Mefliam

School wasn’t cancelled but no one seemed to be in the classrooms. On the walls, in the outdoor corridors, white, angular letters spelled out messages. It didn’t seem to be hate speech, or threats, or political; no one was enraged, nor bemused. The language looked maybe like Finnish, lots of i’s and f’s and doubled letters. They were already starting to sandblast or rub it off. Why only the fresh white graffiti? The old greasy slogans and profanity plus the oil of a thousand hands running every day along its now smooth surface gave the wall a venerable patina. Where the fresh white words had been removed, something else had gone too; now there existed transparent blotches, revealing the crumbled brick backfill of the wall as though preserved in resin, or like a clever display in the mining and geology section of a children’s museum.

Students had gathered on the sort of second-story courtyard, and they were talking, yelling, excited by the distraction. Their black polyester robes flowed about, and their contrasting faces looked grimacey and masklike in the light of the cloudy sky.

But then we were at the party. Rachel or Jessica or Meghan was having a birthday party. An old roommate? We were sitting in some sort of bizarre anteroom, the party could be heard, bounces of colored light too, via the hallway at the left. Again the walls were dirty, greasy, well used. Some of graffiti fluoresced. The light was putrid and turbid, suggesting metal staircases and loading docks and broken fire-extinguisher boxes, and boxes of ammunition towards the corner like in a N64 shooter. People passed by, ones and twos, cups in hand, hand in hand, cups in mouth, mouth in mouth. My companion greeted them when it seemed to suit his fancy, or the haze of his stupor temporarily diminished. He too was slumped in a second dark green (or was it grey) vinyl-covered fauteuil pushed up against the wall. The birthday girl stumbled past, disappearing past a corner, and then was back. The shuttle will be here soooon, she reassured the room, partly for the benefit of the two of us in it. She called out a friend’s name, waved a hand/sloshed a solo cup, and was again gone. Another girl sauntered in and noticed us, maybe.  Her dress was one of those colors which probably looked better on her computer screen than it did now, vraiment. She seemed to recognize my neighbor but then fixed on me. Did she speak? Did it matter? Was my neighbor telling me of her tendency, warning me with a lifted eyebrow and an “if you like…” shrug, or was that just my own souvenir? She approached me, straddled my jutting knees. Her solo cup was partners with a cigarette, each listing dangerously. The hem of her garment, her shoulders, my knees, the edge of the fauteuil were all in the same plane. Her eyes gleamed dangerously and then fogged, the sequins scintillated. “Shuttle’s here!” someone whooped.

We got out of the shuttle onto what looked like a vertical hillside. Tufts of grass green and yellow and drying dirt under our feet evoked an old outfield. I've been here before. In my mind flashed a ski-area-style map; liftlines here, blues and greens, cartoon trees and peaks and permanently closed areas and access roads. You are here. 

The activity was straightforward: you just slide down the hill. Can’t be sure if you need some sort rice-sack-cum-toboggan, or if just spreading your feet apart and balancing is sufficient. Look, down there is the end of the slope, it seems to flatten out. Are those people picnicking? Slide don’t fall. The lift can take you back to the top for a repetition, like at those tubing places. The attendant was checking passes or something, as people came to the entrance before sliding down. How many runs did the birthday party get? I’d already done several, I think. He looked at my pass. A problem: an ID number appeared to be missing. No worry, he can look it up in a ledger, or call someone, and get me my proper number. He is looking for his cell phone. I am getting embarrassed; won’t the people behind me be getting perturbed at the delay? Isn't there a better way to do this? There must be a better way to do this. I’m holding up the whole line. The attendant cares none; he continues searching with a bureaucrat’s disposition. I wait.