usually explode; I put up with a lot from Al. All I can do now is bolt for the door. Disgusting.

Half an hour later, I've dropped onto a metal chair in the campus coffee shop. I'm attempting to emanate “fuck off” waves to anyone who might think of approaching me as I hunch over my mocha, like a vulture huddled over carrion. That's a good image. No one hits on vultures.
Poor Christian. He's probably entirely freaked out. I wouldn't want to be working in an office with Al and any woman if I were an undergrad. I don't want to be working with Al with anyone, male or female, as a graduate student. His behavior is an insult to my dignity as a student and a woman. I hear part of my mind question why last time wasn't an insult. Ian was a different man, not a dismantled, distracted burn-out, but a real mind who respected my brain as well as my body. That same insipid voice in the back of my mind reminds me that Ian left. I frown and look out at the traffic fording the puddles of yesterday's storm. Ian had a better opportunity across country at another school, that's why he left. And he had those eleven year old twins. How could he abandon them?
My thoughts are interrupted when I perceive that my scalp is getting wet. I look up, and a wet drop strikes me right between the eyes. A pipe running along the ceiling is dripping directly above me. What a lovely day.